To keep down the number of poor people in a parish, order was given that only one family might live in one house, and no new house might be built in the country unless it had four acres of ground attached to it. In the cities of London and Westminster, and for three miles round them, no houses were to be built except for persons worth a specified amount. Houses might not be divided into tenements, nor might lodgers be taken in.
All this was to keep people as much as possible in the places where they belonged. The churchwardens and overseers had to attend to the relief of the poor. There are, belonging to a good many parishes in England, old account-books, showing how these officers raised and spent money on the relief of the poor. Some of these books go right back to this time, though most of them begin a good deal later. These officers had to keep a very sharp look-out. Of course they did not want the poor-rate to be any higher than they could help, so strangers coming into the parish were quickly tracked and hindered from gaining a settlement there. Vagabonds and strolling players were hurried out of the parish, and in some cases whipped. The stocks, the whipping-post, and the cage were set up near the churchyard gate, and they were in pretty constant use.
Wayfarers, Early Fourteenth Century. From a manuscript in the British Museum.
The officers were very anxious, too, to prevent any travellers from falling ill in their parish. Those who were sick, and could possibly be moved, they shifted on to the next parish, lest they should become chargeable to the parish. Some parishes spent a good deal of money, and the officers much time, in conveying people out of their bounds. That led, we may imagine, to many disputes between parishes, and gave the court of Quarter Sessions a lot of work to do; for amongst the many things which Quarter Sessions had to attend to was the carrying out of the Poor Laws.
Parishes had to look after and to support their own poor in much the same way right down to the early part of the nineteenth century, less than a hundred years ago.
