A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



The council by its direct action attempted to enforce the law, mainly 

 by means of letters to the justices of the peace. These letters were no 

 longer confined to special times of distress, but deal continually in the 

 reigns of the first two Stuart kings with the ordinary administration of the 

 poor law. 



In the year 1603 was a visitation of the plague, and at Wing the church- 

 wardens paid 3-r. for two books of prayer in the time of plague and for the 

 letters of the council. 



No Buckinghamshire returns exist during the scarcity of 1608, but they 

 are full in 16223 and 1631, dealing not only with the provision of corn 

 but with the whole system of poor relief. It is remarkable that the differ- 

 ence between private charity and public relief is unnoticed, and the justices 

 report their own action in the market and the charity of private people as 

 similar efforts to deal with the difficulty. There is an extremely interesting 

 return for Desborough m Hundred in 1622, including the report of the 

 mayor of Wycombe. The same course of action to lower the price of corn 

 was pursued as in Elizabeth's reign, and in addition corn-masters served the 

 poor at their own houses upon credit, which they would not do in the 

 market, and thus the poor obtained sufficient food. In various parishes 

 men had bought rye in London out of their own purses for the poor and sold 

 it at less than cost price. The poor, as far as possible, had been given 

 employment, but their poverty was ascribed to the condition of the clothing 

 and bone-lace trades, both of which were ' much decayed and do daylie 

 fayl.' In consequence there were no means to set the poor in work, although 

 help was afforded so far as the stocks and collections of every parish allowed. 

 In the town of Wycombe there were as many as a hundred people out of 

 work, and other towns suffered from the same cause, since lack of employment 

 was far more serious than the scarcity of corn, and the poor could only starve 

 or steal in spite of the fact that the monthly collections in many parishes had 

 been doubled. Assistant constables had been appointed to deal with vagrants, 

 their numbers being too numerous for the ordinary constables, and many ale- 

 house licences had been taken away. In 1631 there are returns for the 

 greater part of the county. In Desborough Hundred 192 in this year there was 

 a shortage of corn, though Wycombe market was well supplied from 

 Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Hampshire. It was the only market in the 

 hundred, and part of Ashendon Hundred 198 must also have been dependent 

 on it, since there was no market at all according to the certificate, the land 

 being nearly all pasture and ' gentlemen's demaynes.' The market of 

 Buckingham also was well supplied from Oxfordshire, and hence, with the 

 suppression of maltsters and brewers, prices had abated. 



In the borough m itself, the magistrates report that the poor did not 

 beg in their own parish and had no cause to beg elsewhere, since they were 

 all well relieved and given work, but the inhabitants grumbled at the heavy 

 weekly taxation more than the poor at the restrictions on begging. Vagrants 

 were few, because watch and ward were well kept, and the townspeople no 

 longer gave to strange poor when they might not do so to their own people ; 

 and further, a penalty had been imposed on those who relieved vagrants, in a 



191 S.P. Dom. Jas. I, vol. 142, No. 44. 191 Ibid. Chas. I, vol. 191, No. 35 (iv). 



193 Ibid. vol. 191, No. 35 (iii). 194 Ibid. vol. 197, No. 46. 



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