A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



relief without the test of destitution. In the parishes of Odsey and 

 Edwinstree Hundreds in 1631 the able-bodied were relieved with corn at 

 reasonable prices, so that they did not lose their day's worlc to go to market. 

 Out-relief seems generally to have been by bread or money." The 

 impotent seem mostly to have been relieved in their own homes. This was 

 true of St. Albans in 1632.** 



At East Barnet in 1639 there was but one pauper, Widow Chambers, 

 to whom the overseer gave 2s. a week. The seven cases at Elstree also 

 received small allowances and so did the poor of Northaw. At Chipping 

 Barnet there seem to have been no paupers.^' One reason for this treatment 

 of the impotent was the small number of poor-houses. One had been built 

 at Waltham in 1593 ^^ and another in 1639 at Hunsdon." But the rarity 

 of notices of them suggests that Hertfordshire was not well stocked with 

 workhouses until after Gilbert's Act. 



An alternative plan used in the 1 7th century was the boarding out of 

 paupers. Until 1639 the poor at Hunsdon were 'housed in private 

 houses.' " The demand for labour made the treatment of the able-bodied 

 and of the children fairly easy. In parish after parish between 1630 and 

 1640 the justices report ' our poor are set to work ' '' ; ' our able poor are set 

 to work and our children apprenticed ' " ; ' we have bound 66 apprentices in 

 St. Albans and 136 in the hundred, and are raising parish stocks to set the 

 poor on work ' " ; ' our poor are relieved and all our children at work ; our 

 stock remaining is 40/.' " ; ' there is a stock of j^8 for setting the poor to 

 work ' " ; 'we have no poor children to put forth.' °* 



The Poor Law system was on a very small scale. But after the Civil 

 War and in the i8th century conditions changed. The number of deserted 

 families who came on the parish was increasing, in spite of the Act of 

 1662.*' Hertfordshire, however, offered a fair amount of employment to 

 the agricultural labourer. The poor rate was steadily rising. Nevertheless 

 such figures as we have do not seem excessive. At St. Albans in 1797 

 there were seventeen men and women and twenty-two children in the 

 workhouse and fifteen out-pensioners.'"" At Redbourn there were thirty 

 people in the workhouse and the farmer was allowed to giwe ' pensions to 

 twenty-two paupers whom he could relieve ' more cheaply outside. This 

 seems to indicate more pauperism in the country than in the town. About 

 this time the justices were obliged by the dearness of food to adopt the 

 17th-century method of out-relief in corn. In 1795 some parishes bought 

 flour and bread for the use of the poor, and parish funds were started.* In 

 1817, in the agricultural district round Hitchin, those who lived 'on the 

 rates ' were better off than the paupers who paid them.' As Gilbert's Act 

 had abolished the workhouse test, the justices were perplexed to know where 

 their tests of relief began. The idle poor were saved from selling their 

 furniture, but rates were taken by distress.* Poor relief had become a 



^ S. p. Dom. Chas. I, ccxxxi, 19. ** Ibid. *' Ibid, ccccxviii, 21 (i-ix). 



^ Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. viii, App. i, 4323. " Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), i, 62. 



'Mbid. '3 S. P. Dom. Chas. I, ccxxxi, 19. ^ Ibid. 20. "^ ibid, clxxxriii, 43. 



"* Ca/. S. P. Dom. 1637, pp. 267-9. ^ S- P- Dom. Chas. I, ccccxviii, 21 (i). 



•" Ibid. (v). S3 5^„, ;j, (Herts. Co. Rec), ii, 78. 



^'^ Sir F. M. Eden, State of Poor, ii, 271. 1 Ibid. 275 et seq. 



» Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), ii, 180. ' Pcor Law Rep. (18 18), 87. ■• Ibid. 94. 



218 



