Chapter 5

(1)The Church as Legatee.—The church building among the Teutonic races was not held by the bishop as part of what was originally the charitable property of the church. It was assigned to the patron saint of the church by the donor, who retained the right of administration, of which his own patronage or right of presentation is a relic. Subsequently, with the study of Roman law, the conception of the church as apersona fictaprevailed; and till the larger growth of the gilds and corporations it was the only general legatee for charitable gifts. As these arise a large number of charitable trusts are created and held by lay corporations; and “alms” include gifts for social as well as religious or eleemosynary purposes. (2)Freedom from Taxation and Service.—Gifts to the church for charitable or other purposes were made in free, pure and perpetual alms (“ad tenendum in puram et perpetuam eleemosynam sine omni temporali servicio et consuetudine”). Land held under thisfrankalmoignewas given “in perpetual alms,” therefore the donor could not retract it; in free alms, therefore he could exact no services in regard to it; and in pure alms as being free from secular jurisdiction (cf. Pollock and Maitland). (3)Alienation and Mortmain.—To prevent alienation of property to religious houses, with the consequent loss of service to the superior or chief lords, a licence from the chief lord was required to legalize the alienation (Magna Carta, and Edw. I.,De viris religiosis). Other statutes (Edw. I. and Rich. II.) enacted that this licence should be issued out of chancery after investigation; and the principle was applied to civil corporations. The necessity of this licence was one lay check on injurious alienation. (4)Irresponsible Administration.—Until after the 13th century, when the lay courts had asserted their right to settle disputes as to lands held in alms, the administration of charity was from the lay point of view entirely irresponsible. It was outside the secular jurisdiction; and civilly the professed clergy, who were the administrators, were “dead.” They could not sue or be sued except through their sovereign—their chief, the abbot. They formed a large body of non-civic inhabitants free from the pressure and the responsibilities of civil life. (5)Control.—Apart from the control of the abbot, prior, master or other head, the bishop was visitor, or, as we should say, inspector; and abuses might be remedied by the visit of the bishop or his ordinary. The bishop’s ordinary (2 Henry V. i. 1) was the recognized visitor of all hospitals apart from the founder. The founder and his family retained a right of intervention. Sometimes thus an institution was reorganized, or even dissolved, the property reverting to the founder (Dugdale,Monasticon Anglicanum, vi. 2. 715). (6)Cy-près.—Charities were, especially after Henry V.’s reign, appropriated to other uses, either because their original purpose failed or because some new object had become important. Thus, for instance, a college or hospital for lepers (1363) is re-established by the founder’s family with a master and priest,quod nulli leprosi reperiebantur; and a similar hospital founded in Henry I.’s time near Oxford has decayed, and is given by Edward III. to Oriel College, Oxford, to maintain a chaplain and poor brethren. Thus, apart from alienation pure and simple, the principle of adaptation to new uses was put in force at an early date, and supplied many precedents to Wolsey, Edward VI. and the post-Reformation bishops. The system of endowments was indeed far more adaptable than it would at first sight seem to have been. (7)The Sources of Income.—The hospitals were chiefly supported by rents or the produce of land; or, if attached to monasteries, out of the tithe of their monastic lands or other sources of revenue, or out of the appropriated tithes of the secular clergy; or they might be in part maintained by collections made, for instance, by a commissioner duly authorized by a formal attested document, in which were recounted the indulgences by popes, archbishops and bishops to those who became its benefactors (Cobbe, p. 75); or, in the case of leper hospitals, by a leper with a “clapdish,” who begged in the markets; or by a proctor, in the case of more important institutions in towns, who “came with his box one day in every month to the churches and other religious houses, at times of service, and there received the voluntary gifts of the congregation”; or they might receive inmates on payment, and thus apparently a frequent abuse, decayed servants of the court and others, were “farmed out.” (8)Mode of Admission.—The admission was usually, no doubt, regulated by the prior or master. At York, at the hospital of St Nicholas for the leprous, the conditions of admission were: promise or vow of continence, participation in prayer, the abandonment of all business, the inmate’s property at death to go to the house. This may serve as an example. The master was usually one of the regular clergy. (9)Decline of the Hospitals.—It is said that, in addition to 645 monasteries and 90 “colleges” and many chantries, Henry VIII. suppressed 110 hospitals (Speed’sChronicle, p. 778). The numbers seem small. In the economic decline at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries many hospitals may have lapsed.

