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THE DEVELOPMENT OF POOR RELIEF IN LANCASHIRE, c. 1598–1680*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2010

JONATHAN HEALEY
JONATHAN HEALEY*
Affiliation:
St Hilda's College, Oxford
*
St Hilda's College, Cowley Place, Oxford, OX4 1DYjonathan.healey@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

The development of the poor law has formed a key element of recent discussions of ‘state formation’ in early modern England. There are, however, still few local studies of how formal poor relief, stipulated in the great Tudor statutes, was implemented on the ground. This article offers such a study, focusing on Lancashire, an economically marginal county, far from Westminster. It argues that the poor law developed in Lancashire surprisingly quickly in the early seventeenth century, despite the fact that there is almost no evidence of implementation of statutory relief before 1598, and formal relief mechanisms were essentially in place before the Civil War even if the numbers on relief remained small. After a brief hiatus during the conflict, the poor law was quickly revived in the 1650s. The role of the magistracy is emphasized as a crucial driving force, not just in the enforcement of the statutes, but also in setting relief policy. The thousands of petitions to JPs by paupers, parishes, and townships that survive in the county archives suggests that magistrates were crucial players in the ‘politics of the parish’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , September 2010 , pp. 551 - 572
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

The research on which this article is based was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Studentship, an Economic History Society Tawney Fellowship, an Oppenheim Scholarship from Magdalen College, Oxford, and an Economic and Social Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship held at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure; the article has benefited from close reading by Martin Ingram and Leigh Shaw-Taylor and the anonymous reviewers for the Historical Journal.

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4 Michael J. Braddick, State formation in early modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 118.

5 Paul Slack, Poverty and policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988), pp. 170–3.

6 Hindle, State and social change, pp. 229–30; Mark Goldie, ‘The unacknowledged republic: officeholding in early modern England’, in Tim Harris, ed., The politics of the excluded, c. 1500–1850 (London, 2001), pp. 153–94.

7 On the ‘middling sort’ more generally, see: Jonathan Barry and Christopher W. Brooks, eds., The middling sort of people: culture, society and politics in England, 1550–1800 (Basingstoke, 1994); Steve Hindle, ‘The political culture of the middling sort in English rural communities, c. 1550–1700’, in Harris, ed., Politics of the excluded, pp. 125–52; Kent, Joan R., ‘The rural “middling sort” in early modern England, circa 1640–1740: some economic, political and socio-cultural characteristics’, Rural History, 10, (1999), pp. 19–54CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Henry R. French, The middle sort of people in provincial England, 1600–1750 (Oxford, 2007).

8 Hindle, State and social change, ch. 10.

9 Ibid., p. 12.

10 The term was, it seems, rare until the later seventeenth century, but it is analytically useful as an identifier for the reasonably well-off but non-gentle members of rural society, namely yeomen, better-off husbandmen and wealthier tradesmen and craftsmen: Keith Wrightson, ‘“Sorts of people” in Tudor and Stuart England’, in Barry and Brooks, eds., Middling sort of people, pp. 28–51; French, Middle sort of people, pp. 1–29.

11 Hindle, State and social change, p. 156.

12 Steve Hindle, On the parish? The micro-politics of poor relief in rural England, c. 1550–1750 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 405–28.

13 French, Middle sort of people, pp. 233–4.

14 Anthony Fletcher, Reform in the provinces: the government of Stuart England (London, 1986); but also an earlier generation of county administrative studies of which Hindle specifically mentions: Joel Hurstfield, ‘County government: Wiltshire, c. 1530–1660’, reprinted in Joel Hurstfield, Freedom, corruption and government in Elizabethan England (London, 1973), pp. 236–93; A. H. Smith, County and court: government and politics in Norfolk, 1558–1603 (Oxford, 1974); Mervyn E. James, Family, lineage and civil society: a study of society, politics and mentality in the Durham region (Oxford, 1974); Peter Clark, English provincial society from the Reformation to the Revolution: religion, politics and society in Kent, 1500–1640 (Hassocks, 1977); Diarmaid MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: politics and religion in an English county (Oxford, 1986); Mervyn E. James, Society, politics and culture: studies in early modern England (Cambridge, 1986).

15 Hindle, State and social change, p. 12.

16 Michael Dalton, The countrey justice (London, 1618), pp. 71–8.

17 For Dalton, Michael Dalton, The countrey justice (London, 1643), pp. 111–24; Michael Dalton, The country justice (London, 1697), pp. 146–73. For statute law, 39 Eliz. I, c. 3; 43 Eliz. I, c. 2.

