ABSTRACT
Just as it is impossible to understand the significance of a man's action until we know the environment and influences which have moulded him, so it is impossible to understand any branch of legislation until we know something of the forces which inspired it, both in conception and in administration. In other words, some understanding of contemporary opinion is a vital prologue to the study of any phase of a past age. Such opinion may have accorded ill with the practice of the time—it may have had little direct influence on legislation—but, inevitably, since laws are administered by men, it pervades their details and becomes the force by which the bones of legislation are moved. This is especially the case when legislation deals with such a subject as the regulation of the Poor, which affects the lives and pockets of ordinary men. The Poor Laws, moreover, were administered, not by paid officials, but by ordinary citizens as a civic duty. That meant that contemporary opinion on the subject of the Poor was, in many cases, the opinion of the men who actually worked the machine. Therefore, in order to know the spirit in which the statutes dealing with the Poor were administered, it is necessary for us to study, as a preliminary, the social and economic atmosphere of the time to which they belong. During the Middle Ages religion permeated every sphere of life. Hence it is not surprising to find that the earliest motives for relieving the Poor in England were predominantly religious. At an early date, we are told, the third part of the income of every church was to be devoted to this work. In the same way hospitality and charity to the Poor were stressed as being good works worthy of all Christian people. To give alms was a means of grace to the giver, even if the gift were ill-advised, and more likely to create than to remedy poverty. The doles from the monastery gates, the open table kept by wealthy nobles, the gifts of food and money at weddings and at funerals, were all indiscriminate charity, inspired partly, no doubt, by a love of display, but also by the religious idea that to give alms to the Poor was a means of grace for more fortunate persons. To be poor was not regarded as a fault of man, but as an inscrutable act of Providence: both rich and poor alike were members of one Church; both were brothers in Christ. While these beliefs obtained common acceptance, the main object of charity was the giving of alms to relieve, and not to prevent, poverty. Speaking generally, one might almost say that throughout the early Middle Ages there was no public consciousness that poverty ought to be prevented. The Bible had stated that, “ye have the Poor with you always”, and at a time when theology and sociology were inextricably mixed, this seemed reason enough for leaving things as they appeared to have been ordered by Providence.
