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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

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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.

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

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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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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

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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.