Pauperism increased by the destruction of the monasteries.

be able to produce many of those luxuries which we now consider indispensable. And, notwithstanding all that is said about the rude hospitality of that age, and of the consumption of ale and beer in those remote times, it is abundantly certain, that the labouring classes consume, in our day, a very much larger portion of malt liquor than the labourers did of those golden times.

But it cannot be denied, that although a large portion of the community was benefitted by the confiscation of the monastic revenues, yet a great number of the people, who had been regularly fed and clothed by the hospitality of the monks, were left in a dependant and destitute state, so that beggars and vagabonds, who had never been accustomed to work, became a pest to the surrounding neighbourhoods. Sir F. EDEN, speaking of this latter class, says "There are at least 100,000 vagabonds, who live without any regard to the laws of man or of God; they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants, who, if they give not bread, or some kind of provision, to perhaps forty such in a day, are sure to be insulted by them but they likewise rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood. These, when food was not to be procured by begging, would plunder, and consequently, if taken, would be punished by the legislature:" hence, STRYPE, an eminent justice of the peace in Somersetshire, says— "that in that district alone, there were, in one year, 35 robbers burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 No. 3.

L

Deplorable state of society.

discharged;" and HARRISON asserts, that in this reign no less than "72,000 great and petty thieves were put to death;" and even during the reign of Elizabeth, he adds, "that rogues were trussed up apace, and that there was not one year commonly wherein three or four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the gallows, in one place and another. And in spite of these sanguinary punishments, the country, by being invested with robbers and vagabonds, who would not work, was in a state of dreadful turbulence." And the same writer observes, "there were at least 300 or 400 vagabonds in every county who lived by theft and rapine, and who sometimes met in troops to the number of sixty, and committed spoil on the inhabitants: that if all the felons of this kind were reduced to good subjection, they would form a strong army: and that the magistrates were awed by the association and threats of confederates from executing justice on the offenders."

popu

We, therefore, naturally infer, that the Reformation was beneficial to all classes,-to the industrious, commercial, and manufacturing portion of the lation, by removing the restrictions of popish seclusion, and by increasing the energies of the assiduous : to the poor, who depended on monastic benevolence for support, and even to the indolent and vicious, as it brought them under the subjection of the law, and compelled them to exert their energies for their own subsistence.

Increase of mendicancy.

CHAP. VII.

THE POOR LAWS.

Increase of pauperism caused by the dissolution of the monasteries-Various acts of parliament to endeavour to provide a remedy-The important act of 43, Elizabeth-Its enactments-Comparative state of destitution-Workhouses erected.

THE history of the poor in England, as it is impressed on the pages of the statute-book, discloses many interesting views of the state of society during the sixteenth century. Beggary and mendicancy became a more formidable evil to the industrious classes than it had been antecedent to this time. It may not unreasonably be assumed, that the greater part of the beggary which at this period inundated the country, flowed from a want of relief by the dissolution of the monasteries, a large portion of whose revenues used to be bestowed in relieving the necessities of the distressed. But there exists a strong doubt in the mind of some historians* who have written on the state of society in this period, "whether the monasteries, generally, had greatly troubled themselves with relieving the poor who did not immediately belong to their own demesnes;" but the monasteries, by an indiscriminate relief of the destitute, were, in a great measure, the cause of that destitution which

Sir F. EDEN's State of the Poor, v. I. p. 95.

Legislative attempts to prevent mendicancy.

they relieved; inasmuch, as numbers of idle, dissolute persons, are always to be found, who will never work for their own maintenance, so long as they can be relieved by the industry of others. There was much vagrant mendicancy, however, in England, long before the Reformation, and so early as the middle of the fourteenth century, the evil began to engage the attention of the legislature.

The efforts of parliament to grapple with pauperism, from the beginning of the reign of Henry IV., were renewed very soon after the restoration of a settled government, under Henry VII. In 1495, an act was passed repealing the provisions of the act of 1388, which had directed magistrates to commit vagabonds to prison, on the ground "that the king's grace anxiously desired to reduce his subjects under obedience to the laws, by softer means than by such extreme rigour as that of the existing law against vagabonds and beggars, who were now accordingly ordered to be set in the stocks."* A clause that follows, is curious, as indicating the destitute condition of students at the universities, in this period: it enacts that "no man shall be excused for begging out of his hundred, except he be a clerk of one university or other, without he show the letters of his chancellor from whence he saith he cometh."

The evils of vagrancy continued to increase, notwithstanding all the laws which were enacted to pre

Various attempts to raise money for the poor.

vent them, until at last the legislature were compelled to grapple with the danger by stringent enactments, which enforced labour on the mendicant, as an equivalent for his relief.*

But, before a compulsory rate was enacted for the relief of the poor, the legislature seems to have tried a variety of expedients, for the purpose of raising funds for them. Fines were levied for profaneness and immorality; churchwardens were empowered to levy twelve pence upon every parishioner who omitted going to church on Sunday;† half the penalty for not wearing a woollen cap on a Sunday; one-third of the fines for saying mass, and other offences against the established worship; penalties for swearing, tippling, and disorderly conduct on the Lord's day. But all

• In 1535 it was acknowledged in the preamble of a new act, "that the act passed five years before was defective, forasmuch as it was not provided in the said act how, and in what wise, the said poor people and sturdy vagabonds should be ordered at their repair and at their coming into their countries, nor how the inhabitants of every hundred should be charged for the relief of the same poor people, nor yet for the setting and keeping in work and labour of the aforesaid valiant vagabonds."—(Henry VIII. stat. 27, cap. 25.) "Idleness and vagabondry are the mother of all thefts, robberies, and all evil acts, and other mischiefs, and the multitude of people given thereto, hath always been here within this realm very great, and more in number as it may appear than in other regions; the which idleness and vagabondry all the king's highness' noble progenitors, kings of this realm, and this high court of parliament, hath often and with great travail gone about and assayed with godly acts and statutes to repress; yet until this our time it hath not had that success which hath been wished; but partly by foolish pity, and many of them which should have seen the said godly laws executed, partly by the perverse nature and long accustomed idleness of the persons given to loitering, the said godly statutes hitherto hath had small effect.”—(Edward VI. Stat. 1, Cap. 3.