S0268416000000953 A

Continuity and Change 3 (2), 1988. 209-245.
Printed in Great Britain
Local responses to the poor in late

medieval and Tudor England
MARJORIE K. McINTOSH*
Despite the recent surge of historical interest in poverty, our under-

standing of the poor in pre-modern Europe remains curiously uneven. We
know a good deal about the religious definitions of poverty in the Middle
Ages and something about how the poor were treated in medieval cities on
the continent.1 The impact of Christian humanism has received con-
siderable attention, especially continental attempts to implement a
remedial approach toward poverty at the urban or state level in the mid-
sixteenth century.2 Within the English context, research has been shaped
by the passage in 1598 and 1601 of national legislation ensuring public
support of the deserving poor. Some studies have examined the
background to the Elizabethan poor laws, stressing Parliamentary
measures and the systems of relief operated by the larger urban centres.3
Other work has explored the implementation of the poor laws in
succeeding centuries.4 The English medieval poor have received scant
notice.6 Nor has there been much interest in Tudor poverty outside the
cities.6
This paper describes the treatment of the poor in English local
communities during the later medieval and Tudor periods. The study
focuses upon developments in villages and smaller towns, looking
secondarily at the actions of Parliament and problems in the cities.
Communities in the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex,
Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, and Suffolk provide most of the examples.
Although local, rather than national, events form the basis of this
account, two pieces of Parliamentary legislation provide appropriate
* Department of History, University of Colorado, Boulder.
209
MARJORIE K. McINTOSH
termini. Our examination begins in 1388, the year of an act which assumes
that the legitimate poor are to be maintained by their local communities.7
This measure, affirming what was traditional practice, furnishes a
convenient if rather arbitrary opening date within the post-plague period
of relatively mild poverty. Our study continues to the passage of the
Elizabethan poor law of 1598.8 This act, which was modified slightly in
1601, codified the practices which had been developing in villages and
towns for more than a century and incorporated parts of earlier Tudor
legislation.
Our span of two centuries may be divided into four sub-periods, each
with its own characteristics. The period between 1388 and c. 1465 forms
a baseline for later discussion, allowing us to view the local response to
poverty within a setting in which the population and the degree of poverty
were both objectively low. From 1465 to 1530, economic and demographic
developments in several regions of England increased the number of poor
people and strengthened the negative associations surrounding the idle
poor. The years between 1530 and 1563 were of particular importance.
Religious changes ordered by the central government forced individuals
and parishes to assume virtually the entire burden of poor relief at the
same time that poverty continued to mount. When voluntary charity
proved inadequate, Parliamentary legislation empowered local authorities
to raise compulsory taxes for support of the poor. During the rest of
Elizabeth's reign the number of poor people of all types rose in most
communities. Despite efforts to keep down the cost of poor relief, nearly
all parishes were obliged to use taxation at least in bad years.
We may begin with some general observations about the local response to
poverty before moving into a chronological discussion. Of primary
concern is the question of how poverty was perceived between 1388 and
1598. Local people commonly thought in terms of two or three distinct
categories of the poor, each closely associated with labour. The deserving
poor were distinguished from the undeserving. Those poor people who
were unable to work to support themselves were considered worthy of
assistance, whereas those unwilling to work warranted no sympathy or
aid.9 By the Elizabethan years, a new type of poverty was appearing -
people who wanted to work but could not find sufficient employment.
The deserving or impotent poor were unable, through no fault of their
own, to engage in the labour necessary to support themselves. Many were
victims of life-cycle poverty: orphans too young to work, widowed
mothers (and occasionally fathers) of small children, and - most fre-
210
THE POOR IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND TUDOR ENGLAND
quently - the elderly. Others were kept from work by illness, injury, or a
physical handicap. All medieval and Tudor communities contained a
considerable number of men and women who were self-supporting and
respectable members of society for much of their lives but who might have
needed assistance now and then. There was thus no division between
clearly defined classes of those who were poor and those who were self-
sufficient. The extent of life-cycle and disease-based poverty within a given
village or town depended upon economic and demographic conditions
and hence varied between regions and over time. The statute of 1388
suggests that English people had already accepted the concept that a local
community ought to assist its own impotent poor if relatives could not
provide help. Most people struck by life-cycle or accidental poverty
needed aid only temporarily. Only the elderly might require support for a
period of years. Nor did the poor necessarily need a large amount of aid.
Outside assistance was intended to supplement existing income. The
majority of those receiving poor relief were able to bring in some cash
through their labour or had a little land or a few animals. In some cases
occasional support, such as help with a rent payment or shoes for the
children, might be enough. It was also assumed that the poor should
remain in their own homes whenever possible rather than being
institutionalised. The problem faced by local leaders with respect to the
impotent poor was how to structure and pay for their support.
The second group consisted of those people who were unwilling to
work. These undeserving poor were most visible, and caused the most
worry when they were strangers. This led to the harsh treatment of
vagrants.10 The issue here was not that such people had to be supported,
for the idle poor never qualified for assistance, but rather that they
threatened local order. Members of shiftless local families were less likely
to respond to the informal control normally exercised by a landlord,
employer, or priest. Outsiders without jobs might be totally immune to
these restraining influences. Because geographical mobility was an
inherent feature of late medieval and Tudor life, the leaders of many
communities had to deal constantly with people arriving from outside.
They had to distinguish between those newcomers who genuinely sought
employment and those who hoped to labour as little as possible. The
questions concerning the idle poor focused upon punitive treatment: how
best to chastise those who refused to work, be they natives or outsiders;
how to encourage the prompt departure of undesirable people; and,
increasingly in the Tudor period, whether the poor could be forced to
labour. By the later sixteenth century, local leaders were confronting the
third version of poverty, as people who wished to work were either unable
to find employment or could not earn enough to support their families. A
211
community which undertook to provide support for such people might

face an enormous drain on its financial resources, especially in areas
susceptible to the vagaries of the cloth trade.
With reference to the historically venerable, but still active, debate
concerning the impact of religious beliefs upon attitudes toward the poor,
there is no observable correlation in local records between a community's
religious orientation and its treatment of the poor during the decades
between 1530 and c. 1570.11 The responses to poverty and the methods of
support seen in the conservative market town of Louth in Lincolnshire, a
centre of the Pilgrimage of Grace, were virtually identical to those found
in strongly Protestant towns during these years. Only in those situations
in which men of Puritan persuasion took control of local policy during the
latter part of Elizabeth's reign does one find a particularly aggressive
stance toward poverty - both relief of the deserving poor and coercive
treatment of the others - which seems specifically tied to their religious
outlook.12 Nor were the ideas of Christian humanism of much importance
within the local setting. The men responsible for shaping policy in villages
and the lesser towns had seldom received a grammar school education.
Their reactions stemmed from traditional Christian morality and
pragmatic concerns.
Far more significant than religion in determining the response to
poverty was the level of administrative autonomy and vitality of a given
village or town prior to the Reformation. In the decades around 1500,
local self-government was sometimes expressed through a formal town
structure, but the dominant families of many smaller places ran the public
life of their communities through a manor court or a powerful parish
fraternity. Villages and towns whose leaders were accustomed to making
decisions about local issues in the early Tudor period usually addressed
the problems of poverty with vigour both then and in subsequent
decades.13 It is scarcely surprising that communities which were energetic
in assisting their own deserving poor were also energetic in discouraging
idleness and removing unwanted outsiders. Negative measures, backed
by force, therefore grew up hand-in-hand with constructive forms of
support.
The distinction commonly drawn between private charity and public
assistance by the parish or town is artificial and distorts our understanding
of the nature of relief. Many private gifts and bequests were administered
directly by local officials; other endowments were governed by trustees
who were simultaneously officers of public bodies. Private aid was viewed
as the base, to be supplemented as necessary by parish or town relief. It
is more helpful to think in terms of a distinction between voluntary and
compulsory support. The most important change in relief of the poor
212
within these two centuries was the introduction of obligatory parish rates
to cover the cost of assistance.
The standard focus upon developments at the national or urban levels
has likewise limited our perception. The progression of statutes dealing
with the poor does indeed shed light on what the government and
members of Parliament viewed as the major issues and on their attempts
to provide solutions. The cities certainly did have more dramatic problems
with the poor. Yet the great majority of the population lived in villages
and small towns. The forms assumed by poverty in these settings and the
responses to the poor on the part of local leaders reflected the experience
of most English people. Before the end of the sixteenth century, national
legislation had relatively little impact upon local communities. The acts of
1552 and 1563 which authorised the collection of weekly rates were among
the few instances of central government activity which seriously influenced
local behaviour. Here, as in many areas of economic and social policy,
Parliament lagged behind the more innovative local communities.14
Further, the distinctive feature of the English response to poverty as
compared with continental forms was the reliance upon taxation. Since
taxation became familiar to most English people through the practice of
the lesser communities, we may best trace its development there.
II. 1388-1465
Between 1388 and c. 1465, poverty was not a severe problem in most
English communities. It has consequently left few records and is difficult
to study in precise fashion. The population was low and at best stagnant,
held down by disease and perhaps by a relatively late age of marriage.15
The size of an average holding of land had increased since 1349. Demand
for labour was strong and prices low. As a result, the level of real wages
was substantially higher in the first half of the fifteenth century than prior
to the plague or between 1550 and 1750. For those who survived, life-cycle
poverty was mild amidst these favourable circumstances. Some poor
people were helped by relatives, while others were able to make private
arrangements. An old person with land, for example, might be supported
through an agreement whereby someone else undertook to work the
property and provide care for the owner in return for keeping the rest of
the profits.16 Within many manors, the local court ensured some degree of
economic protection for the widows and orphans of deceased tenants.17
For those who lacked land and could not work on a normal basis,
employers may have been willing to set upflexiblecontracts, using board
and room as part payment, in order to avoid the high wages demanded by
able-bodied workers.
213
If a person was unable to arrange for his or her own sustinence during
periods of life-cycle or accidental poverty, several forms of assistance were
available. Probably the most common, though largely unrecorded,
consisted of individual charity given by local people. Personal gifts of
food, clothing, money, and housing may be assumed to have formed the
largest single type of poor relief throughout the centuries under discussion.
Offering hospitality and distributing excess food were social obligations
incumbent upon the wealthy, and the ethic of informal assistance seems to
have been shared by people with limited means.18 In the later Middle Ages
public begging was allowed within one's own community, but even after
it was prohibited, the poor were still permitted to ask for aid at the doors
of their neighbours.19 Some of the beneficed clergy were probably giving
alms to the poor, a requirement enforced by the church itself in the
thirteenth century and backed by Parliamentary statute in 1391.20 As
clerical almsgiving declined, the laity moved to fill the gap in parochial
assistance. Some type of local relief is suggested by the statute of 1388,
which stated that beggars who were unable to work were to be maintained
by the residents either of their current abode or of the village or town in
which they had been born.21 The poor might seek help from nearby
religious houses too. The level of monastic assistance in this period was
almost certainly higher than in the sixteenth century, when it is estimated
that more than 800 houses gave about £11,500 annually in various forms
of relief to the poor.22
Support was also provided by the religious fraternities. These lay
guilds, many of which accepted women as well as men, were usually
founded within a parish church around the worship of a particular
saint.23 Supported by an initial entry fee and an annual payment, a
fraternity guaranteed to its members the prayers of the full company after
death plus, in most cases, an appropriate funeral. The fraternities were
surveyed by the government in 1389 in an attempt to determine which
groups performed economic functions, which were against the law, and
which were purely religious in nature.24 Despite the incentive to conceal
worldly activities, about 30 per cent of the recorded fraternities said that
they provided financial assistance to their own members in times of
affliction (see Table 1). They spoke of giving help to those who fell into
unmerited poverty, who became poor 'by God's grace' - through old age,
sickness, or injury.25 Aid was normally short-term, given in the form of a
weekly allowance, with a common value of between 4d. and 6d. This
amount was evidently considered sufficient to supplement the other
income of an individual or small household. In addition to assistance to
their own members, 10 per cent of the fraternities in 1389 offered aid to
the outside poor, and many of them distributed small sums as 'soul-
214
TABLE 1
Assistance given to the poor by religious fraternities recorded in 1389a
No. which gave

