poor law Flashcards
enclosure perception
- poorer sort felt under threat-
- 1570s Buckinghamshire landlords burned in effigy
- poor artisans and servants conspired to cut throats of Oxfordshire gentlemen in 1596
-westmorland tenants satirised landlords as croaking ravens feeding on poor sheep in hell
enclosure stats
wordie- by 1500 45% of cultivable land in eng already enclosed- mostly sheep run
- Allen of the midlands- 18% of cultivable land- s midlands- enclosed in ‘second great wave’ of conclusive between 1575 and 1674
problem of poverty
-changing - more labouring and life cycle poverty
- hindle - poor as a class reflected new marginality and precariousness
-crisis of the youth- low marriagee rates and thus high illegal rate making it diff to secure a settled place in social order
poverty interpretation
dyer if interpret poverty as inability to feed yourself
in early 14thc 1/5-6 mill
around 1500 120,000 people as living below the poverty line from a pop of 2.3m
so imporving- John guy- biggest success of Tudor eng was the ability to feed itself
localism examples dealing w poverty
1538 forced levy
compulsory poor rate- colchester, Ipswich, crab 56/57, employment schemes 46-48
acts for dealing with poverty - 16thc
1495 vagrancy act
1531 poor law
1536 poor law act
1547 vagrancy act
1553- parishes mandated to hold voluntary collections on a Sunday
1571 sumptuary law
1572 poor law
1589 bill
1597/98- fasting and almsgiving
acts dealing w poverty 17thc
1598 and 1601 poor law
1662 act of settlement
1690s amendments to setlement
1495
vagrancy act
1495 vagrancy act
-ordered local searches for wanderers and suspect persons
- provided set in stocks 3 days and sent homes
- in preamble- act said softer means repress vagrants then Richard iii ordered imprisonment
slack attitude to 1495
no softening in attitude but realisation stocks more practical esp w expanding vagrant pop
wolsey
inventor of Tudor paternalism
- began in 1517 w enclosure provision not success
- 1517 social distress- responsibility prevent spread plague
- 1520 21-searches for grain in dearth to stop hoarding ad sell to market
1517 problems
evil May Day riots
epidemics sweating sickness and plague
1517 efforts against plague
infected houses in London and Oxford marked so people might avoid them
1531 poor law
It simplified the punishment of vagrants from stocking to whipping.
- national licensing of approved beggars – the impotent poor.
slack opp on poor law
motivated three poor harvests 1527 28 29
William Marshall suggestions
1535 advocated income tax for public works organised by central council
1536 poor law act
Public employment
- 2) Parish organises voluntary collections every Sunday
- 3) Towards impersonality and discrimination. Begging and almsgiving to be banned within the act.
- act not renewed.
1547 vagrancy act
Slavery 2 years.
- Reinstates voluntary collections.
- Bans all begging without exception.
- Repealed in 1551 and provisions of 1531 reinstated
schemes setting poor to work
Oxford and Kings Lynn 1546, 1548.
parochial collections replaced by compulsory levies for the poor in Norwich in 1549 and York in 1550.
1553
parishes are mandated to hold voluntary collections on a Sunday
1571 sumptuary law
Purpose: The law aimed to maintain social distinctions by prescribing what individuals of different classes could wear. It was believed that this would uphold the social order and prevent extravagance.
Mandates: It required all men except nobles to wear woolen caps on Sundays and holidays, supporting the English wool trade.
Penalties: Fines were imposed on those who violated the law by dressing above their rank or failing to comply with the wool cap rule.
increasing priority to London in Tudor policy
-August 1596 the Privy Council ordered commissioners in Oxfordshire to end their embargo of exports because of the ‘great scarcety in the city of London’
- while in October the commissioners for Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk were informed that although scarcity was ‘so generall as it towcheth verie neerelie the most places of this realme’, the city of London nonetheless ‘cannot be left unprovided
1572 poor law
- mandatory collections, though although there was no wholly compulsory poor rate in London before 1572, the alderman often told give more
- increase coercion
increase coercion 1572
whipping ear boring first offence
death for second
attitudes to 1572 poor law
mp miles Sandys overshare and bloody
controversial parts 1572
broad definition of ‘vagabonds’ included familiar wayfaring figures like minstrels (disillusions many).
- Shock of Northern Rebellion wears off and 1593 the ear boring and death sentence repealed and returned to whipping of 1531 Act.
