BURFORD

town (parish), West Oxfordshire district, administrative and historic county of Oxfordshire, southern England, on the River Windrush, in the Cotswolds. The town was acquired by Robert FitzHamon, earl of Gloucester, who granted it a market in 1088 and England's earliest datable merchant guild. Sir Lawrence Tanfield, a local landowner, successfully challenged the town's civic privileges in 1621 and also built a priory, which was later bought by William Lenthall, speaker (chairman) of the English Long Parliament (1640). The priory is now an Anglican convent. In 1649, during the English Civil War, the Levellers, a republican and democratic party of influence within the Parliamentarian army, were crushed at Burford by the lord protector Oliver Cromwell. The town's grammar school was founded in 1571; the Church of St. John the Baptist, originally Norman, has a delicate spire (14th15th century) and a separate 13th-century chapel of St. Mary. Pop. (1991) 1,171.