PREFACE.
The present account of the early history of English poor relief is chiefly derived from the municipal records of London and Norwich and from the reports of the justices of the peace which are included amongst the state papers. Information on the subject is also contained in the Privy Council Register, while some of the orders of both Privy Council and justices and a few of the overseers' accounts are to be found in the collections of the British Museum.
A fairly effectual system of relieving the destitute by public authority has had in England a continuous existence since the seventeenth century. Attempts to found such a system of poor relief in the sixteenth century were common to most of the countries of Western Europe, but the continued existence of any organisation of the kind is peculiar to England.
Possibly this fact has an important influence on our national history. We are apt to consider the facts that we are a law-abiding people and that we have not suffered from violent revolutions to be entirely due to the virtues of the national character and the excellence of the British Constitution. But before the introduction of our system of relieving the poor we were by no means so free from disorder. The poor laws themselves were at least partly police measures, and, until they were successfully administered, the country was repeatedly disturbed by rebellions and constantly plagued by vagrants. The connection between the relief of the poor and orderly government in England appears fully during the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it may be that our legal system of poor relief has ever since contributed to the absence of violent catastrophes in our national history.
But although the continuous existence of a system of public poor relief for nearly three centuries is peculiar to England, the English organisation was at first only one of a series of similar systems which began to arise during the sixteenth century in most of the countries of Europe. Both in England and on the continent, however, poor laws were difficult to administer. On the continent they fell gradually into abeyance, and the English system of poor relief was by no means enforced simply because a poor law was passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It survived almost alone among the similar organisations of the time chiefly in consequence of the policy adopted by the Privy Council in the reign of Charles I. and of the efforts made by English justices of the peace as a result of that policy.
For nearly a century before the time of Charles I., however, experiments had been made in the organisation of public poor relief. Efforts in this direction were first undertaken by the towns, and the provisions of the earlier English poor laws appear to have been modelled on pre-existing municipal regulations. The City of London was apparently the first English secular authority to organise the public relief of the poor. Collections by the aldermen at the church doors were decreed by the Court of Aldermen in 1532: compulsory taxation was levied by the Common Council as early as 1547, while the Bishop and citizens persuaded Edward VI. to grant the royal palace of Bridewell for the creation of the first House of Correction. Before 1569 legislation also had been fashioned upon these pre-existing orders and bye-laws of the towns, but neither statutes nor municipal orders were successful.
Statute succeeded statute throughout the sixteenth century; during the years 1594 to 1597, however, there was great scarcity of corn and provisions; the poor died from starvation or rose in insurrection. The whole question of poor relief was in consequence thoroughly thrashed out in Parliament. Bacon and Burleigh, Whitgift and Raleigh took part in the debates. A great committee appointed in 1597 held its meetings in the Middle Temple Hall, and there Bacon, Coke, and the most distinguished men in the House discussed at least thirteen bills on the subject. This committee finally rejected all the bills referred to them in favour of a new bill drafted by themselves which finally passed into law. This was practically re-enacted in 1601 and has remained in force until our own time as the basis of our organisation for the relief of the poor.
But the question of poor relief was not settled by statutory enactment any more than by municipal regulations. Administration and not legislation has always been the difficulty in laws concerning the poor. Until the end of the sixteenth century the history of relief in England is parallel to that of France and Scotland; there were in all three countries many poor laws but none were well administered. But in the time of Charles I. the machinery for the execution of the law is developed, and henceforward the history of poor relief in England differs from that of the neighbouring countries.