1. Regulations made at Chester as to Beggars, 1539—2. A Proclamation Concerning Corn and Grain to be brought into open Markets to be sold, 1545—3. Administration of Poor Relief at Norwich, 1571—4. The first Act Directing the Levy of a Compulsory Poor Rate, 1572—5. The first Act Requiring the Unemployed to be set to Work, 1575-6—6. Report of Justices to Council Concerning Scarcity in Norfolk, 1586—7. Orders devised by the Special Commandment of the Queen's Majesty for the Relief and Ease of the Present Dearth of Grain Within the Realm, 1586—8. The Poor Law Act of 1601—9. A note of the Grievances of the Parish of Eldersfield, 1618—10. Petition to Justices of Wiltshire for Permission to Settle in a Parish, 1618—11. Letter from Privy Council to Justices of Cloth-making Counties, 1621-2—12. Letter from Privy Council to the Deputy Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace in the Counties of Suffolk and Essex concerning the Employment of the Poor, 1629—13. The Licensing of Badgers in Somersetshire, 1630—14. Badgers Licensed at Somersetshire Quarter Sessions, 1630—15. The Supplying of Bristol with Grain, 1630-1—16. Proceedings against Engrossers and other Offenders, 1631—17. Order of Somersetshire Justices Granting a Settlement to a Labourer, 1630-1—18. Report of Derbyshire Justices on their Proceedings, 1631—19. Letter from Privy Council to Justices of Rutlandshire, 1631—20. Judgment in the Star Chamber against an Engrosser of Corn, 1631.
The national system of Poor Relief which was built up in the course of the sixteenth century was composed of three elements, experiments of municipal authorities, Parliamentary legislation, supervision and stimulus supplied by the Privy Council. The first step taken by towns was usually to organize begging by granting licences to certain authorized beggars, while punishing the idler (No. 1); the next to provide establishments where necessitous persons could be set to work on materials provided at the public expense (No. 3). The action of the State followed the same lines of development. During the first three quarters of the sixteenth century it (a) left the provision of the funds needed for relief to private charity, (b) directed the relief of the "impotent poor," but treated all able-bodied persons in one category, that of "sturdy rogues." But in 1572 it recognized the inadequacy of voluntary contributions by directing the levy of a compulsory poor rate (No. 4), and in 1576 made the important innovation of discriminating between persons unemployed because they could not get work and persons unemployed because they did not want work, by enacting that the former should be set to work on materials provided for them, and that the latter should be committed to the House of Correction (No. 5). The system was completed by the Act for the Relief of the Poor of 1601 (No. 8). Its administration was in the hands of the Justices of the Peace, who were much occupied with questions of settlement (Nos. 9, 10, 17), with carrying out instructions sent to them by the Privy Council for relieving distress (Nos. 12 and 19), and with making reports to the Privy Council of their proceedings (No. 18).
The provision of relief was never intended to be, and down to 1640 was not, the sole method of coping with problems of distress. It was in its origin associated with measures of a preventive character, attempts to prevent the eviction of peasants (Part II, Section I, Nos. 9, 10, 13-17, 20 and 21), occasional attempts to raise wages (Part II, section III, Nos. 10, 18, 19 and 20), attempts to prevent employers dismissing workpeople in times of trade depression (No. 11), attempts to regulate the price of food stuffs and to secure adequate supplies for the markets (Nos. 2, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20). In the latter matter, as in many others, the Tudor governments tried to make a regularly administered national system out of what had for centuries been the practices of local bodies. The Justices of the Peace were required in 1545 to inspect barns and to compel the owners of supplies of grain to sell it in open market (No. 3). Under Elizabeth the system was elaborated. The Justices from time to time made returns to the Privy Council of the stocks of grain available (No. 6), and of the prices ruling (No. 18); and extremely detailed instructions for their guidance were drawn up by Burleigh in 1586 (No. 7). The licensing of "Badgers," or dealers in corn, was part of their regular business (Nos. 13 and 14); the movement of grain from one district to another was carefully supervised (No. 15); and engrossers and regrators were frequently brought before them (No. 16). The efficiency of the system depended very largely on the close supervision of local government and economic affairs by the Privy Council, and on the fact that offenders against public policy could be tried before the Court of Star Chamber. One case before that Court is printed below (No. 20). It is interesting as showing both the economic ideas upon which the policy of regulating prices was based, and the way in which attempts to supervise economic relationships brought the government into collision with the interests of the middle and commercial classes.
