[410] _Privy Council Register_, 16 Oct., 1633.
[411] _Dom. State Papers_, Chas. I., Vol. 187, No. 22.
[412] _Dom. State Papers_, Chas. I., Vol. 186, No. 16.
[413] In 1631 also a dispute about a poor rate in Marlborough was referred to the Lords of the Council and was sent by them to the Lord Chief Justice and judges of assize. _Privy Co. Reg._, 13th May, 1631.
[Sidenote: 5 _a_. The work of the overseers in 1599.]
The last authority who was responsible for the execution of the poor law was the overseer. He it was who had to do the work, the function of all the others was to make him do it. It was the duty of the overseers to know all about the poor in their parish; to fix the amount of the assessment and to levy it proportionately. They had also to provide pensions and habitations for the impotent poor, to find masters for apprentices and to procure work for the unemployed. The overseers' accounts for Staplegrove in the county of Somerset in the year 1599 will show us something of their ordinary work. Payments were made by twenty-two parishioners quarterly and by sixteen weekly, while two of the inhabitants took charge of two impotent people. Ten poor people received payment of a small sum every week on what we should now call the outdoor relief system. Besides this money had been disbursed in order to provide for a pauper's burial, to recompense tithingmen for receiving the poor strangers that were brought to them, and to purchase clothes and wood for the older poor and also outfits for apprentices[414]. In this account there is nothing about setting the poor to work, but the rest of the poor law seems to have been well executed in 1599.
[Sidenote: 5 _b_. When stirred to greater activity by scarcity measures.]
The kind of instruction given to the overseers when the justices were stirred to greater activity than usual may be gathered from a paper in the Tanner Manuscripts. It is entitled "A true copy of the charge given to the overseers of every towne the 19 of December 1623," and must refer to some particular county or some particular division. During the early part of this year the price of corn was high and the justices took many measures to provide for the poor. The sufferings of the poor in the preceding winter may be the reason that the justices were more strict in their supervision at this time. There are altogether eight orders, one of which relates to alehouses; the constables and overseers are ordered to see that the labourers and other poor are well served with bread and beer, and that they do not linger longer than is necessary for the delivery of the bread and beer. Another order shows how very inquisitorial was the character of the Government of the time: there was certainly no notion that the Englishman's house was his castle. The overseers and one of the constables were twice every week to search the houses of the labourers at night to see that all were at home, and also to look out for any articles that the people might be suspected of stealing. Several of the orders concern the keeping of the poor at work[415]. Others arrange that children, not yet old enough to be apprentices, should be taught to spin by some honest woman in the town, who was to have a penny a week for each child until it could earn something for itself. Beggars were to be punished, and provision of fuel was to be made for the poor[416]. We can see how far removed this system was from our own notions of liberty, and we can also see that if the overseers performed these orders, they had even more reason than the justices to complain of hard work. There is a great deal about the provision of work and comparatively little about pensions, so that here it seems likely that the overseers were more likely to provide for the impotent without pressure than to find work for the unemployed. During the years 1631 to 1640 we are often told that "articles" were delivered to the overseers, and this document is not improbably typical of some of them. For these are the kind of matters commented on by the justices whenever they enter into details at all[417].