VCH Oxon • Texts in Progress • Bruern (May 2015 version) • social hist. p. 1
VCH Oxfordshire Texts in Progress
BRUERN
Social History
SOCIAL HISTORY
Social Structure and the Life of the Community
The Middle Ages
Bruern’s late 11th-century agricultural community of villani, bordars, and servi was typical of
many Oxfordshire manors, and its removal by the newly established Cistercian abbey in the
mid 12th century was therefore both a dramatic and transformative event, and a vivid
illustration of the power of medieval lordship.1 A few former tenants may have remained,
living and working on the newly established granges as lay brothers (conversi) or as hired
labourers; some may even have been resettled as abbey servants on existing tenant
holdings, as is perhaps suggested by the existence of a house and 30-a. holding at Tangley
removed by the abbey in 1515.2 Many others, however, including most women and families,
were probably moved elsewhere. Incoming lay brothers in the late 12th century may have
included an uncle of the county’s sheriff Robert de Witefeld, a native possibly of
neighbouring Milton.3
The resulting parish community was very different from those in neighbouring places,
one of the most obvious features being probably the absence of women and children even
amongst abbey servants. The initial monastic community most likely comprised an abbot
and twelve monks transferred from Waverley (Surrey),4 and although numbers fluctuated
during the Middle Ages the community was never especially large.5 Numbers of lay brothers
or resident servants may have been roughly comparable: nine or ten servants were named
in 1523, when five wealthier taxpayers included lessees of the tannery and other property.6
Like most late medieval rural servants, those living at Bruern were probably young
1
VCH Oxon. I, 413; above, par. intro. (settlement).
Above, econ. hist. (medieval agric.).
3
TNA, E 315/37, no. 82; List of Sheriffs for England and Wales (Lists and Indexes IX, 1898), 107;
VCH Oxon. II, 80.
4
Visit. Dioc. Linc. II, 215; VCH Surrey, II, 77–9.
5
Above, par. intro. (population).
6
TNA, E 179/161/198; above, econ. hist. (16th to 18th cents).
2
VCH Oxon • Texts in Progress • Bruern (May 2015 version) • social hist. p. 2
unmarried men who subsequently moved away to start a family. By the 16th century wives
and children were no longer expressly forbidden,7 although in 1532 the scandalous
discovery of women in the abbot’s lodgings contributed to his removal from office.8
Within this mostly male community, the daily routines of monastic life were
punctuated by occasional violence and conflict. In the mid 1220s a Gloucestershire man
accused around a dozen monks and lay brothers of robbery, among them (probably) the
monks Geoffrey and Ranulf of Bruern, John de Compton, and Ivo le Ostiller, in charge of the
guesthouse. Implicated lay brothers included a carter, a smith, four ploughmen, and a
forester.9 Ten years later an abbey tenant was forcibly evicted, and in 1241 one of the
abbot’s household was convicted of murder,10 while in 1266 the abbot was pardoned for
allegedly keeping a convicted felon’s horse.11 Abbots were deposed in 1279 and 1366,12
internal tensions being probably exacerbated by the abbey’s financial difficulties: revenues in
1291 totalled only c.£72,13 and royal keepers were appointed to clear its debts in 1304,
1330, 1351, 1354, and 1364–6, leaving only enough to feed and clothe the abbot, monks,
and necessary servants.14 In 1364 the abbot of Garendon (Leics.) was implicated in an
attack on Bruern abbey which led to the imprisonment and eventual removal of Abbot John
Dunster, whose misrule had allegedly brought the abbey to the brink of dispersal.15 A later
abbot was accused in 1368 of forging a royal charter.16
The abbey’s financial problems were exacerbated by its manifold obligations,
including service to the pope and travel to the Cistercians’ mother house at Cîteaux. 17 Kings
and dignitaries exploited the abbey’s hospitality: the papal legate stayed at Bruern in 1213,
and royal letters were occasionally dated there in the later 13th century,18 while from the
14th century the abbey was required to provide corrodies (board and lodging) to royal
7
Cf. P.J.P. Goldberg, ‘Life and Death: the Ages of Man’, in R. Horrox and W.M. Ormrod (eds), A
Social History of England 1200–1500 (2006), 420–1; G. Coppack, The White Monks: The Cistercians
in Britain 1128–1540 (1998), 120.
8
Visit. Dioc. Linc. II, 216.
