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Local responses to the poor in late medieval and Tudor England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Marjorie K. McIntosh
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Continuity and Change , Volume 3 , Special Issue 2: SPECIAL ISSUE: CHARITY AND THE POOR IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE EUROPE , August 1988 , pp. 209 - 245
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

ENDNOTES

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5 Page, F. M., ‘The customary poor law of three Cambridgeshire manors’, Cambridge Historical Journal 3 (1930) 125–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, Elaine, ‘Some aspects of social security in medieval England’, Journal of Family History 7 (1982) 307–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘The custody of children in English manor courts’, Law and History Review 3 (1985) 333–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For late medieval charity from the donors' perspective, see Thomson, J. A. F., ‘Piety and charity in late medieval London’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 16 (1965) 178–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fleming, P. W., ‘Charity, faith, and the gentry of Kent, 1422–1529’, in Pollard, Tony, ed., Properly and politics (London, 1984) 36–58Google Scholar; and Rubin, Miri, Charily and community in medieval Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Emmison, F. G., ‘Poor-relief accounts of two rural parishes in Bedfordshire, 1565–1598’, Economic History Review 3 (1931) 102–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘The care of the poor in Elizabethan Essex’, Essex Review 62 (1953) 7–28.Google Scholar

7 12 Richard II, c. 7. The provisions of the 1388 act are considered below. Caroline Barron has kindly informed me that London had already defined the problem of poverty and attempted to find solutions before 1388: civic legislation passed in 1366 drew a distinction between the impotent poor and sturdy beggars.

8 39–40 Elizabeth I, cc. 3–5.

9 These categories are described in the B- and C-texts of William Langland's Piers Plowman: see Shepherd, Geoffrey, ‘Poverty in Piers Plowman’, in Aston, T. H. et al. , eds., Social relations and ideas: essays in honour of R. H. Hilton (Cambridge, 1983) 169–90.Google Scholar

10 Vagrancy legislation is discussed below; Pound, Poverty and vagrancy; Beier, A. L., ‘Vagrants and the social order in Elizabethan England’, Past and Present 64 (1974) 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Slack, Paul, ‘Vagrants and vagrancy in England, 1598–1664’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 27 (1974) 360–79.Google Scholar

11 See, e.g., Tawney, R. H., The agarian problem in the sixteenth century (London, 1912)Google Scholar; Tawney, , Religion and the rise of capitalism (London, 1927)Google Scholar; Knowles, D., The religious orders in England, 3 vols., (Cambridge, 1959), esp. 3Google Scholar; Jordan, W. K., Philanthropy in England, 1480–1660 (London, 1959)Google Scholar; and Thomson, , ‘Piety and charity’, 178–95.Google Scholar

12 One of the best examples is the town of Hadleigh, Suffolk, described by Foxe as ‘a university of the learned’ for its knowledge of true Protestant doctrine even in Henry VIII's reign, a leading Puritan pulpit and congregation throughout the Elizabethan years, and the home of probably the most fully developed system of poor relief and coercion found in the sixteenth century apart from the largest urban centres. See Jones, W. A. B., Hadleigh through the Ages (Ipswich, 1977), chs. 3–4Google Scholar, and the fine records preserved in the Hadleigh Urban District's strongroom, kindly made available to the author by the District Council and its archivist, Mr Jones.

13 Examples of strong responses to poverty in communities with a variety of powerful pre-Reformation institutions are Sudbury, Suffolk and Louth, Lines., with town structures; Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire and Clare, Suffolk, with manor courts; and Wisbech, Isle of Ely and Saffron Walden, Essex, with fraternities. Continuity of function is particularly visible when the pre-Reformation fraternity became the town government of the 1540s or 1550s, as in Wisbech, Saffron Walden, and Bury St Edmunds.