No. of religious assistance to their No. which gave
fraternities own members who fell assistance to
County ( = guilds) into poverty" other poor people'
Bedfordshire 1 0 0
Berkshire 1 0 0
Cambridgeshire 60 20 5
Derbyshire 8 3 0
Dorset 1 0 0
Essex 8 1 1
Gloucestershire 5 0 0
Hertfordshire 4 0 1
Kent 1 0 0
Lancashire 1 0 0
Leicestershire 3 3 0
Lincolnshire 123 24 28
London 42 23 1
Norfolk 164 56 8
Northamptonshire 10 3 0
Oxfordshire 3 2 0
Shropshire 1 1 0
Somerset 1 0 0
Staffordshire 1 0 0
Suffolk 39 2 0
Sussex 1 0 0
Warwickshire 7 7 3
Yorkshire 18 9 1
Total 503 154 48
" Information is drawn from the Appendix of H. F. Westlake, The parish gilds of medi-
aeval England (London, 1919).
6
Burial costs are not counted here as assistance.
c
Money or bread collected from the members as soul-alms is not counted here as assist-
ance, nor is the operation of a school.
alms'.26 Their charity to others, largely symbolic in nature, seldom

provided predictable assistance.
The relief provided by the fraternities was considerable though hard to
quantify. One cannot measure precisely the number of fraternities active
at any one time or the size of their membership. Because many of them did
not hold property, did not keep written records, or were in existence for
only a short period, they have left little trace apart from bequests in wills.
In 1389, certificates were returned and preserved for 503 fraternities in 23
215
counties (see Table 1). These figures are without doubt incomplete, in
terms both of the counties covered and of the number of guilds named
within reported counties. Some of the returns have clearly been lost, but
the coverage may not have been full even in 1389.27 In Cambridgeshire, for
example, the surviving returns list 60 fraternities, mentioning no guilds at
all in certain major parishes, yet a partial search of local records between
1389 and 1547 revealed a total of 165 fraternities.28 In the regions of their
greatest popularity, virtually every parish had one or more guild. In such
areas, the male heads of most self-supporting families belonged to a
fraternity, often joined by their wives. The assistance provided by these
institutions to their own members must therefore have taken care of a
considerable share of life-cycle or accidental poverty in some parts of the
country.
For those people who needed more extensive care, the Church and a few
lay institutions maintained hospitals and almshouses. Late medieval and
Tudor hospitals performed a variety of functions. They cared for those
who were ill or physically incapacitated, provided temporary shelter for
the homeless or travellers, and gave a home to the elderly.29 Here again,
it is difficult to determine the number of such institutions in actual
operation. Most hospitals were either supported by a religious organ-
isation or had a landed endowment, so they left records, but they tended
to lose their purpose over the course of time. The number of residents
might drop; the nature of the inmates might change, becoming genteel
retainers of the governing body rather than lepers or plague victims; or
the income might be quietly appropriated. Almshouses, intended normally
for old people, were still few in number during this period. They are
particularly poorly documented, because they were generally established
on a less formal basis and often operated for only a limited period of time.
A tabulation of all hospitals and almshouses mentioned in the Charity
Commissioners' reports of 1819-1840, the Victoria County Histories, and
Knowles and Hadcock's Medieval Religious Houses indicates that there
were c. 470 such institutions in operation in the 1390s. (Another 325
hospitals had existed at earlier times but were already moribund.) The
number of elderly, ill, or incapacitated people sheltered by these
institutions varied greatly, from two or three inmates in a cottage to thirty
or more in a substantial hospital. Surviving, but patchy evidence suggests
an average of perhaps ten residents, yielding a national total of 4,700
people. Since there were around 9,000 parishes in England in the later
Middle Ages, the equivalent of one person from every two parishes was
being cared for in a hospital or recorded almshouse.30 Residential facilities
of this magnitude probably took care of many of those unable to live
independently.
216
Nor did most communities have serious problems with willfully idle
local people or shiftless outsiders. Wages were high, part-time employment
was common, and in many regions cottages could be had for minimal rent.
Local people who disliked long hours of regular labour must therefore
have been able to maintain themselves or even a small family with a
limited amount of work. If their social behaviour fell within accepted
bounds, village and town leaders did not fuss about their lack of diligence.
Even though geographical mobility was fairly high, especially in the later
fourteenth century, poor outsiders were likewise viewed with comparative
tolerance, as long as they sought some form of work.31 It was only
shiftless, begging wanderers who evoked fear, a reaction especially strong
at the national level. The statute of 1388 specified that able-bodied people
who begged outside their own communities were liable to punishment in
the stocks or even imprisonment.32 No servants or labourers were to seek
employment away from their homes without a testimonial from a ' good
man' of the area in which they had last worked. Yet few people seem to
have been punished as vagrants by local authorities. Some of those on the
road were travelling to take up land left by a distant relative and hence
were obviously legitimate.33 The need for labour, particularly cheap
labour, must have led many employers to welcome new workers, with or
without the required testimonial. If they remained at their job, under the
supervision of a known family, local leaders accepted their presence.
These were the years in which immigrants could most easily become
successful members of their adoptive communities.
in. 1465-1530
Between c. 1465 and 1530 a cluster of economic and demographic changes
in several regions of the country intensified the problems of poverty.34
Local communities responded by expanding the assistance available to the
deserving poor while at the same time displaying a more repressive
attitude toward the idle or outside poor. Change was concentrated
between 1465 and 1500, although repercussions were still being felt in the
early decades of the sixteenth century.
Economic developments shaped many of the new features. Between
1460 and 1490 the economy of some key areas recovered from the
stagnation which had characterised the earlier and middle decades of the
century.35 The new economic forms relied heavily upon capital and
specialisation and were sensitive to the availability of labour. They were
influenced by the completion of the tenurial adjustments which followed
the plague; the gradual accumulation of land and wealth associated with
market agriculture; and the rising importance of commerce at all levels of
217
the economy. There was considerable regional variation in the extent of

economic change: south-east England, parts of the Midlands, and much
of the south west grew more wealthy, while the north east and probably
the north west suffered relative decline. In agriculture, the demand for
land quickened in many areas.36 Accumulation of units resulted in a
polarisation of holding sizes.37 Large-scale commodity production
increased, especially around London and the urban centres of the
Midlands. In the south east, market-oriented grain production and
dairying began to spread.38 Both these forms were labour-intensive, the
first benefiting large farmers, the second smallholders. In many northern
counties and parts of the Midlands, by contrast, the later 1460s and 1470s
witnessed a surge in the conversion from arable farming to sheep raising,
thus decreasing the need for labour.39 Enclosure of open-field areas
reached its peak during the 1490s; it was during the later fifteenth century
that the majority of deserted villages were abandoned. In many regions
prosperous local people were becoming separated from those increasingly
dependent upon wages.
Pronounced changes were also occurring in trade and manufacturing.
The value and volume of recorded imports and exports were rising by
1485 and increased from 47 to 80 per cent during the reign of Henry
VII.40 This stemmed in part from active production of woollen cloth.41
Unlike the limited growth of the earlier fifteenth century, centred in the
West Country, increased manufacture now included much of south-east
England and the upper Thames valley. Traditional local crafts, such as
leather working, were breaking down into narrower skills, requiring more
specialised training. Of particular importance was the transformation of
the brewing process. In the latefifteenthcentury there was a rapid increase
in the tendency for brewing to become a capitalised occupation, requiring
more costly equipment and the use of paid labour.42 These changes were
made more rapid by the introduction of beer brewing, for the hops acted
as a preservative, making possible larger individual brewings. Most
women and many male brewers with smaller operations were forced out
of business, eliminating a major form of subsidiary household income.
Domestic commerce saw comparable developments. Retailing was now
becoming a distinct economic activity; middlemen increasingly channelled
goods into London.43 The appearance of the common carrier led to an
improved network of national transport. In trade as in agriculture, there
was regional variation, well illustrated by the depressed situation in the
north east.44 Here only pastoral farming prospered. Other aspects of the
economy suffered precisely because of the success of the south east-
London's victory over York in the 1470s and 1480s with respect to control
218
of England's share of the North Sea trade, the domination of East Anglian
ports over commercial fishing, and the collapse of the York and
Richmond cloth industries.
Demographic factors were interwoven with the emergence of new
economic patterns. It is not clear whether the decline of the population
during the century after 1349 continued beyond 1450. Some historians
argue that renewed population growth began only in the 1520s; others
suggest that expansion began possibly as early as the 1450s, certainly by
the 1470s, especially in the south east.45 If the population was indeed rising
before 1500, it may have produced temporary pressure within individual
households and limited rural areas. Of vital importance to the question of
poverty was an increase in geographic mobility after 1450. Tenants of land
turned over with exceptional rapidity in the second half of the century,
and there was greater movement from smaller communities into market
towns within given regions.46 Long-distance migration seems to have
increased too, most notably into the south east. Geographic mobility
helps to explain the regional variations in agricultural and craftwork
practices with respect to the utilisation of labour during the later fifteenth
century.
Associated with these changes was a probable expansion of adolescent
service. Although the population of some of the cities during the century
after the plague had contained as many as 30 per cent servants, most of
them unmarried young people, there had been far fewer servants in the
rural areas - probably around 10 per cent.47 Some of the agricultural
servants remained in service for much of their lives. In the decades after
1460 the institution of adolescent service appears to have become more
popular in commercialised agrarian regions and the market towns. The
number of people described as servants in local records often increased
abruptly, and they were now commonly described as the son or daughter
of a named adult.48 Mobility among servants was considerable, as many
of them changed masters at the end of each year, sometimes travelling far
from their homes to take up new positions. Some servants, however,
stayed with a given master for a longer period, receiving training which
was equivalent to an apprenticeship. By 1500 the pattern of service as an
interim stage between childhood and self-supporting adulthood, well
documented in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was firmly
established in many of England's smaller communities.49
The new economic and demographic patterns had a pronounced impact
upon poverty. The extent of life-cycle poverty widened in many
communities, as a higher fraction of local families found themselves
unable to weather periods of crisis without help. Yet the ability of other
219
lesser members of the community - relatives and neighbours of similar

