The Dissolution of the Monasteries, 283 



but ions of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, etc., for pauper 

 industry,^ poor houses and hospitals- quickly followed, until at 

 Queen Elizabeth's death the whole fabric of parochial relief, 

 with its poor law officials, rate collectors, workhouses, asylums, 

 and industrial homes was fully developed, and only needed the 

 subsequent perfecting or altering touches which even now 

 allow it to boast a precedence over all the scientific schemes 

 periodically invented to take its place. 



It is interesting to notice the various divisions into which 

 the country was in turn subdivided for purposes of poor relief. 

 By 22 Hen. VIII. c. 12 it was the hundred presided over by the 

 justice. By 5 Eliz. c. 3 the parish, which had superseded the 

 hundred, was further subdivided into chapelries, and then the 

 chapelries, by 13 Eliz. and 14 Chas. II., were changed for the 

 township. The collectors, overseers and governors who adminis- 

 tered the funds were finally replaced by churchwardens and 

 subsidy men, all of which early schemes formed the germ of 

 our modern Union and Poor Law Guardian systems. Turning 

 back to the old monastic tithe partition, it may be said without 

 fear of contradiction that the era of the Reformation coincided 

 with the time when a tithe of the land's produce, reduced as 

 it was by the other religious sources of expenditure, could 

 not continue to cope with the wants of a rapidly increasing 

 pauper population. But surely real property, by means of 

 tithe offering, had fully contributed its legitimate share, and it 

 was now, if ever, the right time for the legislature to call upon 

 personal property to contribute its quota to the national poor 

 fund? The political power of the landed interest was para- 

 mount, and why the two houses of legislature, packed with 

 the representatives of real property, levied fresh taxation on 

 their own interest, is an enigma about which every reader in- 

 terested in the land would like some explanation. It is possible 

 that the royal exactions on personal estates, in the form of 

 benevolences, percentages, and wool grants had squeezed this 

 kind of property well-nigh dry. It is also possible that Parlia- 

 ment hardly realised the detrimental though indirect effects 



^ 39 Eliz. c. 3. 2 18 Eliz. c. 3 and 39 Eliz. c. 5. 



