[418] _Dom. State Papers_, Chas. I., Vol. 344, No. 30.
If therefore we may take these reports as specimens of rural parishes, we see that in each parish a stock existed for setting the poor to work, and that there does not seem to have been any great difficulty about the unemployed. The relief of the impotent and the apprenticing of children appear to have been carefully looked after, and the justices were prompt to notice any omission in the reports. We shall see later that there is reason to believe that these parishes were not exceptional, but that under the supervision of the justices the same kind of measures were taken in many parts of southern England.
We have already seen that the central government, the Privy Council, energetically tried to enforce the law, and that this increased energy makes the seventeenth century the important period in England for the poor law administration. We now see that in justices, judges and overseers the local government existed through which the action of the Privy Council could be made effectual. It is in this that England differed from other European countries, particularly from France and Scotland. We have drawn our information chiefly from the official records of Privy Council, justices or overseers. We have noted examples in the work of the justices and overseers in which the action of the Privy Council did have a considerable effect. We have also seen that a large body of evidence exists which will give us much information as to the methods of relief employed, and may enable us to tell how far the system was successful. We have now to see how this organisation affected the poor, and how far it was generally enforced in all parts of the country.
We will therefore cease to examine the system from the point of view of the administrative machinery, and instead consider, first, the relief which it afforded the various classes of poor, and secondly, the extent to which the organisation, whose nature we have described, was employed over the whole country.
§ 1. The methods in which the Scarcity Orders of the Privy Council were executed in 1623 and 1630-1. _a._ The suppression of alehouses and restrictions of malting. _b._ The regulations for serving the markets with corn and supplying the poor in their homes. _c._ Selling corn bought by the inhabitants to the labourers under the market price. _d._ Other special methods of providing food for the poor. § 2. Evidence as to the success or failure of the corn regulations. § 3. Reasons for their adoption. § 4. Bearing of the scarcity measures on history of poor relief. _a._ Growth of organisation. _b._ The standard of life of the poorer classes. § 5. Provision of fuel for the poor in winter. § 6. Help afforded in times of sickness or plague. § 7. Contributions to sufferers from fire. § 8. Two characteristics of seventeenth century poor relief accentuated by this emergency relief. _a._ Little distinction between paupers and non-paupers. _b._ Little distinction between relief afforded by voluntary contributions and that provided by poor rates.