YEOMAN FARMING IN OXFORDSHIRE 189 



each by occupying owners, and the groups for convenience 

 are designated A, B, C, D, E. 



From this summary it appears that only 9 per cent of the 

 county's rural real estate was in the hands of the independent 

 farmer in 1785. But it also appears that the five groups fall into 

 two well-marked divisions. In groups C, D, and E, comprising 

 about two-thirds of the townships, there are only three hundred 

 and forty-three occupying owners, or less than two per township. 

 They pay but 2.3 per cent of the tax and presumably own only 

 this percentage of the land. The remaining 97.7 per cent is to be 

 attributed to the non-occupying owner to the landlord. In the 

 other division, formed of groups A and B and comprising one 

 hundred and two townships, the occupying owner pays 20 per cent 

 of the tax and is to this extent a substantial factor in the commu- 

 nity. We should not be far wrong in picturing two-thirds of rural 

 Oxfordshire in 1785 as given over almost entirely to the landlord, 

 while the other third has one-fifth of its population yeoman farmers. 



It will be remembered that Oxfordshire rises in the north- 

 west into the Cotswold Hills and in the southeast into the Chil- 

 terns. The intervening surface comprises the low-lying valleys 

 of the Thames, the Cherwell, and the Thame. A cross-section of 

 the county from northwest to southeast would thus have the 

 appearance of the profile of a saddle, with Oxford at the center. 

 In the Chiltern region there are fewest yeomen townships. These 

 parishes were brought under cultivation largely from the forest 

 state, as becomes clear from the position and extent of their open 

 fields. The more fertile and more favorably situated parts of the 

 river valleys also are in landlord hands. In three spots only 

 are independent farmers numerous, and these three are the most 

 retired in the county. One is the triangle formed with the northern 

 line of the Chilterns as its base and the two highways from Oxford 

 to London as its sides. It is a lonely plain, in places not very 

 fertile, still untraversed by a railway and in marked contrast with 

 the attractive southern slopes of the same hills. The open fields 

 of this region were among- the last in the county to be enclosed. 

 A second isolated spot is that about Otmoor, some distance 

 removed from the Oxford-Bicester highway. But the largest of 



