Many of the reports are still to be found among the State Papers and afford us considerable information as to the state of the country and the extent to which the law was executed. The justices' reports concerning vagrants from 1569 to 1571 are preserved from nineteen different counties. These were made directly to the Privy Council. From some counties like Gloucester and Northampton there are many reports, but from others like Lincoln and Hereford only one was returned. Although the justices of Holland in Lincolnshire only report once they say they will keep watches every month in order that vagabonds may be punished and suppressed[158].
The accounts from different parts of the country vary very much. The Oxfordshire answer is usually "All things be well[159]," but in Northamptonshire there were many vagrants, and apparently they were mostly sturdy rogues for they were usually "stocked" and whipped[160]. Gloucestershire is a fairly average county; in the country round Cirencester we are told there were no "persons disorderly found," but in the division of Thornbury there were ninety-two vagrant men and fifteen children. In Tewkesbury and Deerhurst there were fifteen sturdy vagrants, twenty impotent beggars, and four children[161].
Sometimes great numbers were attracted by particular causes. Thus from Cambridgeshire some reports state, "No such kynde of persons there were found[162]," but in four hundreds forty-seven were arrested, "the number whereof were so greate at that present by reason of the confluence to and from Sturbridge fayer[163]."
When we remember that all the vagrants were taken in two or three searches only and that it is probable that the more capable had ample notice, the results indicate a considerable amount of disorder. On the other hand, the fact that when the proportions are given so many are impotent, and the frequent presence of children lead us to believe that these wanderers were more often people in want than wicked plunderers of their fellow-countrymen.
These orders of the Privy Council were directed towards the decrease of vagrants, but in the replies of the justices we see the close connection between measures of this kind and the relief of the poor. Thus in Essex and Surrey advantage was sometimes taken of the clause permitting the justices to put vagrants to service. At Barking and Walthamstow masterless men were appointed to masters, and at Brixton and Wallingford three out of thirteen were put to service[164]. But the report from Worcestershire is more interesting and confirms the information derived from the speech made by Mr Sands during the debate in Parliament on the Bill of 1571[165]. The justices there said that they had already taken measures to repress beggars and so found very few in the searches now made; the few that remained there were licensed by them but the "greter parte of the poore ar provyded for where they dwell[166]." We can thus see that, though this whipping campaign concerns vagrants, the question of vagrants was inseparably connected with the care of the poor, and that these measures, although undertaken with a view of preserving order, tended to lead to the better organisation of relief.
The next series of measures undertaken by the Privy Council concerns therefore the supply of the markets during years of high-priced corn.
Even in the reign of Henry VIII. London and Bristol had bought a public store of corn in order to prevent scarcity, and in 1528 and 1549 the Privy Council had regulated the buying and selling of grain in order to lower the price but had failed to obtain much result[167]. Between 1569 and 1597 there were three seasons in which corn was exceptionally scarce, 1572, 1586, and 1594 to 1597. In each of these the Privy Council issued similar orders and their action became more vigorous and more successful as time went on.
The sudden rises in the price of corn were in a great measure caused by the narrowness of the area from which a supply could come. There were few means of rapid communication; the roads were bad and the supplies of grain available for a particular district might be in the hands of very few men. It was quite possible for the dealers of corn to prevent corn from coming to a market, to buy up the supplies already there and afterwards raise the price to an artificial height. This was considered unfair according to the commercial morality of the time, and when it was done in the case of a necessary of life it caused great hardship to the poor.
In 1572 enquiries were made as to the price of corn in the Western counties and in Norfolk and Suffolk. The replies received show that it varied considerably even in adjacent counties. In Somerset best wheat sold for twenty shillings a quarter, in Dorset it fetched sixteen, it cost eighteen shillings in Norfolk, while in Suffolk it would be purchased for only fourteen[168]. The next year a commission was issued and the commissioners were empowered to order the farmers to bring corn to market in proportion to the amount they possessed[169].