18 Anon., An ease for overseers of the poore (Cambridge, 1601).

19 39 Eliz. I, c. 3; 43 Eliz. I, c. 2. My italics.

20 Ethel M. Hampson, The treatment of poverty in Cambridgeshire, 1597–1834 (Cambridge, 1934); E. M. Leonard, The early history of English poor relief (Cambridge, 1900); Beatrice Webb and Sidney Webb, English local government, vii: English poor law history, part one: the Old Poor Law (London, 1927); G. W. Oxley, Poor relief in England and Wales, 1601–1834 (Newton Abbot, 1974); Fletcher, Reform in the provinces, pp. 183–93; Slack, Poverty and policy; Paul Slack, The English poor law, 1531–1782 (Basingstoke, 1990); Paul Slack, From Reformation to improvement: public welfare in early modern England (Oxford, 1999); Paul Fideler, Social welfare in pre-industrial England: the Old Poor Law tradition (Basingstoke, 2005). Regional case-studies include: Beier, A. L., ‘Poor relief in Warwickshire, 1630–1660’, Past and Present, 35, (1966), pp. 77–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steve Hindle, The birthpangs of social welfare: poor relief and parish governance in seventeenth-century Warwickshire (Stratford-upon-Avon, 2000); Kent, Joan R. and King, Steven, ‘Changing patterns of poor relief in some English rural parishes, circa 1650–1750’, Rural History, 14, (2003), pp. 119–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hindle, On the parish?, pp. 229–56.

21 Christopher Haigh, Reformation and resistance in Tudor Lancashire (London, 1975), pp. 87–97; Helen M. Jewell, The north–south divide: the origins of northern consciousness in England (Manchester, 1994), pp. 119–57; see also the quotations on pp. 177–8; Braddick, State formation, pp. 352–5.

22 For rare examples of existing regional studies of early poor relief in the north, see: G. W. Oxley, ‘The permanent poor in south-west Lancashire under the Old Poor Law’, in J. R. Harris, ed., Liverpool and Merseyside: essays in the economic and social history of the port and its hinterland (London, 1969), pp. 16–24; Rushton, Peter, ‘The poor law, the parish and the community in north-east England, 1600–1800’, Northern History, 25, (1989), pp. 135–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a study of a rather different type: Fessler, Alfred, ‘The official attitude to the sick poor in seventeenth-century Lancashire’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 102, (1950), pp. 85–113Google Scholar.

23 Hindle, On the parish?, pp. 252, 296.

24 Rushton, ‘Poor law, the parish and the community’, p. 137.

25 King, Steven, ‘Locating and characterizing poor households in late-seventeenth century Bolton: sources and interpretations’, Local Population Studies, 68 (2002), p. 59Google Scholar.

26 Slack, English poor law, pp. 3–13, 51–3; Slack, Poverty and policy, pp. 113–37.

27 John F. Pound, Poverty and vagrancy in Tudor England (2nd edn, London, 1986), pp. 1–36; A. L. Beier, The problem of the poor in Tudor and early Stuart England (London, 1983); A. L. Beier, Masterless men: the vagrancy problem in England, 1560–1640 (London, 1985); Slack, Poverty and policy, pp. 2–8; Slack, Reformation to improvement, pp. 5–28; Fideler, Social welfare, pp. 37–102.

28 14 Eliz. I, c. 5; 39 Eliz. I, c. 3; 43 Eliz. I, c. 2; Slack, Poverty and policy, pp. 124–31.

29 Leonard, Early history, pp. 95–131; Slack, Poverty and policy, pp. 148–56.

30 F. A. Bailey, ed., The churchwardens' accounts of Prescot, Lancashire, 1523–1607 (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (RSLC), 104, Preston, 1953), p. 29.

31 J. A. Twemlow, ed., Liverpool town books: proceedings of assemblies, common councils, portmoot courts, &c, 1550–1862 (2 vols., Liverpool, 1918–35), ii, pp. 353–4. In Cumberland the parish of Great Salkeld was collecting money for an individual pauper in 1583: Bouch, C. M. L., ‘Poor law documents of the parish of Great Salkeld’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 2nd ser., 49 (1949), p. 142Google Scholar.

32 W. E. A. Axon, ed., The annals of Manchester: a chronological record from the earliest times to the end of 1885 (Manchester, 1886), p. 39.

