VKOMAN FARMING IN OXFORDSHIRE 197 



individual parishes, we find an occasional deviation from the rule 

 just stated, but seldom one of moment. Distinct loss of occupying 

 owners or of their estates can be discerned in seven townships 

 only. In these, eight independent farmers and occupied farms 

 rated at 27 45. disappear. Klsewhere, if occupying owners 

 seem to be lost, they have either disposed of their properties at 

 a date distant from that of enclosure or have leased them and 

 thenceforth appear as landlords. The disappearance of eight men 

 and of some three hundred acres in the forty-nine townships 

 which underwent enclosure during the half century in question is 

 of slight consequence in comparison with the marked increase of 

 yeoman farming apparent in the townships taken together. 



Before 1785 enclosure had been actively going on during thirty 



. but unfortunately our data for determining its effects are by 



no means so complete or precise as the material just summarized. 



The only Oxfordshire I^and Tax assessments before 1785 are 



of a few parishes for the years 1760 and 1761. Nor do 

 these distinguish between occupying and non-occupying owners, 

 as do the later ones. Hence the sole information to be had from 

 comparison of a Land Tax receipt of 1760 and one of 1785 is 

 whether there had been in the interval an engrossing of farms, 

 i.e. the absorption of small estates by large ones. Such informa- 

 tion may be extended by an examination of enclosure awards, 

 which likewise do not go the length of discriminating between 

 occupying and non-occupying owners. At best we can merely 

 argue that cn^rossin^ may have entailed the loss of some inde- 

 pendent farmers, while its absence probably means the mainte- 

 nance of the status i/no. 



the fift tordshirc parishes enclosed from 1758 to 



the 1760 assessments remain for seven. One of these, 



Stanton Ilarcourt, shows no particular cn^rossim; during the 



I, Hut the other seven do. Especiallv in I'.ladon, Chester- 



iul I landbnrnu^h tin- Duke of Marlborough is found to 



been vigorously making purchases, and in ( n his 



interest is new. In the other three townships the purchasing 



landlords are different persons, and the one at Heath has not 



bought extensively. 



