191 



11)5 



SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



champaign '), and of the improvident marriages of the servants, who in numbers 

 far exceeded their masters. 192 



Despite all difficulties the little townships in Nottinghamshire seem to 

 have set themselves energetically to their problem : a report of the action 

 taken in Bassetlaw in 1636 shows that the majority of the townships there 

 had raised a ' town stock,' and were busily apprenticing children, relieving the 

 aged, and setting the able-bodied to work. The town stock was in part raised 

 by local rating, but it also included money lent or given for the purpose. 

 The relief was differently administered ; sometimes weekly, sometimes 

 monthly, occasionally yearly. It was very various in amount : 4<xr. yearly 

 was perhaps the largest sum given to one individual ; 2</., 4</., or 6d. a week 

 were common amounts. Occasionally coats or food were given instead of, or 

 with, the money. Children too young to be apprenticed were put in the care 

 of old people needing relief, or left with their parents. How adults were set 

 to work is not clear. Possibly the smaller communities in the county followed 

 the example of Nottingham, where a few years later (1649) twelve spinning 

 wheels were bought and 20 was lent by the town to a certain William 

 James ; and he was further allowed zzs. 6d. a quarter to set all the willing 

 poor to use the said wheels at certain fixed rates. An overseer was appointed 

 to receive complaints, and, oddly enough, no work was to be begun until 

 summer. 193 Twelve years later flax was bought to set the poor people to work, 

 and this plan was pursued through the closing years of the I7th century. 

 Land was also bought by Nottingham town in 1658 to set the poor to work. 

 In one or two places mentioned in the report of 16356 the town stock was 

 devoted to building houses for the reception of the poor, but this was rare. 

 On the whole, as might be expected in a small community, the relief seems 

 to have been given much more individually and on a much less definite system 

 than was possible in later times. Vagrants under such an arrangement were 

 of necessity severely dealt with, punished and sent back whence they came. 198 

 This led to friction between the parishes, as appears from Mrs. Hutchinson's 

 story of the dispute of the three parishes of Kinoulton, Hickling, and Owthorpe 

 about a cripple who was sent from one to another. 197 But the mere fact of 

 such an occurrence in 1659 shows that the administration of the Poor Law 

 must have early got into this rough working order ; otherwise it would 

 hardly have continued in vigour when the Civil War had so effectually 

 diverted the attention of the gentry and landowners who had been at the head 

 of local administration. 



The burden of the Civil War fell with peculiar force on Nottingham- 

 shire. Not only was it the scene of the opening of the war, but the town 

 of Newark and the castle of Nottingham both underwent prolonged sieges. 

 Further, the bulk of the country gentry in Nottinghamshire, who, as has 

 been shown, had filled very definite places as leaders of the county, were, with 

 few exceptions, on the side of the king, and to a considerable extent the 

 yeomanry appear to have followed them. The list of estates which were 

 sequestrated, or for which their owners compounded, did not only include 



191 S.P. Dom. Chas. I, cxciii, 79. ln Rec. of Borough ofNott. v, 259. 



194 Ibid. 309, 311, &c. 1M Ibid. 296. 



" S.P. Dom. Chas. I, cccxxix, 63, &c. Also see the Early Hist, of Engl. Poor Relief, by Miss E. M. 

 Leonard. 



'" Life of Colonel Hutcbinson (ed. 1906), 314. 



2 9 I 