status - to give informal assistance was simultaneously weakened. This
could occur both in generally prosperous areas experiencing economic
polarisation and in depressed regions. Local leaders were therefore
obliged to seek out and develop alternate methods of support. Such forms
necessarily involved tapping the resources of wealthier members of the
village or town. But, since no institution had the authority to demand
funds for the poor, all relief remained voluntary. Further, these efforts
were carried out solely at the local level: the government and Parliament
displayed minimal interest in the problems of poverty.50
The parish was the unit within which most experimentation with
support of the poor took place. Between 1465 and 1530 churchwardens
became more actively involved in poor relief: they distributed bequests of
cash or goods,51 and in some cases managed the accounts of chantries,
obits, and 'lights' for the veneration of a saint, many of which also
provided for the distribution alms.52 Parishes often acquired a stock of
land and/or animals built up gradually through gifts and bequests.
Income from leasing the stock went primarily toward maintenance of the
fabric of the church, but lesser sums might be given in acts of charity.53
Some parishes evidently remained able to provide for the needs of their
own poor: an archidiaconal visitation of Oxfordshire in 1520 reported no
neglect of parochial hospitality or almsgiving in 158 of the 193 parishes
surveyed.54
The role of the parish fraternities also increased. The popularity of
fraternities reached its peak in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries, and many of them assembled stocks of land or animals.55 Some
of their expanding income went to the poor, either their own members or
others. Thus, the guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Boston, Lincolnshire
gave a total of £22-10-8 to outside poor in 1518-1519: weekly stipends of
6d. each to thirteen poor people plus assistance to six almshouses.56 By the
1540s, about a third of the fraternities whose property was recorded in
seventeen counties gave cash sums to the poor.57 Other forms of assistance
were provided too, the operation of an almshouse being a favourite
project of many fraternities in market towns.58
Almshouses are an interesting way of studying the response to the
deserving poor. These institutions began to appear in the later fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, founded in most cases by lay people for the care
of other laity. Unlike the hospitals, nearly all run by religious bodies,
almshouses were commonly administered by a body of lay trustees.
Virtually all houses established after c. 1450 were specifically intended for
local old people who had worked hard while they could but then fell into
poverty. These poor but respectable men and women received accommo-
220
•g
| 500
per
—
•2 8 counties in the South east
r
calculate
ancj Mi dlands*
= 100)
§ 2 300
to >
•D «» | 1
<= O)
3 in i
1
200 r--
1
it
•
1
' l
Q Average, 1400-1459 •—i !
o) 100 ^ ^ i—> i i
(0 • S-i-J --T.-J '
All other counties
L
!: --L-J (excluding London
CD LJ
•D
1400 1420 1440 1460 1480 1500 1520 1540 1560 1580 1600
Years
FIGURE 1. Indexed rate offoundations of English almshouses and hospitals, 1400-1600. The
number of almshouses and hospitals founded between 1400 and 1459 within each heading
was converted to an average per annum figure (see Table 2); the latter was used as the index
base (= 100). All subsequent foundations were counted by decade, converted to a per annum
figure, and the latter compared to the 1400-1459 base.
•Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, and Suffolk; Leicestershire
and Nottinghamshire. Sources: see Table 2.
dation and sometimes cash or fuel. Almshouse foundations therefore

provide a touchstone of concern with life-cycle poverty as well as an
indication of charitable wealth among prosperous local families. Table 2
and Figure 1 describe the level of almshouse and hospital foundations by
decade. With few exceptions the institutions founded in the later fifteenth
century were almshouses rather than hospitals. (Thesefiguresare certainly
incomplete, for many of the smaller and more ephemoral almshouses left
no written records and hence do not appear in the sources used.) When the
foundations are examined by county, two distinct patterns emerge. For
the majority of the country, the rate of almshouse foundations between
1465 and 1550 remained at approximately the level produced by averaging
the years between 1400 and 1459. For eight counties in the south east and
Midlands, however, a dramatic rise is seen in the second half of the 1460s
and the 1470s. Although the level varied in succeeding decades, it seldom
dropped below twice the 1400-1459 average. This may well be a reflection
of local polarisation of wealth.
221
TABLE 2
Foundation of English almshouses and hospitals, 1400-1600"
8 counties in the
South east and Midlands" All other counties London
No. of new Av. no. of new No. of new Av. no. of new No. of new g
foundations foundations/yr foundations foundations/yr foundations Total
New houses founded:

1400-1409 3 — 16 — 1 20
1410-1419 2 — 11 — 1 14
1420-1429 0 — 12 — 2 14
1430-1439 1 — 11 — 2 14
1440-1449 6 — 16 — 1 23
1450-1459 1 — 8 — 0 9 H
Total I40O-1459 13 0.22 74 1.23 7 94 «j
1460-1464 1 0.20 1 0.20 0 2
1465-1469 4 0.80 5 1.00 0 9
1470-1479 9 0.90 12 1.20 0 21
1480-1489 6 0.60 11 1.10 0 17
1490-1499 4 0.40 10 1.00 0 14
1500-1509 8 0.80 13 1.30 1 22
1510-1519 5 0.50 8 0.80 0 13
1520-1529 6 0.60 6 0.60 1 13
1530-1539 4 0.40 5 0.50 6 15
1540-1549 5 0.50 9 0.90 4 18 a
1550-1559° 11 1.10 20 2.00 4 35 m
•a
1560-1569 6 0.60 16 1.60 0 22 o
1570-1579 14 1.40 12 1.20 1 27 O
1580-1589 13 1.30 27 2.70 1 41 73
1590-1599 11 1.10 30 3.00 2 43 Z
Unknown dates: r
Sometime in 15th century 2 — 9 — 0 11 H
Sometime in 16th century 5 — 16 — 1 22 m
Sometime, 1400-1599 14 — 54 — 1 69 2
m
Total 21 79 _ 2 102 0
Composite figures:
No. of houses already in operation in 1399 77 383 11 471
No. of new foundations
1400-1464 14 0.22 75 1.15 97
1465-1529 38 0.58 65 1.00 2 105
1530-1559 20 0.67 34 1.13 14 68
1560-1599 44 1.10 85 2.12 4 133
Total 1400-1599 137 338 30 505
" Information derived from the Charity Commissioners' reports of 1819-1840, from the volumes of the Victoria County Histories, and from David
Knowles and R. H. Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: England and Wales (revd. edit., London, 1971), 310-410.
0
Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, and Suffolk; Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. In each of these counties some
houses were founded between 1465 and 1499; more houses were founded between 1465 and 1529 than between 1400 and 1465.
c
Includes 5 re-foundations under lay control of institutions closed in the 1530s or 1540s.
Although most assistance was provided by the laity, the Church

continued its aid. Many of its hospitals still offered care and shelter,
although few new ones were founded in this period. Monastic almsgiving
remained substantial. The volume of monastic charity had probably
declined since its medieval peak, but the suggested value of £11,500
annually in 1535 would still have produced an average of 26s. for each of
the 9,000 parishes in England.69 Monastic giving was, of course, unevenly
distributed among parishes, but a sum of this size would have made a
noticeable difference to many smaller communities.
The economic and demographic changes of the later fifteenth century
also intensified the issue of the shiftless poor. The number of unemployed
local people rose in certain regions, as did the number of poor newcomers
in south-east England and many of the market towns. In these
communities, established families became uneasy about the idle poor,
especially new arrivals. Such people were prone to violence and
inappropriate social behaviour. Because the response of the central
government was slow and limited, local communities were forced to devise
their own solutions.60 Public issues, including the maintenance of order,
had traditionally been handled by the leet courts, held in hundreds,
boroughs, and some manors.61 Leet offices were filled by yeomen, the
wealthier husbandmen, and successful craftsmen and local traders, the
same men who controlled the parish and fraternities.
Between 1465 and 1500 the leet courts were the vehicles through which
problems concerning the undeserving poor were addressed. Officers of the
leets expanded the use of bye-laws and increased their range of
punishments, with expulsion from the community the characteristic
weapon of last resort.62 Even so, their ability to deal with the shiftless poor
remained hampered by their lack of access to direct force: they could go
no further than placing vagrants temporarily in the stocks. The leets tried
to contain the rise in local violence.63 They enforced long-standing
Parliamentary legislation regulating the leisure-time activities of servants
and labourers, which had been ignored for decades, particularly the
playing of games considered conducive to betting.64 They attempted to
control the rowdy behaviour of young males in alehouses, and they
punished sexual misbehaviour.65 Although misconduct of this sort had
occasionally been mentioned by leet courts in the past, never before had
it been supervised with such fervour, with attention directed so specifically
at the poor.66 This response by the courts was strongest in the decades
before 1500, although in a few places it continued as late as the 1530s. It
is interesting that intense emotion seems to have lasted only a generation
in most communities.67 Although the pace of economic and demographic
change may have slackened temporarily around 1500, it is unlikely that
224
the conduct of the poor improved so abruptly. More probably, the level
of anxiety diminished as local communities became accustomed to the
presence of strangers and to new styles of behaviour.
iv. 1530-1563
Between 1530 and 1563, the number of poor people continued to rise as
the result of uneven economic development and nationwide population
growth which had begun in the 1520s. In these decades, existing methods
of responding to the poor were dramatically altered. This is the only
period within our two centuries in which the actions of the crown and
Parliament were of primary importance to the local response to poverty:
the central government both ended traditional patterns and authorised
new ones. First, royal and Parliamentary decisions concerning the church
terminated most of the institutions which had previously aided the poor.
The dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 and 1539 halted their
almsgiving. Royal confiscation of the property of chantries, certain
hospitals, and the religious fraternities in 1545 and 1547 did far more
damage. Even the parish stocks were in jeopardy, taken by the crown in
those instances in which the property was held in association with prayers
for the dead.
The consequences of the political/religious changes of the 1530s and
1540s upon local poor relief were disastrous. Loss of monastic alms
removed support at an average level of 26s. per parish.68 It is harder to
assess the impact of the closing of the fraternities and chantries. Those
guilds with landed property reported by royal commissioners between
1545 and 1549 constituted an unknown fraction of the total number in
existence. Many of the smaller guilds held no land at all, while others had
sold their property before the arrival of the commissioners. The parish
church of St Margaret's in Westminster had eight active fraternities in the
early sixteenth century, but only one was picked up by the commissioners;
18 fraternities in London were reported to the crown but 81 were
mentioned in wills between 1522 and 1540; 29 Suffolk fraternities appear
in the 1545-1549 returns, whereas 129 were noted in local records between
1439 and 1528.69 As Table 3 displays, the reported fraternities were widely
distributed throughout the country. It may be assumed that in many
counties most parishes had a guild, particularly in the market towns. Since
a third of the fraternities listed by the commissioners provided support to
their own members or the outside poor, the loss of their support mattered.
Those fraternities and parish chantries described in 1545-1549 which gave
assistance to the poor distributed an annual average of 32s. each in cash,
in addition to unspecified relief in the form of fuel, food, drink, and
225
TABLE 3
Assistance given to the poor by religious fraternities and chantries recorded in 17 counties and London, 1545-1549"
Amount given annually Per cent of total

No. of religious No. of fraternities No. of chantries by fraternities and annual income
fraternities which gave to the which gave to chantries'* from landed property
(= guilds)6 poor the poor0 £ s. d. given to the poor
o
IS
Counties with scant assistance from
fraternities and chantries (= less than
£5 p.a.)
Bedfordshire 6 0 1 17 s
Buckinghamshire 4 0 o
13 4 3
Cornwall 4 3 4 13 12 12 z
H
Kent 4 2 1 16 4 + unspec' 3 + unspec. O
CO
Leicestershire 4 0 0 0 X
Suffolk 29 3 4 2 8 + unspec. 12 +unspec.
Counties with moderate assistance
(= £5 to less than £20 p.a.)
Devonshire 9 1 7 9 3 11+unspec. 12 +unspec.
Hertfordshire 9 7 17 15 1 7 13
Lancaster 0 0 4 19 7 11+unspec. 33 + unspec.
THE ]
U
Lincolnshire 25 7 2 8 3 4 + unspec. 6 + unspec.
Northamptonshire 12 4 4 17 0 3 +unspec. 10 + unspec.
Somerset 23 3 5 14 8 11 16
Counties with considerable assistance
(= £20 p.a. or more) >
Gloucestershire 20 19 19 27 6 10 + unspec. 6 + unspec.

