Another writer gives 2s. as being sufficient to “keep a poor man or woman (with good husbandry) one whole week.”[[136]] Certainly 2s. is the very lowest figure that can have sufficed to keep up the mother’s strength. The bare cost of food for a mother and three children must have amounted to at least 5s. 6d. per week, but there were other necessaries to be provided from the scanty wages. The poorest family required some clothes, and though these may have been given by charitable persons, rent remained to be paid. Building was cheap. In Scotland, the “new house” with windows glazed with “ches losens” only cost £4 12s. 3d. to build, while a “cothouse” built for Liddas “the merchant” cost only £1 0 0;[[137]] other cots were built for 4s., 11s. 1d,, 5s. and 14s. 4d. These Scottish dwellings were mud hovels, but in England the labourers’ dwellings were not much better.
Celia Fiennes describes the houses at the Land’s End as being “poor Cottages, Like Barns to Look on, much Like those in Scotland, but to doe my own country its right yᵉ Inside of their Little Cottages are Clean and plaister’d and such as you might Comfortably Eat and drink in, and for curiosity sake I dranck there and met with very good bottled ale.”[[138]]
In some places the labourers made themselves habitations on the waste, but this was strictly against the law, such houses being only allowed for the impotent poor.
Many fines are entered in Quarter Sessions Records for building houses without the necessary quantity of land. By 39 Eliz. churchwardens and overseers were ordered, for the relief of the impotent poor, to build convenient houses at the charges of the Parish, but only with the consent of the Lord of the Manor. 43 Eliz. added that such buildings were not at any time after to be used for other inhabitants but only for the impotent poor, placed there by churchwardens and overseers.
The housing problem was so acute that many orders were made by the justices sanctioning or ordering the erection of these cottages. “Rob. Thompson of Brompton and Eliz. Thompson of Aymonderby widow, stand indicted for building a cottage in Aymonderby against the statute, etc., upon a piece of ground, parcell of the Rectorie of Appleton-on-the street, and in which the said Eliz. doth dwell by the permission of John Heslerton, fermour of the said Rectorie, and that the same was so erected for the habitation of the said Elizᵗʰ. being a poore old woman and otherwise destitute of harbour and succour ... ordered that the said cottage shall continue ... for the space of twelve yeares, if the said Elizᵗʰ. live so long, or that the said Heslerton’s lease do so long endure.”[[139]] In another case, Nicholas Russell, the wife of Thomas Waterton, and Robert Arundell, were presented for erecting cottages upon the Lord’s waste ... at the suit of parishioners these cottages are allowed by Mr. Coningsby, lord of the manor.[[140]]
It was often necessary to compel unwilling overseers to build cottages for the impotent poor, and for widows. “A woman with three children prays leave for the erection of a cottage in East Bedwyn, she having no habitation, but depending upon alms; from lying in the street she was conveyed into the church where she remained some small time, but was then ejected by the parish.” The overseers are ordered to provide for her.[[141]]
The overseers at Shipley were ordered to build a house on the waste there for Archelaus Braylsford, to contain “two chambers floored fit for lodgings” or in default 5s. a week. At the following sessions his house was further ordered to be “a convenient habitation 12 feet high upon the side walls soe as to make 2 convenient chambers.”[[142]]
The housing problem however could not be settled by orders instructing the overseers to build cottages for the impotent poor alone. Petitions were received as often from able-bodied labourers and for them the law forbade the erection of a cottage without four acres of land attached. The magistrates had no power to compel the provision of the land and thus they were faced with the alternatives of breaking the law and sanctioning the erection of a landless cottage on the waste or else leaving the labourer’s family to lie under hedges. The following petitions illustrate the way in which this situation was faced:
George Grinham, Norton-under-Hambton, “in ye behalfe of himselfe, his poore wife and famelye” begged for permission “for my building yᵉʳ, of a little poor house for ye comfort of my selfe, my poore wife and children betwixt those other 2 poore houses erected on the glebe ... being a towne borne childe yᵉʳ myselfe.”[[143]]
Another from William Dench, “a very poor man and having a wife and seven children all born at Longdon,” who was destitute of any habitation, states that he was given by William Parsons of Longdon, yeoman, in charity, “a little sheep-cote which sheep cote petitioner, with the consent of the churchwardens and overseers converted to a dwelling. Afterwards he having no licence from Quarter Sessions, nor under the hands of the Lord of the Manor so to do, and the sheep-cote being on the yeoman’s freehold and not on the waste or common, contrary to Acts 43 Eliz. c. 2 and 31 Eliz. c. 7 he was indicted upon the Statute against cottages and sued to an outlawry. He prays the benefit of the King’s pardon and for licence in open session for continuance of his habitation.”[[144]]