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The Oxfordshire Rising was an abortive anti-enclosure rebellion that took place at Enslow Hill, ‘’Oxfordshire’’ in November 1596. Led by local carpenter Bartholomew Steer, and spurred on by high prices, the rebels sought to address the mounting enclosure crisis in Oxfordshire by striking down local enclosing gentlemen and leading a charge on London.[1]
Context
[edit]Crisis of the 1590s
[edit]Dearth had blighted England throughout the 1590s. Harvest failure had struck in 1586 and food prices continued to rise throughout the latter part of the sixteenth century. The 1590s were particularly bad, with poor harvests from 1594-98 leading to a grain scarcity and greatly increased prices.[2] Prices had risen above the level even the most thrifty could afford. Wheat prices doubled in Oxford between 1590 and 1594, and in 1596 they rose from 5s to 8s in the six months between Lady Day and Michaelmas.[3] Attempts by Oxfordshire magistrates to keep grain prices down by banning shipments out of the county in August 1596 had failed, and the local Baron, Lord Norris, was rowdily presented with a petition demanding hospitality from local lords.[4] Food riots had occurred in Kent and Essex in 1596, in the West Country, East Anglia, Kent and Sussex in 1597, along with an apprentice-led food riot in London in 1595.[5] Such riots rarely threatened outright rebellion, but allusions to risings and violence are recorded amongst the discontented at Norwich, Essex and Somerset in 1595.[6] Rising prices and the threat of disorder in country and town were back by low wages for agricultural workers, increasing rural poverty as the yeomanry increased their land holdings.[7][8]
Enclosure
[edit]Enclosure involved the fencing or hedging off of one’s land from other previous open field land, often to create one large contiguous farm, owned by one substantial farmer.[9] Those with interests in securing large commercial farms referred to such practice as ‘improving’ the land rather than enclosing. Aside from the poor harvest of 1586, England had seen a sustained run of good harvests leading up to 1593, when aspects of the husbandry statutes were repealed to allow for more ‘improvement’ of common land.[10] Such enclosure could however prove devastating in times of poor harvest. As the spending power of the labouring poor decreased, gathering wood, foraging for food and grazing cattle on common land became an essential part of the household economy, and often made the difference between subsistence and starvation.[7]
The lower Cherwell valley area, to the north of the city of Oxford, was particularly susceptible to enclosure, being of heavy, poorly drained clay, prime land for enclosing ‘improvement.’[11] Local manor owners had taken advantage of this. Francis Power, lord of the manor of Bletchingdon had a family history of enclosing common and demesne land, and had by 1596/7 enclosed 40% of the manor of Bletchingdon, leaving 24 houses let with no accompanying land.[12] Similarly, William Frere, a wealthy county oligarch, had enclosed land around Water Eaton, dispossessing 16 houses of land, thus reducing the number of plows in operation in his manor by half.[13] ‘New money’ enclosers Sir William Spencer and wealthy yeoman John Rathbone had also enclosed land in the manor of Yarnton, and in lands around Shipton-on-Cherwell, Bletchingdon and Water Eaton respectively.[14] Such intense enclosure put the labouring poor of the lower Cherwell valley into the midst of what historian John Walter has termed a ‘crisis of enclosure’.[15] As well as the immediate economic toll this took on the poor, there was a social cost: the young were denied the chance of letting a smallholding and therefore the opportunity of supporting of starting a family.[16]
The Rising
[edit]Preparation
[edit]The instigator of the Rising plot was Bartholomew Steer, a carpenter employed by Lord Norris, lord lieutenant of Oxfordshire and owner of the manor of Bletchingdon. About three weeks before Michaelmas, Steer met with co-conspirator and fellow Norris employee James Bradshaw to discuss the August petition, and both travelled from their lodgings in Hampton Gay to meet with Steer’s brother, John in Witney. John Steer, a weaver claimed that there was great unemployment in Witney, and boasted that he could raise one hundred men to ride with him in cause.[17] Spurred on, Bradshaw and Steer then set about attempting to recruit their fellow servants in Norris’ household as the lord wintered in London, preaching ‘the politics of Cockayne’.[18] They were joined by Bradshaw’s brother, Richard and local miller’s loader John Ibill in spreading the word countywide. Together, they formulated a plan to meet on Enslow Hill, the site of a previous rising in 1549, and go to Norris’ armoury, take armour fit for 100 men, along with horse and artillery, and attack eight leading landed gentry; (Power, Rathbone, Spencer, Frere and Norris, along with Vincent Barry, George Whitton and Sir Henry Lee) and then ride to London, to meet with the discontented apprentices who had risen in 1595.[19] The assault was to be staged on 21st November, four days after St. Hugh’s day, and more provocatively, festivities celebrating the anniversary of Elizabeth I’s accession day. Steer and Bradshaw used markets, fairs and kinship networks to spread word of their plan, whilst their fellow servants, Lord Norris’ coachmen, brought them back stories of badly managed enclosures in nearby Northamptonshire and Warwickshire.[20]
Enslow Hill
[edit]On 21st November, at 9pm, Steer ascended Enslow Hill without either of the Bradshaw brothers, without his own brother John Steer, without John Ibill and without the hundred promised from Witney. He was joined by fellow Hampton Gay resident Thomas Horne, Robert Burton, a Beckley mason, and Edward Bompass. Together, the four of them waited for two hours and nobody came. [21]
Aftermath
[edit]Legacy
[edit]
- ^ John Guy, ‘’Tudor England’’ (Oxford, 1988) p 405
- ^ Paul Slack, ‘Poverty and Social Regulation in Elizabethan England’, in Christopher Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, 1984), pp. 221-41, p 226
- ^ John Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”? The Oxfordshire Rising of 1596’, ‘’Past & Present’’, 107 (May 1985) pp. 90-143, p 95
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ pp. 97-8
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 92
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 91
- ^ a b Enclosure and Resistance in Oxfordshire, Steve Hindle, ‘Enclosure and Resistance in Oxfordshire: A Tradition of Disorder?’, ‘‘BBC Legacies: Oxfordshire’’
- ^ , Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 96
- ^ Christopher Clay, ‘‘Economic Expansion and Social Change, England, 1500-1700: Volume I, People Land and Towns’’ (Cambridge, 1984) p 70
- ^ Clay, ‘‘Economic Expansion and Social Change’’ p 79
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 109
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 110
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 111
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 112
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 118
- ^ Enclosure and Resistance in Oxfordshire, Hindle, ‘Enclosure and Resistance in Oxfordshire’
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 99
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 100
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 100-3
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 104-6
- ^ Walter, ‘A “Rising of the People”?’ p 101