434 APPENDIX II. POOR LAW 



Bay that the Act of Elizabeth in 1601 (43 Eliz. c. 2) followed previous legisla- 

 tion by directing money to be raised for the relief of the impotent poor " of 

 lame, impotent, blind, and such other among them being poor and not able 

 to work," for the provision for them of " convenient houses of dwelling," and 

 for " the putting out of ... children to be apprentices." 



From the first, the problem of dealing with the able-bodied presented the 

 greatest difficulty to legislators. The necessity of discriminating between 

 the two classes of the able-bodied was early felt. It was forced into pro- 

 minence, partly by the increase of mendicancy fostered by indiscriminate 

 almsgiving, partly by the industrial changes, which, during the Tudor period, 

 affected both agriculture and manufacture. Sturdy rogues and vagabonds 

 were punished, under penal laws of such ferocious severity that they defeated 

 themselves with whipping, branding, imprisonment, and transportation. 

 For less hardened offenders labour was used both as a test and a penalty ; 

 for them Houses of Correction were created ; rewards were offered for their 

 apprehension ; they were harried by laws of settlement from parish to parish 

 until they reached their place of birth. Towards the able-bodied poor, who 

 were willing to work, a different policy was adopted. It was at first scarcely 

 more lenient. For them a living at least, but not wages, was to be provided, 

 on condition that they earned their food as slaves. Labour was the test of 

 their necessities. In 1547 (1 Ed. VI. c. 3) every "city, town, parish, or 

 village " was required to provide work for its able-bodied poor, or " to appoint 

 them to such as will find them work " for meat and drink. Elizabethan 

 legislation proceeded on more humane lines. In 1575, and again in 1597 

 and 1601, 1 "a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron," and other 

 stuff was to be provided in every parish " to set the poor on work." The 

 material was to be wrought up at the home of the needy able-bodied person, 

 finished at a given time, and paid for according to skill. Those who either 

 refused to work, or spoilt or embezzled the material, fell into the class of 

 vagabonds, and were consigned to a House of Correction. The stock was to 

 be replenished by the sale of the manufactured goods, so that the system 

 might become self-supporting. 



The Elizabethan Poor Law was imperfectly administered. Political 

 disorders increased the disorganisation of the system. Overseers failed to 

 collect the rates ; the stock was not uniformly provided ; the vagrant popula- 

 tion had greatly increased. Stanley, 2 the ex-highwayman, writing probably 

 in 1605, imagined that there were then " not so few as 80,000 idle vagrants that 

 prey upon the common- wealth." It is improbable that their number had de- 

 creased during the Civil Wars or under the Commonwealth. It was against 

 this class, and especially against squatters, that the Act of 1662 " for the 

 better Relief of the Poor " (14 Car. II. c. 12), commonly known as the "Act 

 of Settlement " was directed. 3 The principle on which it proceeded was 

 as old as the Anglo-Saxons. As the first step towards progress and 

 order, every man was required within 40 days to have a settled domicile, and 

 to be enrolled in some fixed community. Stranger and outlaw were synony- 

 mous terms. Throughout the Poor Law legislation from Richard II. to 

 Elizabeth, the same principle had been enforced for the removal of the poor 

 to their birthplace or last permanent abode. If relief was to be treated as a 

 parochial, and not as a national, burden, a settlement was necessary. But 

 the Act of Charles II. indisputably made the law more rigid, and imposed 

 new fetters on the mobility of labour. It recites that people wandered from 

 parish to parish, endeavouring " to settle themselves where there is the 



1 18 Eliz. c. 3 ; 39 Eliz. c. 3 ; 43 Eliz. c. 2. 



*Stanleye's Remedy: or the Way how to Reform Wandring Beggars, Theevcs, High- 

 way Robbers, and Pickpockets. London, 1646. 

 3 Report to the Poor Law Board, by G. Coode, 1851. 



