ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the changes which were taking place in the organization of states and in the patterns of sociability of the people who were at the summit of each political nation. To a far greater extent than in the recent past, by the 1550s at the centre of the new political world lay the Court of the king. Whether the elite's new consciousness of the problem of poverty after 1500 reflected a real increase in the proportion of poor people in the population as a whole can only be a matter for conjecture. In London at least, the disruptions occasioned by the Civil War stimulated poor law officials to redouble their efforts. In Western Europe as a whole two quite different types of secular courts were found. The first sort used the inquisitorial forms known to the Roman Law and the second the accusatorial procedures derived from the old Germanic law.