33 Bailey, ed., Churchwardens' accounts of Prescot, p. 107.

34 John Harland, ed., The house and farm accounts of the Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall (4 vols., Chetham Society (CS), o.s., 35, 41, 43, 46, Manchester, 1856–8), i, p. 83. Reginald Sharpe France, who was exceptionally ready to ascribe mortality crises to disease and especially plague, makes no mention of any epidemic at Ashton this year, but as the burial register only begins in 1595 one may have evaded notice thus far: France, R. S., ‘A history of plague in Lancashire’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 90, (1940), pp. 1–175Google Scholar. The register for nearby Oldham records the presence of plague in the summer of 1593: J. Perkins, ed., The registers of St Mary's Oldham, 1558–1682 (Lancashire Parish Register Society, clvii, 2003), p. 193. There was also a serious plague in London in 1592–4, and around the same time in Staffordshire: David M. Palliser, ‘Dearth and disease in Staffordshire, 1540–1670’, in Christopher W. Chalklin and Michael A. Havinden, eds., Rural change and urban growth: essays in English regional history in honour of W. G. Hoskins (London, 1974), pp. 60–1.

35 Hindle, State and social change, p. 154.

36 James Tait, ed., Lancashire Quarter Sessions records (CS, n.s., 77, Manchester, 1917), pp. 1–68.

37 Cf. Hindle, Steve, ‘Dearth, fasting and alms: the campaign for general hospitality in late Elizabethan England’, Past and Present, 172, (2001), pp. 58–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Harland, ed., House and farm accounts, i, p. 113.

39 Ibid., i, pp. 114–15.

40 Ibid., i, pp. 128–9.

41 Andrew B. Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Liverpool, 1978), pp. 109–21. In Chester, admittedly a rather more politically advanced town than anywhere in Lancashire, a ‘general meeting’ of churchwardens and overseers was called in 1598 so as to study the new poor law, which had been brought by one of their MPs: Slack, Reformation to improvement, pp. 41–2.

42 The National Archives (TNA), SP 16/265/86, report of justices of Bolton Division, 18 Apr. 1634.

43 TNA, SP 16/395/46, report of justices of Bury Division, 12? July 1638.

44 Tait, ed., Lancashire Quarter Sessions records, passim.

45 Bailey, ed., Churchwardens' accounts of Prescot, p. 154; R. Stewart-Brown, Notes on Childwall (Liverpool, 1914), p. 89; Lancashire Record Office (LRO), DDCa/7/1/3.

46 B. W. Quintrell, ed., Proceedings of the Lancashire justices of the peace at the Sheriff's Table during Assize Week (RSLC, 138, Chester, 1981), pp. 171–7; Hindle, On the parish?, p. 253.

47 LRO, QSB/1/6/46–8.

48 TNA, SP 16/351/111, report of justices of Rochdale Division, Mar. 1637. This apparently contradicts the report from the same division in 1634 which states that ‘In the yeare one thousand six hundred twenty and eight wee caused within the said parish about an hundred and fowerscore poore to be put apprentice which were chargable to the countye by beginge, and yearely since divers more have beene bound apprentices. There hath bene everie yeare dureinge that time an annuall taxation of at least towe hundred pounds for reliefe of the impotent.’ Hindle takes this to show that rates began in 1628; however, although the document does seem to hint at this it does not explicitly state so, and thus with the later report in mind it seems most likely that 1626 forms the starting date for rated poor relief in Rochdale. TNA, SP 16/273/56, report of the justices of Rochdale parish, 18 Aug. 1634; Hindle, On the parish?, p. 253; see also: D. J. Wilkinson, ‘The justices of the peace and their work in Lancashire, 1603–1642’ (M.Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1982), p. 138.

49 TNA, SP16/330/64, report of the justices of Amounderness Hundred, 22 Aug. 1636.

50 For a comparable approach in Northumberland: Rushton, ‘Poor law, the parish and the community’, pp. 137–40.

51 Twemlow, ed., Liverpool town books, ii, pp. 751–3, cf. p. 622.

52 LRO, QSB/1/22/30.

53 G. W. Oxley, ‘The Old Poor Law in West Derby Hundred, 1601–1837’ (Ph.D. thesis, Liverpool, 1966), p. 10; Colin Rogers, The Lancashire population crisis of 1623 (Manchester, 1975).

54 TNA, SP 16/382/10, report of the justices of Furness and Cartmel Liberties, 13 Feb. 1638. On the ambiguity of the statute position on begging see Hindle, On the parish?, pp. 67–8.

