Thus in the period from 1597 to 1644 the Privy Council are increasingly active on behalf of the poor, and during eleven of these years, from 1629 to 1640, they adopt a policy of constantly exerting influence to secure the proper administration of the poor laws. This continuous policy seems to be suggested by the exceptional measures which had formerly been adopted in years of scarcity. In every season of high-price corn since 1527 some action of this kind was taken, and every exceptionally bad time of distress increased the extent of governmental interference. The continuous policy adopted between 1629 and 1640 began with a failure of harvest and crisis in the cloth trade, and the earlier methods of the Government were like those of 1597 and 1622. But while the season of scarcity still continued the Privy Council issued the Book of Orders for the relief of the poor, and the organisation begun by these commands was continued throughout the period of personal government.
Abbot and Laud, Wentworth and Falkland, Dorchester and Wimbledon are the members of the Privy Council whose names are most closely connected with this policy. Its effects and success we shall be better able to estimate later, but we can already see that the system which the Privy Council tried to enforce was considerably more extensive than any organisation of poor relief with which we are familiar. Already we know that the poor were not only looked after in times of bad harvests, as in the sixteenth century, but they were also sometimes employed when they were out of work, and that, not only when an individual was unfortunate, but when whole classes were suffering from a fluctuation in trade. This certainly could not always be carried out, but the Council insisted that it should be attempted. The personal government of Charles I. has been more associated with the exaction of Ship Money than with attempts to enforce a system which has much in common with the socialistic schemes with which we are familiar on paper, and yet these eleven years are remarkable for more continuous efforts to enforce socialistic measures than has been made by the central Government of any other great European country. Apart from its success or failure the attempt is interesting, because it shows us the ideal of government which was in the minds of Charles I. and his advisers, and reminds us that these infringers of individual liberties were also, in intention at least, the protectors of the poor.
CHAPTER IX.
1597-1644.
THE LOCAL MACHINERY FOR ADMINISTRATION.
- 1. Powers of the justices.
- 2. Work of the justices in first putting the law in execution.
- (a) In West Riding in 1598.
- (b) In North Riding from 1605 onwards.
- 3. Reports of the justices in response to the Book of Orders.
- 4. The work of the judges.
- (a) Authoritative decisions on points of law.
- (b) Administrative work as the link between the Privy Council and the justices.
- 5. The work of the overseers.
- (a) In 1599.
- (b) When stirred to greater activity by scarcity measures.
- (c) After the issue of the Book of Orders.
The increased activity of the Privy Council, which made the poor law of the seventeenth century more effective than that of the sixteenth, depended for its success upon the activity of the local officials, particularly of the justices of the peace and the municipal authorities. We will now therefore examine the work done (1) by the justices and town rulers, (2) by the judges[375], and (3) by the overseers.
1. Powers of the justices.