CHAPTER II.
THE CAUSES OF THE REORGANISATION OF POOR RELIEF.
- 1. Increase of vagrants. (1) Harman's description of vagrants in England. (2) Bands of vagrants on the Continent.
- 2. Reasons why men became beggars. (1) The destruction of the feudal system destroyed employments furnished by war and service. (2) Manufactures on a large scale less stable than old occupations. (3) Rise of prices affected food earlier than wages. (4) In England enclosures were made because sheep were more profitable than corn.
- 3. Old methods of charity. (1) Private individuals. (2) Monasteries. (3) Hospitals.
- 4. Attempts at reorganisation on the Continent.
- 5. Three factors in making of English poor relief: (1) the orders of the towns; (2) the regulations of the statutes; (3) the efforts of the Privy Council to secure the administration of adequate relief. Three periods in the history of the first making of the English system: (1) 1514-1569; (2) 1569-1597; (3) 1597-1644.
The earlier years of the sixteenth century began a period of great changes in the position of the poorer classes, and these changes soon resulted in a series of attempts to reform and reorganise the whole system of poor relief.
1. Increase of vagrants.
(1) Harman's description of the bands of vagrants in England.
The desire to repress vagrants had already led state and town to make regulations concerning the relief of the poor, but whereas, before the sixteenth century, beggars were only an occasional nuisance, they now became a chronic plague. The great increase in the numbers of these vagabonds appears to have begun early in the reign of Henry VIII. Thomas Harman, a gentleman of Kent, in about 1566, wrote an elaborate description of twenty-three varieties whom he had found to be in existence[27]. One of his anecdotes shows that they were already numerous soon after the execution of the Duke of Buckingham in 1521[28]. A man of some importance, he states, died about this time, and crowds of beggars attended the funeral. Some of them were poor householders and these returned to their homes at night. But the others were sheltered in a large barn which, on being searched, was found to contain seven-score men and at least as many women. The bands of these wanderers continued to increase, for Harrison, in his Description of England, tells us, "it is not yet full threescore yeares since this trade began: but how it has prospered since that time it is easie to judge, for they are now supposed, of one sex and another, to amount to above 10,000 persons[29]."
Harman's description of this "rowsey ragged rabblement of rakehelles" shows that some sort of organisation existed amongst them. He prints a slang dictionary of thieves' language, and states that this had been in existence for thirty years: he also gives an account of their order of precedence, thus showing that many degrees of roguery were recognised by the rogues themselves.
We can see from his account of their pranks, that they were both cunning and daring, and were often a great hardship to the honest citizens of the poorer classes.