55 TNA, SP 16/330/99, report of the justices of North Lonsdale, 9 Aug. 1636; Hindle, On the parish?, pp. 65–6.

56 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the manuscripts of the marquis of Lothian preserved at Blickling Hall, Norfolk (London, 1905), p. 78, ‘Orders concerning the statute for the releif of the poore agreed at Ilmynster, the 11th of April [1601?]’. In Pittington (County Durham), a parish-owned flock of sheep was used to maintain the poor until it was replaced by a rate assessment in 1624: Rushton, ‘Poor law, the parish and the community’, p. 137.

57 Rogers, Lancashire population crisis, p. 10.

58 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part iv: The manuscripts of Lord Kenyon (London, 1894) p. 28, ‘Orders by the judges of assize for the county of Lancaster, 1623’.

59 Orders and directions … (London, 1631); on the role of the privy council in the county more generally see Quintrell, B. W., ‘Government in perspective: Lancashire and the privy council, 1570–1640’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 131, (1981), pp. 35–62Google Scholar.

60 It has recently been plausibly argued that this was the case for the country as a whole: Langelüddecke, Henrik, ‘“Patchy and spasmodic”?: the response of justices of the peace to Charles I's Book of Orders’, English Historical Review, 113, (1998), pp. 1231–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 E.g. Fletcher, Reform in the provinces, p. 58; W. K. Jordan, Philanthropy in England: a study of the changing pattern of English social aspirations (London, 1959), pp. 134–5.

62 TNA, SP 16/273/56, report of the justices of Rochdale Division, 18 Aug. 1634: cf. n. 48 above.

63 TNA, SP 16/330/64, report of the justices of Amounderness Hundred, 22 Aug. 1636.

64 TNA, SP 16/397/69, report of the justices of Lonsdale Hundred, 20 Aug. 1638.

65 Tim Wales, ‘Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenth-century Norfolk’, in R. Smith, ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 355–6.

66 Cf. S. King, Poverty and welfare in England, 1700–1850: a regional perspective (Manchester, 2000), p. 197.

67 TNA, SP 16/338/7, report of the justices of Kendal Ward, 18 Apr. 1638. Hindle, On the parish?, p. 296.

68 TNA, SP 16/273/55, report of the justices of Blackburn Division, 18 Aug. 1634; SP 16/273/56, report of the justices of Rochdale Division, 18 Aug. 1634; SP 16/351/111, report of the justices of Rochdale Division, Mar. 1637; SP 16/362/115, report from an unknown parish, June 1637. The overseer in 1631 was named as one John Hamond. Two references to individuals of that name have been traced in the Lancashire records for the period, the one witnessing a will at Marsden in 1630, the other living at Crawshaw Booth in 1642. Both of these locations are in Whalley parish. Additionally, the first and third apprentices on the list were put out to members of the Towneley family of Towneley Hall, also in Whalley. LRO, DDWh/3/14, will of John Hargreaves of Thedgend, 18 Dec. 1630; DDB/57/4, Agreement, 14 July 1642.

69 TNA, SP 16/330/99, report of the justices of North Lonsdale, 9 Aug. 1636.

70 TNA, SP 16/382/10, report of the justices of Cartmel and Furness Liberties, 13 Feb. 1638.

71 TNA, SP16/397/69, report of the justices of Lonsdale Hundred, 20 Aug. 1638.

72 Langelüddecke, ‘“Patchy and spasmodic”?’, p. 1239.

73 Excluding those which were predominantly in other counties, and which were officially created after 1620.

74 Cf. Langelüddecke, ‘“Patchy and spasmodic”?’, pp. 1247–8.

75 LRO, QSB/1/114/58. There is a similar note, dated 22 May 1631, on a petition from Michaelmas that year: QSB/1/126/76.

76 LRO, QSB/1/196/17.

77 LRO, QSP/435/11.

78 LRO, QSP/206/29.

79 Oxley, ‘Old Poor Law in West Derby Hundred’, pp. 11–12.

80 Large numbers of petitions survive in the Lancashire Record Office up to the early eighteenth century, but these have not been quantified for the purposes of this study.

81 It ought to be possible, through a painstaking comparison of the surviving petitions and the Quarter Sessions order books, to get a better idea, but this is beyond the scope of this study.

82 LRO, QSO/2/18–19.

83 R. H. Tawney, Religion and the rise of capitalism: a historical study (London, 1926), pp. 218–19; Webb and Webb, English local government, vii, pp. 95–100; Margaret James, Social problems and policy during the Puritan Revolution, 1640–1660 (London, 1930), pp. 249–51; H. N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution (London, 1961), pp. 319–20; Jordan, Philanthropy in England, pp. 136–8; Christopher Hill, The century of revolution, 1603–1714 (Edinburgh, 1961), p. 153; Beier, ‘Poor relief in Warwickshire’, pp. 80–6.