London and Middlesex 18 13 17 72 15 2 7
Oxfordshire 5 3 8 35 9 11 21 ta
Sussex 29 3 (+16 no info.) 5 20 10 6 18 O
Yorkshire 3 2 6 28 4 9 +unspec. 12 a
K> <
Total 204 70 107 279 19 5
•h.
° Information is drawn from the printed returns, published on an individual county basis, of the commissioners sent in the closing years of Henry
VIII's reign or the first two years of Edward VI's reign. Only those fraternities with landed property were recorded. The discrepancy between the
number of fraternities mentioned in the commissioners' returns and the much larger count which emerges from local records presumably results from
three factors: many of the smaller fraternities held no landed property; some, perhaps many groups sold their land shortly before the commissioners'
appearance to prevent its confiscation by the crown; many fraternities were relatively short-lived.
* 'Fraternities' (= guilds) also includes groups which held services for designated saints. Endowments held by the parish itself are not included
here.
" 'Chantries' includes stipendaries and obits.
* Sums given to help pay taxes and to prisoners are not included here, nor is the operation of a school.
* Unspecified includes such assistance as housing, fuel, food, drink, and clothing for which no cash equivalent is provided on the return.
clothing. At a maximum rate of 6d. per week, this sum would have
provided full support for two people for much of the year, or partial or
short-term aid to a larger number of the needy. Further, about 260
hospitals and endowed almshouses were closed between 1536 and 1549, a
figure which represented at least half the institutions then in operation.
Most of the established forms of poor relief had thus been eradicated,
placing the burden of support de facto on local people and the parish.
The initial response of concerned individuals and of many communities
was to try harder through voluntary charity. The volume of gifts and
bequests to the poor grew appreciably during the 1550s as compared with
the previous four decades.70 The rate of almshouse foundations shot up in
the 1550s, in all regions of the country (see Table 2 and Figure 1). In some
towns and villages private feoffees or the community itself bought back
property which had formerly belonged to monasteries, fraternities, or the
parish, assigning part of the income to poor relief.71 It quickly became
apparent, however, that voluntary assistance to the poor in whatever form
was insufficient. The parish, now more than ever the primary unit of relief,
needed access to stronger methods of compelling those with means to
assist their impoverished neighbours. For centuries many parishes had
imposed occasional taxes for repair of the church building. In the later
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries some of them had levied rates to pay
for the wages of a parish clerk. In Edward VI's reign a few of the cities
introduced rates for the poor: London levied a tax in 1547 to found the
hospital of St Bartholomew's; Norwich enforced compulsory contri-
butions to the relief of the poor in 1549; and York did so in 1550.72 The
parish fraternities had customarily supported their assistance through
required annual membership payments. The concepts of compulsory
parish rates and of obligatory payments to the poor were therefore not
foreign.
It is at this point that the central government became critical. During
the 1530s and 1540s it had moved slowly in considering new ways of either
supporting the worthy poor or discouraging idle wanderers. In 1531,
rejecting a radical measure drafted by Christopher St German, the
government introduced an act which advocated licensing beggars and
whipping vagabonds.73 This measure may well have been welcomed by
local constables, who could now administer immediate punishment to
undesirable outsiders. Legislation approved in 1536 was more progressive.
After prohibiting public begging, the measure ordered each parish to
name collectors for the poor, to gather and distribute alms.74 They were
responsible too for boxes placed in every church to encourage almsgiving.75
The reluctance of members of Parliament to permit any compulsion in
the collection of alms is suggested by a provision added later to the
228
government's draft, stressing that no one should be 'constrained to any

such certain contribution but as their free wills and charities shall
extend."6 The 1536 act stipulated further that idle vagabonds were to be
forced to work after being returned to their home communities. Voluntary
collection of alms by the parishes proved inadequate, and a statute of 1547
again permitted public begging within one's home region." It also
expanded slightly the provision for impotent beggars, ordering towns or
hundreds to provide housing in which the poor might lodge. The startling
feature of the 1547 statute is its treatment of vagabonds. Any able-bodied
person found living idly, refusing work, might be taken by an employer
before two Justices of the Peace.78 If found guilty, the 'loiterer' was to be
branded on his chest with a mark of V, using a hot iron. He was then
assigned as a ' slave' for a term of two years to the master who reported
him. This measure was so extreme that there is no evidence in local records
that it was ever enforced, and two years later it was repealed.79
Whereas local officials responsible for supporting the poor had gained
relatively little from the legislation of the 1530s and 1540s, they were
probably grateful for the statute of 1552. Though the government's
wording was cautious, never describing the new measures as compulsory,
the act in fact authorised parishes and towns to impose local taxes for
support of the poor.80 Each parish or corporate borough was to compile
a list of its legitimate poor and to elect two people as collectors of alms.
The collectors were to ask all parishioners what they were willing to give
to the poor and to collect and distribute the appropriate sums each week.
Public begging was forbidden. The act had at least gentle teeth, for if any
person able to help the poor refused to do so, he was first to be exhorted
by the minister and churchwardens and then sent before the bishop.
Should he not respond to the bishop's admonition, he could be ordered to
pay.
Although records are sparse, there is evidence that this measure was
implemented in some parishes during the later 1550s and early 1560s.
Parishes chose collectors and prepared lists of those who needed relief,
those who volunteered their contributions, and the size of each person's
weekly payment.81 Aid was distributed in the familiar form of small
weekly allotments of 2d. to 6d. each. Use of collectors continued under
Philip and Mary, a reign which saw no serious change in the forms of
relief.82 The force behind the parish collections was increased in a statute
of 1563. Although the contributions were still described as voluntary, the
act specified that any recalcitrant parishioners were to be sent to the
Justices of the Peace, who could back their orders for payment with
imprisonment.83
The middle decades of the sixteenth century thus saw the crucial shift
229
from voluntary to compulsory support of the poor. By 1563 the Church's

assistance was gone. Lay collectors had emerged as the key figures within
a parish-based structure. Yet the continuity was greater than appears at
first glance.84 The importance of the parish in supporting the poor prior
to 1530 had now been confirmed by legislation. Before the ending of the
fraternities, most self-supporting household heads in many parishes paid
a regular fee which went in part to assist their fellow guild members and
other deserving poor. Just two years after the final confiscations of
fraternity property in 1550, the collectors were ordered to administer a
system in which economically solid local families (in practice, the former
fraternity members) gave regular payments to help the deserving poor.
The similarity is presumably more than coincidental.
v. 1563-1598
Between 1563 and 1598 poverty in England worsened. Demographic and
economic changes enlarged the proportion of poor people and deepened
their need. The rise in population continued throughout the century, with
an increase of nearly 50 per cent between 1541 and 1601.85 By the 1590s
many regions were more densely settled than at any time since the 1310s.
The bad harvests of 1594-1597 resulted in deaths from famine in certain
areas.86 The plague brought occasional mortality crises and economic
disruption to many towns and villages. Inflation was steep, and wage
rates did not keep up. Real wages between 1594 and 1598 were only 57 per
cent of what they had been in the 1560s and just 37 per cent of their value
in the opening decade of the sixteenth century.87 Because economic
expansion did not match the demographic increase, employment
opportunities were insufficient to fill the demand in some regions.
Unemployment was accentuated by occasional disruptions of the cloth
trade.
These developments led to serious problems with poverty in most
communities. All three types were now present - the deserving, the idle,
and the unemployed poor. A larger fraction of established families were
vulnerable to life-cycle poverty. A higher birthrate produced more young
children unable to work and at risk of being orphaned. Poor parents were
sometimes 'overburdened with children' whom they could not support
even if the father was employed. Geographical mobility was very high.
Suspicion of vagrants mounted, accentuated after 1588 by the presence on
the roads of demobilised soldiers and sailors. The problems were
particularly acute in the towns. Their populations were swollen by the
arrival of unskilled newcomers. Unemployment or under-employment
was rife, owing in part to the unpredictable nature of work in the cloth
230
industry. In a census taken in Norwich in 1570, 2,359 people, or 22 per

cent of the English-speaking population, were deemed by city authorities
to be poor.88 (They probably earned less than the equivalent of £1
annually which formed the bottom level of the wage-earning group in the
1524-1525 subsidy assessment.) Of the Norwich poor, about half were in
need through old age, illness, the death or desertion of the head of the
family, or an excess number of children; the remaining half were poor
through lack of employment or low wages. The response to poverty
during the Elizabethan period was marked by two features: attempts to
refine the definition of the various kinds of poor people; and efforts to
develop more sophisticated methods of assisting the legitimate poor, of
coercing the unworthy, and of creating work for those who sought to
labour.
Everyone agreed that voluntary assistance remained the ideal method
of supporting the deserving poor. Parish and town officials encouraged
gifts and bequests to the poor, administering a growing volume of
endowed charities and stocks of land, animals, and cash.89 As Table 2 and
Figure 1 indicate, the rate of foundation of new almshouses rose
throughout the country in the later sixteenth century, reaching its peak in
the 1580s. Further, though open begging was prohibited, the poor
continued to ask for assistance within their own parish on a door-to-door
basis with impunity. Indeed, it has been suggested that the refusal of
prosperous families to aid poor neighbours may have been a factor in the
rise of witchcraft charges in the Elizabethan years.90 Justices of the Peace
issued licenses to individuals hit by misfortune, allowing them to solicit
aid outside their home parish, and granted similar 'briefs' to repre-
sentatives of hospitals, prisons, and other institutions.91
Voluntary charity struggled to meet the rising need. In the 1560s, it still
provided the bulk of all assistance given. In the market town of Romford,
Essex, for example, money received through new bequests and the parish
stock covered the 50s. distributed by the parish in 1564-1565 to the poor
living in their own houses, while an endowed almshouse provided full
support for another six old people.92 Voluntary assistance enabled a few
parishes to cope with the increasing demand made upon their resources.
Of the sums distributed to the poor by officials of St Margaret's,
Westminster, between 1584 and 1609, 66-75 per cent came from gifts and
bequests; the remainder was collected through the poor rate.93 Further, it
was private charity in St Margaret's, not the rates, which soared during
years of unusual need associated with crisis mortality. In most areas,
however, requests for assistance increased so steadily that voluntary
giving lagged behind. The estimated cumulative yield from private
benefactions for poor relief in Jordan's ten counties during the 1590s was
231 CON 3
90 per cent higher than the yield in the 1560s at the face value of money,
only 13 per cent higher when allowance is made for inflation, and
probably somewhere in between when the rising value of the assets is
included.94 The gain was too small to cover the growing need.
In view of this gap, it is not surprising that many Elizabethan parishes
and towns explored means of lowering the cost of poor relief. In the case
of established residents who clearly warranted support, local officials tried
to avoid direct payments. In the past, orphans or illegitimate children too
young to go into service had commonly been boarded with poor widows;
payments to that household filled a double function. Now, however,
young children were more often given into the custody of masters who
were free to put them to work.95 These men had to give bond that they
would 'save the parish harmless' from any further charges for the child.
Many communities experimented with ways of forcing the poor to work,
sometimes trying to teach useful skills which would eliminate the need for
future support. The strongly Puritan cloth towns of Hadleigh, Suffolk set
up a workhouse in 1577, known also as a house of correction, within
which 'idle rogues and masterless persons' as well as poor children were
set to work spinning.96 The village of Linton, Cambridgeshire similarly
had a 'task house'. The collectors in the rural parish of Eaton Socon,
Bedfordshire paid 2d. per week in 1596 to a woman 'that teacheth the
poor children to work bone lace'.97 Although the children were allowed to
keep the profits from the sale of their work, this was not a voluntary
programme, for poor parents who did not send their children to the
teacher received no further relief from the rates.
Dislike of vagrants at the local level has much the same tone as
Parliamentary legislation and the Elizabethan literature on rogues and
vagabonds.98 The local reaction, however, seems to have stemmed more
from economic concerns than from fear of disorder. Although groups of
disreputable strangers were certainly viewed with some alarm, the chief
worry concerning poor outsiders was that they might remain in the
community for the three years which entitled them to relief.99 Local
officials worked to keep newcomers who lacked property or employable
skills from settling in their areas. Officials of Sudbury, Suffolk in the mid-
1570s ordered that no local householder should lease any property to an
outsider without the consent of the mayor and majority of the aldermen.100
Bury St Edmunds conducted regular checks of the town wards during
the early 1570s to see which individuals or families were likely to become
a charge. Those who seemed doubtful either were expelled from Bury (as
were 43 people during January of 1571 alone) or were required to find an
established resident willing to post bond that they would not become
chargeable.101 Communities considered it a good investment to pay their
232
constables to convey poor people out of the area in order to preclude

