Poverty and Vagrancy in Tudor England by John F. Pound

Author:John F. Pound [Pound, John F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Renaissance
ISBN: 9781317880738
Google: fM0FBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-07-15T01:23:39+00:00

The Acts of 1598 and 1601

Arguments notwithstanding, positive action was taken by the government over the whole issue of poverty and vagrancy. The first of a series of statutes was designed to deal with the ‘professional poor’, the rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars. Vagabondage was again carefully defined, and it was ordered that any persons thus designated were to be arrested, whipped until bloody, and then returned by the most direct route to their place of origin. If they delayed on the way they were to be whipped again. On reaching their home parish they were to be placed in service if able-bodied, or lodged in almshouses if deemed incapacitated in any way. If necessary, incorrigible rogues were to be committed to gaol or a house of correction, and the Act authorised justices of the peace to erect such places in every county and city in the kingdom. If treatment of this sort proved insufficient to deter the rogue element, provision was made for them to be banished from the realm or committed perpetually to the galleys. Any that returned from such banishment left themselves open to execution as felons (18, p. 95).

The evils of enclosure were again recited, and provision made for the restoration of any ‘houses of husbandry’ with twenty acres or more of land that had been allowed to decay or waste since the beginning of the reign. A companion Act ‘for the maintenance of husbandry and tillage’ ordered that all grazing lands which had been arable for a period of twelve years continuously prior to 1558 should be restored to tillage; similarly any land that had been used for grazing purposes for the past twelve years was to be maintained in that condition.

Ideally, this ‘freezing’ of the agricultural situation as it was at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign should have been beneficial to the poor. Protection from the evils of enclosure, assuming that such evils did in fact still exist, coupled with effective legislation can only have been beneficial to the increasing number of rural wage-earners, but in reality such a scheme was a non-starter from the outset. It was passed ‘by men against whose own self-interest its prescription ran, surely with full knowledge that it was unenforceable’, and in such circumstances its effect must have been minimal (18, pp. 95–6).

Of far greater importance, and central to the whole problem at issue, was the statute entitled ‘An Act for the relief of the poor’. In itself it contained little in the way of innovation, and little that was really sweeping or bold. But it did gather together the experience of a century of trial and error, a century in which men's opinions had become progressively more humane and their minds receptive to the arguments of the politicians, whether those arguments stemmed from a cold appraisal of the facts or from a genuine desire to improve the lot of those whose sufferings were greatest. Any scheme, local or national, placed heavy reliance on the executive power, and

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