7 a. Stocks used to employ the poor in their houses or elsewhere.
We will now examine some of the more typical cases of setting the poor to work. Generally we hear that stocks were raised and the poor found with work, but we do not hear that the work was done in any public building. It does not follow that a building was not used, but we do not hear that one was provided. We will first notice a few instances in which the poor were set to work in this way, and we will then examine some of the Jersey schools and the workhouses and Houses of Correction of the period. Lastly, we will endeavour to see what expedients were adopted by public or semi-public authorities to provide the poor with work without directly employing them. Under this head we will notice such expedients as emigration, putting pressure on employers, and the various ways in which a young artisan or tradesman was helped to set up in business for himself.
We shall see later that all these expedients were adopted much more often after 1631 than before it, and it is at that date that our information is most complete. About that time we hear of several ways in which the poor were employed directly or indirectly by the public authorities, but in which we are not told of the erection of a workhouse or other building of the kind. In Winchester, for instance, the stock was placed in a clothier's hands; at Maidstone "the towne doth ymploy poore women and their children in spinning, making of buttons and twisting of threed for the same." In two of the hundreds[538] of Shropshire "the poore of euery paryshe wthin the said hundreds are sufficiently provided for and are not permitted to wander or beg but are set to worke on husbandry as the state of the countrey doth require."
All these and many other instances are reported in 1631, but there are examples at other times. At Norwich many plans were tried[539], but in 1625 it was resolved that the stone-mines should be used for that purpose. The workmen were to be "sett on worke" the next Monday at eight o'clock and surveyors were ordered to be present. "And the Belman ys required to warne all such as want worke and dwell not in infected howses to repaire thither at that hower wth barrowes and fittinge tooles to digg stone & they shall be compounded wthall for reasonable wages[540]."
At King's Lynn also different expedients were adopted. As early as 1581 money had been spent in changing St James's Church into a workhouse, and shortly afterwards we have evidence of employment being then given to the poor. In 1623 the building was pulled down, and possibly in consequence of this we find an agreement made in that year between the citizens on the one side and a merchant taylor, a glover and a woolchapman on the other. These last undertook not only to teach children to spin worsted yarn, but also to give employment to the poor, and to pay proper wages to those who were not learners. In June, 1631, the Mayor and the Recorder sent in a report to the Sheriff, in which they said that then they had "bought materialls to sett the able-bodyed poore on worke not suffering to or knowledge anie poore to stragle and begg upp and downe the streets of this Burgh[541]." In Lynn, therefore, the authorities on several occasions made energetic efforts to find employment for those out of work, and very possibly some arrangement of this sort was in continuous operation from the year 1581.
7 b. Introduction of new trades.
Sometimes the authorities utilised the labour of their poor in order to establish a new trade. Thus in eight of the towns of Hertfordshire public funds were obtained for an unsuccessful attempt to employ those out of work in making serges and baize, then called the "new drapery[542]." A project of the same kind was suggested to the justices of Pembrokeshire, but they were very cautious about committing themselves to its adoption[543].
Our informants generally tell us only that stocks were raised and the poor set to work. But from the instances we have just examined we can see that many kinds of employment were used. On the whole clothmaking and the provision of flax, hemp and tow were the most usual expedients.
7 c. Workhouses and Jersey schools.
But both private employers and public officials found that if the very poor took work into their homes they might embezzle the materials. Moreover, the seventeenth century administrators often carefully provided for the training of workers, and this could be more conveniently done in some building. We, therefore, hear of the erection of workhouses and Jersey schools and the continued use of Houses of Correction. At Newbury and Reading institutions of this kind were founded by Mr Kendrick. At Newbury we are told threescore persons were employed in the trade of clothing and other manufactures, most of these "being houskeepers and havinge wyfes and children depending upon their labours." Besides this fifty households were set to work by spinning for the workhouse, and a "stock" was raised by taxation to be partly expended "to imploie the poore in worke[544]."