We now come to those families who occupy the bottom right quadrant.  For each of the families listed here the head of household described himself as an agricultural labourer.  Study of these families, however, also reveals that other branches seemed to occupy different levels of the socio-economic structure.

Firstly, the POPE cluster.  The Census contains six Pope households, separating into two groups.  The first group consists of four households: three related to each other as second cousins and one as 1C1R.  These are Jonathan (1788-1813) and Lydia, Joseph (1785-1840) and Mary, Charles (1795-1852) and Lucy, all second cousins, and James (1782-1849) and Ann.  The other two households contain Elizabeth, the widow of Benjamin Pope (1772-1834) and George Pope, married to Ann Pope, a niece of Benjamin.  As before, we have looked at the relationships for children of these people in 1841.  We need not distinguish between each of the children, because the relationships are broadly similar.

So, this instantly reveals how far the Pope structure might reach.  On the one hand it could link into paupers, as Thomas Brown, the husband of Martha Chip, was so described in the Census, while, on the other hand, it could reach right into the Slades.  The connection here goes through Septimus Slade, the brother of Henry Senior, also a farmer in the village, but not much mentioned by the letters.  On the agricultural labourer level, this cluster might more properly be described as Pope-Stimson-Clifford.  Therefore, we have a similar level of interlinking as we have found for the Jarvis-Jones-Lewingdon cluster.

Joseph Pope (1785-1840) and his son, Will (1817-), attract a couple of mentions in the letters, but with a sinister theme: madness.  In the middle of June 1840, early one Wednesday morning, people saw Joe Pope out in the street.  His wife, Mary, later went round to do the washing for the Marris household.  At nine o’clock, Lucy, the wife of his cousin Charles, dropped by to find Joe dead on the floor.  He had done very little work for a while and often suffered from fits.  His eldest son, Will, had worked for the Slades and then left, only to return at the end of 1841.  They say he is very queer in his mind, but manages to keep well.  Henry Slade Senior thought about hiring him to look after some sheep.

The name PARSONS occurs with most frequency.  Nine heads of households have this name between the two villages.  Many Parsons feature in the Parish Records.  We cannot clearly link direct relationships between all nine households.  One block of the Parsons named here almost certainly belonged to a different social level, one nearer that of the Slades, from what the letters show us.  We will review them later.  At the level of agricultural workers, we have the Tirrold family of Abel Parsons (d1829) and Rachel.  Rachel lives with some of her children in one household.  Three of her married sons, Joseph, Daniel, and Jonas, have their own households.  Rachel’s father-in-law, Richard, is still alive, living next to his grandson, Jonas.  The head of this household, however, is Francis Beckinsale, the husband of Richard’s daughter, Martha.  Joseph, Daniel, and Jonas all list themselves as agricultural labourers, but Francis Beckinsale is one of the two publicans.  Into this same cluster, we can link the two Didcock households in Upthorpe: George and his wife Elizabeth and children; John and Jane, living with Jane’s illegitimate child, Jacob.  All three adults are siblings and have Richard Parsons as their uncle.  Both George and John Didcock list themselves as agricultural labourers.

Split equally between Tirrold and Upthorpe, lived the three CURTIS households plus that of John Baker, all related.  At the head of the family comes Elizabeth (1771-), now widowed, and living with her married daughter Amey Jordan plus husband and children.  Then come two other of her children living with their own families: Thomas (1791-) and elder brother George (1789-).  John Baker (1815-) had married Martha Curtis (1816-1843).  Martha was daughter to Thomas by his first wife.  Linked into this assemblage, we also have the Dearloves, for which two households exist.  We cannot be exact about the relationship between the two Dearloves, but we do know that Avery Dearlove (1806-), living in Tirrold, had Martha Curtis for his mother.  Martha was another daughter of Elizabeth, already mentioned.  George worked in 1841 as an agricultural labourer, but his brother, Thomas, ran a grocery shop, while old Elizabeth worked as a baker.  Elizabeth herself came from the (Kirk)Patrick family.  Her brother, William, living in the third household listed beyond where Thomas Curtis lived, made a livelihood as a carrier at this time.  We know, however, that he had kept one of the pubs in the village, during the 1820s. This is one of the great families in the village and, by following the later marriages made by the sons of Thomas, we can see them as an example of successful social mobility.  Indeed, they already had interesting connections, as this chart indicates.  This shows the relationships for Charlotte Curtis (1816-), the eldest child of the agricultural labourer, George Curtis.

Therefore, at the furthest extremities of the Curtis family, the Slades themselves swim into view.  To put the relationship into context, we find that Charlotte’s third cousin, born 1822, was Kezia Slade, sister to Henry, the recipient of the letters.

The letters scarcely mention the Curtis family.  We hear about George Curtis. He borrowed a horse from the Slades to take his wife over to Hanney.  They wondered whether he had overriden it, for the horse died that night, despite the horse doctor’s efforts.  His niece, Martha Curtis, whom Charlotte calls ‘Patty’, had worked for Mrs Lawson as a servant, and was quite a favourite.  She marries John Baker in 1840.  Charlotte saw them go to church when she went down to see Old Mrs Fuller.  By 1843, she has died, probably in childbirth, leaving John and two tiny children.  John later marries Maria, the widow of William Grove.

Tirrold has two BALL households: Elizabeth (1789-1852) and the agricultural labourer, George (1785-).  Elizabeth is George’s sister-in-law, having married his brother William.  The Slade name surfaces again, because we know that the mother of George and William was one Elizabeth Slade (1758-1822).  We cannot, however, directly relate her into the main Slade family.  Part of the Ball family links into the Herberts and Keates.  Another part connects with the Popes.  We hear that Ann Ball, one of George’s daughters, decides to get married, leaving Mr Noad, the clergyman, needing to fill her place as teacher.

The KEATE family has a venerable history portrayed by the Parish Records. In 1841, the Census listed six households of the Keate name.  At least four of them have direct relations.  Two sons of the parish clerk Zachary, William (1786-) and James (1783-1847) show how the same name is linked and how it goes across sectors.  Three of William’s sons, William, Charles and Robert have their own households.  Only for the remaining household, containing Jane Keate (1765-1846) and the widow Sarah Saunders (1782-), do we have problems making a direct linkage.  Incidentally, Sarah Saunders was yet another Blackman.  As we will see, William worked as a carpenter, but others of the Keates laboured in the fields.

The NEAL family is obscure, but one branch of it connected with the Popes, the Cliffords, and even the Parsons.  The CORDEROY family has strong connections with the Fullers, accompanying them from Blewbury to Aston at the beginning, but also seems to have connected into the Blackman family, although the linkage is not completely clear.

Finally, we should mention Joseph LANE.  Working here as an agricultural labourer, he belonged to the large Lane family of which we will hear more, many of whom worked in the corn trade at different levels.

Since the people in the other quadrants have no provable linkages with other families living in the villages, there is little their discussion can add to this review.  Apart from the Summersby family, which mostly receives negative notices from the Slade letters, the other names pass by virtually without mention.  For example, we learn that the Chesterman family occupies a Slade cottage but we know little else about them or the others.