ABSTRACT
The ceaseless activity shewn by reformers in promulgating these new schemes, few of which depended on the overseers and churchwardens for their effectiveness, is explained by the faulty financial and administrative machinery of the parish. The responsibility for the Poor rested on the churchwardens and the overseers of the Poor, who by the 43 Eliz. c. 2. were to be nominated from among the substantial householders by two or more neighbouring justices. But whatever may have been the early practice, in the period under review the usual procedure was for the vestry to decide the overseers for the following year, and send a list to the justices with the request that they would nominate the first two names. Thus in reality the choice of officers to deal with the Poor rested with the parish itself, and they were usually appointed on some fixed system of rotation. Once appointed the justices exercised very little control over them, for though the Act provided that within four days after the end of their term of office they should submit their account to the justices, this examination was apt to be perfunctory. 1 Also, by a ruling of a later date, it was decided that if the overseer were prepared to swear to his accounts, it was not necessary for him to produce details. In the same way, the provision that the rates made by the overseers should be signed by the justices before they could be collected, was rendered nugatory by a legal decision declaring that though their signature was indeed necessary before the rate could become legal, yet the justices had no power, either to refuse to sign or to alter the assessment, however unjust it might seem to them to be. In short, their action was purely administrative. 2 Hence there was very little effective control over the way in which the parishes assessed, levied, and spent their poor rates; and by their liberty in this important matter of finance the way was prepared for them to take what freedom they would in other branches of the poor relief.