In the 15th century the towns grew in importance. First the wool trade and then the cloth trade flourished, and the English developed a large shipping trade. The towns grew up like “little principalities”; and for the advancementGild and municipal charities.of trade, gilds, consisting alike of masters and workmen, were formed, which endeavoured to regulate and then to monopolize the market. By degrees the corporations of the towns were worked in their interests, and the whole commercial system became restrictive and inadaptable. Meanwhile the towns attracted newcomers; freedom from feudal obligations was gained with comparative ease; and a newplebswas congregating, a population of inhabitants not qualified as burghers or gild members, women, sons living with their fathers, menial servants and apprentices. There was thus an increasing restriction imposed on trade, coupled with a growingplebs. Naturally, then, lay charities sprang up for members of gilds, and for burghers and for the commonalty. Men left estates to their gilds to maintain decayed members in hospitals, almshouses or otherwise, to educate their children, portion their daughters, and to assist their widows. The middle-class trader was thus in great measure insured against the risks of life. The gilds were one sign of the new temper and wants of burghers freed from feudalism. Another sign was a new standard of manners. Rules and saws, Hesiodic in their tone, became popular—in regard, for instance, to such a question as “how to enable a man to live on his means, and to keep himself and those belonging to him.” The boroughs established other charities also, hospitals and almshouses for the people, a movement which, like that of the gilds, began very early—in Italy as early as the 9th century. They sometimes gave outdoor relief also to registered poor (Green i. 41), and they had in large towns courts of orphans presided over by the mayor and aldermen, thus taking over a duty that previously had been one of conspicuous importance in the church. As early as 1257 in Westphalian towns there was a rough-and-ready system of Easter relief of the poor; and in Frankfort in 1437 there was a town council of almoners with a systematic programme of relief (Ratzinger, p. 352). Thus at the close of the middle ages the towns were gradually assuming what had been charitable functions of the church.

While a new freedom was being attained by the labourer in the country and the burgher in the town, the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient supply of labour for agriculture must have been constant, especially at every visitation ofStatutory wage control.plague and famine. In accordance with a general policy of state regulation which was to control and supervise industry, agriculture and poor relief and to repress vagrancy by gaols and houses of correction, the state stepped in as arbiter and organizer. By Statutes of Labourers beginning in 1351 (25 Edw. III. 135), it aimed at enforcing a settled wage and restraining migration. From 1351 it endeavoured to suppress mendicity, and in part to systematize it in the interest of infirm and aged mendicants. Each series of enactments is the natural complement of the other. In the main their signification, from the point of view of charity, lies in the fact that they represent a persistent endeavour to prevent social unsettlement and in part the distress which unsettlement causes, and which vagrancy in some measure indicates, by keeping the people within the ranks of recognized dependence, the settled industry of the crafts and of agriculture, or forcing them back into it by fear of the gaol or the stocks. The extreme point of this policy wasreached when by the laws of Edward VI. and Elizabeth the “rogue, vagabond or sturdy beggar” was branded with anRon the shoulder and handed over as a bondman for a period to any one who would take him. On the other hand, it was desired that relief should be a means of preventing migration. In any time of general pressure there is a desire to organize mendicity, to prevent the wandering of beggars, to create a kind of settled poor, distinguished from the rest as infirm and not able-bodied, and to keep these at least at home sufficiently supported by local and parochial relief; and this, in its simpler form all the world over, has in the past been by response to public begging. The argument may be summed up thus: We cannot have begging, which implies that the beggar is cared for by no one, belongs to no one, and therefore throws himself on the world at large. Therefore, if he is able-bodied he must be punished as unsocial, for it is his fault that he belongs to no one; or we must make him some one’s dependant, and so keep him; or if he is infirm, and therefore of no service to any one—if no one will keep him—we must organize his mendicity, for such mendicity is justified. If he cannot dig for the man to whom he does or should belong, he must beg. Then out of the failure to organize mendicity—for relief of itself is no remedy, least of all casual relief—a poor-law springs up, which, afterwards associated with the provision of employment, will, it is hoped, make relief in some measure remedial by increasing its quantity by means of compulsory levies. This argument, which combined statutory wage control and statutory poor relief, seems to have been firmly bedded in the English legislative mind for more than two centuries, from 1351 till after 1600; and until 1834 these two series of laws effectually reduced the English labourer to a new industrial dependence. To people imbued with ideas of feudalism the way of escape from villenage seemed to be not independence, but a new reversion to it.

