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“An Echo of the Multitude”: The Intersection of Governmental and Private Poverty Initiatives in Early Modern Exeter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2017

Connie S. Evans
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Extract

On June 15, 1624, Dr. Robert Vilvane informed the mayor of Exeter by letter of his displeasure with the haphazard application of poor rates in the city. Vilvane, who owned property within the city and in the surrounding countryside, was protesting the high rates imposed on his modest holdings in the city, since he was already subject to what he felt were excessive assessments on his country properties. Vilvane pointed out that he had taken it upon himself to support the purchase of armor and powder for martial officers, along with voluntary contributions to the poor, to churches, and to “sundry other taxes.” Despite a debt to the city in the amount of £500 (on which he paid interest), he did “freely give 12d weekly to two poor families here, which else would fall into penury.” Having recounted all this, he considered that “there is little cause to hoist me so high to all payments, who (besides my house) have little here [in the city].” At the crux of his argument, he asserted, was “that a Rate to the Poor is no competent Rule…both because it is uncertain…and also unequal, because some are set up too high, and others too low, by fear or favour.” Vilvane had contributed to a certain collection for the poor in a particular part of the city and noted that “many murmur at this day” about the collection, since it appeared that the overseers “did not disburse above half the Contribution.” As an unwilling party to this scheme, the doctor was upset, as he felt others were: “[I] do profess myself in this but an Echo of the Multitude, which are much aggrieved.”

Type
Symposium: The Study of the Early Modern Poor and Poverty Relief
Information
Albion , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , Fall 2000 , pp. 408 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 2000

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References

1 Moore, Stuart, ed., A Calendar of the Records and Muniments belonging to the Corporation of the City of Exeter preserved in the record room of the Guildhall, 3 vols. (Exeter, 1870), 1: 158Google Scholar, letter 270.

2 The Report of the Commissioners Concerning Charities (Exeter, 1825), pp. 14–90.

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9 Other useful studies include: Slack, Paul, “Poverty and Politics in Salisbury 1597-1666,” in Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500-1700, eds. Clark, Peter and Slack, Paul (Toronto, 1972)Google Scholar; Hampson, E. M., The Treatment of Poverty in Cambridgeshire 1597-1834 (Cambridge, 1934)Google Scholar; Em-mison, F. G., “Poor Relief Accounts of Two Rural Parishes in Bedfordshire, 1563-1598,” Economic History Review 3, 1 (1931)Google Scholar; Underdown, David, Fire From Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, 1992)Google Scholar; Wales, Tim, “Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenth-century Norfolk,” in Land, Kinship and Life Cycle, ed. Smith, Richard M. (Cambridge, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tronrud, Thorold J., “Dispelling the Gloom. The Extent of Poverty in Tudor and Early Stuart Towns: Some Kentish Evidence,” Canadian Journal of History 20, 1 (April, 1985)Google Scholar; Wrightson, Keith, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525-1700 (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; Pound, John F., “An Elizabethan Census of the Poor” University of Birmingham Historical Journal 8 (1962)Google Scholar.

10 Act Book 4: fol. 22.

11 ibid., fol. 25

12 Book of the Accounts of the Poor, Book 157, (Devon Record Office, Exeter), fols. 33-41; Mac-Caffrey, Exeter, 1540-1640, pp. 112-13.

13 Stephens, W. B., Seventeenth-Century Exeter (Exeter, 1958), p. xviiiGoogle Scholar.

14 Ibid., pp. ix, 87-122.

15 MacCaffrey, , Exeter, 1540-1640, p. 11Google Scholar; Hoskins, W. G., Exeter in the Seventeenth Century: Tax and Rate Assessments 1602-1699 (Torquay, 1957)Google Scholar, passim.

16 Beef worth £5 was given to the poor in 1588, 1591, 1594, 1596, and 1597, while bread for the poor was bought in 1589. Act Book 5: fols. 27, 124, 206, 273, 301, 310, 343, 373, 407.

17 Act Book 3: fol. 457.

18 Act Book 5: fols. 88, 109.

19 ibid., fols. 183, 326, 353.

20 Ibid., fols. 423, 434; Exeter was clearly feeling the effects of a general subsistence crisis that had overtaken the country in the 1590s, a crisis precipitated by significant inflation and a drop in real wages. The central government responded to the overwhelming demand for aid with the promulgation of new statutes on poor relief, culminating in the great Elizabethan poor law statutes of 1598 and 1601.

21 Act Book 6: fols. 126, 133.

22 Ibid., fols. 152, 209; Act Book 7: fol. 32.

23 Act Book 6: fols. 387, 388, 431; Act Book 7: fol. 524a.

24 Act Book 7: fol. 538.

25 Ibid., fol. 628.

26 Ibid., fol. 113; Hoskins, , Exeter in the Seventeenth Century; Rowe, Margery M., ed., Tudor Exeter: Tax Assessments 1489-1595 including the Military Survey 1522 (Torquay, 1977)Google Scholar.

