it in Eng of an impression which is as near as possible the CH. 1. reverse of the truth. I do not doubt that for many centuries these houses fulfilled honestly the intentions with which they were established; but as early as the reign of Richard II. it was found necessary to provide some other means for the support of the aged and impotent; the monasteries Growth of not only having then begun to neglect their duty; land. but by the appropriation of benefices having actually deprived the parishes of their local and independent means of charity.* Licences to beg were at that time granted to deserving persons; and it is noticeable that this measure was in a few years followed by the petition to Henry IV. for the secularization of ecclesiastical property.† Thus early in our history had the regular clergy forgotten the nature of their mission, and the object for which the administration of the nation's charities had been committed to them. Thus early, while their houses were the nurseries of dishonest mendicancy, they had surrendered to lay compassion, those who ought to have been their especial care. I shall unhappily have occa sion hereafter to illustrate these matters in detail. I mention them in this place only in order to dissipate at once a foolish dream. At the opening of the sixteenth century, before the suppression of the monasteries had suggested itself in a practical form, pauperism was a state question of Rich. II. 12, cap. 7, 8, 9; Rich. II. 15, cap. 6. Injunctions to the Monasteries: BURNET's Collect. pp. 77-8. Сн. CH. I. great difficulty, and as such I have at present to consider it. The sin of idleness. For the able-bodied vagrant, it is well known that the old English laws had no mercy. When wages are low, and population has outgrown the work which can be provided for it, idleness may be involuntary and innocent; at a time when all industrious men could maintain themselves in comfort and prosperity, 'when a fair day's wages for a fair day's work' was really and truly the law of the land, it was presumed that if strong capable men preferred to wander about the country, and live upon the labour of others, mendicancy was not the only crime of which they were likely to be guilty; while idleness itself was Severe acts justly looked upon as a high offence, and misdemeanour. The penalty of God's laws against a necessary idleness, as expressed in the system of nature, of hospita- was starvation; and it was held intolerable that against vagrancy correlation lity. any man should be allowed to escape a divine judgment by begging under false pretences, and robbing others of their honest earnings. In a country also the boast of which was its open-handed hospitality, it was necessary to take care that hospitality was not brought to discredit by abuse; and when every door was freely opened to a request for a meal or a night's lodging, there was an imperative duty to keep a strict eye on whatever persons were on the move. We shall therefore be prepared to find 'sturdy and valiant beggars' treated with summary justice as criminals of a high order; the right of a government so to treat them being proportioned to the facili ties with which the honestly disposed can main- CH. 1. tain themselves. impotence as giving a It might have been expected, on the other hand, that when wages were so high, and work so constant, labourers would have been left to themselves to make provision against sickness and old age. To modern ways of thinking on these subjects, there would have seemed no hardship in so leaving them; and their sufferings, if they had suffered, would have appeared but as a deserved retribution. This, however, was not the temper of earlier times. Charity has ever been the Age and especial virtue of Catholic States, and the aged recognised and the impotent were always held to be the legi- claim upon timate objects of it. Men who had worked hard society. while they were able to work were treated like decayed soldiers, as the discharged pensionaries of society; they were held entitled to wear out their age (under restrictions) at the expense of others; and so readily did society acquiesce in this aspect of its obligations, that on the failure of the monasteries to do their duty, it was still sufficient to leave such persons to voluntary liberality, and legislation had to interfere only to direct such liberality into its legitimate channels. In the 23rd of Edw. III. cap. 7, a prohibition was issued against giving alms to valiant beggars,' and this proving inadequate, and charity being still given indiscriminately, in the twelfth year of Richard II. the system of licences was introduced, and a pair of stocks was erected by order in every town or village, to 'justify' persons begging The justifiunpermitted. The monasteries growing more valiant cation of beggars.' Acts of CH. I. and more careless, the number of paupers continued to multiply, and this method received successive expansions, till at length, when the Reformation was concluded, it terminated, after many changes of form, in the famous Act of Elizabeth. We can thus trace our poor law in the whole course of its growth, and into two stages through which it passed I must enter with some minuteness. The 12th of the 22nd of Henry VIII., and the 25th of the 27th, are so remarkable in their tone, and so rich in their detail, as to furnish a complete exposition of English thought at that time upon the subject; while the second of these two acts, and probably the first also, has a further interest for us, as being the composition of Henry himself, and the most finished which he has left to us.* Hen. VIII. Act of 1531. crease of vagrancy. 'Whereas,' says the former of these two Acts, of the in- in all places throughout this realm of England, vagabonds and beggars have of long time increased, and daily do increase in great and excessive numbers, by the occasion of idleness, mother and root of all vices; whereby hath insurged and sprung, and daily insurgeth and springeth, continual thefts, murders, and other heinous offences and great enormities, to the high displeasure of God, the inquietation and damage of the king's people, and to the marvellous disturbance of the common weal of this realm; and whereas, strait statutes and ordinances have been before *Letter of Thomas Dorset to the Mayor of Plymouth: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 36. the peace search in tricts for very and of the de this time devised and made, as well by the king CH. 1. our sovereign lord, as also by divers his most noble progenitors, kings of England, for the most necessary and due reformation of the premises; yet that notwithstanding, the said number of vagabonds and beggars be not seen in any part to be diminished, but rather daily augmented and increased into great routs or companies, as evidently and manifestly it doth and may appear: Be it therefore enacted by the king our sove- Justices of reign lord, and by the Lords Spiritual and shall make Temporal, and the Commons, in this present all parishes parliament assembled, that the justices of the and dispeace of all and singular the shires of England the discowithin the limits of their commission, and all classifying other justices of the peace, mayors, sheriffs, serving bailiffs, and other officers of every city, borough, poor. or franchise, shall from time to time, as often as Licences to need shall require, make diligent search and granted to inquiry of all aged, poor, and impotent persons, which live, or of necessity be compelled to live by alms of the charity of the people; and such search made, the said officers, every of them within the limits of their authorities, shall have power, at their discretions, to enable to beg within such limits as they shall appoint, such of the said impotent persons as they shall think convenient; and to give in commandment to every such impotent beggar (by them enabled) that none of them shall beg without the limits so appointed to them. And further, they shall deliver to every such person so enabled a letter containing the name of that person, witnessing that he is beg shall be them. |