YEOMAN 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 4s. disappear. Elsewhere, 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 

 years, but unfortunately our data for determining its effects are by 

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

 The only Oxfordshire Land Tax assessments before 1785 are 

 those 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 engrossing may have entailed the loss of some inde- 

 pendent farmers, while its absence probably means the mainte- 

 nance of the status quo. 



Of the fifty-six Oxfordshire parishes enclosed from 1758 to 

 1785. the 1760 assessments remain for seven. One of these, 

 Stanton Harcourt, shows no particular engrossing during the 

 period. But the other seven do. Especially in Bladon, Chester- 

 ton, and Handborough the Duke of Marlborough is found to 

 have been vigorously making purchases, and in Chesterton his 

 interest is new. In the other three townships the purchasing 

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

 bought extensively. 