AUTHORITIES
The only modern English writer who deals adequately with the subject of this section is Miss E.M. Leonard, The Early History of English Poor Relief. Short accounts of different aspects of the subject are given by Cunningham, English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, Part I; Ashley, Economic History, Chap. V; Nicholls, History of the Poor Law; Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages; Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century; Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries; Oxford Historical and Literary Studies, I, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds and their Representation in Contemporary Literature, by Frank Aydelotte; Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, Vol. III, One Hundred Years of Poor Law Administration in a Warwickshire Village, by A.W. Ashby. The student may also consult the following:—
(1) Documentary authorities:—Municipal Records (see bibliographies and references under section II) and Quarter Sessions Records (see bibliographies and references under section III); the Statutes of the Realm, Acts of the Privy Council, Calendars of State Papers Domestic, especially under Elizabeth; Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, especially Vol. I (containing Quarter Sessions Proceedings of Wiltshire and Worcestershire), the volumes containing a report on the papers of the Marquis of Salisbury (in particular Part VII), and a report on the papers of the Marquis of Lothian (pp. 76-80).
(2) Reference to questions of pauperism and prices will be found in contemporary literary authorities set out under section I, in particular in the works of More, Crowley, Lever, Stubbes, Harrison, Bacon and Moore, and in the Commonwealth of this realm of England. Awdeley, Fraternity of Vagabonds (1561, Early English Text Society), gives an amusing account of the habits of vagrants.
1. Regulations made at Chester as to Beggars [Morris. Chester in the Plantagenet and Tudor Reigns, pp. 355, 356], 1539.
Henry Gee, Mayor, 31 Henry VIII. [1539]. Forasmuch as by reason of the great number of multitude of valiant idle persons and vagabonds which be strong and able to serve and labour for their livings, and yet daily go on begging within the same city, so that the poor impotent and indigent people and inhabiting within the same city and having no other means to get their living but only by the charitable alms of good Christian people daily want and be destitute of the same, to the great displeasure of Almighty God and contrary to good conscience and the wholesome statute and laws of our sovereign Lord the King in such case made and provided; for reformation whereof it is ordained and established by the said city ... that the number and names of all indigent and needy mendicant people shall be searched, known and written, and thereupon divided in xv parts, and every of them assigned to what ward they shall resort and beg within the said city, and in no other place within the same, and their names to be written in a bill and set up in every man's house within every ward for knowledge to whom they shall give their alms and to no other. And if any other person or persons come to any man or woman's door, house or person to beg, not having his name in the bill within that man's or woman's houses, then the same man or woman to give unto the same beggar no manner alms or relief but rather to bring or send him to the stocks within the same ward, or else to deliver him to the constable of the same ward or the alderman's deputy within the same ward, and he to put him in the stocks, there to remain by the space of a day and a night; and yet, every man and woman that shall offend in using themselves contrary to this ordinance concerning such valiant beggars shall for every such offence forfeit xiid. to be levied to the use of the common box by the commandment of the alderman of the same ward, and for default of payment thereof the same man or woman so offending to be committed to the ward by the mayor till it be paid.
And if any of the indigent and poor needy beggars [beg] at any time in any other place within this city out of the ward to them assigned as is aforesaid, then the same beggar so offending to be punished by the mayor's discretion. And further it is ordered that all manner of idle persons, being able to labour abiding within the said city and not admitted to live by alms within the said city, shall every workday in the morning in the time of winter at vi of the clock, and in time of summer at iiii of the clock, resort and come unto the high cross of the said city, and there to offer themselves to be hired to labour for their living according to the king's laws and his statutes provided for labourers; and if any person or persons do refuse so to do, then he or they so refusing to be committed to ward by the mayor of the said city for the time being, there to remain unto such time he or they so refusing hath found sufficient sureties to be bound by recognisance before the said mayor in a certain sum, so to [do] accordingly to the King's laws and statutes aforesaid.