14 The Parliamentary response is discussed below.

15 Smith, R. M., ‘Some reflections on the evidence for the origins of the “European marriage pattern” in England’, in Harris, Christopher C., ed., The sociology of the family: new directions for Britain (Keele, 1979), 74–112Google Scholar; Hatcher, John, Plague, population and the English economy, 1348–1530 (London, 1977), chs. 2–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dyer, Christopher, Lords and peasants in a changing society: the estates of the Bishopric of Worcester, 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), ch. 9.Google Scholar

16 Clark, ‘Some aspects of social security’. Maintenance agreements appear to have been less frequent after 1349 than in the first half of the fourteenth century, owing to the relative abundance of land.

17 Page ‘Customary poor-law’, and Clark, ‘Custody of children’.

18 Heal, Felicity, ‘The archbishops of Canterbury and the practice of hospitality’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33 (1982) 544–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘The idea of hospitality in early modern England’, Past and Present 102 (1984) 66–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 The prohibition of begging is discussed below.

20 For clerical almsgiving, see Tierney, , Medieval poor law, 106–9Google Scholar; 15 Richard II, c. 6.

21 12 Richard II, c. 7.

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23 Smith, Toulmin and Smith, L. T., eds., English Gilds E.E.T.S., 40, (London, 1870)Google Scholar; Westlake, H. F., The parish gilds of medieval England (London, 1919)Google Scholar; Scarisbrick, J. J., The Reformation and the English people (Oxford, 1984), ch. 2Google Scholar; Hanawalt, Barbara A., ‘Keepers of the lights: late medieval English parish gilds’, in Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (1984) 21–37Google Scholar; Brigden, Susan, ‘Religion and social obligation in early sixteenth-century London’, Past and Present 103 (1984) 67–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosser, A. G., ‘Medieval Westminster: the vill and urban community, 1200–1540’, (University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1984) esp. ch. 7Google Scholar; and Barron, Caroline M., ‘The parish fraternities of medieval London’, in Barron, C. M. and Harper-Bill, C., eds., The Church in pre-Reformation society: essays in honour of F. R. H. DuBoulay (Suffolk, 1985) 13–37.Google Scholar

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26 A guild might invite a few poor men to participate in the fraternity's feast or give out pennies or grain on the patron saint's day or at the burial of members (Westlake, Parish gilds, Appendix).

27 In addition to the returns used by Westlake and shown in Table 1, the Public Record Office in London has since 1970 discovered nine other returns among its own records; Caroline Barron has recently identified four more stray returns at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

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32 12 Richard II, cc. 7, 3, and 9.

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44 Material on this region was generously furnished to the author by A. J. Pollard of Teesside Polytechnic, Cleveland, on the basis of his own research for a study of the economy and politics of the North east in the fifteenth century.

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46 E.g., Howell, , Land, family and inheritance, Fig. 16 and Table 28Google Scholar; Ballon Priory, Table 3Google Scholar; McIntosh, , Autonomy and community, ch. 6Google Scholar; and Butcher, A. F., ‘The origins of Romney Freemen, 1433–1523’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 27 (1974) 16–27.Google Scholar

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48 In Havering, Essex, for example, the number of people described as servants in my composite listing derived from all local records was six times higher in the 1470s than in 1430–60, despite only a limited increase in total population. (By 1562, servants constituted about 20% of the estimated population of Romford parish: McIntosh, M. K., ‘Servants and the household unit in an Elizabethan English community’, Journal of Family History 9 [1984] 3–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.) The records of other communities show increases in the number of servants too. It is of course possible that some of this apparent change resulted from more precise terminology on the part of clerks.

49 Phythian-Adams, Charles, Desolation of a city: Coventry and the urban crisis of the late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979) ch. 20Google Scholar; McIntosh, , ‘Servants and the household unit’Google Scholar; and Ann, Kussmaul, Servants in husbandry in early modern England (Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar

50 A statute of 1495 confirmed the 1388 requirement that an impotent poor person might beg only in his own community (11 Henry VII, c. 2). A revision of this act in 1503–4 offered a tighter definition of a person's ‘home community’: beggars were to return to the ‘city, town or hundred where they were born, or else to the place where they last made their abode the space of three years’ (19 Henry VII, c. 12). The three-year rule was to determine eligibility for local support in all subsequent legislation until 1598.