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29 For each decade, a mean average was established from real-wage index figures; this mean average was divided into the mean averages (times 100) for each of the succeeding decades, producing a percentage or “deflator,” which could then be applied to charitable sums given during the decade or period in question. The mean average of 619 was established for the first decade of the study, and it was this average that was used as a constant in establishing the deflators for subsequent decades. In order to include all the years of Elizabeth’s reign, figures from November, 1558 through December, 1559 were added to the totals for the next decade.

30 Sources for wills: Probate records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1558-1630, Public Record Office, London; Miss Olive Moger, ed., Copies of Transcripts and Extracts from Wills and Other Records collected by Miss Olive Moger circa 1921 to ¡941, West Country Studies Library, Exeter [hereafter cited as OMC]. A separate series, edited by Sir Oswyn Murray, in 38 volumes, lacks any other publication data, but is located in the West Country Studies Library, Exeter [hereafter cited as Murray]. In both the Moger and Murray collections, there is no pagination, so only volume numbers are cited.

31 Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, pp. 403-08.

32 PRO, PCC Probate 11/56, quire 43, fol. 339.

33 PRO, PCC Probate 11/91, quire 23, fols. 176-77.

34 PRO, PCC Probate 11/70, quire 21, fols. 162-64.

35 PRO, PCC Probate 11/52, quire 16, fol. 118.

36 PRO, PCC Probate 11/69, quire 62, fol. 483.

37 Harte, Walter J., Gleanings from the Common Place Book of John Hooker, relating to the City of Exeter (1485-1590) (Exeter, 1926), p. 27Google Scholar. Izacke, Samuel, An Account of the Legacies left to the poor of the City of Exeter (1736; re-published with remarks by William Carwithen, Exeter, 1820), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

38 OMC, 16/22, proved 10 October 1562.

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40 Izacke, S., Account of the Legacies, pp. 31–33; Report of the Commissioners Concerning Charities, pp. 174–79Google Scholar; Izacke, R., Remarkable Antiquities, p. 190Google Scholar; Moore, , Calendar of the Records and Muniments, 1: 419Google Scholar, doc. 350a.

41 Description of the Various Charities in Exeter, Book 149 (Devon Record Office, Exeter), fols. 79-92; Jenkins, , Civil and Ecclesiastical History, pp. 407–08Google Scholar; Harte, , Gleanings of Hooker, p. 28Google Scholar; Izacke, S., Account of the Legacies, pp. 88–90Google Scholar; Hoker, Vowell alias, Description of the Citie of Excester, 3: 726; Report of the Commissioners Concerning Charities, p. 225Google Scholar.

42 Book 149, fols. 31-34; Izacke, S., Account of the Legacies, p. 24Google Scholar; Hoker, Vowell alias, Description of the Citie of Excester, 3: 732Google Scholar.

43 Book Relating to the Administration of Blundell’s Charity 1601-1690, Book 146 (Devon Record Office, Exeter), will: fols. 1-21; Report of the Commissioners Concerning Charities, pp. 170-74; Jenkins, , Civil and Ecclesiastical History, pp. 410–11Google Scholar; Izacke, S., Account of the Legacies, pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Hoker, Vowell alias, Description of the Citie of Excester, 3: 862Google Scholar; Prince, John, Danmonii Orientales Illustres or the Worthies of Devon (London, 1810), pp. 89–91Google Scholar.

44 For sources, see note 41, above.

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46 Harte, , Gleanings of Hooker, p. 28Google Scholar; Izacke, S., Account of the Legacies, pp. 46, 72Google Scholar.

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48 Moore, , Calendar of the Records and Muniments, 1: 503–05Google Scholar, doc. 561.

49 Ibid., 1: 505-07, doc. 562.

50 MacCaffrey, Exeter, 1540-1640, p. 62 n. 13.

51 Act Books of the City of Exeter, Vols. 2-8: 1508-1640 (Devon Record Office, Exeter), 3: fols. 429, 307; 4: fols. 490, 547, 550, 424.

52 Act Book 5: fol. 433.

53 Ibid., fols. 113, 120, 134, 144, 148, 150-51, 408, 455; Act Book 6: fols. 61, 105, 378; Act Book 8: fols. 335, 443.

54 Act Book 5: fols. 452, 53.

55 Act Book 6: fols. 169, 100, 152.

56 Report of the Commissioners Concerning Charities, passim. I have not ascertained whether the Tuckfield benefaction is still in operation.

57 Luders, A., et al, eds., The Statutes of the Realm (London, 1810), p. 39, Elizabeth, I, c. 3, 896–97Google Scholar.