tudor attitudes to poverty Flashcards
increase in poverty led to…
increase in vagrancy and begging
vagrants and beggars were viewed as a problem because…
in the tudor period they were seen as potential threat to social stability and social order.
they would wander from place to place making it hard to control the population and they could spread resentment about social conditions.
if they were unemployed they had no master to control them.
vagrancy and begging was punished because…
the tudors assumed if someone was unemployed and they were a vagrant it was because they were too lazy to work.
tudors assumed there was work available.
punishments were designed as a means of social control, often vagrants were arrested and sent back to their original parish
define impotent poor
those with physical disabilities or those who are ill, old, infirm which makes them unemployed but considered poor through no fault of their own.
how should the impotent poor be dealt with?
thought to deserve to be cared for and supported by the community as they were poor through no fault of their own and weren’t thought to be a social problem.
government response towards impotent before 1530s?
to be cared for through the provision of poor relief through alms/charitable donations from wealthy parishioners and was collected through the church.
define the able bodied poor
known as undeserving poor as tudors expected them to work as they had no visual reason to be vagrants.
how should the able bodied be dealt with?
to be punished as it is assumed they were being lazy
government response to able bodied before 1530s?
law established in 1495 where able bodied were to be put in the stocks for 3 days, whipped then taken to their parish of origin where they were punished and controlled.
