Poor law and social security in Tudor England: The role of the Justices of the Peace
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54103/2464-8914/30277Keywords:
Poor Law, justices of the peace, local administrationAbstract
The essay investigates the poor law of the Tudor age, with particular reference to the statutes issued between the 1530s' and 1601. In the Middle Ages the assistance to the indigent was originally entrusted to the Church, to monastic institutes, to the trade and craft guilds and religious confraternities, and subsequently to the voluntary contribution of members of the community. Since it was considered the primary duty of each local parish to collect offerings to give to the poor, in England the relief of the needy was, from the beginning, closely entwined with the activity of the parish, the original ecclesiastical administrative unit destined to become the main local government unit for the implementation of the Poor Law.
If the first statute expressly addressed to the care of the poor, issued in 1531, sanctioned the official recognition of the need of the government to deal with the matter, five years later a new statute ordered the elders of each city, village or parish, to identify and assist the needy, with particular reference to the poor unable to work. It was the first official regulation of a local public assistance system, which invested the officers of each community - in primis, the parish -, of specific obligations and responsibilities for maintenance and care towards the poor, including the provision of employment to unemployed able poor. Whereas until then the problems of poverty, begging and vagrancy had been dealt within a repressive/punitive regulatory framework that did not distinguish between needy subjects and villains, the law of 1536 introduced, for the first time, a socio-economic assistance programme focusing on a systematic organization of fund-raising and distribution combined with the provision of labour.
The system inaugurated by the statute of 1536 would have been the foundation of the Poor Laws of the Elizabethan era. In particular, during the reign of Elizabeth I, the voluntary contribution of the community members would be replaced by the imposition of a tax on all parish members (the "poor rate") to be used for the support of the deserving poor (sick, disabled or elderly) of their community. Nine years later, the system was codified by a new statute, which gave the justices of the peace the power to determine the existence of conditions of need, to calculate the weekly poor rate that parishioners were required to pay, to supervise its collection, and to get the poor to work. Such a legal framework was specified by a further act issued in 1576, which provided for the establishment of houses of correction, functioning both as factories and as penal institutions - built, maintained and administered under the supervision of the justices of the peace - where the able-bodied poor were required to carry out activities useful to the community.
The system would be completed by two further fundamental statutes of the end of the century (one issued in 1597, the other in 1601), which confirming, simplifying and standardizing for the whole kingdom the norms issued in the years 1572-76, would have established the current legislation in the field for the next two centuries, under which increasingly appeared the attribution of powers of supervision, control and discipline of the poor to the justices of the peace. It was therefore emphasized, through a clear, precise and effective legislation, the centrality of the intervention of the lay authorities, while any reliance on the voluntary contribution of members of the community definitively ceased.
The justices of the peace, originally guarantors of the social peace, were thus placed at the heart of the system outlined by the Poor Law. Members of the gentry, appointed by the crown and subject to the supervision and control of the Privy Council, they exercised their activities on an honorary basis and without any remuneration. Under the Tudor policy of centralization their functions, both in local administration and in the maintaining of the peace, were regulated in detail, increased and strengthened to the point that they became «the rulers of the land», the main bodies of local government and the longa manus of the sovereign in the territories of the kingdom, thus confirming their role as responsible for the entire English local administration.
The powers of investigation, control and discipline of the poor recognized to the justices of the peace, closely related to the functions of these magistrates of maintenance of order and social security in the kingdom, testify that Tudor legislation - and, in particular, the Elizabethan statutes – were founded in reasons that had little to do with charitable intents, thus inscribing the care of the needy in a systematic program of criminal policy. All within the framework of an organization, hierarchically structured and made to such a point efficient, especially from the years 1620’s, to remain in operation until the second half of the eighteenth century.
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