Oxfordshire Rising of 1596

The Oxfordshire Rising took place on November 17th 1596 under the rule of Queen Elizabeth I of England during times of bad harvest and unprecedented poverty. It consisted of four desperate impoverished men trying to seize weapons and armour, and march on London, hoping to attract '200 or 300... from various town of that shire'.^[1] They met on Enslow Hill on November 17th, but without any of the assumed support were quickly arrested,^[2] and subjected to excessive maltreatment by the authorities. They were tortured due to suspicions of a wider conspiracy. A year later two of the men were hung, drawn and quartered for their treason.^[2]

The years 1596-8 were the worst for many years for the English population, as bad harvests coincided with outbreaks of disease, as well as a fall in wages which forced many people into starvation. Given the state of the poorest classes, those with property felt threatened by revolt, a fact not helped by the boom in publishing of sensationalist literature detailing the many 'crimes' of vagrants thanks to new printing technology. Over 20% of the rural population were considered 'poor' (i.e. impoverished) and so these fears were easy to feed. Furthermore, as it was up to the local gentry and JPs (Justices of the Peace) to enforce these laws there was a lot of inconsistency and scope for, if not corruption, then subjectivity, depending upon which locality these 'undeserving poor' resided in. The Oxfordshire Rising had very little effect on the reign of Elizabeth, however it, along with the wider social crisis, prompted her government to introduce more measures dealing with the problems of poverty and vagrancy on a national level. These national interventions included the introduction of the Poor Laws of 1598 which encouraged employment of the capable poor and aid for the incapable, in contrast to that of 1572, which many felt were too harsh as they included the death penalty for being considered part of the 'undeserving poor.'

1. ^ Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 'Queen Elizabeth - Volume 261: December 1596' in Mary Anne Everett Green (ed.) Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Elizabeth, 1595-97 (London, 1869), pp. 313-327
2. ^ ^{a b} [1], J.A. Sharpe, ‘Social Strain and Social Dislocation, 1585-1603’, in John Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge, 1995), pp.192-211, pp. 198-9.