SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



A certain number of aged and impotent poor were relieved by 

 pensions of 2s. 6d. a month or is. or is. 6d. a week. In 1690 the 

 parish of St. Andrew Holborn complained that owing to the great 

 increase of the pensioned poor the available money is insufficient to 

 maintain them. In 1701 Baling attempted to replace these pensions 

 by indoor-relief, and obtained leave to accommodate eight of their 

 pensioned poor in a house, and to levy for this purpose a rate of 

 3*/. in the pound, hoping to effect a saving of 12 a year. 132 " Invalided 

 soldiers also were provided for under an Act of Queen Elizabeth's 

 reign by pensions of about 40^. a year, raised by a special county 

 rate managed by two county treasurers. As these pensions were given 

 without any inquiry there was a great deal of abuse and fraud, and 

 in 1623 the treasurers were ordered to give no pensions without strict 

 investigation. 138 



To meet the expense of the poor, besides the special rates levied for 

 the purpose, certain fines were apportioned to the justices, such as the fines 

 for not taking the oath and the fines levied on alehouse-keepers for using 

 false measures. 133 * In 1631 m the justices sent into the Council the accounts 

 of the expenditure of 92 received from such fines in the parishes of 

 St. Sepulchre, Clerkenwell, St. Giles Cripplegate, Islington, Hornsey, 

 Finchley, and Friern Barnet, reporting that they have apprenticed 

 twenty children of poor men, that they are ' maintaining a manufacture ' 

 in the house of correction, founded by a 'stock' of 100 given by 

 Sir John Fenner, by which an artisan is to instruct in the said manu- 

 facture twenty poor orphans, ' such as before wandered in the streets,' 

 and that they have dispatched many idle and loose persons to serve with 

 His Majesty of Sweden, besides distributions of money to the poor ' at 

 their discretion.' 



In consequence of many complaints of the inequality and uncertainty 

 of the rates and charges for the poor and the highways, an assessment 

 was ordered to be made according to an equal pound rate on the yearly 

 value of the houses. 1341 The increase of the poor, ' owing to the present 

 war ' led the churchwardens in Ratcliff to apply for an extra assessment 

 in 1 694, and a similar request was made by the parish of St. Clement 

 Danes. 



Special endowments for the benefit of the poor were often bequeathed 

 to their parishes by well-to-do parishioners. A list of such benefactions 

 belonging to the parish of Enfield in 1709 is in the British Museum, 135 

 amounting to a capital sum of 184, besides yearly income to the amount 

 of JI 9 7 s - 6d. Of this some is to be spent in distributions of money 

 or bread or clothes to the poor ; some is for the maintenance of poor 



Ua 

 133a 



Hardy, MM. Sets. R. 229. m Jeaffreson, MM. Sen. R. ii, 142, 164, 176 ; iii, 2, 25. 



Elizabeth's act forbidding inclosures near London (35 Eliz. cap. 6) allotted a moiety of the fines 

 imposed, viz. $ for every inclosure, and $ for every month it was kept inclosed, to the churchwardens 

 of the parish in which the inclosure was made, for the benefit of the poor. 

 114 S.P. Dom. Chas. I, vol. 202, No. 20. 

 " ta Hardy, Midd. Sen. R. 33, 107, 119. 

 '" B.M. Egerton Library, No. 2267. 



95 



