A HISTORY OF YORKSHIRE 



Canon Atkinson, whose local knowledge was so extensive that to diflFer is audacious, seems to 

 put a somewhat strained interpretation on looms as some kind of punitive instrument. At 'OJ''^ 

 looms were frequently placed in the houses of correction, and although none of the entries make 

 it clear, it is quite possible that the three houses of correction for the county served the twofold 

 purpose of a place where rogues were punished and where work was found for the deserving poor. 



As a rule the distinction between the orders made by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of York 

 and those made at the Quarter Sessions is that the York civic authorities were more humanitarian, 

 but with regard to homing the poor the county was in advance of the city. On several occasions 

 the justices of the peace gave order that suitable cottages should be built for the homeless. An 

 order was issued at the Richmond Quarter Session on lo October 1620 : — 



That v?hereas there was a frame erected for a house to be builded upon a waiste peece of 

 ground in Long Cowton to harbour and releeve Will Dawson his wife and children, which was kit 

 pulled down by Ralph Huton gent"" and others — on full consideration by the Court it is ordered 

 that the said house shalbe presentlie built up again by the parishioners of Long Cowton at their own 

 charge, and sett in the same place where it stood before.*' 



Several houses for the poor were built at Brompton and Lastingham.*' 



Political animus played its part in providing for the necessities of the poor. The Yorkshire 

 Parliamentary -Puritans satisfied their hatred of the stage, their dislike of their opponents, and their 

 desire to be charitable at the expense of others, in an order passed at a meeting of the Quarter 

 Sessions held on 10 July 1655 : — 



The constables and overseers of Gillinge to levy 5/. on the goods of the Lord Fairfax to be 

 distributed to the poor according to ordinaunce of parliament, for that it hath been proved that he 

 was present when Tho. Carlton, Anth. Chapman and others acted a comedy or staige play at 

 Gillinge at Christmas last ; the like order to the constable and overseers of Oulton against Lord 

 Castleton ; the like order to the constable and overseers of Bransby against Mr. Cholmeley. *' 



The study of the efforts made by the local authorities in a large town like York, or by the 

 justices in the diiFerent Ridings, makes it clear that many of the schemes of the latter-day humani- 

 tarians have already been tried by i6th and lyth-century philanthropists, and abandoned as futile. 

 In no town in England were more persistent and strenuous endeavours made by the municipality 

 to supply work for the unemployed, the amount of money left by charitable bequests to York ought 

 to have ensured its perpetual exemption from a poor-rate, but even in the 19th century it has 

 furnished data for ' A Study in Poverty.' No more convincing proof of the futility of a system of 

 municipal doles can be found than in the steady but rapid growth of the pauper list in the York 

 Municipal Records. 



It is difficult to realize, as one travels through the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire, along 

 the monotonous roads, lined with continuous houses, which link together huge towns, where dense 

 populations focus round busy mills or noisy ironworks, that as late as the 1 6th century the greater 

 part of these congested regions was uninclosed and uninhabited lands. The treatment of York- 

 shire as an economic unit, when the inclosure question is involved, is entirely misleading ; no two 

 counties of England offer to-day greater physical, industrial, and economic differences than the East 

 and West Ridings, and this differentiation appears even in the early i6th century. This is no 

 mere matter of inference or conjecture ; the Inquisition of 151 7 =' furnishes indubitable evidence of 

 the general economic conditions prevailing at that time. However greatly opinion may differ as to 

 the interpretation of the facts gathered by Wolsey's commissioners, no glosses or explanatory clauses 

 can obliterate the startling differences that existed between the two Ridings. The first business of 

 the commission was to inquire into the amount of inclosing that had gone on during the previous 

 twenty-seven and a half years, the ultimate object being to discover whether the statement that the 

 depopulation and distress was due to the conversion of arable into pasture land was true, or was the 

 expression of the chronic discontent of poverty. 



The North Riding was first visited. The acreage of this division is to-day 1,361,465 acres. 

 During the period over which the inquiry extends, almost thirty years, 2,708 acres had been 

 inclosed, 628 acres in order to give greater facilities for the chase ; 2,100 acres had been con- 

 verted from arable to pasture land. In the inquisition taken by the Commissioners specific 

 information is also given of the effects of the change. Thirty-seven ploughs had been put down, 

 forty-four people had left the neighbourhood, and twenty-one messuages were In a state of dilapidation.™ 



^ RT"" ^i"J"" ^''^ ^^- ^- ^"^^ ^•^' "' ^53- " Ibid. V, 21, 22 ; . Oct. i6;o. 



-, i , •/' 'j • . ^- ^- Leadam, ' The Inquisition of 1 5 1 7,' Hist. Soc. Trans. (New. Ser.) vii, 2 IQ et seq. 



■ Mr. Leadam conjectures that 128 people were evicted, as the houses that were in ruins must have h7d 



inriabitants. 



474 



