I.] POOR MAN'S FRIEND. 15 



and expense attending the relieving of the poor. 

 These canons, in setting forth the manner in which 

 the tithes should be disposed of, say, "Let the priests 

 set apart the first share for the building and ornaments 

 of the church; let them distribute the second to the 

 poor and strangers, with their own hands, in mercy 

 and humility' and let them reserve the third part for 

 themselves." This passage is taken from the canons 

 of ELFRIC, canon 24th. At a later period, when the 

 tithes had, in some places, been appropriated to con- 

 vents, acts of Parliament were passed, compelling the 

 impropriators to leave, in the hands of their vicar, a 

 sufficiency for the maintenance of the poor. There 

 were two or three acts of this sort passed, one par- 

 ticularly in the twelfth year of RICHARD the Second, 

 chapter 7th. So that here we have the most ancient 

 book on the Common Law ; we have the canons of 

 the church at a later period; we have acts of Parlia- 

 ment at a time when the power and glory of England 

 were at their very highest point ; we have all these to 

 tell us, that in England, from the very time that the 

 country took the name, there was always a legal and 

 secure provision for the poor, so that no person, how- 

 ever aged, infirm, unfortunate^ or destitute, should 

 suffer from want. 



15. But, my friends, a time came when the provi- 

 sion made by the Common Law, by the Canons of the 

 Church, and by the Acts of the Parliament coming in 

 aid of those canons ; a time arrived, when all these 

 were rendered null by what is called the PROTESTANT 

 REFORMATION. This " Reformation," as it is called, 

 sweeped away the convents, gave a large part of the 

 tithes to greedy courtiers, put parsons with wives and 

 children into the livings, and left the poor without 

 any resource whatsoever. This terrible event, which 

 deprived England of the last of her possessions on 

 the continent of Europe, reduced the people of Eng- 

 land to the most horrible misery ; from the happiest 

 and best fed and best clad people in the world, it 

 made them the most miserable, the most wretched 

 and ragged of creatures. At last it was seen that, 

 15* 



