To relieve the Reformation from the odious charge that it was responsible for the poor-laws, many authors have declared that not only did poverty largely exist before, say, the dissolution of the monastic houses, but that it would not long have been possible for the ancient methods of relieving the distressed to cope with the increase in their numbers under the changed circumstances of the sixteenth century. It is of course possible to deal with broad assertions only by the production of a mass of details, which is, under the present circumstances, out of the question, or by assertions equally broad, and I remark that there is no evidence of any change of circumstances, so far as such changes appear in history, which could not have been fully met by the application of the old principles, and met in a way which would never have induced the degree of distressing pauperism which, in fact, was produced by the application of the social principles adopted at the Reformation. The underlying idea of these latter was property in the sense of absolute ownership in place of the older and more Christian idea of property in the sense of stewardship.
Most certainly the result was not calculated to improve the condition of the poorer members of the community. It was they who were made to pay, whilst their betters pocketed the price. The well-to-do classes, in the process, became richer and more prosperous, whilst the “masses” became, as an old writer has it, “mere stark beggars.” As a fact, moreover, poverty became rampant, as we should have expected, immediately upon the great confiscations of land and other property at the dissolution of the religious houses. To take one example: Dr. Sharpe’s knowledge of the records of the city of London enables him to say that “the sudden closing of these institutions caused the streets to be thronged with the sick and poor.”
“The devil,” exclaims a preacher who lived through all these troublous times—“the devil cunningly turneth things his own way.” “Examples of this we have seen in our time more than I can have leisure to express or to rehearse. In the Acts of Parliament that we have had made in our days what godly preambles hath gone afore the same; even quasi oraculum Apollinis, as though the things that follow had come from the counsel of the highest in heaven; and yet the end hath been either to destroy abbeys or chauntries or colleges, or such like, by the which some have gotten much land, and have been made men of great possessions. But many an honest poor man hath been undone by it, and an innumerable multitude hath perished for default and lack of sustenance. And this misery hath long continued, and hath not yet (1556) an end. Moreover, all this commotion and fray was made under pretence of a common profit and common defence, but in very deed it was for private and proper lucre.”[332]
In the sixty years that followed the overthrow of the old system, it was necessary for Parliament to pass no less than twelve acts dealing with the relief of distress, the necessity for which, Thorold Rogers says, “can be traced distinctly back to the crimes of rulers and agents.” I need not characterise the spirit which is manifested in these acts, where poverty and crime are treated as indistinguishable.
Dr. Jessop writes: “In the general scramble of the Terror under Henry the Eighth, and of the anarchy in the days of Edward the Sixth … the monasteries were plundered even to their very pots and pans. The almshouses, in which old men and women were fed and clothed, were robbed to the last pound, the poor almsfolk being turned out in the cold at an hour’s warning to beg their bread. The splendid hospitals for the sick and needy, sometimes magnificently provided with nurses and chaplains, whose very raison d’être was that they were to look after the care of those who were past caring for themselves, these were stripped of all their belongings, the inmates sent out to hobble into some convenient dry ditch to lie down and die in, or to crawl into some barn or house, there to be tended, not without fear of consequences, by some kindly man or woman, who could not bear to see a suffering fellow-creature drop down and die at their own doorposts.”[333]
Intimately connected with the subject of the care of the poor in pre-Reformation days is obviously that of the mediæval guilds which, more than anything else, tended to foster the idea of the Christian brotherhood up to the eve of the religious changes.
It would probably be a mistake to suppose that these societies existed everywhere throughout the country in equal numbers. Mr. Thorold Rogers, it is true, says—and the opinion of one who has done so much work in every kind of local record must carry great weight—that “few parishes were probably without guild lands.” But there is certainly no distinct evidence that this was the case, especially in counties say like Hampshire, always sparsely populated as compared with other districts in the east of England, and where the people largely depended on agricultural pursuits for a living. It was in the great centres of trade and manufacture that the guilds were most numerous and most important, for it was precisely in those parts that the advantages of mutual help and co-operation outside the parish bond were most apparent and combination was practically possible.
An examination of the existing records leads to a general division of mediæval guilds into two classes—Craft or Trade associations, and Religious or, as some prefer now to call them, Social guilds. The former, as their name implies, had, as the special object of their existence, the protection of some work, trade or handicraft, and in this for practical purposes we may include those associations of traders or merchants known under the name of “guild-merchants.” Such, for instance, were the great companies of the city of London, and it was in reality under the plea that they were trading societies that they were saved in the general destruction which overtook all similar fraternities and associations in the sixteenth century. The division of guilds into the two classes named above is, however, after all more a matter of convenience than a real distinction founded on fact. All guilds, no matter for what special purpose they were founded, had the same general characteristic of brotherly aid and social charity; and no guild was divorced from the ordinary religious observances commonly practised by all such bodies in those days.
It is often supposed that, for the most part, what are called religious guilds existed for the purpose of promoting or encouraging the religious practices, such as the attendance at church on certain days, the taking part in ecclesiastical processions, the recitations of offices and prayers, and the like. Without doubt, there were such societies in pre-Reformation days—such as, for example, the great Guild of Corpus Christi, in the city of York, which counted its members by thousands. But such associations were the exception, not the rule. An examination of the existing statutes and regulations of ancient guilds will show how small a proportion these purely Ecclesiastical guilds formed of the whole number of associations known as Religious guilds. The origin of the mistaken notion is obvious. In mediæval days—that is, in times when such guilds flourished—the word “religious” had a wider, and what most people who reflect will be inclined to think, a truer signification than has obtained in later times. Religion was then understood to include the exercise of the two commandments of charity—the love of God and the love of one’s neighbour—and the exercises of practical charity to which guild brethren were bound by their guild statutes were considered as much religious practices as attendance at church or the taking part in an ecclesiastical procession. In these days, as Mr. Brentano in his essay On the History and Development of Guilds has pointed out, most of the objects, to promote which the guilds existed, would now be called social duties, but they were then regarded as true objects of Christian charity. Mutual assistance, the aid of the poor, of the helpless, of the sick, of strangers, of pilgrims and prisoners, the burial of the dead, even the keeping of schools and schoolmasters, and other such like works were held to be “exercises of religion.”[334]