Page 5 - Moreton Village Only Book

Moreton Village Only 5 5
Moreton Village Only

thatched roofs were being built and there were
many more of them then than remain today.
In the late 1500’s and early 1600’s, Moreton
may well have been becoming a prosperous
little agricultural community, laying the foun-
dations for what it is today.

Our story moves to the English Civil War
(1642-1649), Cavaliers and Roundheads and
very little mention of Moreton! Despite the
hamlet’s close proximity to Oxford which
played a central part in the Civil War and was
King Charles I’s base until the fall of Oxford
in 1646, the only claim to fame for Moreton
is that John Hampden, who was fatally
wounded at the battle of Chalgrove Field in
1643, “passed through Moreton” on his way
to die in Thame. John Hampden was a
Buckinghamshire MP who became a Colonel
in the Parliamentarian army and he is
Moreton’s only recorded link to the Civil War.
We would like to claim that Prince Rupert of
the Rhine and Oliver Cromwell stopped by
the Royal Oak for a pint, but we can’t! What
we can claim is that the Royal Oak, in common
with so many pubs in England, was very
probably named after the oak tree in which
Prince Charles (later Charles II) hid after the
battle of Worcester in 1651 before he fled to
France, only to return to England at the
Reformation in 1660.

The Civil War was a turning point in English history but little is recorded about what may
have happened in Moreton in the following years. Moreton’s only recorded famous resident,
William Basse of Moreton, the poet and retainer of Sir Richard Wenman, died in 1653. Unlike
other small English villages no manor house was built and no church was established. At that
time there was no school and there are no records of any shops. It is likely that Moreton
remained an essentially agricultural community with the skilled artisans and merchants
staying in the more prosperous town of Thame (only two miles distant and well within
walking distance as it is today) although the young farm labourers of Moreton may well have
earned some pocket money by acting as bodyguards to the needle makers of Long Crendon.

Even into the 1700’s, there is little evidence today of “Georgian houses” in Moreton
– as a small, agrarian hamlet it would not have been the type of place for a merchant or
craftsman to build his house – there would have been more opportunity for them to
display wealth and taste in the increasingly prosperous town of Thame with its proximity
to the home of the Wenman’s at Thame Park. Although the course of the roads (or,
more likely, cart tracks in those days) were changed to nearer to the ones that we have
today, Moreton probably remained what it had always been – tenanted with no landowners
or property owners living in the hamlet; tending its land and its livestock; growing its
crops and paying its rents to the Wenmans at Thame Park and to the Earl of Abingdon
who had succeeded to the ownership of Moreton two hundred years before. Moreton
did have one new building – its own “pest house” (isolation hospital), now The White
House situated in Moreton Lane, similar to the one in Thame.

Absentee ownership by the Bishop of Lincoln and Norman and medieval knights
followed by the Tudor nobles and their descendants who held land in Moreton purely as
a small part of the huge estates that they had gained following Henry VIII’s dissolution
of the monasteries resulted in Moreton being constrained in its growth. This situation
continued under a series of landlords through marriage and inheritance and it would
not be until well into the 19th century that a school would be built and a Methodist
chapel erected and only in the early 20th century that some of the properties in Moreton
would move from being tenanted to ownership.