Changing the Practice of Charity in Sixteenth-Century Norwich: ‘The verie nedefull and urgent reformacion' 1

This study documents the provision of and motivation for poor relief in sixteenth-century Norwich. Much of the scholarship concerning the religious reform of the sixteenth century has debated the impact of the Reformation and related the religious doctrine of the Reformation to political concerns: the idea of ‘godly rule’. ² This question of religious and moral infiltration into the political sphere lies behind the decisions made by the civic authorities that shaped the way in which charity was administered in Norwich during the sixteenth century. Matthew Reynolds has described Norwich as a ‘hotbed of puritanism and radical dissent from the 1560s to the end of James I’s reign’. ³ I will investigate whether this influenced the authorities’ decision making, in relation to the background of the economic and religious environment of the city.