9
Cur. Reg. XI, pp. 273, 423.
10
Ibid. XV, pp. 311–12; Oxon. Eyre, 1241, pp. 149–50; cf. Cal. Pat. 1292–1301, 46.
11
Cal. Pat. 1258–66, 645.
12
VCH Oxon. II, 80–1.
13
Tax. Eccl. 32, 44–5, 203, 219, 222, 236 (total £72 11s. 1d.).
14
Cal. Pat. 1301–7, 229; 1327–30, 525; 1350–4, 62; 1354–8, 39; 1361–4, 461–2; 1364–7, 86, 244–5;
for debts, above, econ. hist. (medieval agric.).
15
Cal. Pat. 1361–4, 454, 483; 1364–7, 9, 244; Cal. Papal Petitions, I, 446, 470–1, 511.
16
Cal. Close 1364–8, 492; Cal. Chart. 1341–1417, 221–2.
17
C.R. Cheney and M.G. Cheney (eds), The Letters of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) concerning
England and Wales (1967), pp. 59, 84, etc.; Cal. Papal Regs. 1198–1304, 85, 101; Cal. Doc. France,
52; Cal. Pat. 1281–92, 430, 443.
18
W.D. Macray (ed.), Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham (Rolls Series, 1863), 235; Cal. Pat. 1247–58,
117; 1272–81, 188; 1281–92, 423–4, 454; Close 1256–9, 268; 1261–4, 135; Cal. Inq. Misc. I, p. 309;
Cal. Chanc. Warrants, 30.
VCH Oxon • Texts in Progress • Bruern (May 2015 version) • social hist. p. 3
servants.19 Conversely the abbey benefited from royal patronage, in particular Henry II’s
grant of a daily wagon-load of fuel from Wychwood forest. Richard I doubled the entitlement
to two wagon-loads, and Henry III provided a particular wood in the forest for the abbey’s
use.20 The grant exposed the abbey to accusations of waste and destruction, however, and
in the 1240s it was heavily fined by the forest justices.21
The abbey’s recovery from the crisis of the mid 1360s was assisted by new
benefactions, including a universal grant of free warren and the acquisition of neighbouring
Fifield manor.22 The 15th and early 16th century was largely characterized by capable and
respected abbots,23 many of whom had social connections with local gentry,24 while some
monks served outside the abbey as parish priests.25 Tensions re-emerged, however, during
the abbacy of John Chaffcombe (1527–32), who allegedly obtained the office by offering
Thomas Wolsey a bribe of 200 marks and 280 oaks towards the building works at the
cardinal’s Oxford college, subsequently plundering the abbey to recoup his outlay.26 The
future prior Richard Norton was apparently caught up in Chaffcombe’s dealings, and in
1529–30 was imprisoned by Wolsey on a false charge of pledging the convent’s plate to the
abbot of Garendon.27 His imprisonment may have provoked the monks to gather an 80strong force to expel Chaffcombe from the abbey,28 although the attempt failed, and the
abbot subsequently summoned a group of Burford craftsmen to bar the gates. In 1532 he
was finally ousted, tried, and deposed, receiving a pension of £13 6s. 8d. a year.29 His
successor restored order, but in 1536 the abbey was suppressed, the monks and many of
the servants dispersed, and the abbot left with an annual pension of £22.30
The Reformation to 1800
Following the abbey’s suppression Bruern was once again reorganized under new lords, the
monastic buildings being replaced by a large private manor house, and the granges
becoming effectively leasehold farms. The changes were apparently accompanied by
19
Cal. Close 1318–23, 117; 1374–7, 517; 1377–81, 371; 1392–6, 504; 1405–9, 76.
Rot. Chart. 146; Cal. Chart. 1300–26, 270–1; 1341–1417, 221–3; Close 1242–7, 384, 408–9, 513–
14; 1251–3, 294; Cal. Pat. 1232–47, 472.
21
Cal. Pat. 1232–47, 472; Close 1261–4, 339–40; Oxon. Forests, p. 52.
22
Cal. Chart. 1341–1417, 196; Cal. Pat. 1381–5, 107; below, Fifield, manor.
23
D.M. Smith (ed.), The Heads of Religious House: England and Wales, III. 1377–1540 (2008), 272;
ODNB, s.v. Robert King.
24
D. Royce, ‘Icomb Place’, Trans. of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeol. Soc. 7 (1882–3), 179;
Oxon. Wills, 15–16, 22–3.