1576
Stocks of materials on which the poor can be employed (the good); bridewells (for the bad).
1589 bill
attempting to criminalise minor trespass; Queen initially blocks but passes during the chaos of 1590s. (1588 York stocks).
1597/8
fasting and almsgiving
2/3 parishes implement
1598 and 1601 poor law
- made enforcement of laws more practical
1598 poor law two acts
-prescribed the treatment of maimed, idle and disorderly soldiers returning from the wars.\
- One set out to make the founding of almshouses and hospitals easier; the other provided mechanisms for investigating breaches of charitable trusts
charitable uses act 1601
developed mechanisms for investigating breaches of charitable trusts
- illustrated poor law not act alone
Oxfordshire rising impact
perceived threat provided extra urgency - poor law acts
instructive that also and fasting policy composed immediately after a meeting of council had discussed investigation into causes of Oxford conspiracy
1662 act of settlement
- JPs can remove from the parish is arrived in the last 40 days and ask for poor relief or look as if might.
- essentially an Act for Removal.
- provided that they had not rented a house worth €10 a year or more.
impact of 1662 act of settlement
- showed move to localism and attempt to restrict the movements of the poorest class
- Adam smith wealth of nations 1776- there is scarce a poor man in england of forty years of age… who has not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this ill-contrived law of settlement.”
- exceptions were those banished to America
amendments to settlement
- all those on poor relief must wear P in red blue fabric on right sholde-r part of 1690s reforms trying to reduce rates demand
- 1686 statute
- 1692 earn settlement
- 1697 act
1686 statute
period 40 days removed begin only when gave notice of their arrival in a parish
if no notice- expelled any time
1692 settlement ammendment
settlement could be earn
by renting property worth 10 pounds
and by paying local rates
or vy being bound as apprentice or hired as servant ad working for a year
act 1697
declared those w certificates from their home parish could be removed only when became chargeable and not until then
precedent sin medieval period
Medieval Lawyers: “we ought not to show ourselves generous indiscriminately to all who come.”
- 1349 Statute of Artificers: forbade almsgiving to able bodied beggars.
- 400 hospitals already in 1530.
dyer medieval precedents
- precedents important and argues for vitality of old system
- almshouse at Sherbourne Dorset 15C paid for by excess over war levies.
- During 100 Years War, routine overcollection for redistribution to widows and veterans, especially in Suffolk.
- price regulations on bread and ale
- co-ordinated campaign of will donations in Lavenham in the 15C built 9 almshouses
- Stoke by Nayland and Great Waldingfield wills contribute to producing a local weekly poor relief.
personal intervention remains of paramount importance
- William Cecil at Burghley house
- Into the late Elizabethan age, Leicester, Huntingdon and Walsingham were almost personally responsible for supporting the local poor. This suggests a vitality of paternalism.
bridewell punishment
prisons taught how to work
hard labour and physical punishment
refusal to work 4 stripes, unchristian lang 3
bridewells increasing
1576 act puts bridewells every county and corporate town
provincials just 20 spaces, London 150
170 by 1700
views of bridewells
bier- corrupted the good and made the bad worse
hext- vagrants and criminals would rather go to gaol
chester- connected to gaol
almshouses positive attitudes
Can be idealised (widow in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale or “only freemen in the commonwealth).
- There was a genuine feeling of responsibility between rich and poor; instilled by religion (for example as each were idealised through the paradigm of Dives and Lazarus).
- Also remember that tudor society was one built ostensibly off ideas of social obligation.
- selfishley- nec for rich to get to heaven
distinction charity and pro law
the formation of the poor law was not simply a benevolent social gesture:
1) Charity encouraged begging while PL sought to suppress it
2) Charity had no emphasis on providing work
3) Charity did not supply relief proportionate to need
influences on almshouses
- Dissolution: Slack £6500 yr not matched in private benefactions until 1580; Dyer 2.5 -> 9%.
- Slack Renaissance humanism.
- Hindle need.
need for almshouses rose due to
decline in neighbourliness
rising scale of poverty
decline in neighbourliness why
- Lawrence Stone: rise in litigation = breakdown of consensual community methods; “ethical and economic fissures… fill communities with malice and hatred”
- Anthony Hope and Felicity Heal concur.
