Origins of the Poor Law system
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This article deals with Poor Law provision in Britain before the 1601 Old Poor Law
The Origins of the Poor Law system in Britain can be traced as far back as the fifteenth century. Monasteries were in decline and their eventual dissolution during the Reformation caused poor relief to move from a largely voluntary basis to a compulsory tax that was collected at a parish level.
Early legislation was concerned with vagrants and making the able-bodied work especially after the Black Death when labour was in short supply. Specific legislation was passed which prevented private individuals from giving Poor relief to able-bodied paupers. In 1388, the Statute of Cambridge was passed making each individual parish responsible for administering poor relief to the impotent poor. [1]
Tudor attempts to tackle the problem go all the way back to the reign of Henry VII. In 1495 Parliament passed a statute ordering officials to seize "All such vagabonds, idle and suspected persons living suspiciously and then so taken and set in stocks, there to remain by the space of three days and three nights to have none other sustenance but bread and water, and there after the said three days and three nights, to be had out and set at large and then to be commanded to avoid the town." No remedy to the problem of poverty was offered by this; it was merely swept from sight, or moved from town to town. There was no distinction made, moreover, between real vagrants and the jobless; both were simply categorised as 'sturdy beggars', to be punished and moved on.
In 1530, during the reign of Henry VIII, a proclamation was issued, describing idleness as the 'mother and root of all vices', ordering that whipping should replace the stocks as the punishment for vagabonds. This change was confirmed in statute the following year, with one important change: a distinction was made between the 'impotent poor' and the sturdy beggar, giving the old, the sick and the disabled licence to beg. Still no provision was made, though, for the healthy man simply unable to find work. All able-bodied unemployed were put into the same category. Those unable to find work had a stark choice: starve or break the law.
In 1535 a bill was drawn up calling for the creation of a system of public works to deal with the problem of unemployment, to be funded by a tax on income and capital. Though supported by the king it was savaged in Parliament. An act was passed in 1536, placing responsibility for the elderly and infirm with the parish or municipal authorities, though provision was reliant on voluntary donations.
For the able-bodied poor, things became even tougher during the reign of Edward VI, when a bill was passed in 1547 subjecting vagrants to some of the more extreme provisions of the criminal law. Two years servitude and branding with a 'V' was the penalty for a first offence; death for a second. It was simply too severe to serve its purpose, as Justices of the Peace were reluctant to apply the full penalty of the law. There is no evidence at all that the act was ever enforced before it was repealed in 1550.
The government of Elizabeth was also inclined to severity, passing an act in 1572 calling for offenders to be bored through the ear for a first offence and hanging for persistent beggars. But this act also made, for the first time, a clear distinction between the 'professional beggar' and those unemployed through no fault of their own. The first complete code of poor relief was made in the Act For the Relief of the Poor 1597. For the "deserving poor" some provision was eventually made in the Elizabethan Poor Law.
[edit] Historical interpretations
Marjie Bloy, a Ph.D. Senior Research Fellow with the National University of Singapore, has argued that the Reformation caused moral expectations surrounding charitable giving to disappear. [2]
[edit] Bibliography
- A.L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560-1640 (1985)
- A.L. Beier,The Problem of the Poor in Tudor and Stuart England (1983)
- N Fellows, Disorder & Rebellion in Tudor England (2001)
- Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England (2000)
- John F Pound, Poverty and Vagrancy in Tudor England (1971)
- Paul Slack, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (1998)
- Paul Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor England (1988)
- Penry Williams, The Tudor Regime (1979)
[edit] References
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