A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



The time at which enclosures began undoubtedly coincided with the rise 

 of the vagrant trouble, a fact which confirms the general complaints by six- 

 teenth-century writers, of the lack of subsistence for the small man after the 

 enclosure of commons. In I 504 the Common Council of Gloucester, among 

 various regulations for the improvement of the city's morals, for decency 

 and good order, issued orders to all beggars and poor people to ' avoyde this 

 towne, except such as hath been all dayez dwellyng ' there, of whom a strict 

 register was to be kept by the town clerk, and who were to wear the city 

 livery. 1 These were the last efforts of the old order of things, when poverty 

 could be limited and systematized. But the simultaneous breakdown of the 

 guild system and of the manor were producing an irresistible tide of vagrancy, 

 swelled by the general spirit of unrest and love of travel. In 1559 gipsies 

 ( ' certain persons called Egyptians ' ) were apprehended in Gloucestershire. 8 

 Successive poor laws, beginning in 1536 and culminating in Elizabeth's 

 famous Poor Law of 1601, were the state's answer to the new problem of 

 poverty and vagrancy which confronted it. From this time the parish was 

 the unit for relief, and the parish accounts are full of items as to dealing with 

 vagrants. Those who had a pass, or certificate, were helped on to their 

 place of birth. 3 The impotent were to be provided for by a poor rate levied 

 on the parish ; the able-bodied were to be given work. In Gloucestershire 

 poor-houses were not established till the eighteenth century (the earliest 

 instance I can find is at Colesbourne in 1717*), but poor rates were levied 

 for out-door relief, and the justices in quarter sessions were constantly called 

 upon to settle disputes as to liability ; ' Must Cubberly pay for the relief of 

 the poor of Cowley ? ' and so on. With the quarter sessions, too, a statute of 

 1563 had placed the power of fixing rates of wages, and of apprenticing 

 poor children. Punishments could be inflicted on those who refused either 

 to be bound, or to receive, apprentices 6 to agricultural labour ; rather more 

 licence was allowed to the employers of artisan labour. In 1682 the Justices 

 of the Seven Hundreds Division ordered ' all the younger people of the age 

 to go to service, and live at their own hands, to appear before them, that 

 . care may be taken to apprentice them, and punish those that refuse.' The 

 ' ' County Stock ' could be drawn upon for the expenses of apprenticeship, and 

 ' probably could well afford it. 8 In 1 68 1 only five cases demanding poor 

 relief came before the quarter sessions of Gloucester; in 1682, ten; in 

 1683, nineteen; in 1684, fourteen; in 1685, four; in 1686, seventeen. 7 

 But the fatal doctrine of Settlements (embodied in an Act of 1662) proved as 

 much more expensive as it was more harmful than the old system. The 

 cost of transporting vagrants (i.e. all who could not prove that they would 

 never become chargeable) to their place of settlement now fell upon the 

 county, which made constant attempts at economy. In 1712 the justices 

 fixed the cost of conveying a vagrant at 4^. per mile, with 4^. a day for 

 his maintenance, and ordered a stricter examination of travelling certificates, 

 ' lest men should be ' encouraged to spend their lives in wandering from 

 one part of the kingdom to another.' One would hardly think the poor 

 law of the day offered much temptation to permanent tramping, but in 



1 Hist. AfSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. pt. ix, 436-7. ' S. P. Dom. Eliz. vii, 20. 



'e.g. Churchwardens' Accounts of Dursley, 1621-1734, frequent notices: 'To a poor man with a 

 passe, 2}. To an Irish poor man with a certificate, is.' * Record Books. 



6 See Record Books, 1682-3. 'Act of 1662. ' Record Books. 



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