future relief. The market town of Long Melford, Suffolk gave nearly 40s.
to its constables in 1597 for carrying 200 to 250 poor newcomers out of
the parish.102 Those wanderers who seemed dangerous were arrested and
whipped before being sent back to their home parishes. Reports submitted
from the constables of 18 counties between 1569 and 1572 indicate that
more than 750 vagrants had been seized and punished.103
Despite the contributions of voluntary charity and the effort to reduce
the burden of poor relief, the increase in undeniable poverty forced
virtually all late-Elizabethan parishes to make use of rates for the poor, at
least in bad years. A weekly payment was still viewed as a supplement to
other forms of income and still had a normal upper limit of 6d., though
the purchasing power of that sum had dropped substantially.104 Even with
small individual grants, however, the net level of payments rose. In the
isolated farming community of Leverton, Lincolnshire, for example,
about 30s. annually were adequate in the mid-1560s to assist four local
poor people, plus travellers with testimonials and gatherers for hospitals
or almshouses.105 In 1598, Leverton had to collect £5-10-9 to help twenty
natives plus outsiders. The rural parish of Northill, Bedfordshire collected
22s. during the second half of 1563 for minor assistance to 28 local poor;
in the first eight months of 1595 more than £9 was needed.106 In Hadleigh,
Suffolk, £65 to £70 were distributed annually to the poor in the mid-1560s
through a mixture of taxes and a large landed endowment belonging to the
town.107 This sum provided weekly stipends for 40 to 50 people. By 1598,
despite strenuous efforts to keep down payments, Hadleigh's assistance
had risen to £160. In most communities, the weight of poor rates fell
primarily upon the shoulders of the wealthier local families. Households
which were marginally self-supporting were excused from the rates. Thus,
in Shillington, Bedfordshire a total of 164 people paid the general parish
rate for support of the church in 1596, but only 63 of the more prosperous
paid for relief of the poor.108 Thirty people were assisted by the rates. In
all communities, those who refused to contribute were sent in accordance
with statute to the bishop or, after the 1560s, to the Justices of the
Peace.109
Parliamentary legislation during Elizabeth's reign mirrored closely the
concerns of local leaders. An act of 1572 dealt with the first two types of
poverty.110 With respect to the impotent poor, the measure authorised the
Justices of the Peace to supervise parish and town relief, establishing
official residences for those deserving people whose parishes could not
support them. Able-bodied beggars were to be set to work within the
residences. The statute also offered a list of the kinds of people considered
to be vagrants.111 They were to be punished not only by whipping but also
233 9.2
by having a hole bored through their right ear. (Local records provide
no indication that ear boring was implemented.) A statute of 1576
distinguished further still between the kinds of poverty. It mentioned for
the first time those 'poor and needy persons being willing to work' who
could not find employment, ordering that every town and county provide
a stock of wool, hemp,flax,iron, or other materials for their use.112 These
stocks were likewise to provide employment for young workers, 'to the
intent youth may be accustomed and brought up in labour and work, and
then not like to grow to be idle rogues.n13 In every county, one or more
Houses of Correction were to be established, with a mixed function of
punishment and support. To them were to be sent those poor people who
refused to work and any vagrants for whom no home community could
be identified. The acts of 1572 and 1576 remained in effect until 1593,
when ear boring was repealed.114 Direct measures were backed by Books
of Orders intended to hold down the cost of grain for the poor and to curb
the spread of disease.115
When seen from the vantage point of local communities, the ' great'
Elizabethan poor laws of 1598 and 1601 lose their distinctiveness. They
appear as a cumulative summary of policies which had been growing up
for over a century. The legislation of 1598 and 1601 contained only a few
new features: overseers of the poor were to replace the collectors at the
parish level, administering relief and providing employment for the able-
bodied poor; incorrigible vagabonds might now be sent overseas among
other possible punishments.116 What distinguishes these laws is not the
novelty of their approach but rather that they lasted so long. They
remained in effect until 1834, though modified by the Settlement Act of
1662 and the 'Speenhamland system' of the later eighteenth century.
During these centuries compulsory parish rates were the principal
mainstay of the poor, and the needy were in effect tied to those parishes
obliged to provide assistance to them.
VI. CONCLUSION
If one compares the response to poverty in England between 1388 and

1598 with what was happening on the continent, the greatest contrast was
the gradual acceptance in England of the need for taxation to support the
poor. Compulsory payments were indeed ordered in some of the
continental cities as part of the reforms of the mid-sixteenth century, but
only in England were rates imposed in local communities of all sizes
within a national system of poor relief backed by the central government.
Several reasons for this divergence may be suggested. The English
willingness to tolerate taxation developed within the local setting. The
234
exceptionally high level of geographic mobility in England, intensifying

