ABSTRACT
This chapter constructs some of the details of the Exeter system of poor relief in general, before addressing some of the details about the poor relieved under that system, and the contributors and the contributions that supported them. Historians of Tudor poverty have tended to see Norwich as something of a model city for early English poor relief in the sense that national endeavours may have been modelled on that city. Exeter, however, provides a better model city in a different sense. Exeter's ordinariness helps it serve as an excellent case study of early modern poor relief in English towns as a place where legislation was enacted. For many of the inhabitants of Exeter, however, their experience of the city's system of weekly charitable relief was as contributors. The whole scheme was decidedly normal, possibly explaining an absence of scholarly attention, but making it all the more interesting as a potential model of urban welfare developments.
