The Early History of English Poor Relief

by of Girton College E. M. Leonard

Many of the regulations, made with the object of repressing vagrants and able-bodied beggars, were closely connected with the statutes concerning labour, enacted from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards.

After the Black Death of 1348-9, labourers were scarce and wages rose rapidly; a series of enactments was therefore passed, designed to force every able-bodied man to work, and to keep wages at the old level.

In the first regulation of this kind, the Ordinance of Labourers of 1349, the first step is taken towards the national control of poor relief. The proclamation restrains the liberty of the giver; the private individual may no longer give to whom he chooses. It is provided that no one is to give relief to able-bodied beggars, and the ground of the prohibition is expressly stated to be "that they may be compelled to labour for their necessary living."

The first provision of funds for the relief of the poor made by law, is embodied in one of the same series of labour statutes. The wages of priests were regulated and it was ordered that the fines of those parishioners who paid more than the statutory rate, should be given to the poor[8].

Almost as soon as these labour statutes were passed, we hear that labourers fled from county to county in order to elude the operation of the law[9]. The workmen adopted many devices, in order to escape from any part of the country where these regulations were enforced. Some seem to have pretended to be crippled and diseased, and so, when undetected, could wander and beg with impunity. Others, apparently, joined bands of pilgrims, like the famous travellers from the Tabard to Canterbury, and, journeying with them, would reach a district, where they could obtain good wages and be undisturbed by the execution of the labour laws. In 1388, therefore, regulations were made, restricting the movements, not only of able-bodied beggars, but of all beggars and of all labourers and, at the same time, admitting the right to relief of those who were unable to work for themselves[10]. Servants who wished to depart from the hundred in which they lived, under colour of going a pilgrimage, or in order to serve or dwell elsewhere, were to have a letter, stating the cause of their journey and the time when they were to return, duly signed by the "good man of the hundred" appointed for the purpose. If they were found away from their district, without a letter of this kind, they were to be placed in the stocks and kept there, until they found surety to return to their own neighbourhood. However, a servant who had a certain engagement with a master in another part of the country, was always to be allowed to have a letter, allowing him freely to depart. Thus the statute prevented a man from wandering about in search of work, but did not prevent him from migrating, when an engagement was already concluded. All these regulations affected beggars: an able-bodied beggar who begged without a letter was to be put in the stocks in the same manner as a labourer without a letter. He could not escape by pretending that he was a labourer, because both were liable to punishment. Neither could he elude the vigilance of the law, by pretending to be disabled, because the impotent poor also were forbidden to wander; they were to stay where they were at the passing of the Act, or, if the people there were unable to support them, were to go, within forty days, to other towns in the same hundred or to the place where they were born.

This statute is often regarded as the first English poor law, because it recognises that the impotent poor had a right to relief, and because it carefully distinguishes between them and the able-bodied beggars. The provisions also imply the responsibility of every neighbourhood for the support of its own poor. Moreover, this enactment may be regarded as a law of settlement. Not only were the impotent poor confined to their own district, but all unlicensed labourers were likewise forbidden to migrate. Probably the Act had little effect because it was too stringent to have been enforced.

Not only Parliament, but the municipal rulers also, made regulations for the restraint of vagabonds. The authorities of the City of London, in 1359 and in 1375, forbade any able-bodied person to beg, and at the end of the fifteenth century the constables were ordered to search, not only for the vagabonds themselves, but also for the people who harboured them[11].

Two statutes relating to beggars and vagabonds were passed in the reign of Henry VII.[12], but in both the severity of the punishment was decreased, because the king wished by "softer meanes" to reduce them to obedience. The decrease in the severity of this punishment seems to show that there was as yet little sign of the crowds of vagrants, who were a terror to the country under Henry VIII. So far the wanderers were men who had no difficulty in obtaining work, but who wanted better terms. Under Henry VIII. they include also unemployed labourers, and the legislation dealing with them concerns the provision of work for the able-bodied as well as assistance for the impotent poor; still the regulations concerning vagrants were already connected with the relief of the poor because the efforts made to keep at work the valiant beggars had made it necessary to distinguish between them and the old and disabled, and had led to some provision being made for those really unable to help themselves.

3. Control of charitable endowments by the State.

But there was another cause for the public regulation of the relief of the necessitous. From the thirteenth century onwards there are signs that men had ceased to leave charitable endowments entirely in the hands of ecclesiastics. A growing desire was felt, that Parliament and Town Governments should share in the administration of some of the funds for the relief of the poor.