SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



put out five, and appropriated a balance of ^loi js. As to the >C5oo left to 

 the sermon and seamen an unsuitable individual received a pension upon the 

 strength of which he migrated to Cornwall, and part went in the satisfaction 

 of a debt to one of the aldermen.'" In short, corporations were scarcely more 

 scrupulous than individuals : if they were capable of showing such cruelty as 

 they did towards pauper immigrants, it was only one step further to appro- 

 priate private charitable bequests. Charity had been left for so many centuries 

 in the hands of religious corporations that its necessity was little understood 

 by political bodies, in whose eyes it was often an unwelcome innovation. 



A more popular method of dealing with distress in the seventeenth 

 century was by attempting to regulate the price and supply of the corn, 

 apprenticing of children and the settlement of vagrants. In the distress of the 

 years 1630— i, justices of the peace throughout the country acting as Poor 

 Law officers for their counties were under the strictest orders from the Privy 

 Council to prevent all artificial enhancing of the price of grain, to see that the 

 poor were supplied at as low a price as might be, and to suppress unnecessary 

 ale-houses, to apprentice all poor children of a suitable age, and to deal 

 stringently with vagrants and rogues. The system of apprenticing and the 

 suppression of vagrancy and other disorders were probably beneficial, but the 

 attempt to interfere with prices was of doubtful expediency. In Dorset, 

 at any rate, there seems to have been no combination on the part of corn 

 merchants to raise prices unduly.'™ The justices, indeed, considered that the 

 interference of the state pressed over-hard upon the farmer ; they stated that 

 when wheat was under 5J. the bushel and barley under ^s. bd. ' the husband- 

 man cannot well maintain his tillage at the present prices of all other 

 necessaries,' "" and this representation was probably correct, for from the 

 neighbourhood of Bridport, in the same year, came the complaint that the 

 cost of living was dearer ' almost by half than in former times, all foreign 

 commodities, salt especially, being at such extraordinary prices,' while rents 

 were high, and a considerable amount of barren land had been brought into 

 cultivation at great cost by the use of marl and lime, ' which is gotten at 

 excessive charge.'"'"' 



In the ordinary administration of their duties the Poor Law officers of 

 the county could look to other sources of revenue beyond the money raised by 

 the rates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of these, one of the 

 most important must have been the forfeitures of dishonest tradesmen. Several 

 cases recorded in the archives of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis illustrate 

 this point. In 16 17 J. Benville of Buckland was convicted of having brought 

 to market 8 lb. of butter of short weight, for which default he was condemned 

 to forfeit the butter, which was given to the poor; a similar fate befell William 

 Bythywood whom the constables found in possession of a leg and shoulder of 

 a calf killed ' sethence the time of Lent.' '°' Fines for drunkenness were also 

 applied to 'thuse of the poore ' at Melcombe,'"* and as this was a common 



"' Petty Bag: Proceedings of Commissioners for Charitable Uses, bdle. 48, No. i. 



*"■ Cal. S.P. Dom. 1631-3, pp. 183, 185, 186, 188. 



'"' Ibid. 185. In March, 1631, wheat was at 7/. or 7/. 6d. the bushel in the Dorchester division, but 

 by the following November it had fallen to 5/., while barley was at 3/. and a further fall was expected (ibid. 

 1629-31, p. 547,and 1631-3, p. 185). '"' Cal. S.P. Dom. 1631-3, p. 186. 



"• H. J. Moule, Descriptive Catalogue of the Charters, etc. of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, 56, 58. 



'" Ibid. 57. 



251 



