ABSTRACT
From 1485 to 1649 Parliament passed over two dozen statutes dealing with the poor. The legislation did not cease, moreover, with the fall of Charles I. Social security and unemployment benefits are foundation-stones of British society today, and only recently have the nineteenth-century vagrancy laws been repealed. But the Tudor and early Stuart poor-laws are not simply a series of Acts of Parliament, numerous, wordy and difficult to recall in examinations. Like other events in history, they must be viewed with reference to their ‘lives and times’. So one aim of this pamphlet is to place the legislation in its historical context: in relation to earlier, medieval facilities for handling poverty; by examining the questions, ‘who were the poor, and how numerous were they?’; and by showing the influence of economic conditions, of ideas concerning poverty, and of the interests of those who ruled.
