CHAPTER XI.
THE FIRST POOR LAW ACT.
The first Act for the relief of the poor was passed in 1535 (27 Henry VIII., c. xxv.).
“All governors of shires, cities, towns, etc., shall find and keep every aged poor and impotent person which was born or dwelt three years within the same limit, by way of voluntary and charitable alms, etc., with such convenient alms as shall be thought meet by their discretion,” etc.
It was in this year (1535) that the lesser monasteries were dissolved. So the first poor law was enacted, to provide for the poor and impotent, in the same year in which the dissolution occurred.
The total annual revenue of all the monastic and chantry estates, together with the episcopal and chapter estates surrendered to the Crown, was about £300,000, which, if carefully managed—say by a Board of Commissioners—to provide for the poor, would now realize an annual revenue of eight and a half millions sterling, sufficiently adequate to defray all the expenses of the poor of England and Wales, without a penny expense to the ratepayers. All the vast properties were disgracefully granted away to unprincipled, poor, avaricious favourites and courtiers of Henry VIII., and his children.
It was Cromwell who, in his desire to promote the Reformation, advised the King to divide the abbey lands among the nobles and gentry, either by grant or sale on easy terms; and that by being thus bound by the sureties of private interest, they might always oppose any return towards the dominion of Rome.[232]
Cromwell’s views turned out to be correct, as we know from the conduct of members of Parliament who were in possession of monastic property. In Mary’s reign her Parliament, which was so obsequious in all matters of religion, adhered with a firm grasp to their Church lands. Nor could the papal supremacy be re-established by Mary until her sanction was given that they should be allowed the full enjoyment of their Abbey lands, and we may ascribe the zeal of the same class, in bringing back and preserving the reformed Church under Elizabeth, to a similar motive; that, according to the general laws of human nature, they gave a readier reception to truth, which made their estates more secure.[233] They would be any religion, provided they retained their church lands.[234]
The 31 Henry VIII., c. xiii., expressly states that the laity in possession of the lands of the dissolved monasteries were to maintain hospitality. But they never did any such thing, nor were they required to do so. They increased the rentals of the monastic, episcopal and capitular lands fourfold more than had previously been paid, for ecclesiastical lands were let at about one-fourth of their rack-rental value. A good deal of the land was tithe-free, and therefore higher rentals were demanded than for lands which paid tithes. These men made the poor laws; their increased rentals increased pauperism, but they had only a small fractional part to pay themselves towards the maintenance of the poor; the bulk of the rates for the relief of the poor (increased in number by the conduct of these new landlords) was paid by people unconnected with the land.
“The poor of England,” says Blackstone, “till the time of Henry VIII., subsisted entirely upon private benevolence, and the charity of well-disposed Christians. For though it appears by the ‘Mirror’ that by the Common Law the poor were to be ‘sustained by parsons, rectors of the church, and the parishioners, so that none of them die for default of sustenance;’ and though by the statutes 12 Rich. II., c. vii. and 19 Henry VII., c. xii. the poor are directed to be sustained in the cities or towns wherein they were born or where they had dwelt for three years (which seem to be the first rudiments of parish settlements), yet till the statute of 27 Henry VIII., c. xxvi., I find no compulsory method chalked out for this purpose; but the poor seem to have been left to such relief as the humanity of their neighbours would afford them. The monasteries were, in particular, their principal resource.”[235]