A man named Churm, who owed a grudge to Oasland, claimed to have accidentally found a letter mentioning Oasland's complicity, which had been dropped from the pack of a Scottish pedlar, and was addressed to Sir John Pakington [q. v.] Oasland was kept in close confinement at the George Inn in Worcester till 2 April 1662, when his fellow-prisoner, Andrew Yarrenton, Yarranton, or Yarrington [q. v.], on examination by the lord-lieutenant, satisfied him of his own and of Oasland's innocence (Yarranton, Full Discovery, passim).
Oasland was much associated with Baxter, who appreciated his fluency in the pulpit. In August 1662 Oasland was ejected from his living in Bewdley by the Act of Uniformity, and removed to Staffordshire, where he preached privately. He had many remarkable escapes from arrest, but the respect with which he was universally regarded often prompted even men of opposite opinions to shelter him. He was cited by the court of Lichfield, but discharged by the declaration for liberty of 1685. After the Toleration Act of 1688 he preached regularly till 3 Oct. 1703, when he was taken ill. He died on the 19th.
Baxter described Oasland as ‘the most lively, fervent, moving preacher in all the county, of an honest, upright life,’ and not carried ‘too far from conformity.’ His generosity to the poor was great, and he had a peculiar talent for winning the love and confidence of children.
Oasland married, in 1660, a daughter of Mr. Maxwell, banker and mercer, of Bewdley, by whom he had several children. Edward, his eldest son, was presbyterian minister at Bewdley, and died in January 1752, at which time he was possessed of a farm at Rock and a house at Bewdley.
Oasland published:
- . ‘The Christian's Daily Walk’ (under the initials O. N.), London, n.d. (? 1660).
- ‘The Dead Pastor yet speaketh,’ London, 1662 (Kennet, Register, p. 748); the substance of two sermons preached at Bewdley, and printed without his knowledge.
[Oasland's Autobiography, and Life by his son, in Bewdley Parish Magazine, March 1878, and following numbers; Sylvester's Reliq. Baxterianæ, pt. i. pp. 90, 95, pt. ii. p. 383, pt. iii. p. 91; Burton's Hist. of Bewdley, pp. 23–4, 49; Palmer's Nonconformist's Memorial, iii. 383–7; Cal. State Papers, 1661–2, pp. 143, 149; assistance from the Rev. E. Winnington Ingram of Bewdley; Cambr. Univ. Reg. per the Registrary; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. vii. 102.]
OASTLER, RICHARD (1789–1861), ‘the factory king,’ the youngest of the eight children of Robert Oastler of Leeds, was born in St. Peter's Square in that town on 20 Dec. 1789. His mother, a daughter of Joseph Scurr of Leeds, died in 1828. His father, originally a linen merchant at Thirsk, settled at Leeds, and became steward of the Fixby estates, Huddersfield, the property of the Thornhills of Riddlesworth, Norfolk. Disinherited by his father for his methodism, the elder Oastler was one of the earliest adherents of John Wesley, who frequently stayed at his house on his visits to Yorkshire. On Wesley's last visit he is said to have taken Richard Oastler, then a child, in his arms and blessed him.
Educated at the Moravian school at Fulnek, where Henry Steinhauer was his tutor, Richard Oastler wished to become a barrister; but his father articled him to Charles Watson, architect, at Wakefield. Compelled by weakness of sight to abandon this profession after four years, he became a commission agent, and by his industry accumulated considerable wealth. But he lost everything in 1820. His father dying in July of that year, Thomas Thornhill, the absentee owner of Fixby, appointed him to the stewardship, at a salary of 300l. a year. Oastler removed from Leeds to Fixby Hall on 5 Jan. 1821, and devoted himself to his new duties. The estate contained at that time nearly one thousand tenants, many of them occupying very small tenures; but the annual legal expenses of Oastler's management were not more than 5l. (Fleet Papers, vol. i. No. 26, p. 203).
Oastler was at this time well known in the West Riding. He had been since 1807 an advocate of the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. He also supported Queen Caroline and opposed Roman catholic emancipation. While he was on a visit in 1830 to John Wood of Horton Hall, afterwards of Thedden Grange, Hampshire, an extensive manufacturer of Bradford, who had introduced many reforms into his own factory, his host told him (29 Sept.) of the evils of children's employment in the Bradford district, and exacted from him a promise to devote himself to their removal. ‘I had lived for many years,’ wrote Oastler, ‘in the very heart of the factory districts; I had been on terms of intimacy and of friendship with many factory masters, and I had all the while fancied that factories were blessings to the poor’ (ib. vol. i. No. 13, p. 104). After Wood's disclosure he on the same day (29 Sept.) wrote a letter to the ‘Leeds Mercury’ entitled ‘Yorkshire Slavery,’ in which he described what he had heard. Oastler's statements were met with denial and criticism; but he established their truth, and won the gratitude of working men. He indicated the policy