25
Cal. Papal Regs. 1471–84, 675; 1513–21, 577.
26
Visit. Dioc. Linc. II, 216–17; Lincs. Archives, DIOC/BOX 92/5.
27
L&P Hen. VIII, IV (3), p. 2741.
28
Ibid., p. 2363; TNA, STAC 2/27/15.
29
Visit. Dioc. Linc. II, 215–17; Valor Eccl. II, 204.
30
L&P Hen. VIII, IX, p. 149; XI, p. 253; XIII (1), p. 576; XVII, p. 90.
20
VCH Oxon • Texts in Progress • Bruern (May 2015 version) • social hist. p. 4
marked depopulation, although at least some abbey officers or servants (including the
former Sandbrook bailiff John Green) remained.31 Newcomers such as William Parrot (d.
1584) at Bruern Grange were substantial yeoman farmers with wide connections: Parrot
owned a house at Milton-under-Wychwood in which his uncle lived, and left money to the
poor of Fifield, Milton, and Shipton.32 How far the parish had resident gentry in the later 16th
century is unclear, although the Brydges family installed heraldic glass in the new manor
house, and Sir Thomas Brydges’ son Henry lived at Tangley,33 while Sir Henry Unton
occupied the manor house in the 1580s.34 Unton’s gentleman servant Thomas Fitch traded
regularly in Burford, while the parish also had links with Chipping Norton.35
Continuity was provided from 1593 to 1781 by the Copes as lords of Bruern,36
although Sir John Cope (d. 1638) and his grandmother Anne (d. 1637) may have been the
first of the family to live at Bruern Abbey rather than at their ancestral seat of Hanwell. Both
employed numerous servants, to whom Sir John left the large sum of £100 to be divided
among them. The Copes were on close terms with the Puritan clergyman Robert Harris, who
signed the protestation oath in 1642 as ‘minister’ of Bruern, and witnessed Sir John’s will
with four other inhabitants.37 Both Harris and the Copes adopted a low profile during the Civil
War, however,38 and Bruern seems to have avoided direct involvement in either the conflict
or its aftermath. Sir John Cope (d. 1721), whose career as an Oxfordshire MP was
undistinguished, lived intermittently at Bruern in the 1690s, where he was supplied by
tradesmen from the area and received venison from Wychwood forest or Icomb (Glos.), with
cider brought from Stow-on-the-Wold. Other expenditure included provisioning the stables,
maintaining the house, and paying the servants, of whom Cope’s bailiff Thomas Bryan (d.
1703) received £20 a year and farmed on his own account.39 Another servant, Joshua
Higgins (d. 1718), remembered fellow household staff in his will, alongside family members
from his native Shropshire.40 The Copes remained at Bruern until fire destroyed the manor
31
Above, econ. hist. (16th to 18th cents).
Ibid.; OHC, MS Wills Oxon. 186, f. 333.
33
Above, manors; TNA, PROB 11/43/134; Oxon. Visit. 19–20, 201.
34
J.L. Bolton and M.M. Maslen (eds), Calendar of the Court Books of the Borough of Witney 1538–
1610 (ORS 54, 1985), 108; Oxf. Ch. Ct Deposns 1581–6, p. 35; TNA, E 179/162/345; ODNB, s.v.
Unton.
35
Oxf. Ch. Ct Deposns 1581–6, pp. 35–6; 1592–6, pp. 33–4; Cal. Pat. 1589–90, p. 18; for later
Burford connections, TNA, PROB 11/126/458.
36
Above, manors.
37
TNA, PROB 11/178/190; Prot. Retns, 80; OHC, MS Wills Oxon. 13/1/38; below, relig. hist. (pastoral
care).
38
ODNB, s.v. Robert Harris, Anthony Cope (d. 1614); Hist. Parl. s.v. Anthony Cope (d. 1675).
39
Hants RO, 49M80/F1; 43M48/483–5, 488–9, 494–5, 497, 500–1; Hist. Parl. s.v. John Cope; TNA,
PROB 4/22487 (Thos Bryan).
40
OHC, MS Wills Oxon. 133/5/18.
32
VCH Oxon • Texts in Progress • Bruern (May 2015 version) • social hist. p. 5
house in 1764,41 and following rebuilding the house was let to the farmer Richard Harris,
who assumed the lord’s hunting rights in the parish.42
The late 17th-century farmhouse at Bruern Grange (left) and a 1795 drawing
of Bruern Abbey (right).
