ABSTRACT
THERE is little positive evidence for the care of the deprived child in English history before the Reformation. Most of it has to be pieced together from casual references, the absence of information about the deprived child at this time being just as significant as would have been copious references to him. The manorial group of medieval society was self-sufficient and room could be found for the homeless child within the community, in the cottage of the childless villein or to replace those sons of villeins who had gained permission from the lord to leave the manor to become clerks or monks. Such children were mostly orphans who could not be cared for by relatives, or were illegitimate. The illegitimate child was completely without rights, the property of the mother's master, if she were a servant 1 , and the Church, in upholding the sanctity of marriage, condemned his very existence, forbidding him to inherit or to be ordained. Yet while he was nobody's child, he was also the child of the people, 2 and some community obligation was implied towards him. Then, as now, the natural families absorbed him and the motherly and childless, whose poverty was not too great, were glad to care for him. Sometimes a distant relative would take him in, particularly if his mother was an erring daughter of the Church, who, like Langland's nun, had borne a child in cherry time, to the scandal of the parish. 3
