[758] See above, p. 172.
[759] Lord Dorchester had been appointed one of the special commissioners for the poor in June 1630. See above, pp. 156, 164.
[760] See note App. V.
[761] See p. 172 seq.
[762] All these inquiries refer to the statute of Elizabeth concerning labourers (5 Eliz. c. 4) or to the clause in the poor law of 1601 (43 Eliz. c. 2) which ordered the overseers to set to work all persons who had no means to maintain themselves. See above, pp. 140, 161. Some of the regulations of the former statute provide that in many employments servants should not be retained for less than a year; that the rates of wages should be fixed by the justices in Quarter Sessions every year; that a quarter's warning should be given if either master or servant desired to terminate the engagement at the end of the term, and that a testimonial should be obtained by a servant before he left his own parish or town, and should be shown to his new master before he obtained a fresh engagement. The statute also settled the conditions of apprenticeship, and limited the right of becoming an apprentice in certain crafts to the sons of those who possessed a little property. It also provided that all persons between twelve and sixty not otherwise employed, might be compelled to serve in husbandry. Several other references to the execution of this statute occur in the reports here printed. See B., Westmill and Sawbridgeworth, also D and E.
[763] See above, p. 249.
[764] In the manuscript the names of the churchwardens &c. are written opposite the entries in a right-hand margin and the names of the places are written in a large hand in a left-hand margin.
[765] Of these places only Ware, Stortford, Sawbridgeworth, Braughing and Stansted Abbots are of any size; Eastwick has even now only 71 inhabitants, and neither Gilston, Westmill or Thundridge have a population exceeding 500. The population of Charles I.'s time for the whole of England and Wales is estimated to have been about one-sixth that of the present day. The largest place, Ware, has a stock when the reports begin, the second in size, Stortford, reports one at the second meeting, while the overseers of Braughing have arranged for the employment of the poor in another manner. Here therefore as elsewhere arrangements for finding work exist more in the larger places than in the smaller.
[766] The keeping of cows so that the poor could have their milk seems to have been one of the oldest methods of public poor relief; see Ashley, Econ. Hist., II. p. 311.
[767] See above, pp. 156-7 note.