51 E.g., Suffolk Record Office, Bury, FL 509/1/15, fos 19r–26v (Long Melford), Lincolnshire Archives Office, Louth, St James parish, 7/2, fos 22r–33v, and see Scarisbrick, , Reformation and the English people, chs. 1–3.Google Scholar

52 Kreider, Alan, English chantries: the road to dissolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979)Google Scholar, and see, e.g., Kitching, C. J., ed., London and Middlesex chantry certificates, (London Record Society, 1980)Google Scholar; Brown, J. E., Chantry certificates for Hertfordshire (Hertford, c. 1909)Google Scholar; Hussey, Arthur, ed., Kent chantries (Kent Archaeological Society 12 1936)Google Scholar; and Hussey, Arthur, ed., Kent obit and lamp rents (Kent Archaeological Society 14 1936).Google Scholar

53 In the 1540s, 64 parishes in London and Middlesex reported an annual income of£1980, of which£70, or 4 per cent, was given to the poor. Eighteen fraternities and chantries, with an income of£1050, gave£73 (7 per cent) to the poor (London and Middlesex chantry certificates, passim).

54 Tierney, , Medieval poor law, 128.Google Scholar

55 Thus, in Norwich 10–13 fraternities were in existence at any one time between 1370 and 1470, a number which had risen to 21 between 1510 and 1532 (Tanner, Norman P., The Church in late medieval Norwich, 1370–1532 [Toronto, 1984] 74Google Scholar). The gradual abandonment of a belief in Purgatory during the 1530s and 1540s together with fear of royal confiscation undermined the position of the fraternities. Of testators whose wills were proved in the commissary court of London, for example, 23.6 per cent left bequests to fraternities between 1522 and 1539 whereas only 8.5 per cent did so between 1539 and 1547 (Brigden, , ‘Religion and social obligation’, 101, note 191).Google Scholar

56 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Misc. Don. 169, fo. 7. The guild had an annual income of£324 in 1548: Foster, C. W., ‘The chantry certificates for Lincoln and Lincolnshire returned in 1548’, Associated Architectural Society Reports and Papers 36 (1921–1922), and 37 (1923–1925).Google Scholar

57 See Table 3 below. In 1548, the fraternity of Salve Regina in the London parish of St Magnus, whose members were of modest economic station, was providing lifetime support to one blind brother and three poverty-stricken sisters as well as temporary support to a sister during her illness and a brother then imprisoned in Ludgate (Bridgen, , ‘Religion and social obligation’, 99Google Scholar). The Confraternity of St George in Norwich, with about 200 prosperous members, gave annual support in 1533 to three fellows who had fallen into poverty, at the rate of 6d./week; one of these, an elderly man, had received similar aid for the past three years (Tanner, Church in late medieval Norwich, 80).Google Scholar

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60 Legislation concerning games was tightened in 1477–8 and 1495 (17 Edward IV, c. 3, and 11 Henry VII, c. 2). The latter act also introduced licensing of alehouses and ordered that vagrants be placed in the stocks before being sent out of the community, measures which did provide some practical assistance to local leaders. The only early Tudor royal proclamation dealing with the poor, from 1487, concerned the punishment of vagabonds, Hughes, P. L. and Larkin, J. F., eds., Tudor royal proclamations (New Haven, Connecticut, 1964) 17Google Scholar. These measures came after several decades of local activity on the issues they addressed.

