We will first see how the municipal authorities dealt with settlement; we will then investigate various methods of dealing with the unemployed; and lastly we will examine the different ways in which funds were collected.
3. (1) With regard to the settlement of new comers.
With regard to questions concerning the expulsion of new comers the statute of Charles II. (13 and 14 Car. II. c. 12) does not appear to initiate a new custom. Municipal control in this matter begins before 1569. Whenever the town made a vigorous attempt to maintain its own poor, many efforts were made to prevent new comers from settling within its borders. Sometimes the landlords were forbidden to subdivide tenements or build more houses of the poorer sort; sometimes the citizens were fined for entertaining poor inmates, and sometimes the inmates themselves were ordered to depart.
Thus in London the landlords first are restrained. In a resolution of the Common Council of 5 Edw. VI. it is stated that "capytell messuages and houses" had been turned into alleys and the class of vagabonds was greatly increased. It is therefore ordered that the inhabitants of these alleys should pay their rent to the House of the Poor in West Smithfield and not to their landlords[235].
In Aug. 1557 it is not only the landlords but the occupiers who are to blame, and they are ordered to put out of their houses "vagaboundes," "masterles men" and "evill disposed persons," and in future not to receive any one of the sort[236].
The municipal rulers of Ipswich also, in 1557, the year in which a compulsory Poor Rate was enforced, appointed "searchers for newcommers into the Towne[237]," and in 1578 provided that searches shall be made forthwith "for new commers and servants, retained for less than one yere," and that the constables are to warn new comers to depart the town[238].
In Cambridge in 1556 an inquiry had been made concerning new comers but apparently the town rulers were not very vigilant, for in 1584 the Privy Council ordered them to remove as many small tenements as might be consistent with the public convenience[239].
In St Albans as at Norwich we find that the regulations were very complete. In 1586 monthly searches were instituted: and the searchers were commanded "in the limits of their several Wards" to "make search for such new comers to the town as being poor may be likely to be chargeable to the same, and if they shall find any such within either of their several Divisions to give notice thereof to Mr Mayor, that order may be taken for their sending away[240]." We hear of orders made for the expulsion of particular poor people because they were likely to be in need of relief, and in some cases we can see that this practice caused great hardship to individuals. Thus John Tompson, a joiner, had taken a poor woman into his house and as she was likely to become chargeable she was ordered to quit the borough[241]. Moreover we have the later plan of finding sureties already in operation. John Palmer was admitted a freeman, a Thomas Browne undertaking that Palmer's children should not become chargeable to the Borough[242].
We thus see that the statute of Charles II. did not impose hardships on the poor never before endured. It is a curious instance of the adoption by statute of a custom that had long existed. The custom had been enforced without statutory authority while the town government continued to possess semi-independent powers, but it could not be enforced without statutory authority in later times. The statute therefore stereotyped a custom that had long been in existence in the towns and would otherwise have become obsolete.
This practice of preventing settlement has a far closer connection with the social order of the reign of Elizabeth than with that of Charles II. It was a great hardship to the poor, but it was a hardship to which they had long been partially accustomed and which fitted in with the economic policy of the towns.