Agricultural History Review, Volume 50 Part 2 (2002), pp. 203–224

This article investigates a number of parliamentary reports published during the first half of~e nineteenth century to demonstrate that the distinction between open and close parishes was a crucial determinant of the ways in which the poor laws and the laws of settlement were implemented in English rural society. Focusing on Oxfordshire, it shows that three seemingly separate issues - whether parishes in different economic circumstances adopted different policies on poor relief, whether the parishes responding to Rural Queries of 1832 were representative of parishes in general, and whether the mid-nineteenth-century parliamentary returns properly reflected the real condition of the rural localities - are closely inter-related and that parish typology provides an important clue to understanding that inter-relationship. 

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