Bruern’s other inhabitants were chiefly tenant farmers and domestic and farm
servants,43 who included several families of relatively long-standing: the Rickettses,
established by 1642, remained until the 18th century.44 John Draper (d. 1679), a lessee of
Bruern Grange,45 was involved in running the Copes’ Bruern estate,46 while other prominent
tenants included Andrew Yeatman (d. 1722) and his son-in-law John Hitchman (d. 1727) at
Tangley,47 and Draper’s successor at Bruern Grange, Clement Furley (d. 1683).48 The
Bruern Grange lease passed later to William Ansell, whose term expired in 1783, and soon
afterwards both he and his relative James Tilling, the Tangley lessee, left the parish
following an auction of their goods.49 Bruern’s seclusion and sparse population may have
encouraged occasional thefts from fields and houses, and in the late 18th century Tangley
was the scene of an oft-repeated (and probably true) story of a bungled burglary by the
notorious Wychwood highwaymen the Dunsdon brothers.50
41
Above, manors (manor ho.).
OHC, QSD/L/55; Oxf. Jnl Syn. 17 Dec. 1785, 23 Sept. 1786, etc.
43
Above, econ. hist. (16th to 18th cents).
44
Prot. Retns, 80; TNA, E 179/164/504; E 179/255/4, m. 142; OHC, Shipton par. reg. transcript
(burials).
45
TNA, PROB 11/361/469.
46
Hants RO, 43M48/363, 469–70, 474.
47
Ibid. 43M48/462–3; OHC, MSS Wills Oxon. 159/5/23; 35/3/30.
48
Above, econ. hist. (16th to 18th cents).
49
TNA, PROB 11/830/177; Oxf. Jnl Syn. 22 Nov. 1783, 13 Dec. 1783, 16 May 1785.
50
Oxf. Jnl Syn. 17 Mar. 1770; OHC, Cal. QS, IX, 95; J. Moody, ‘The Fulbrook Highwaymen’, Cotswold
Life (July 1984), 17; C. Bloxham, Portrait of Oxfordshire (1982), 98.
42
VCH Oxon • Texts in Progress • Bruern (May 2015 version) • social hist. p. 6
Since 1800
In the first two decades of the 19th century Bruern’s small and scattered community of
farmers and labourers more than doubled in size to 64 inhabitants, and was occasionally
troubled by conflict between employers and workers.51 By 1851 the population had fallen to
around 50, of whom more than half were newcomers: farmers and labourers were generally
Oxfordshire-born, but only two inhabitants over the age of 25 had been born in Bruern.
Population turnover was not particularly rapid, however. Six of the nine families resident in
1851 remained in 1871,52 while the Huckvales’ 70-year tenancy of Bruern Grange lasted
until the 1890s, when they were replaced by the Cornish farmer James Hodges.53
Bruern Abbey in 1881 (left) and 1899 (right) illustrating the extent of Cecil
d’Aguilar Samuda’s improvements to the house and estate. Note the
appearance of the cricket ground at the bottom of the later map. Details from
OS Maps 1:2500, Oxon. XX.9 (1881 and 1899 edns).
The break-up of the manorial estate around the same time saw a farm bailiff installed
at Tangley in place of resident farmers, while Bruern Abbey was let (and later sold) to the
wealthy Cecil d’Aguilar Samuda, formerly of Shipton Court.54 In 1901 Samuda, son of a
London engineer and Liberal MP, lived there with his wife and eleven servants,55 making
considerable improvements to the house and estate (including provision of a cricket ground),
51
OHC, Cal. QS, II, 73b, 298, 317; Census, 1801–21; above, par. intro. (population).
TNA, HO 107/1732; ibid. RG 9/910; RG 10/1456.
53
OHC, QSD/L/55; TNA, RG 12/1178; RG 13/1398; Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1891 and later edns).
54
TNA, RG 11/1519; RG 12/1178; RG 13/1398; Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1887 and later edns); above,
manors.
55
ODNB, s.v. Joseph d’Aguilar Samuda; TNA, RG 13/1398.
