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ties with which the honestly disposed can main- Cя. 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.
Complaint

crease of

'Whereas,' says the former of these two Acts, of the in- in all places throughout this realm of England, vagrancy. 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. I. 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, sheriff's, 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

VOL. I.

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G

beg shall be

them.

Punish

CH. I. authorized to beg, and the limits within which he is appointed to beg, the same letter to be sealed with the seal of the hundred, rape, wapentake, city, or borough, and subscribed with the name of one of the said justices or officers aforesaid. And if any such impotent person do beg in any other place than within such limits, then the justices of the peace, and all other the king's officers and ministers, shall by their discretions punish all such persons by imprisonment in the stocks, by the space of two days and two nights, giving them only bread and water.'

ment of persons begging be

yond the limits ap

pointed them.

Punishment of

persons

begging without licence.

Sturdy and valiant

beggars to

Further, If any such impotent person be found begging without a licence, at the discretion of the justices of the peace, he shall be stripped naked from the middle upwards, and whipped within the town in which he be found, or within some other town, as it shall seem good. Or if it be not convenient so to punish him, he shall be set in the stocks by the space of three days and three nights.'

Such were the restrictions under which impotency was allowed support. Though not in itself treated as an offence, and though its right to maintenance by society was not denied, it was not indulged, as we may see, with unnecessary encouragement. The Act then proceeds to deal with the genuine vagrant.

'And be it further enacted, that if any person or persons, being whole and mighty in body and be whipped able to labour, be taken in begging in any part of this realm; and if any man or woman, being

at the cart's tail,

whole and mighty in body, having no land, nor

master, nor using any lawful merchandry, craft, CH 1. or mystery whereby he might get his living, be vagrant, and can give none account how he doth lawfully get his living, then it shall be lawful to the constables and all other king's officers, ministers, and subjects of every town, parish, and hamlet, to arrest the said vagabonds and idle persons, and bring them to any justice of the peace of the same shire or liberty, or else to the high constable of the hundred; and the justice of the peace, high constable, or other officer, shall cause such idle person so to him brought, to be had to the next market town or other place, and there to be tied to the end of a cart, naked, and be beaten with whips throughout the same town till his body be bloody by reason of such whipping; and after such punishment of whipping had, the person so punished shall be enjoined And to rehis oath to return forthwith without delay, their pa in the next and straight way, to the place where where they he was born, or where he last dwelled before the shall be put same punishment, by the space of three years; and then put himself to labour like a true man ought to do; and after that done, every such person so punished and ordered shall have a letter, sealed with the seal of the hundred, rape, or wapentake, witnessing that he hath been punished according to this estatute, and containing the day and place of his punishment, and the place whereunto he is limited to go, and by what time he is limited to come thither: for that within that time, showing the said letter, he may lawfully beg by the way, and otherwise not; and if he do not

upon

turn to

to labour.

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