- Rise in social tensions: Oxford Rebellion 1596.
rising scale of poverty need for almshouses
- William Harrison (1535): “multitude of poor and needy folks”
- difficult to generalise, but it seems massive downward social mobility: 20 -> 50% rural population are labourers 1520-1650
- Exemptions to 1524 subsidy 27.6% whereas exemptions to 1671 Hearth Tax 50.8%.
living standards improve w poor relief
- Christopher Dyer: vitality of mixed economy of poor relief; nonetheless, 16C improvement to 14C and 15C due to landholding structure; 14C 50-60% insufficient to feed a family.
- Better than Europe, c.f. France.
- WK Jordan: “remarkable period of investment”
poverty not improving
Vagrancy +65% 1570-1635.
Slack: living standards steadily declined for a century; see decline in meat consumption and gravitation to cheaper grains
- Hindle: by 1620, a skilled labourer on 1/3 or ½ 1500 RT. (overstocked labour market and extinction of common rights).
- - Felicity Heal: ‘vision of neighbourliness’ shattered
poor law part of wider context
elizabethan regime increasingly regulative
- on the one hand they set the framework for the bureaucratised solution to social difficulties;
-on the other the new statutes effectively criminalised the symptoms of idleness: begging, gleaning, tippling, swearing and drunkenness
why Econ motivations to poor law limited
economics \did not really exist as a thought or principle of its own separated from the moral values and social economy
centre v locality- centre poor law
- Central government (1630 Book of Orders, Slack)
- (Privy Council, councillors) clearly had a voice in the policy and policy development (27-29, 1590s);
locality lead poor law v centre
local interests (both rate payers and magistrates) with schemes in Cambridge, Ipswich and Norwich.
forms of poor relief
private charity
bridewells and hospitals
almshouses
friendly son and associational Phil
book of orders
private charity
wk Jordan- charitable donations in wills kept pace with inflation and population growth (in fact, reality probably more than Jordan assumes due to small, face-to-face).
- Slack recognises that until the 1630s, private donations were probably more valuable than the rates from the Poor Law. Charity in England was greater than elsewhere in Europe: 40% of French towns have fonds, 60% of English parishes.
hospitals
London hospitals, a coherent system introduced 1544-57 to cater for the different types of pauper, but its aspiration of central control through a board of governors was quickly abandoned
book of orders
elizabethan
Jacobean
Caroline
elizabethan- book of roders
plague and dearth following those of wolsey
Jacobean book of orders
regulate alehouses
book of orders Caroline
- privy councillors more prominent supervisory role
- 1630-1 Caroline book of orders coincides w attempted controls on London pop enclosure in midlands- related due to migration
- commission for relief of debtors
- proclamation on keeping of fishways, lent and fast days on Wednesday and Friday
workhouses
14 between 1692-1712
corp for poor
C.f. Macfarlane on failure London Corporation due to Tory magistrates and Whig corporation; town council hostile to external interest groups: networks of local interest and party inhibit social policy.
pray fasting and almsgiving 1596-7
felicity heal say sprovoked nostalgia
how does poor law operate
work and punishment for the idle and able-bodied.
- cash payments to the impotent and thus an attempted ban on begging and casual almsgiving.
- parishes could do a range of things with the revenue from the poor rate
poor rate use of
- Binding poor children as apprentices
- Expelling pregnant strangers from the parish
- Buying paupers property in other parishes
- Benefits in cash or kind
- Medical aid
- Work.
flexibility
-regular and extraordinary payments
- gave parishes significant digression and thus powerful patronage networks and webs of informal social controls, discretion important in softening most punitive aspects of law
- 17thc rating system
regular payments
weekly
impotent poor
agreed once a year
extraordinary
st need often labouring poor or the sick
17thc rating system
taxed just real property in parish
under-estimated its asmnt but were highly convenient for busy local officials
increasing suspicion of parish officials
1598 supposed to be supervised by two ups
flaws of reforms
- highlighted in discussions of reform in 16900s
- once bureaucracy
- restrict mobility of workers
- limitations built into parochial model f what could be achieved w parish resources and attempts of parishes in London- corp of poor hospitals
problem w bureaucracy
burden on parish officials, JPs and the poor. See volume of litigation on Settlement, appeals and disputes; often occurred within a town which crossed parish boundaries.
restrict mobility of labour
- which needed for Econ
not clear if occurred - as pairs officials usuallyy used discretion and let profitable labourers slip by according to landau - so effect probs discourage migrant poor claiming relief
Paul slack
- poor law operational by 1620s real sucess
- long way wiping out poverty yet changed character to something more manageable
- does not accept poor law bought off rev but part of wider negotiation
- poor not passive recipients could manipulate system serve needs0 eg enter workhouse when need roof over heads
poor law operational expansion
£10,000 (1614) -> £400,000 (1700) per year. Even final figure can only support 3.6% population.
change in poverty- slack
a decline in deep and crisis poverty and a rise in labouring, shallow poverty. Also recognises continued strength of private charity.
