duction and it was becoming an increasingly difficult thing for the young journeyman to become a master.

We must remember that six to twelve per cent. was the ordinary rate of interest at the time. The difficulty of paying so much probably prevented many poor young men from starting business. Moreover all through the Middle Ages lending money for interest was considered contrary to Christian morality, and many men still held to the old opinion. In great numbers of places therefore funds were bequeathed to what have been termed "Lending Cash Charities." Sums were lent to young men, or sometimes to older men who had lost their capital, either for no return or at what was then a low rate of interest, and the borrowers had to find security for the repayment of the original sum. Many of the City Companies are responsible for the administration of very considerable sums of this kind. The Haberdashers' Company alone possesses £2510 which ought to be lent gratis and which was bequeathed by many different donors between the years 1569 and 1638. The Mercers' Company possesses at least twenty-one gifts of this kind. One of the most considerable of these is that of Lady Campbell, who in 1642 bequeathed £1000 which was to be lent gratis on good security to eight young men of the Mercers' Company; shopkeepers of the mercery were to be preferred, and next to them silkmen1.

Not only the City Companies but also the town rulers of most provincial towns and sometimes parish authorities were trustees for such charities. At Ipswich bequests of this kind are especially numerous; they are much smaller in amount than those of London, but they are typical of the kind of charity that once existed in almost every town in which old records remain.

1 Haberdashers' Company Char. Com. Rep. x. p. 230. Mercers' Company Char. Com. Rep. vi., pp. 285, 291, 307.

Specimens.

David Appowell, 1508. £100 to be lent to two young men for seven years in consideration of four cart-loads of coal every year.

Alice Blundell, 1570. £100 to be lent to two young men who were to give 18. 1d. every week to thirteen poor folk of the parish of St Lawrence Jewry. Richard Fishborne, 1625. £1000 to be lent to five young men free of the Company £200 each for five years gratis with three good securities.

In common with twenty-three other towns, Ipswich had an interest in Sir Thomas White's will and received in its turn £100 to be lent to four poor tradesmen. Besides this no less than eleven other legacies of this sort were received before 1635. Amongst these Mrs Alice Scrivener gave £100 to be lent gratis to ten people for four years, Christopher Cock gave £100 to be lent to four clothiers for five years, and John Barrett £20 to four shoemakers without interest'. At Reading the same kind of thing was done; in 1626 Mr Ironside left £100 to be lent gratis to two clothiers and two shopkeepers, and in 1633 Richard Johnson gave £100 for four tradesmen for twelve years. At Oxford there were once many sums for such loans, but these have most of them either been lost or are used for other purposes.

In Barnstaple, Bristol, Newbury, Lichfield, Wolverhampton

1 Legacies to charitable uses in Ipswich, p. 74 seq.

Other Cash Charities of the same kind for the benefit of the inhabitants of Ipswich were as follows:

1579.

Mrs Rose Bloise £20 to four handicraftsmen for two or three years. 1583. Mr John Tye £25 to five or more persons who are inhabitants for not longer than three years without interest.

1595. Mr Thos. Goodwin £40 for four poor occupiers for two years without interest.

1608. Mrs Alice Bloise £40 to six young men, being freemen for three years.

1616. Mr Willm. Birden £20 to four poor occupiers for four years.

1616. Mr Willm. Acton £80 to four clothiers for four years.

1621.

clothiers.

Mr J. Acton added £20 to be lent in the same manner.

Mr Rich. Martin left overplus of certain revenues to be lent to

2 Char. Com. Report, 32, Pt. 1, p. 43. Ironside's Charity. Reading Records, Vol. 1., p. 170. Richard Johnson.

Other charities of the kind existed in Reading. See Barbor's and Winche's Charities Rep., 32. Pt. 1, p. 43.

3 Rep. vi., p. 397 seq.

Among the lost charities of Oxford are the following:

Jane Fulsey, 1603. £40 to be lent to four poor tradesmen for three years.

Robert Wilson, 1640. £20 to be lent in two, three or four equal portions for seven years. Ib. p. 404.

There are sixteen other lost charities of the kind either without date or of later date than 1640, and three or four other lending charities which are still wholly or partially in existence.

and Colchester1 there were similar bequests, and apparently in most towns charitable funds of this kind were in existence during the reigns of the earlier Stuarts. It was one of the ways in which the philanthropists of the time endeavoured to give employment, only in this case it was not to the vagrant, but to the householder or skilled workman. Usually these sums were given by private people and administered by the town. But at Hitchin we find something of the kind suggested as a method of poor relief. The justices in their report recount the sufferings of the poor during the plague, and say that "three poore tradesmen who were shutt up And haue lost their custome and spent their meanes haue petitioned for stock to put them into Trade againe"." The matter was not yet decided, but from the justices' language it is clear that they regarded it as quite within their power to grant relief in this manner. John Lock, tailor of London, bequeathed gifts of £5 to £10 to the apprentices of Bridewell with a similar object, and, having regard to the circumstances of the time, few charities would probably have had a better effect if they had been honestly administered.

We thus see that many different methods were employed to relieve the old, to train the young and to give work to the ablebodied. The examples we have already given afford some evidence that legal poor relief had become well established in many districts, but it was not equally well administered at all

1 See Reports of the Charity Commissioners. Among these sums at Bristol were the following:

Alderman Thorne's Gift £500 in 1532 to "succour young men that were minded to cloth making."

John Heydon, 1579. £100 for two young men trading over seas at interest of £3. 68. 8d.

Alderman Whitson, 1627. £500, £250 to five young men for seven years at interest of ten shillings, £250 to twenty tradesmen for seven years, &c. Report VIII., p. 597 seq.

Such bequests were also sometimes in the hands of parochial officials.

St Mary, Aldermary. John Kemp in 1569 gave £100 to the churchwardens that they might lend the same to ten poor occupiers without interest.

Anthony Sprott in 1607 gave £20 to the churchwardens and parishioners to be lent by them to a young occupier at 16s. a year. Rep. vi., p. 201. 2 Dom. State Papers, Chas. I., Vol. 349, No. 70.

times and in all places. We will now inquire when and how the administration of the law was improved, and the answer to this question may suggest the reason why the history of the English Poor Law is different to that of the rest of Western Europe.

CHAPTER XII.

1597-1644.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE POOR LAW AS A WHOLE.

1. Importance of the period 1597 to 1644.

(a) Because it was the period when the relief of the impotent poor became established.

(b) Because it is the only period in which many efforts were made to set the unemployed to work.

Administration of the Poor Law as a whole.

2. Negligent administration of the Poor Law in the North and extreme West.

3. The administration of the Poor Law in the rest of England varied with the action of the Privy Council.

4. Action of the Privy Council and administration between 1597 and 1605. 5. Action of the Privy Council and administration between 1605 and 1629. 6. Action of the Privy Council and administration between 1629 and 1644. (a) State of affairs in 1631.

(b) Improvement effected in 1631 and 1632.

(c) Improvement maintained between 1631 and 1640.

Provision of Work for the Unemployed.

7. The improvement effected in 1631 especially concerned the unemployed. The detailed report from Bassetlaw.

8.

9. Provision of work: (a) in the North and extreme West, (b) in the towns, (c) in the Western counties, (d) in the Eastern counties.

WE have already examined both the machinery which existed for the execution of the poor law and the different methods which were used for relieving the impotent, for training the young and for

1. Importance of the period 15971644.