the problems of poverty in villages and small towns as well as in the cities,
may have forced local leaders to acknowledge more quickly that voluntary
charity was insufficient. Changes in religious institutions during the 1530s
and 1540s brought matters to a compelling head. Parish officials were
accustomed to handling poor relief, but they needed greater legal
authority in order to collect forced payments. Parliament's reluctant
approval of binding rates in 1552 and 1563 may have been influenced in
part by the fact that the parishes would have to bear the onus of
unpopular taxation. Further, England had a relatively strong central
government, one which for two centuries had been enacting measures
designed to shape economic and social developments. The timing of the
laws authorising rates - passed during the reigns of Edward VI and the
early years of Elizabeth - is probably critical. Members of the Privy
Council under both monarchs had been affected by the new learning. They
were prepared to grant to government at all levels a strong hand in
producing a better commonwealth. Once rates had been introduced, the
development of an administrative system for collecting and distributing
them, a secondary issue, could occur over the course of the later sixteenth
century.
By 1598, England was accustomed to a multifaceted programme for
addressing poverty. It provided care or the means of employment for
deserving poor people, using taxation as necessary, while at the same time
dealing firmly, even repressively, with the idle or vagrant poor. The poor
laws of 1598 and 1601 did not embody perfect wisdom. Flaws in their
perception of the poor and in their proposed remedies hampered
implementation of the laws over the coming centuries. Nevertheless, the
creation of a national system for responding to the various forms of
poverty, based upon local decisions and support, may be regarded as one
of the most significant developments of early modern English history.
The initial research for this project was carried out while the author was a Visiting Research
Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge University in 1983—1984 and was supported by a
Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The paper has profited
greatly from comments by Caroline Barron, Elaine Clark, and Roger Schofield.
ENDNOTES
1 Brian Tierney, The medieval poor law (California, 1959); K. Bosl, 'Potens und Pauper:
Begriffsgeschichtliche Studien zur Gesellschaftlichen Differenzierung im Fruehen
Mittelalter und zum " Pauperismus" des Hochmittelalters', in his Fruehformen der
Gesellschaft in Mittelalterlichen Europa (Munich, 1964) 106-34; Michel Mollat, ed.,
Etudes sur I'histoire de la pauvrete, 2 vols. (Paris, 1974); Mollat, Les pauvres au moyen
age (Paris, 1978); W. P. Blockmans and W. Prevenier, 'Poverty in Flanders and
235
Brabant from the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century: sources and problems', Ada
Historiae Neerlandicae 10 (1979) 20-57; and Lester K. Little, Religious poverty and the
profit economy in medieval Europe (London, 1978). For cities, see J. H. Mundy,
'Charity and social work in Toulouse, 1100-1250', Traditio 22 (1966) 203-87; W. J.
Courtenay, 'Token coinage and the administration of poor relief during the late Middle
Ages', Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3 (1972) 275-95; Julius Kirshner and A.
Molho, 'The dowry fund and the marriage market in early Quattrocento Florence',
Journal of Modern History 50 (1978) 403-38; Suzanne F. Roberts, 'Les Consulats du
Rouerque et PAssistance Urbaine'. Assistance el Charite (Cahiers de Fanjeaux, au XHIe
et au debut du XlVe siecles 13 (Toulouse, 1978) 131—46; Jacqueline Caille, Hopitaux et
charite publique a Narbonne au moyen age (Toulouse, 1978); Thomas Fischer,
Staedtische Armut und Armenfuersorge im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Goettingen, 1979);
and Erich Maschke, Staedte und Menschen (Wiesbaden, 1980) 357-79.
2 Harold J. Grimm, ' Luther's contributions to sixteenth-century organization of poor
relief, Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 61 (1970) 222-34; Robert M. Kingdon,
' Social welfare in Calvin's Geneva', American Historical Review 76 (1971) 50-69; Brian
Pullan, Rich and poor in renaissance Venice. The social institutions of a Catholic slate,
to 1621 (Oxford, 1971), and his 'Catholics and the poor in early modern Europe',
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th ser., 26 (1976) 15-34; Jean-Pierre
Gutton, La socie'te et les pauvres en Europe, XVle a XVIIIe siecles (Paris, 1974);
Natalie Zemon Davis, 'Poor relief, humanism, and heresy: the case of Lyon', reprinted
in her Society and culture in early modern France (London, 1975) 17-64; Miriam U.
Chrisman, 'Urban poor in the sixteenth century: the case of Strasbourg', Studies in
Medieval Culture 13 (1978) 59—67; Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, Poverty and capitalism
in pre-industrial Europe (New Jersey, 1979); Robert Juette, 'Poor relief and social
discipline in sixteenth-century Europe', European Studies Review 11 (1981) 25-52; and
Thomas Riis, ed., Aspects of poverty in early modern Europe (Stuttgart, 1981).
3 E. M. Leonard, The early history of English poor relief (Cambridge, 1900) chs. iv-vi;
G. R. Elton, 'An early Tudor poor law', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 6 (1953)
55-67; C. S. L. Davies, 'Slavery and protector Somerset: the Vagrancy Act of 1547',
Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 19 (1966) 533-49; A. L. Beier, The problem of the poor
in Tudor and early Stuart England (London, 1983) and his Masterless men: the vagrancy
problem in England, 1560-1640 (London, 1985); and Paul Slack, 'Poverty and social
regulation in Elizabethan England', in Christopher Haigh, ed., The Reign of Elizabeth I
(Basingstoke, 1984) 221-41 (abridged in Slack's 'Poverty in Elizabethan England',
History Today 34 [Oct., 1984] 5-13). For towns, see John Webb, ed., Poor relief in
Elizabethan Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 9, 1966; John F. Pound, ed., The Norwich
census of the poor, (Norfolk Record Society, 40, 1971); John F. Pound, Poverty and
vagrancy in Tudor England [for Norwich] (London, 1971); Kitty Anderson, 'The
treatment of vagrancy and the relief of the poor and destitute in the Tudor period
[London to 1552; Hull to 1576]' (University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1933); and Paul
Slack, 'Social policy and the constraints of government, 1547-1558 [on London]', in
Jennifer Loach and Robert Tittler, eds., The mid-Tudor polity, c. 1540-1560 (London,
1980)94-115.
4 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English poor-law history. Part I: the old poor law (London,
1927); E. M. Hampson, The treatment of poverty in Cambridgeshire, 1597-1834
(Cambridge, 1934); R. W. Herlan, 'Poor relief in London during the English
Revolution', Journal of British Studies 18 (1979) 30-51; Stephen Macfarlane, 'The
administration of poor relief in London in the later seventeenth century' (Oxford
University D.Phil, thesis, 1979); Paul Slack, 'Poverty and politics in Salisbury,
236
1597-1666', in Peter Clark and P. Slack, eds., Crisis and order in English towns,
1500-1700 (London, 1972) 164-203; Paul Slack, ed., Poverty in early-Stuart Salisbury,
(Wiltshire Record Society, 1975); A. L. Beier, 'Poor relief in Warwickshire, 1630-1660',
Past and Present 35 (1966) 77-100; Tim Wales, 'Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle:
some evidence from seventeenth-century Norfolk', in Richard M. Smith, ed., Land,
kinship and life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984) 351-404; and W. Newman Brown,' The receipt
of poor relief and family situation: Aldenham, Hertfordshire 1630-1690', in Smith ed.,
Land, kinship and life-cycle, 405-22. For the replacement of the ideas which supported
the 'old poor law', see Gertrude Himmelfarb, The idea of poverty (London, 1984).
5 F. M. Page, "The customary poor law of three Cambridgeshire manors', Cambridge
Historical Journal 3 (1930) 125-33; Elaine Clark, 'Some aspects of social security in
medieval England', Journal of Family History 7 (1982) 307-20; and 'The custody of
children in English manor courts', Law and History Review 3 (1985) 333-48. For late
medieval charity from the donors' perspective, see J. A. F. Thomson, 'Piety and charity
in late medieval London', Journal of Ecclesiastical History 16 (1965) 178-95; P. W.
Fleming, 'Charity, faith, and the gentry of Kent, 1422-1529', in Tony Pollard, ed.,
Property and politics (London, 1984) 36-58; and Miri Rubin, Charily and community in
medieval Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987). ;
6 F. G. Emmison, 'Poor-relief accounts of two rural parishes in Bedfordshire, 1565—
1598', Economic History Review 3 (1931) 102-16, and 'The care of the poor in
Elizabethan Essex', Essex Review 62 (1953) 7-28.
7 12 Richard II, c. 7. The provisions of the 1388 act are considered below. Caroline
Barron has kindly informed me that London had already denned the problem of
poverty and attempted to find solutions before 1388: civic legislation passed in 1366
drew a distinction between the impotent poor and sturdy beggars.
8 39^tO Elizabeth I, cc. 3-5.
9 These categories are described in the B- and C-texts of William Langland's Piers
Plowman: see Geoffrey Shepherd, 'Poverty in Piers Plowman1, in T. H. Aston et al.,
eds., Social relations and ideas: essays in honour of R. H. Hilton (Cambridge, 1983)
169-90.
10 Vagrancy legislation is discussed below; Pound, Poverty and vagrancy; A. L. Beier,
'Vagrants and the social order in Elizabethan England', Past and Present 64 (1974)
3-29, and Paul Slack, 'Vagrants and vagrancy in England, 1598-1664', Economic
History Review, 2nd ser. 27 (1974) 360-79.
11 See, e.g., R. H. Tawney, The agarian problem in the sixteenth century (London, 1912);
Tawney, Religion and the rise of capitalism (London, 1927); D. Knowles, The religious
orders in England, 3 vols., (Cambridge, 1959), esp. 3 ; W. K. Jordan, Philanthropy in
England, 1480-1660 (London, 1959); and Thomson, 'Piety and charity', 178-95.
12 One of the best examples is the town of Hadleigh, Suffolk, described by Foxe as 'a
university of the learned' for its knowledge of true Protestant doctrine even in Henry
VIII's reign, a leading Puritan pulpit and congregation throughout the Elizabethan
years, and the home of probably the most fully developed system of poor relief and
coercion found in the sixteenth century apart from the largest urban centres. See W. A.
B. Jones, Hadleigh through the Ages (Ipswich, 1977), chs. 3-4, and the fine records
preserved in the Hadleigh Urban District's strongroom, kindly made available to the
author by the District Council and its archivist, Mr Jones.
13 Examples of strong responses to poverty in communities with a variety of powerful pre-
Reformation institutions are Sudbury, Suffolk and Louth, Lines., with town structures;
Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire and Clare, Suffolk, with manor courts; and Wisbech,
237
M A R J O R I E K. M c I N T O S H
Isle of Ely and Saffron Walden, Essex, with fraternities. Continuity of function is
particularly visible when the pre-Reformation fraternity became the town government
of the 1540s or 1550s, as in Wisbech, Saffron Walden, and Bury St Edmunds.
14 The Parliamentary response is discussed below.
15 R. M. Smith, 'Some reflections on the evidence for the origins of the "European
marriage pattern" in England', in Christopher C. Harris, ed., The sociology of the
family: new directions for Britain (Keele, 1979), 74—112; John Hatcher, Plague,
population and the English economy, 1348-1530 (London, 1977), chs. 2—4; and
Christopher Dyer, Lords and peasants in a changing society: the estates of the Bishopric
of Worcester, 680-1540 (Cambridge, 1980), ch. 9.
16 Clark, 'Some aspects of social security'. Maintenance agreements appear to have been
less frequent after 1349 than in the first half of the fourteenth century, owing to the
relative abundance of land.
17 Page 'Customary poor-law', and Clark, 'Custody of children'.
18 Felicity Heal, 'The archbishops of Canterbury and the practice of hospitality', Journal
of Ecclesiastical History 33 (1982) 544-63; and 'The idea of hospitality in early modern
England', Past and Present 102 (1984) 66-93.
19 The prohibition of begging is discussed below.
20 For clerical almsgiving, see Tierney, Medieval poor law, 106-9; 15 Richard II, c. 6.
21 12 Richard II, c. 7.
22 Beier, Problem of the poor, 19-20, and see A. Savine, English monasteries on the eve of
the dissolution (Oxford, 1909); R. H. Snape, English monastic finances in the later
Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1926); and Knowles, Religious orders.
23 Toulmin Smith and L. T. Smith, eds., English Gilds E.E.T.S., 40, (London, 1870); H.
F. Westlake, The parish gilds of medieval England (London, 1919); J. J. Scarisbrick, The
Reformation and the English people (Oxford, 1984), ch. 2; Barbara A. Hanawalt,
' Keepers of the lights: late medieval English parish gilds', in Journal of Medieval and
Renaissance Studies 14 (1984) 21-37; Susan Brigden, 'Religion and social obligation in
early sixteenth-century London', Past and Present 103 (1984) 67-112; A. G. Rosser,
'Medieval Westminster: the vill and urban community, 1200-1540', (University of
London Ph.D. thesis, 1984) esp. ch. 7; and Caroline M. Barron, 'The parish fraternities
of medieval London', in C. M. Barron and C. Harper-Bill, eds., The Church in pre-
Reformation society: essays in honour of F. R. H. DuBoulay (Suffolk, 1985) 13-37.
24 Calendar Close Rolls, 1385-1389, 624, and Churchill Babington and J. R. Lumby, eds.,
Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, Rolls Series, 9 (London, 1866) 191.
25 Westlake, Parish gilds, Appendix. See also W. M. Palmer, 'The village gilds of
Cambridgeshire', Transactions of the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Archaeo-
logical Society, I (1900) 330-402.
26 A guild might invite a few poor men to participate in the fraternity's feast or give out
pennies or grain on the patron saint's day or at the burial of members (Westlake, Parish
gilds, Appendix).
27 In addition to the returns used by Westlake and shown in Table 1, the Public Record
Office in London has since 1970 discovered nine other returns among its own records;
Caroline Barron has recently identified four more stray returns at the Bodleian Library,
Oxford.
28 Palmer, 'Village gilds'.
29 R. M. Clay, The medieval hospitals of England (London, 1909); and David Knowles and
R. N. Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: England and Wales (revd. edit., New York,
1971).
238
30 Peter Heath, The English parish clergy on the eve of the Reformation (London, 1969) 8.
By the nineteenth century the number of parishes had risen to over 10,000 through
subdivision of large units: E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The population history of
England, 1541-1871 (London, 1981) Table A7.10.
31 R. H. Hilton, The decline of serfdom in medieval England (London, 1969) 32-5; E. B.
DeWindt, Land and people in Holywell-cum-Needingworth (Toronto, 1972) 158; and
Cicely Howell, Land, family and inheritance in transition: Kibworth Harcourt, 1280—1700
(Cambridge, 1983) 44-8.
32 12 Richard II, cc. 7, 3, and 9.
33 Zvi Razi,' Family, land and the village community in later medieval England', Past and
Present 93 (1981) 3-36.
34 For a more detailed discussion of this period, see M. K. Mclntosh, 'Local change and
community control in England, 1465-1500', Huntington Library Quarterly 49 (1986)
219-42; and 'Economic change in southeast England, 1350-1600', prepared for the
University of California/Cal. Tech. conference on ' Pre-industrial developments in
peasant economies: the transition to economic growth', May, 1987.
35 For a sample of diverse historical assessments of the fifteenth-century economy, see
M. M. Postan, 'Medieval agrarian society in its prime: England', The Cambridge
economic history of Europe 1 (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1971) 548-632; and Medieval
economy and society (London, 1972); A. R. Bridbury, Economic growth: England in the
later Middle Ages (2nd ed., Brighton, 1975); Hilton, Decline of serfdom; and Christopher
Dyer, 'A redistribution of incomes in fifteenth-century England?', Past and Present 39
(1968) 11-33.
36 Hatcher, Plague, 63-4; Rosser, 'Medieval Westminster', 183-6, Ian Kershaw, ed.,
Bolton priory rentals and ministers' accounts, 1473-1539 (Yorkshire Archaeological
Society, 1970) xv-xvi; Dyer, Lords and peasants, 189-90 and 288-305; Andrew Jones,
'Bedfordshire: fifteenth century', in P. D. A. Harvey, ed., The peasant land market in
medieval England (Oxford, 1984) 179-251, esp. 199-200; and Mclntosh, Autonomy and
community: the royal manor of Havering, 1200-1500 (Cambridge, 1986) 221-3.
37 A. R. H. Baker, 'Changes in the later middle ages', in H. C. Darby, ed., A new
historical geography of England before 1600 (Cambridge, 1976) 186-247, esp. 206;
Howell, Land, family and inheritance, 59-60; Bolton Priory, Table 3, Dyer, Lords and
peasants 240-2 and 352-3; and Mclntosh, Autonomy and community, 221-6.
38 Paul D. Glennie, 'A commercializing agrarian region: late medieval and early modern
Hertfordshire'. (Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis, 1983); Douglas Moss, 'The
economic development of a Middlesex village [Tottenham]', Agricultural History
Review 28 (1980) 104-14; Keven McDonnell, Medieval London suburbs (London,
1978); and Mclntosh, Autonomy and community, 226-7; cf. Eleanor Searle, Lordship
and community: Battle Abbey and its Banlieu, 1066-1538 (Toronto, 1974) 365-6.
Agricultural wages dropped by about 30 per cent between their peak in the 1430s and
the 1480s; they rose again from the 1490s onward (Hatcher, Plague, Table II, 49).
39 E. F. Jacob, The fifteenth century (revised ed., Oxford, 1976) 369. For below, see I. S.
Leadam, ed., The Domesday of Inclosures, 1517-1518, 2 vols., (1897; reissued London,
1971) esp. 2 521 and 591; and Baker, 'Changes', 207-15. Recent work has emphasised
that these changes were as much the result of a long-term drop in the population as a
cause of depopulation. See Ian Blanchard, 'Population change, enclosure, and the early
Tudor economy', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 23 (1970) 427-45; and Christopher
