[560] A declaration of the Lord of the Caribee Islands touching servants who had served their time and could not get land. _King's Pamphlets_, British Museum, 669 f. 11, f. 106.
In the midst of all the abuse heaped upon the vagrant in his own time and in our own, it is interesting to remember that he sometimes did something useful when he got the chance. Even in the days of the Stuarts he and his descendants played a part in developing the British Empire and in founding the settlements which led to the existence of the United States.
[Sidenote: 7 _f_. Pressures on employers.]
But work was also provided for the unemployed by means of pressure exercised on employers. We have already seen how both in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Privy Council endeavoured to compel cloth manufacturers to continue to carry on their trade, and how cloth merchants were called before the justices and judges and ordered not to dismiss their men[561]. Another instance of the same kind of interference occurred soon after the outbreak of the Civil War. After Bristol was captured by the Royalists, Prince Rupert endeavoured to relieve the distress of the time by ordering the clothiers to keep their workpeople employed for one month at least[562].
[561] See above, pp. 85, 147 seq., p. 153.
[562] Seyer's _Memoirs of Bristol_, Vol. II., p. 420. 1643.
In another case we can see the justices exercising pressure on particular individuals not because of a fluctuation of trade, but in order to carry out the ordinary provisions of the poor law. Hitchen was the centre of an agricultural district, there was no manufacture in which men could be employed: wages were very low and many were out of work. The justices therefore ordered the "richer sort" to give employment, but they thereby only occasioned complaints, for in this part of the country there seems to have been a permanent difficulty in finding work for the poor[563].
[563] _Dom. State Papers_, Chas. I., Vol. 385, No. 43.
At other times municipal rulers exerted their influence in favour of the inhabitants of a particular town. Thus in 1623 at Reading certain poor complained; the clothiers were warned to appear and thirty of them came to the Guildhall. It was arranged that two clothiers should be appointed to consult with the overseers and see that the poor were set to work. However the complaints still continued, and both at this time and in 1630 the difficulty was met by ordering the clothiers to have all their work done in the town and not to send it into the country. The distress at Reading was thus lessened at the expense of the surrounding district[564].