52
VCH Oxon • Texts in Progress • Bruern (May 2015 version) • social hist. p. 7
and keenly supporting the Heythrop Hunt.56 During the First World War the house served as
a makeshift hospital, and Samuda remained there until his death in 1926.57 The wider
population in 1901 comprised mostly recently-arrived domestic or farm servants; only four
young children had been born in Bruern, while 14 inhabitants were from the Wychwood area
and the rest from further afield.58 The population remained small and overwhelmingly
agricultural in the 1930s–40s, when many inhabitants occupied cottages on service
tenancies.59 During the Second World War the former Conservative MP Brooks Crompton
Wood (d. 1946) accommodated young unaccompanied evacuees at Bruern Abbey,
cultivating paddocks around the house to support the extended household.60
Bruern’s post-war population probably peaked in the late 1960s, when 42 separate
cottages, flats, and houses were occupied mostly by tenants: even in 1991 only six out of 28
householders were owner-occupiers.61 Michael Astor’s purchase of Bruern Abbey in 1947
and of Bruern Grange in the 1950s introduced some stability, the family remaining in the
parish in 2014. Michael’s son David moved to Bruern Grange in 1973, greatly improving the
house and extending the farm piecemeal, both in Bruern and neighbouring parishes. Estate
cottages were still let on service tenancies or to other local workers at reduced rents,62 while
Judy Astor established luxury holiday accommodation near Bruern Abbey.63 Bruern Abbey
itself changed hands more frequently, while the owners of Tangley Hall (the Wingfields) were
mostly non-resident.64 No pubs or community buildings were established in the parish.
Education, Charities and Poor Relief
Bruern had no parish school, and from 1874 came under the School Board established at
Milton-under-Wychwood.65 In the late 20th century a private school briefly operated at
Bruern Abbey.66
In the Middle Ages Bruern abbey distributed alms to local poor, totalling £5 in 1535.67
Following the Dissolution no parochial charities were endowed, although several inhabitants
56
M. Cathcart, ‘The Butler of Bruern’, Wychwoods History 26 (2011), 3–24; C. Miller (ed.), Rain and
Ruin: The Diary of an Oxfordshire Farmer John Simpson Calvertt 1875–1900 (1983), 142, 211;
above, manors (manor ho.).
57
Cathcart, ‘Butler of Bruern’, 15–16, 20; Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1915 and later edns).
58
TNA, RG 13/1398.
59
Census, 1931; TNA, MAF 32/910/78.
60
Oxon. Atlas, 154; TNA, MAF 32/910/78, no. 5.
61
Census, 1951–91; Blair’s Dir. Oxon. (1967); above, par. intro. (population).
62
Information (2014) from David Astor.
63
Above, econ. hist. (19th and 20th cents).
64
Above, manors.
65
Lond. Gaz. 3 July 1874; below, Milton-under-Wychwood, social hist. (educ.).
66
Above, manors.
67
Valor Eccl. II, 267.
VCH Oxon • Texts in Progress • Bruern (May 2015 version) • social hist. p. 8
left money to the poor of neighbouring parishes,68 and in the 1690s Sir John Cope made
occasional payments to local recipients.69 By the mid 18th century Bruern’s poor were
maintained through a pound rate, annual spending falling from c.£22 in 1776 to £7 in 1783–
5; thereafter it rose to more than £16 in 1803, when four people (including two children)
received regular out-relief.70 Agricultural distress increased sharply during the Napoleonic
wars, and by 1815 expenditure was £86, providing outdoor relief to nine permanent and 34
occasional paupers out of a population of around 60.71 No poor were mentioned between
1816 and 1822, and from 1824 annual expenditure rarely exceeded £6, suggesting that
many poor farm labourers had left the parish.72 From 1834 formal responsibility for Bruern’s
poor passed to the new Chipping Norton poor-law union.73
68
OHC, MS Wills Oxon. 186, f. 333; ibid. 13/1/38; 71/1/26; TNA, PROB 11/126/458; PROB
11/361/469.
69
Hants RO, 49M80/F1.
70
Kent History Centre, U269/L26; Poor Abstract, 1777, p. 141; 1787, p. 655; 1804, pp. 400–1.
71
Poor Abstract, 1818, pp. 354–5; Census, 1811–21.
72
Poor Rate Rtns (Parl. Papers 1822 (556), v), p. 136; (1825 (334), iv), p. 171; (1830–1 (83), xi), p.
159; (1835 (444), xlvii), p. 154; Census, 1831–41.
73
Oxon. Atlas, 144–5; below, local govt.