taking rooms at a nearby inn, he did socialise with both Reverend Parker and the Captain, dining frequently with them as the weeks passed. Through his work and these social events, the surveyor gained an unusually full insight into the feud. On several occasions Jones heard the Captain and George Banks ‘damn the parson’s eyes and say that it was no harm to shoot him’. He detected a similar sentiment at Pound Farm, though he found John Barnett more guarded. Barnett confessed to being angry at the manner in which Parker was collecting the tithe in kind, but was otherwise reticent, reluctant to say anything more. The other farmers, particularly Clewes, said nothing. Of all of the villagers, Jones came to spend the most time with young George Banks, who had been instructed by the Captain to act as his guide. Jones found Banks an engaging personality, and they met in the evenings to play cards at Church Farm. But while the bailiff was good company, Jones also noticed an impatient, vicious streak in his character. ‘Banks was the most violent’ 2 in his language, he recalled later. It was a hint that there was something more to the bailiff than first met the eye: it was plain he was alert, keen and able, but was he also impetuous, quietly belligerent and indiscreet?
Jones had completed his survey and left Oddingley by the middle of May, around a week before the farmers’ meeting at the Pigeon House. 1 It was now less than a month before the clover was ready to be harvested and the haymaking season was due to begin. In the valley between the village crossroads and the edges of Trench Wood crops of wheat, barley and oats were growing tall in the fields. For the farmers these were anxious days, and for much of the time they lived by their wits, knowing a single sharp frost, unexpected rainfall or fierce storm could ruin months of work. As by its nature collection of the tithe in kind closely mirrored the agricultural calendar, the busy months of May, June and July were natural flashpoints and to the farmhands and local tradesmen there were signs that tempers were already unusually frayed.
An early indication of this came at Church Farm at around the end of May. Captain Evans was sitting in his parlour with Mary Banks one evening when he sent for Elizabeth Fowler, the dairymaid. It was a strange summons, and when she presented herself it became clear that he did not wish to speak about the farm or any of her other duties. Instead he offered her a glass of wine. The dairymaid accepted the drink, but as she took it up he stopped her and challenged her to raise it as a toast against Parker. Elizabeth refused and excused herself, leaving the Captain ‘very much offended’.
On Tuesday 10 June Thomas Reed, a cabinetmaker from Worcester, was drinking at the Raven on Droitwich Road – a short distance from the city – when he saw a group of Oddingley men enter and start a boisterous conversation at a table in the taproom. Reed only knew three of the men, the two Barnett brothers and a labourer, John Chance. Soon the men were complaining loudly about Parker and the tithe, and, unusually, John Barnett was the most vociferous of them. He declared that if he had ten children, he was sure that one of them would be claimed as tax. Later they stood up, pulled off their hats and then ‘drank damnation’ to Parker. One of the men Thomas Reed did not recognise (most likely Clewes or Banks) described waspishly how he had recently cut four and a half cabbages from his garden and then sent for Parker, asking him to take the remaining half. The tone of the conversation, which varied from cruel humour to malice and icy threats, struck Reed strongly. Over the next few years he would tell ‘different people [of it] a hundred times’. One detail he remembered above all others was John Barnett’s claim that ‘he would give £50 for a dead parson’.
This incident was followed, several days after, by another in Oddingley parish. Reverend
Jones had completed his survey and left Oddingley by the middle of May, around a week before the farmers’ meeting at the Pigeon House. 1 It was now less than a month before the clover was ready to be harvested and the haymaking season was due to begin. In the valley between the village crossroads and the edges of Trench Wood crops of wheat, barley and oats were growing tall in the fields. For the farmers these were anxious days, and for much of the time they lived by their wits, knowing a single sharp frost, unexpected rainfall or fierce storm could ruin months of work. As by its nature collection of the tithe in kind closely mirrored the agricultural calendar, the busy months of May, June and July were natural flashpoints and to the farmhands and local tradesmen there were signs that tempers were already unusually frayed.
An early indication of this came at Church Farm at around the end of May. Captain Evans was sitting in his parlour with Mary Banks one evening when he sent for Elizabeth Fowler, the dairymaid. It was a strange summons, and when she presented herself it became clear that he did not wish to speak about the farm or any of her other duties. Instead he offered her a glass of wine. The dairymaid accepted the drink, but as she took it up he stopped her and challenged her to raise it as a toast against Parker. Elizabeth refused and excused herself, leaving the Captain ‘very much offended’.
On Tuesday 10 June Thomas Reed, a cabinetmaker from Worcester, was drinking at the Raven on Droitwich Road – a short distance from the city – when he saw a group of Oddingley men enter and start a boisterous conversation at a table in the taproom. Reed only knew three of the men, the two Barnett brothers and a labourer, John Chance. Soon the men were complaining loudly about Parker and the tithe, and, unusually, John Barnett was the most vociferous of them. He declared that if he had ten children, he was sure that one of them would be claimed as tax. Later they stood up, pulled off their hats and then ‘drank damnation’ to Parker. One of the men Thomas Reed did not recognise (most likely Clewes or Banks) described waspishly how he had recently cut four and a half cabbages from his garden and then sent for Parker, asking him to take the remaining half. The tone of the conversation, which varied from cruel humour to malice and icy threats, struck Reed strongly. Over the next few years he would tell ‘different people [of it] a hundred times’. One detail he remembered above all others was John Barnett’s claim that ‘he would give £50 for a dead parson’.
This incident was followed, several days after, by another in Oddingley parish. Reverend
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