EM Leonard, Ashby and Christie
- Poor Laws did ‘buy off’ revolution – important because can use these groups as over-optimistic on results.
- Central legislation builds off the model of parochial attempts/solutions.
J Pound and WK Jordan
private benevolence > Poor Laws. (Pound slightly more optimistic than Jordan).
Joanna Innes
more optimistic about efficacy of parliament’s lawmaking than the Webbs.
al bier
liminality of the itinerant poor. Underdown criticises his work on ‘masterless men’ for failing to situate vagrancy in wider picture of Tudor law disorder.
hindle
MicroPolitics, hugely sceptical about the attempts of the government. Sees them as ineffective and degrading and stresses 1) the lack of consensus about right to relief; 2) the continued importance of kin support and family.
Argues that policy was implemented ‘in the pursuit of stability’ – thus necessity. Argues that the aftermath of Kett’s rebellion saw a palpable change in the attitude of the rich to the poor.
WK Jordan:
-sceptical about efficacy of the poor laws,\
=contesting whether they had any real practicability until at least 1660, but
- recognises remarkable longevity of private charity which showed
- ‘the new determination to provide lasting solutions to them were not confined to public authorities’.
origins of poor reform
interpretations from need
changes in public and gov attitudes
gov own ambitions social control
origins- interpretations of need- hist
Sir Matthew Hales offered this interpretation from the mid-17C and Steve Hindle perpetuates it today.
- On the face of it, very convincing, not least because dates often coincide (1527-29, 1590s).
yet limitation on interpretation from need poor law
fails to answer a number of factors: what about the continued interest and concern about poverty in less pressurised environments (ie 1660-1760); what about EU countries which had equal need but no Poor Law (c.f. Scotland)
changes n public and gov attitudes- poor relief
qk Jordan -
slack
dodd
wk Jordan= public and gov attitudes change poor law
protestant interpretation
discrimination between idle ad dserving poor- protestant work ethic and pauline notion of the ‘household of faith’- popular w puritans-
but idea exist 14thc
slack on poor law - changes public and gov attitudes
renaissance humanism
- poor relief done for beneficial result- good of river not donor
- moral reform-
- thorough, rational and systematic
- convincing given wolsey reforms introduced before reformation and modelled on European attempts in catholic countries
Dodd on motivations for law
stressed ambitions of renaissance humanist gov
reformation impact on poor laws
decisive removing existing institutions and determining which could be used instead - ie not religious orders or fraternities
alternative options for reforms
- Could have followed Low Countries: scores of workhouses and almshouses.
- Could have followed France (as London tried): institutions like hospitals.
- Didn’t: parliamentary statute and parochial system of outdoor relief.
- C.f. Scotland which had even need, same Reformation vacuum, and even statutes on paper; but “moribund” (McCarter) until L17C.
- Mitchison attributes this to weak central supervisory mechanism.
- In Wales, the weakness of the county sessions is to blame.
- English parish had always been a stronger unit.
gov own ambitions of social control- poor relief
- gov ambition never overcome interests of local elites- why not ambitious blueprint social reform in period as local resistance faced
utopianism in poor relief
major pw scheme e1536
major institutional system logon hospitals
responsibility up to local communities not state
- who considered a vagrant- 1571 and 1572 disputes in commons- left to local constables and justices
- who were impotent
- law thus took lowest common deonimator both parties found acceptable
poor rate setting
- communities set poor rates- 1620- 1660 became familiar
- by 1700 universal at least in eng
Wales not catch up before end 18thc- Dodd
poor relief projects failed
- London corp fell at restoration
other schemes collapsed w political fortunes of sectional interests which supported them - finically high- new institutions workhouses, heavy overheads never rrecouped
- ## politically opp w parish authroities
examples failed plans
Salisbury
elizabethan warwick
later Stuart London
limited overall success of poor support
webb slack figures- even by 1700 only capacity support 4% pop
slack- poor rates were too small and the number of the poor too large
