A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



between Carlisle and Durham and meet with no settled population for 20 miles. 

 In fifty years 500 ploughs had been laid down, and corn had to be fetched 

 from Newcastle, whereby the plague had been brought into the northern 

 counties. Thus the money went, and people could neither pay their land- 

 lords nor sow the ground. Out of 8,000 acres formerly in tillage not eight- 

 score were then being tilled. The result was that those who sold corn for- 

 merly had now to buy, and cathedrals and colleges were impoverished 

 because tenants could not pay their rent. Whole families were turned out, 

 and poor borough towns were pestered with four or five families under one 

 roof. Under the circumstances it is not surprising to hear that there were 

 200 recusants who would not listen to arguments, and that poverty and irre- 

 ligion were greater in Durham than elsewhere. 1 



Nowhere was there greater need of the Elizabethan Poor Law than in 

 Durham, and the authorities were helped by many private benefactions in the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while many of the old hospitals and 

 charities were reformed and reorganized. In the Durham Parish Books s we 

 can trace the working of the Poor Law in both town and country parishes. 

 Collectors for the poor were regularly appointed; but in some places, as at 

 Pittington, there was no need to levy a formal poor-rate till 1648 or so. 

 However, after the losses of the Civil War the poor were too numerous for 

 casual charity, and the history of the Poor Law in Durham ran the course 

 usual in other counties, especially after the Act of Settlement. Each parish 

 tried to keep potential paupers from gaining a settlement. 



Reference must be made to an interesting experiment at Pittington, 

 where the injunction ' to set the poor on work ' was carried out in a practical 

 and helpful way. Donations and bequests were encouraged to a fund known 

 as the ' Stock of the Poor ' in the early seventeenth century. At first the 

 churchwardens controlled it and lent it in small sums to certain poor people. 

 In 1626 the overseers of the poor took charge of it and were forbidden to 

 lend it except on good and sufficient bond, and repayment was exacted yearly 

 on Easter Tuesday. In 1687 'Trustees of the Poor' superseded the over- 

 seers and the fund had reached to 79. By 1693 the fund was 42 in money 

 and a bond for ^3 2 - It was ultimately passed to the Charity Commissioners 

 in 1860 as the 'Charity of an unknown donor,' after having been diverted 

 from its original purpose for nearly a hundred years. The parish of 

 Pittington also owned a flock of sheep. Other interesting details can be 

 gathered from the Parish Books of Gateshead and Chester le Street, 3 and the 

 general impression they convey is that the Poor Law was administered in a 

 fairly satisfactory manner till the crisis produced by external causes in the 

 late eighteenth century. As often happened in other counties close or select 

 vestries appeared during the seventeenth century, and at Gateshead and in 

 various other places we hear of local oligarchies, known as the Four and 

 Twenty, the Twelve, &c., whose power often lasted down to 1834. 



Long before the sixteenth century the Halmote Books, even those of the 

 bishops, have ceased to give much help in the story of social Durham. The 

 records of the Court of Quarter Sessions begin in 1618, but they are at best a 

 view of the seamy side alone. Sometimes, however, we get interesting side- 



1 S.P. Dom. Eliz. cclxii, Nos. n, iz. * Surtees Soc. Ixxxiv. * Surtees, Hist. ofDur. ii, izj. 



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