61 Hearnshaw, F. J. C., Leet jurisdiction in England (Southampton Record Society, 1908)Google Scholar; and Morris, W. A., The Frankpledge system (New York, 1910).Google Scholar

62 The new role of the leets is discussed more fully in McIntosh, , ‘Local change and community control’Google Scholar. For bye-laws, see Searle, , Lordship and community, 415–17Google Scholar; Guth, DeLloyd J., ‘Borough law and leets: the contribution to representative government’, unpublished paper read at the Medieval Conference, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 05, 1980Google Scholar; Dyer, , Lords and peasants, 358–9 and 368–9Google Scholar; and McIntosh, , Autonomy and community, 250–2Google Scholar. For punishments, see, e.g., Essex Record Office, D/DBy M10, mm. 8 and 12 (Saffron Walden)Google Scholar; Searle, , Lordship and community, 409–14Google Scholar; McIntosh, , Autonomy and community, 250Google Scholar; Guildhall Library, London MS 10312, Roll 182 (Bishop's Stortford)Google Scholar; Mattingly, Joanna (doctoral student, University of London), ‘Statutory law and criminal activity in the Middle Thames Valley under the early Tudors’, unpublished seminar paper read at the Institute of Historical Research, LondonGoogle Scholar; and Dyer, , Lords and peasants, 359.Google Scholar

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64 E.g., Essex Record Office, D/DBy M9–10 (Saffron Walden); Public Record Office, SC 2/203/72 (Clare, Suffolk); Mattingly, , ‘Statutory law and criminal activity’ (the hundreds of Isleworth, Middlesex, and Cookham and Bray, Berkshire)Google Scholar; Searle, , Lordship and community, 415Google Scholar; and Dyer, , Lords and peasants, 358–9Google Scholar. The laws are 12 Richard II, c. 6, and 11 Henry IV, c. 4.

65 E.g., Public Record Office, SC 2/203/72 (Clare, Suffolk); McIntosh, , Autonomy and community, 255–61Google Scholar; Pembroke College, Cambridge, Framlingham MSS, manor court roll G; Essex Record Office D/DBy M10 (Saffron Walden); Searle, , Lordship and community, 409–15Google Scholar; and Mattingly, , ‘Statutory law and criminal activity’ (Cookham and Bray hundreds, Berkshire).Google Scholar

66 Similar concerns were seen during the period of intense population pressure in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; many of them reappeared during the later Elizabethan years. This topic is considered more fully in McIntosh, ‘Local change and community control’.

67 Although it is possible that other courts now began to deal with these issues, there is no sign of their appearance in surviving church court records; we know too little about the actual jurisdiction of the Justices of the Peace in this period to reach any conclusions about their role.

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70 The yield of private benefactions for poor relief mentioned in wills in Jordan's ten counties between 1551 and 1560 was 4.5 times higher than in the 1510s and 1520s and 1.8 times higher than in the 1530s and 1540s; the total cumulative yield of private institutions founded since 1480 was more than a third higher in the 1550s than in the 1540s at contemporary prices. Hadwin, J. F., ‘Deflating philanthropy’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 31 (1978) 105–17, esp. Table 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. When corrected for inflation, the cumulative yield in the 1550s was no higher than in the preceding two decades, but this reckoning does not take into account the inflating value and hence higher yield of assets given in earlier bequests. For charity and the calculation of its worth, see Jordan, , Philanthropy in England and the companion volumes dealing with individual countiesGoogle Scholar, Bittle, W. G. and Lane, R. T., ‘Inflation and philanthropy in England: a re-assessment of W. K. Jordan's data’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 29 (1976) 203–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wilson, Charles, ‘Poverty and philanthropy in early modern England’, in Aspects of poverty, 253–79.Google Scholar

71 For towns, see, e.g., Hadleigh, Suffolk (Jones, , Hadleigh through the ages, 31Google Scholar); Bury St Edmunds (Statham, , Jankyn Smyth and the guildhall feoffees, 7Google Scholar); and Saffron Walden (Richard Lord Braybrooke, The history of Audley End [and] Saffron Walden [London, 1836] 252–3Google Scholar). For rural parishes, see Suffolk Record Office, Bury, 1871/18–20 (Icklingham); and Lincolnshire Archives Office, Addlethorpe parish, 10, for the transition from the guildhall of the 1540s to the church house of 1556.

