THE STATUTE OF 1597

A new era in the history of poor relief opens with the seventeenth century, or to be more precise, with the closing years of the sixteenth. A comprehensive series of bills dealing with various aspects of poverty passed on to the statute book in 1597–8. Of these the most outstanding was the famous 39 Eliz., c. 3, which, re-enacted in very slightly modified form in 1601, formed the basis of Poor Law administration throughout the whole of the period with which we are concerned. It seems, therefore, desirable to recall the terms of the Act.

In every parish overseers—consisting of the churchwardens together with four substantial householders—were to be nominated yearly under the hand and seal of two or more local justices. Upon these unpaid overseers, or “the greater part of them”, was imposed the duty of providing, with the approval of two justices, for all those “having no means to maintain them”. Power, moreover, was accorded to the overseers to raise the requisite funds by a compulsory rate, leviable “weekly or otherwise” upon “every inhabitant and every occupier of lands in the said parish”, under pain of distraint or if need be of imprisonment.

The poor were distinguished under three heads—the able-bodied, the children, the impotent.

For the relief of the first group there was to be accumulated in each parish the already familiar stock of “flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, and other necessary ware and stuff”, upon which to set them “on work”.