There were more poor people and, despite the poor laws, many became rogues or vagabonds or starved to death. Many went from parish to parish to build cottages and consumed all the wood there and then went to another parish. So the parishes were allowed by statute to remove any person coming to settle in any tenement under the value of ten pounds who was likely to be chargeable to it. They were then removed to the last parish were they had resided for at least forty days. Excepted were people temporarily moving to another parish to work at harvest time. The overall effect was to decrease the mobility of people. But a later statute permitted greater movement of poor people by allowing those who were poor for want of work to go to another parish where labor was wanted. They had to bring a certificate of their present parish membership to the new parish, where they could settle if they rented a tenement worth ten pounds a year or served in a parish office. Later, settlement had to be given to inhabitants paying its parish's rates, and unmarried inhabitants hired for one year, and apprentices bound by indenture. But parishes were displeased with the requirement to give settlements to these people because they feared they would become poor and need parish assistance, thereby increasing the rates to be paid.
Parish poor houses were converted into spinning schools to obtain an income. Parishes of large towns were combined to set up large workhouses, where the poor could be set to unskilled manufacture, but the managers lacked the character and education to make them work.
Because prisoners often died before trial and the poor prisoners became instructed in the practice of thievery in prison, they were set to work on materials provided to them at public expense. No parish was rated at more than 6d. per week for such. The president and governors of corporations oversaw rogues, vagrants, sturdy beggars, and idle or disorderly persons working in corporations or workhouses.
Assessments were made for building and repairing gaols in order to maintain the health and safe custody of the prisoners. Also, gaol fever, a virulent form of typhus, was so prevalent in the large prisons for criminals and debtors that it frequently spread through the adjacent towns. During some assizes, it killed sheriffs, lawyers, and justices.
In 1692, London lands were taxed for the relief of orphans. Churchwardens could seize the goods and chattels of putative fathers and mothers deserting bastard children.
From 1691 to 1740, Societies for the Reformation of Manners prosecuted poor people for moral offenses.
All hackney coaches and stage coaches in all the realm became required to be licensed. The turnpike system came into use. Tolls were paid for road upkeep and repair by private companies. The local parishes ceased to have this responsibility. John Ogilby wrote the first road book based on actual surveys of the roads. Stage coaches cost a shilling for every five miles and went 40-50 miles a day. The trip from London to Oxford was twelve hours. The company of Coach and Coach Harness Makers was founded with the consent of the king. The body of a coach hung from the frame by leather braces. One axle pivoted for turns. Plate glass was used in the windows. Rivers improved so that most places were no more distant from navigable waters than a long day's haul on land.
The several post offices were put under the authority of one Postmaster General appointed by the king for the purpose of speed and safety of dispatches, which were carried by horseback. One sheet letter going less than 80 miles cost 2d., and more than 80 miles, 4d.
When the army was disbanded after the Restoration, its officers and soldiers were allowed return to their trades and their apprenticeships without serving the usual seven years. Parishes were required to provide for poor and maimed officers and soldiers who served Charles I or Charles II. The Royal Hospital founded by Charles as a home for veteran soldiers opened in 1692. Greenwich palace was converted to a hospital for seamen and their widows and children to encourage men to become seamen: mariner, seaman, waterman, fisherman, lighterman, bargeman, keelman, or seafaring man in the king's Navy. Also, children of disabled seamen were to be educated at the expense of the hospital.
Charles retained one regiment from which he started a small standing army, which slowly increased in size ever after. The army was primarily mercenary, as it had been in medieval times, with officers buying their commissions. Colonels were the proprietors of their regiments and captains were the proprietors of their companies. The soldiers were ill mannered, swearing and cursing and stealing, sometimes from peoples' homes, and intimidating people with their swords. The bayonet was invented to attach onto a gun, which were muzzle-loading with a match lock. So pikemen with their long spears became obsolete. Hand grenades and small explosive bombs came into use about 1670.