72 Slack, , ‘Social policy’Google Scholar; and Pound, , Poverty and vagrancy, 61.Google Scholar

73 Elton, , ‘An early Tudor poor law’Google Scholar,; and Guy, J. A., The public career of Sir Thomas More (New Haven, Connecticut, 1980) 151–6Google Scholar; 22 Henry VIII, c. 12. It is interesting that no other remedial solutions appear to have been put forward by English Christian humanists, unlike the continent: cf., e.g., Davis, , ‘Poor relief, humanism, and heresy’.Google Scholar

74 27 Henry VIII, c. 25.

75 Parish accounts indicate that boxes for the poor were installed in at least some places and that sums were indeed given to them and distributed: e.g., Hertfordshire Record Office, D/P 12 18/1 (Baldock); Suffolk Record Office, Bury, EL 110/5/3; 2 Edward VI (Mildenhall), and Farmiloe, J. E. and Nixseaman, R., eds., Elizabethan churchwardens' accounts Bedfordshire Historical Records Society 33 (1953) xxx (Shillington, Bedfordshire)Google Scholar. Sums distributed occasionally to the poor by several parishes around 1550 apparently came largely from the poor men's box (Lincolnshire Archives Office, Leverton parish, 7/1, fos 47r–49r; and Hertfordshire Record Office, D/P 18/1, in or after 1548).

76 27 Henry VIII, c. 25, heading 24, a proviso written on a separate schedule annexed to the original act.

77 1 Edward VI, c. 3, item 9.

78 Ibid., items 1 and 6; and Davies, , ‘Slavery and Protector Somerset’.Google Scholar

79 3 and 4 Edward VI, c. 16. It was the act of 1531 which was reinstated, not the more enlightened measure of 1536.

80 5 and 6 Edward VI, c. 2.

81 Hadleigh, Suffolk MSS, Box 4/1 (1558), Suffolk Record Office, Bury, FL 501/7/34 (Clare, late 1552); and Emmison, ‘Care of the poor in Elizabethan Essex’, 28 (Ingatestone, Stock, and Buttsbury, 1555)Google Scholar. Most surviving collectors' accounts begin only in 1563.

82 1 Mary, st. 2, c. 13, and 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 5.

83 5 Elizabeth I, c. 3.

84 The continuing importance of the parish community (commonly expressed before 1548 through local fraternities) throughout the pre-Reformation periods is emphasised by Barren, Caroline, ‘Parish raternities of medieval London’Google Scholar; see also Scarisbrick, , Reformation and the English people.Google Scholar

85 Wrigley and Schofield, Population history of England, Table A3.1.

86 Appelby, A. B., Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Liverpool, 1978), ch. 8Google Scholar; and Slack, Paul, ‘Mortality crises and epidemic disease in England, 1485–1610’, in Webster, Charles, ed., Health, medicine and mortality in the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979) 9–59Google Scholar. For plague, see Slack, Paul, The impact of plague in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1985) especially Part II.Google Scholar

87 Figures calculated from Wrigley and Schofield, Population history of England, Table A9.2.

88 Pound's introduction to Norwich census of the poor, and Slack, , ‘Poverty and social regulation’, 231–2Google Scholar. The suggested definition of the poor, below, is Pound's.

89 Examples appear in almost all churchwardens' and collectors' accounts: e.g., Hertfordshire Record Office, D/P 5/1, 7–9 (Ashwell); D/P 65 21/1 (Buntingford); and A 1578 and 1586 (Thundridge); Bedfordshire Record Office, P 10/25/1 (Northill); Lincolnshire Archives Office, Witham on the Hill parish, 7, fos 5r–9d; and Addlethorpe parish, 10, 1550s–1580s.