Dyer, 'Deserted medieval villages in the West Midlands', Economic History Review,
2nd ser. 35 (1982) 19-34.
239
40 Peter Ramsey, 'Overseas trade in the reign of Henry VII: the evidence of the customs'
accounts', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 6 (1953) 173-82.
41 Baker, 'Changes', 219-26; and J. R. Lander, Conflict and stability in fifteenth-century
England (3rd ed., London, 1977) 35-6.
42 Patricia Smith, 'The brewing industry in Tudor England' (Concordia University
[Montreal] M.A. thesis, 1981); Peter Clark, The English alehouse (London, 1983) 31-2
and 101; and Dyer, Lords and peasants, 347-8.
43 Searle, Lordship and community, 365; Dyer, Lords and peasants, 349; Julian Cornwall,
'English country towns in the fifteen twenties', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 15
(1962) 54-69; and Mclntosh, Autonomy and community, 229-31. For carriers, see Paul
M. Kendall, The Yorkist age (1962; paperback, New York, 1970) 242-3.
44 Material on this region was generously furnished to the author by A. J. Pollard of
Teesside Polytechnic, Cleveland, on the basis of his own research for a study of the
economy and politics of the North east in the fifteenth century.
45 For stagnation, see Blanchard, 'Population change'; B. M. S. Campbell, 'The
population of early tudor England', Journal of Historical Geography 7 (1981) 145-54;
and L. R. Poos, 'The rural population of Essex in the later Middle Ages', Economic
History Review, 2nd ser. 38 (1985) 515-30; for growth in the laterfifteenthcentury, see
R. S. Gottfried, Epidemic disease infifteenth-centuryEngland (Leicester, 1978) 187-206;
and Dyer, Lords and peasants, ch. 9; Hatcher, Plague, ch. 5 offers a convenient
summary.
46 E.g., Howell, Land, family and inheritance, Fig. 16 and Table 28; Bollon Priory, Table
3; Mclntosh, Autonomy and community, ch. 6; and A. F. Butcher, 'The origins of
Romney Freemen, 1433-1523', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 27 (1974) 16-27.
47 P. J. P. Goldberg, ' Female labour, service and marriage in the late medieval urban
North', Northern History 22 (1986) and 'Marriage, migration, servanthood and life-
cycle in Yorkshire towns of the later Middle Ages: some York cause paper evidence',
Continuity and Change I (2) (1986). The rural figure has been calculated by Goldberg
from R. M. Smith,'Hypotheses sur la nuptialiteen AngleterreauxXIIle-XIVesiecles',
Annales: E.S.C. 38 (1983) table 3, p. 118.
48 In Havering, Essex, for example, the number of people described as servants in my
composite listing derived from all local records was six times higher in the 1470s than
in 1430-60, despite only a limited increase in total population. (By 1562, servants
constituted about 20% of the estimated population of Romford parish: M. K.
Mclntosh, 'Servants and the household unit in an Elizabethan English community',
Journal of Family History 9 [1984] 3-23.) The records of other communities show
increases in the number of servants too. It is of course possible that some of this
apparent change resulted from more precise terminology on the part of clerks.
49 Charles Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a city: Coventry and the urban crisis of the late
Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979) ch. 20; Mclntosh, 'Servants and the household unit';
and Ann Kussmaul, Servants in husbandry in early modern England (Cambridge,
1981).
50 A statute of 1495 confirmed the 1388 requirement that an impotent poor person might
beg only in his own community (11 Henry VII, c. 2). A revision of this act in 1503-4
offered a tighter definition of a person's 'home community': beggars were to return to
the 'city, town or hundred where they were born, or else to the place where they last
made their abode the space of three years' (19 Henry VII, c. 12). The three-year rule was
to determine eligibility for local support in all subsequent legislation until 1598.
240
51 E.g., Suffolk Record Office, Bury, FL 509/1/15, fos 19r-26v (Long Melford),
Lincolnshire Archives Office, Louth, St James parish, 7/2, fos 22r-33v, and see
Scarisbrick, Reformation and the English people, chs. 1-3.
52 Alan Kreider, English chantries: the road to dissolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), and
see, e.g., C. J. Kitching, ed., London and Middlesex chantry certificates, (London Record
Society, 1980); J. E. Brown, Chantry certificates for Hertfordshire (Hertford, c. 1909);
Arthur Hussey, ed., Kent chantries (Kent Archaeological Society 12 1936); and Arthur
Hussey, ed., Kent obit and lamp rents (Kent Archaeological Society 14 1936).
53 In the 1540s, 64 parishes in London and Middlesex reported an annual income of £1980,
of which £70, or 4 per cent, was given to the poor. Eighteen fraternities and chantries,
with an income of £1050, gave £73 (7 per cent) to the poor (London and Middlesex
chantry certificates, passim).
54 Tierney, Medieval poor law, 128.
55 Thus, in Norwich 10-13 fraternities were in existence at any one time between 1370 and
1470, a number which had risen to 21 between 1510 and 1532 (Norman P. Tanner, The
Church in late medieval Norwich, 1370-1532 [Toronto, 1984] 74). The gradual
abandonment of a belief in Purgatory during the 1530s and 1540s together with fear of
royal confiscation undermined the position of the fraternities. Of testators whose wills
were proved in the commissary court of London, for example, 23.6 per cent left
bequests to fraternities between 1522 and 1539 whereas only 8.5 per cent did so between
1539 and 1547 (Brigden, 'Religion and social obligation', 101, note 191).
56 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Misc. Don. 169, fo. 7. The guild had an annual income of
£324 in 1548: C.W.Foster, 'The chantry certificates for Lincoln and Lincolnshire
returned in 1548', Associated Architectural Society Reports and Papers 36 (1921-2), and
37 (1923-5).
57 See Table 3 below. In 1548, the fraternity of Salve Regina in the London parish of St
Magnus, whose members were of modest economic station, was providing lifetime
support to one blind brother and three poverty-stricken sisters as well as temporary
support to a sister during her illness and a brother then imprisoned in Ludgate (Bridgen,
' Religion and social obligation', 99). The Confraternity of St George in Norwich, with
about 200 prosperous members, gave annual support in 1533 to three fellows who had
fallen into poverty, at the rate of 6d./week; one of these, an elderly man, had received
similar aid for the past three years (Tanner, Church in late medieval Norwich, 80).
58 For almshouses, see, e.g., Essex Record Office, T/A 104/2, Wisbech Corporation
Records, 1, p. 69; Margaret Statham, Jankyn Smyth and the guildhall feoffees (Bury St
Edmunds, 1981) 6-7; J. E. Swaby, A history of Louth (London, 1951) 71-5, and
Scarisbrick, Reformation and the English people, 21 and 30.
59 Beier, Problem of the poor, 19-20.
60 Legislation concerning games was tightened in 1477-8 and 1495 (17 Edward IV, c. 3,
and 11 Henry VII, c. 2). The latter act also introduced licensing of alehouses and
ordered that vagrants be placed in the stocks before being sent out of the community,
measures which did provide some practical assistance to local leaders. The only early
Tudor royal proclamation dealing with the poor, from 1487, concerned the punishment
of vagabonds, P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, eds., Tudor royal proclamations (New
Haven, Connecticut, 1964) 17. These measures came after several decades of local
activity on the issues they addressed.
61 F. J. C. Hearnshaw, Leet jurisdiction in England (Southampton Record Society, 1908);
and W. A. Morris, The Frankpledge system (New York, 1910).
62 The new role of the leets is discussed more fully in Mclntosh, 'Local change and
241
community control'. For bye-laws, see Searle, Lordship and community, 415-17;
DeLloyd J. Guth, 'Borough law and leets: the contribution to representative
government', unpublished paper read at the Medieval Conference, Kalamazoo,
Michigan, May, 1980; Dyer, Lords and peasants, 358-9 and 368-9; and Mclntosh,
Autonomy and community, 250-2. For punishments, see, e.g., Essex Record Office, D /
DBy M10, mm. 8 and 12 (Saffron Walden); Searle, Lordship and community, 409-14;
Mclntosh, Autonomy and community, 250; Guildhall Library, London MS 10312, Roll
182 (Bishop's Stortford); Joanna Mattingly (doctoral student, University of London),
'Statutory law and criminal activity in the Middle Thames Valley under the early
Tudors', unpublished seminar paper read at the Institute of Historical Research,
London; and Dyer, Lords and peasants, 359.
63 E.g., Mattingly, 'Statutory law and criminal activity'; and Mclntosh, Autonomy and
community, Table 5.4 and ch. 6.
64 E.g., Essex Record Office, D/DBy M9-10 (Saffron Walden); Public Record Office, SC
2/203/72 (Clare, Suffolk); Mattingly, 'Statutory law and criminal activity' (the
hundreds of Isleworth, Middlesex, and Cookham and Bray, Berkshire); Searle,
Lordship and community, 415; and Dyer, Lords and peasants, 358-9. The laws are 12
Richard II, c. 6, and 11 Henry IV, c. 4.
65 E.g., Public Record Office, SC 2/203/72 (Clare, Suffolk); Mclntosh, Autonomy and
community, 255-61; Pembroke College, Cambridge, Framlingham MSS, manor court
roll G; Essex Record Office D/DBy M10 (Saffron Walden); Searle, Lordship and
community, 409-15; and Mattingly, 'Statutory law and criminal activity' (Cookham
and Bray hundreds, Berkshire).
66 Similar concerns were seen during the period of intense population pressure in the later
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; many of them reappeared during the later
Elizabethan years. This topic is considered more fully in Mclntosh, ' Local change and
community control'.
67 Although it is possible that other courts now began to deal with these issues, there is no
sign of their appearance in surviving church court records; we know too little about the
actual jurisdiction of the Justices of the Peace in this period to reach any conclusions
about their role.
68 Beier, Problem of the poor, 19-20.
69 Rosser, ' Medieval Westminster', ch. 7; and London and Middlesex chantry certificates,
65; Susan E. Brigden, 'The early reformation in London, 1520-1547' (Cambridge
University Ph.D. thesis, 1980) 351-3; and V.B.Redstone, 'Chapels, chantries and
guilds in Suffolk', Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural
History 12 (1906) 30-87.
70 The yield of private benefactions for poor relief mentioned in wills in Jordan's ten
counties between 1551 and 1560 was 4.5 times higher than in the 1510s and 1520s and
1.8 times higher than in the 1530s and 1540s; the total cumulative yield of private
institutions founded since 1480 was more than a third higher in the 1550s than in the
1540s at contemporary prices. J. F. Hadwin, 'Deflating philanthropy', Economic
History Review, 2nd ser. 31 (1978) 105-17, esp. Table 2. When corrected for inflation, the
cumulative yield in the 1550s was no higher than in the preceding two decades, but this
reckoning does not take into account the inflating value and hence higher yield of assets
given in earlier bequests. For charity and the calculation of its worth, see Jordan,
Philanthropy in England and the companion volumes dealing with individual counties,
W. G. Bittle and R. T. Lane, ' Inflation and philanthropy in England: a re-assessment
of W. K. Jordan's data', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 29 (1976) 203-210; and
Charles Wilson, 'Poverty and philanthropy in early modern England', in Aspects of
poverty, 253-79.
242
71 For towns, see, e.g., Hadleigh, Suffolk (Jones, Hadleigh through the ages, 31); Bury St
Edmunds (Statham, Jankyn Smyth and the guildhall feoffees, 7); and Saffron Walden
(Richard Lord Braybrooke, The history of Audley End [and] Saffron Walden [London,
1836] 252-3). For rural parishes, see Suffolk Record Office, Bury, 1871/18-20
(Icklingham); and Lincolnshire Archives Office, Addlethorpe parish, 10, for the
transition from the guildhall of the 1540s to the church house of 1556.
72 Slack, 'Social policy'; and Pound, Poverty and vagrancy, 61.
73 Elton, 'An early Tudor poor law',; and J. A. Guy, The public career of Sir Thomas
More (New Haven, Connecticut, 1980) 151-6; 22 Henry VIII, c. 12. It is interesting that
no other remedial solutions appear to have been put forward by English Christian
humanists, unlike the continent: cf., e.g., Davis, 'Poor relief, humanism, and heresy'.
74 27 Henry VIII, c. 25.
75 Parish accounts indicate that boxes for the poor were installed in at least some places
and that sums were indeed given to them and distributed: e.g., Hertfordshire Record
Office, D/P 12 18/1 (Baldock); Suffolk Record Office, Bury, EL 110/5/3; 2 Edward VI
(Mildenhall), and J. E. Farmiloe and R. Nixseaman, eds., Elizabethan churchwardens'
accounts Bedfordshire Historical Records Society 33 (1953) xxx (Shillington, Bedford-
shire). Sums distributed occasionally to the poor by several parishes around 1550
apparently came largely from the poor men's box (Lincolnshire Archives Office,
Leverton parish, 7/1, fos 47r-49r; and Hertfordshire Record Office, D/P 18/1, in or
after 1548).
76 27 Henry VIII, c. 25, heading 24, a proviso written on a separate schedule annexed to
the original act.
77 1 Edward VI, c. 3, item 9.
78 Ibid., items 1 and 6; and Davies, 'Slavery and Protector Somerset'.
79 3 and 4 Edward VI, c. 16. It was the act of 1531 which was reinstated, not the more
enlightened measure of 1536.
80 5 and 6 Edward VI, c. 2.
81 Hadleigh, Suffolk MSS, Box 4/1 (1558), Suffolk Record Office, Bury, FL 501/7/34
(Clare, late 1552); and Emmison, 'Care of the poor in Elizabethan Essex', 28
(Ingatestone, Stock, and Buttsbury, 1555). Most surviving collectors' accounts begin
only in 1563.
82 1 Mary, st. 2, c. 13, and 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 5.
83 5 Elizabeth I, c. 3.
84 The continuing importance of the parish community (commonly expressed before 1548
through local fraternities) throughout the pre-Reformation periods is emphasised by
Caroline Barron, 'Parish fraternities of medieval London'; see also Scarisbrick,
Reformation and the English people.
85 Wrigley and Schofield, Population history of England, Table A3.1.
86 A. B. Appelby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Liverpool, 1978), ch. 8; and Paul
Slack, 'Mortality crises and epidemic disease in England, 1485-1610', in Charles
Webster, ed., Health, medicine and mortality in the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979)
9-59. For plague, see Paul Slack, The impact of plague in Tudor and Stuart England
(London, 1985) especially Part II.
87 Figures calculated from Wrigley and Schofield, Population history of England, Table
A9.2.
88 Pound's introduction to Norwich census of the poor, and Slack, 'Poverty and social
regulation', 231-2. The suggested definition of the poor, below, is Pound's.
89 Examples appear in almost all churchwardens' and collectors' accounts: e.g.,
Hertfordshire Record Office, D/P 5/1, 7-9 (Ashwell); D/P 65 21/1 (Buntingford); and
A 1578 and 1586 (Thundridge); Bedfordshire Record Office, P 10/25/1 (Northill);
243
Lincolnshire Archives Office, Witham on the Hill parish, 7, fos 5r-9d; and Addlethorpe
parish, 10, 1550s-1580s.
90 Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1970), ch. 12; and
Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic (New York, 1971), chs. 16-17.
91 Licenses to beg are, e.g., Hertfordshire Record Office, HAT/SR 2/79, 4/20, 7/156,
8/30; and Elizabethan churchwardens' accounts (of Bedfordshire), 75-87.
92 M. K. Mclntosh, The liberty of Havehng-atte-Bower, 1500-1620 (in preparation), ch.
5.
93 This information was kindly provided to the author by Ian Archer, Junior Research
Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge, stemming from his research on 'Governors and
governed in Elizabethan London' for an Oxford University D.Phil, thesis.
94 Hadwin, 'Deflating philanthropy', Table 2.
95 E.g., Suffolk Record Office, Bury, EL 159/7/29/1-5 (Walsham le Willows); and
Hertfordshire Record Office, D/P 19/1/V, 2 (Great Berkhamstead). Some parishes
continued to board such children locally until they were of age for service: Suffolk
Record Office, Bury, EE 501 C141 B/I, fos 73v-74r (Sudbury), and Tem 123, fos 88,
97, and 136 (Wattisfield).
96 Hadleigh MSS, Box 4/1, 122 ff., and Box 21/27. For Linton, see Hampson, Treatment
of poverty in Cambridgeshire, 10.
97 Bedfordshire Record Office, P 5/12/1.
98 For legislation, see below. F. Aydelotte, Elizabethan rogues and vagabonds (Oxford,
1913); F. J. Furnivall ed., The rogues and vagabonds of Shakespeare's youth, New
Shakespeare Society, 6th ser. 7 (1880), and A. V. Judges ed., The Elizabethan
underworld (London, 1965).
99 For the three-year requirement, see note 50 above.
100 Suffolk Record Office, Bury, EE 501 C141 B/I, fo 112r, and cf. fo 120d.
101 Suffolk Record Office, Bury, C2/1, fos 3r-12r, passim.
102 Suffolk Record Office, Bury, FL 509/5/1, 1597.
103 Beier, Problem of poverty, 32.
104 E.g., Lincolnshire Archives Office, Leverton parish, 13/1, Bedfordshire Record Office,
P 5/12/1 (Eaton Socon), P10/5/1 and P 10/12/1 (Northill), and P44/5/2(Shillington);
Suffolk Record Office, Bury, FL 509/5/1, 1597 (Long Melford); and Hadleigh, Suffolk
MSS, Box 21/7-29. Six pence remained the normal maximum payment per week
through the first half of the seventeenth century (Wales, 'Poverty, poor relief and the
life-cycle', 354).
105 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Leverton parish, 13/1.
106 Bedfordshire Record Office, P 10/5/1, 19-20, and P 10/12/1, p. 13.
107 Hadleigh MSS, Box 4/1, 62-6. For below, see Hadleigh MSS, Box 21/7 and Box 4/1,
261.
108 Bedfordshire Record Office, P 44/5/2.
109 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Leverton parish, 13/1, 1565, and the General Books and
Act Books of the Archdeaconry of Norwich, in the Norfolk Record Office, c. 1563-9
(information kindly provided to the author by Ralph Houlbrooke); for J.P.s, see
Bedfordshire Record Office, P 10/12/1, 1590 (Northill); P 44/5/2, 1596 (Shillington);
and Hertfordshire Record Office, HAT/SR 6/39. Cf. HAT/SR 3/148, a complaint by
a Clothall widow to the J.P.s in 1594 that she and her children have not been relieved
by their parish as the statute dictates.
110 14 Elizabeth I, c. 5, items 16-18.
111 Ibid., item 5.
112 18 Elizabeth I, c. 3, item 4.
244
113 Ibid., item 5.