84 Thomas Steel, ed., Prescot churchwardens' accounts, 1635–1663 (RSLC, 137, Stroud, 2002).

85 It is worth noting, too, that Keith Wrightson found evidence that the system of petty constables was breaking down in parts of Lancashire in the aftermath of the First Civil War: Keith Wrightson, ‘The Puritan reformation of manners, with special reference to the counties of Lancashire and Essex’ (Ph.D. Thesis, Cambridge, 1974), pp. 200–1.

86 LRO, QSB/1/270/18.

87 LRO, QSB/1/270/20.

88 LRO, QSB/1/286/18.

89 LRO, QSB/1/276/27.

90 LRO, QSB/1/292/19.

91 LRO, QSP/1/296/43.

92 Fessler, ‘Official attitude’, p. 92; LRO, QSP/12/2.

93 Cf. David Underdown, Fire from heaven: life in an English town in the seventeenth century (London, 1992), p. 209; Richard Gough, The history of Myddle, ed. David Hey (Harmondsworth, 1981), p. 60; John S. Morrill, Cheshire, 1630–1660: county government and society during the English Revolution (Oxford, 1974), pp. 92–3; Hindle, On the parish?, p. 254.

94 Braddick, State formation, p. 113.

95 Hindle, Steve, ‘Dearth and the English Revolution: the harvest crisis of 1647–50’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 61 Supplement (2008), pp. 64–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 Walter, John and Wrightson, Keith, ‘Dearth and the social order in early modern England’, Past and Present, 71, (1976), pp. 38–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 Hindle, On the parish?, pp. 416–17.

98 LRO, QSP/52/14.

99 LRO, QSB/1/90/51.

100 LRO, QSP/129/5; cf. QSP/197/15.

101 LRO, QSP/219/39.

102 LRO, QSB/1/106/90.

103 LRO, QSB/1/230/36; QSB/1/224/32.

104 Cf. Clive Holmes, ‘Drainers and fenmen: the problem of popular political consciousness in the seventeenth century’, in Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson, eds., Order and disorder in early modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 166–95.

105 LRO, QSB/1/230/54.

106 LRO, QSB/1/82/48.

107 N. J. Higham, A frontier landscape: the north-west in the middle ages (Macclesfield, 2004), pp. 215–20; William Farrer and J. Brownbill, eds., The Victoria history of the county of Lancaster (8 vols., London, 1906–14). I intend to write in more detail on this subject in the near future.

108 LRO, QSP/511/7. There is some general information about poverty in Warton in: Mourholme Local History Society, How it was: a north Lancashire parish in the seventeenth century (Carnforth, 1998), pp. 119–25.

109 LRO, QSP/515/1.

110 Quintrell, ed., Proceedings of the Lancashire justices, pp. 132–3; cf. Lynn A. Botelho, Old age and the English poor law, 1500–1700 (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 40.

111 LRO, DDKe/2/6/4, Quarter Sessions notes, 1682.

112 Haigh, Reformation and resistance, p. 54; David Underdown, Revel, riot and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 73–105.

113 E.g. Anthony Fletcher, A county community at peace and war: Sussex, 1600–1660 (London, 1975); Morrill, Cheshire; cf. Holmes, Clive, ‘The county community in Stuart historiography’, Journal of British studies, 19, (1980), pp. 54–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Winchester, Harvest of the hills.

114 Geoffrey R. Elton, England under the Tudors (3rd edn, London, 1991), p. 60.

115 Goldie, ‘The unacknowledged republic’.

116 Cf. Holmes, ‘Drainers and fenmen’; Slack, Reformation to improvement, pp. 126–49.

117 Cf. Goldie, ‘Unacknowledged republic’.

118 E.g. Kent, ‘Centre and the localities’, pp. 391–9.

119 Ibid., p. 402.

120 Stephen K. Roberts, ‘Juries and the middling sort: recruitment and performance at Devon Quarter Sessions, 1649–1670’, in J. S. Cockburn and Thomas A. Green, eds., Twelve good men and true: the criminal trial jury in England, 1200–1800 (Princeton, NJ, 1988), p. 182; Taylor, Peter, ‘Quarter Sessions in Lancashire in the middle of the eighteenth century: the court in session and its records’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 139, (1989), pp. 72–3Google Scholar; Fessler, ‘The sick poor’, pp. 93–108.

121 For an example, see: Broad, John, ‘Parish economies of welfare, 1650–1834’, Historical Journal, 42, (1999), pp. 985–1006CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.