LOCAL GOVERNMENT. Manor Courts. Courts were held for Minster Lovell manor by 1297. Unlike elsewhere in Chadlington Hundred, view of frankpledge was held not by the earl of Gloucester but by the Lovels, who had infangthief (the right to apprehend criminals within their lands) and other liberties,¹ including hunting rights in Minster woods from 1442.² Courts baron and views of frankpledge, sometimes called lawdays, were still held regularly during the 16th and early 17th centuries; the last surviving roll dates from 1631,³ although in 1712 Thomas Coke, renewing the Wheelers' tenancy of the manor farm, reserved the right to hold courts at the manor house once a year.⁴ Business transacted, apart from copyhold conveyancing, included imposition of fines for non-attendance, for neglect of the landlord's property or of communal property such as the river or bridge, and for the unlicensed sale of ale and disturbances to the peace. Orders were made against tenants taking wood or hunting illegally, and for repair of roads, bridges and ditches. Courts usually elected a constable and a tithingman, though in 1687 a constable seems to have been appointed directly by the justices at the Quarter Session.⁵

Parish Government and Officers. A churchwarden was mentioned from 1642.⁶ During the 18th century parish government was presumably increasingly taken over by the vestry, though the first evidence is the levying of a poor rate in 1776,⁷ and vestry minutes survive only from 1857.⁸ Officers elected there in the 19th century included a surveyor of highways or waywarden, two overseers, and two churchwardens, one for the vicar and one for the parish. Until the Parish Constables Act of 1842 the vestry presumably appointed constables, thereafter nominating four candidates to the local magistrate. In 1866 the vestry appointed an assistant overseer of the poor, and a poor-law guardian was mentioned in 1857.⁹ All officers were drawn from among the chief farmers in the parish, including at least three women in the 19th century. In 1885 the joint surveyor of highways and sanitary inspector asked that his office be divided, since together they were too taxing for one person.¹⁰ Until the 1894 Local Government Act the vestry also dealt with repairs of roads and drains, maintenance of the church, approval of accounts, and the setting of rates; thereafter its few residual civil powers, as elsewhere, passed to a newly established parish council. From 1894 to 1974 the parish belonged to Witney rural district, becoming thereafter part of the new West Oxfordshire District.¹¹

Poor Relief. The average levied by parish rates from 1783 to 1785 was around £113, of which £100 or so was spent on the poor.¹² In 1776 all the money levied, about £80, was spent on the poor, including rent for housing them and litigation costs.¹³ As elsewhere the cost of poor relief rose sharply in the early 19th century, when, out of £489 levied in 1803 and representing a rate of 7s. in the pound, expenses for the poor reached £403, out of the total parish expenditure of some £453. A workhouse, not mentioned later, housed 14 people, who cost the parish £40 but earned £104; 57 children were also maintained, as well as 3 disabled and ill, but no other adults received out-relief. The following year the poor were reportedly farmed for £321.¹⁴ Between 1813 and 1815 expenditure fell from £632 to £352,¹⁵ the number on permanent out-relief falling from 10 to 7, and those on occasional relief from 25 to 23. Expenditure a head of population was broadly average for west Oxfordshire except between 1813 and 1819, when it generally exceeded 45s. and once 50s.¹⁶ Thereafter spending on the poor generally declined, falling from £506 in 1816 to £343 in 1834.¹⁷ After 1834 the parish became part of the newly established Witney poor-law union, to which responsibility for its poor passed.¹⁸