114 35 Elizabeth I, c. 7. It was replaced once more by the measure of 1531 which specified
only whipping.
115 Slack, 'Poverty and social regulation', 224.
116 39^*0 Elizabeth I, cc. 3-5, and 43 Elizabeth I, cc. 2-3.
245

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Continuity and Change 3 (2), 1988. 209-245.

Printed in Great Britain

Local responses to the poor in late

Despite the recent surge of historical interest in poverty, our under-

* Department of History, University of Colorado, Boulder.

community which undertook to provide support for such people might

No. which gave

alms'.26 Their charity to others, largely symbolic in nature, seldom

the economy. There was considerable regional variation in the extent of

lesser members of the community - relatives and neighbours of similar

dation and sometimes cash or fuel. Almshouse foundations therefore

New houses founded:

Although most assistance was provided by the laity, the Church

Amount given annually Per cent of total

Gloucestershire 20 19 19 27 6 10 + unspec. 6 + unspec.

government's draft, stressing that no one should be 'constrained to any

from voluntary to compulsory support of the poor. By 1563 the Church's

industry. In a census taken in Norwich in 1570, 2,359 people, or 22 per

constables to convey poor people out of the area in order to preclude

If one compares the response to poverty in England between 1388 and

exceptionally high level of geographic mobility in England, intensifying

113 Ibid., item 5.

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