90 Macfarlane, Alan, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1970), ch. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Thomas, Keith, Religion and the decline of magic (New York, 1971), chs. 16–17.Google Scholar

91 Licenses to beg are, e.g., Hertfordshire Record Office, HAT/SR 2/79, 4/20, 7/156, 8/30; and Elizabethan churchwardens' accounts (of Bedfordshire), 75–87.Google Scholar

92 McIntosh, M. K., The liberty of Havering-atte-Bower, 1500–1620 (in preparation), ch. 5.Google Scholar

93 This information was kindly provided to the author by Ian Archer, Junior Research Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge, stemming from his research on ‘Governors and governed in Elizabethan London’ for an Oxford University D.Phil, thesis.

94 Hadwin, , ‘Deflating philanthropy’, Table 2.Google Scholar

95 E.g., Suffolk Record Office, Bury, EL 159/77sol;29/1–5 (Walsham le Willows); and Hertfordshire Record Office, D/P 19/1/V, 2 (Great Berkhamstead). Some parishes continued to board such children locally until they were of age for service: Suffolk Record Office, Bury, EE 501 C141 B/1, fos 73v–74r (Sudbury), and Tem 123, fos 88, 97, and 136 (Wattisfield).

96 Hadleigh MSS, Box 4/1, 122 ff., and Box 21/27. For Linton, see Hampson, , Treatment of poverty in Cambridgeshire, 10.Google Scholar

97 Bedfordshire Record Office, P 5/12/1.

98 For legislation, see below. Aydelotte, F., Elizabethan rogues and vagabonds (Oxford, 1913)Google Scholar; Furnivall, F. J. ed., The rogues and vagabonds of Shakespeare's youth, New Shakespeare Society, 6th ser. 7 (1880)Google Scholar, and Judges, A. V. ed., The Elizabethan underworld (London, 1965).Google Scholar

99 For the three-year requirement, see note 50 above.

100 Suffolk Record Office, Bury, EE 501 C141 B/1, fo 112r, and cf. fo 120d.

101 Suffolk Record Office, Bury, C2/1, fos 3r–12r, passim.

102 Suffolk Record Office, Bury, FL 509/5/1, 1597.

103 Beier, Problem of poverty, 32.Google Scholar

104 E.g., Lincolnshire Archives Office, Leverton parish, 13/1, Bedfordshire Record Office, P 5/12/1 (Eaton Socon), P10/5/1 and P 10/12/1 (Northill), and P 44/5/2 (Shillington); Suffolk Record Office, Bury, FL 509/5/1, 1597 (Long Melford); and Hadleigh, Suffolk MSS, Box 21/7–29. Six pence remained the normal maximum payment per week through the first half of the seventeenth century (Wales, , ‘Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle’, 354).Google Scholar

105 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Leverton parish, 13/1.

106 Bedfordshire Record Office, P 10/5/1, 19–20, and P 10/12/1, p. 13.Google Scholar

107 Hadleigh MSS, Box 4/1, 62–6. For below, see Hadleigh MSS, Box 21/7 and Box 4/1, 261.

108 Bedfordshire Record Office, P 44/5/2.

109 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Leverton parish, 13/1, 1565, and the General Books and Act Books of the Archdeaconry of Norwich, in the Norfolk Record Office, c. 1563–9 (information kindly provided to the author by Ralph Houlbrooke); for J.P.s, see Bedfordshire Record Office, P 10/12/1, 1590 (Northill); P 44/5/2, 1596 (Shillington); and Hertfordshire Record Office, HAT/SR 6/39. Cf. HAT/SR 3/148, a complaint by a Clothall widow to the J.P.s in 1594 that she and her children have not been relieved by their parish as the statute dictates.

110 14 Elizabeth I, c. 5, items 16–18.

111 Ibid., item 5.

112 18 Elizabeth I, c. 3, item 4.

113 Ibid., item 5.

114 35 Elizabeth I, c. 7. It was replaced once more by the measure of 1531 which specified only whipping.

115 Slack, , ‘Poverty and social regulation’, 224.Google Scholar

116 39–40 Elizabeth I, cc. 3–5, and 43 Elizabeth I, cc. 2–3.