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Enclosure and Resistance in Oxfordshire: A Tradition of Disorder? |
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The tradition of resistance did not, however, die with them, for many of the same villages from which Steere had sought to recruit rebels in 1596 were at the epicentre of the concerted and strategically premeditated campaign on Otmoor in the early 1830s. Drawn from the seven “towns” (Charlton, Oddington, Noke, Beckley, Horton, Fencott and Murcott) which intercommoned on the moor, crowds of between one and 500 men, many of them with blackened faces, frequently disguised as women, ventured out on to the moor during the night to smash the hedges, ditches and bridges erected by the local gentry.
The Revolution of Otmoor
An aerial view of Otmoor today
© Penelope Jackson |
Known locally as “the Revolution of Otmoor”, this paroxysm of protest drew support not only from the labouring poor but also from lesser farmers and tradesmen. The protesters were also encouraged by itinerant radicals campaigning for electoral reform. So threatening had this complex social and political alliance become by 1831 that even the county elite were contemplating surrendering their claims to absolute rights in property on the moor in the interests of preserving the public peace.
By 1834, however, opposition to enclosure on Otmoor had evaporated as a consequence of the unravelling of a broad and mutable social alliance whose momentary coherence had presented a genuine problem to the county magistracy.
The two episodes provide fascinating evidence of popular attitudes to the land and how it should be worked and exploited for the common good; of the loops of association which might tie disparate groups of protesters together; and of the importance of local folk memory in preserving the custom of disobedience to gentry authority over several generations.
Most of all, they are a powerful reminder both of the symbolism of the land in popular political consciousness and of the fact that most of those who worked upon it were not remunerated with a weekly wage, but with natural resources which might be harnessed just as regularly to the household economies of the labouring poor.
Words: Steve Hindle - University of Warwick
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