Many elements produced the social and economic catastrophe of the 16th century, for the condition into which the country fell can hardly be considered less than a catastrophe. With the growing independence of the people there wasThe decadence.created after the 13th century an unsettled “masterless” class, a residue of failure resulting from social changes, which was large and important enough to call for legislation. In the 15th century, “the golden age of the English labourer,” the towns increased and flourished. Both town and country did well. At the end of the century came the decadence. The measure of the strain, when perhaps it had reached its lowest level, is indicated by the following comparison: “The cost of a peasant’s family of four in the early part of the 14th century was £3:4:9; after 1540 it was £8” (Rogers,Hist, of Agric. and Prices, iv. 756).

The cause of this has now been fairly investigated. The value of land in the 13th century generally depended chiefly on “the head of labour” retained upon it. Its fertility depended on mainoeuvre (manure). To keep labour upon it was therefore the aim of the lord or owner. The enclosing of lands for sheep began early, and in the time of Edward III., in the great days of the woolstaple, must have been extensive. So long as the demand for the exportation of wool, and then for its consumption at home in the cloth trade, continued, the towns prospered, and the enclosures did not become a grievance. Even before the reign of Henry VII., with the decay of trade, the towns decayed, and their population in some cases diminished extraordinarily. This reacted on the country, where the great families had already become impoverished, and were hardly able to support their retainers. In Henry VIII.’s time the lands of the religious houses were confiscated. Worked on old lines, the custom of tillage remained in force on them. Accordingly, when these estates fell into private hands they were transferred subject to the condition that they should be tilled as heretofore. The condition was evaded by the new owners, and the disbandment of farm labourers went on apace. In England and Wales these changes, it is said, affected a third of the country, more than 12,000,000 acres, if the estimates be correct, or rather a third of the best land in the kingdom. With towns decaying, the effect of this must have been terrible. What were really “latifundia” were created, “great landes,” “enclosures of a mile or two or thereabouts ... destroying thereby not only the farms and cottages within the same circuits, but also the towns and villages adjoining.” A herdsman and his wife took the place of eighteen to twenty-four farm hands. The people thus set wandering could only join the wanderers from the decaying towns. At the same time the economic difficulty was aggravated by a new patrician or commercial greed; and once more the land question—the absorption of property into a few hands instead of its free exchange—led to lasting social demoralization. A few years after the alienation of the monasteries the coinage (1543) was debased. By this means prices were arbitrarily raised, and wages were increased nominally; but nevertheless the price of necessaries was “so enhanced” that neither “the poor labourers can live with their wages that is limited by your grace’s laws, nor the artificers can make, much less sell, their wares at any reasonable price” (Lamond,The Commonweal of this Realm of England, p. xlvii). No social reformation, such as the charitable instincts of Wycliffe, More, Hales, Latimer and other men suggested, was attempted, or at least persistently carried out. In towns the organization of labour had become restrictive, exclusive and inadaptable, or, judged from the moral standpoint, uncharitable. There had been a time of plenty and extravagance, of which in high quarters the famous “field of the cloth of gold” was typical; and probably, in accordance with the frequently observed law of social economics, as the advance in wages and their purchasing power in the earlier part of the 15th century had not been accompanied by a simultaneous advance in self-discipline and intelligent expenditure, it resulted in part in lessened competence and industrial ability on the part of the workmen, and thus in the end produced pauperism.

The poverty of the country was very great in the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth. Adversity then taught the people new manners, and households became more simple and thrifty. In the reign of James I., with enforced economy and thrift, a “slow but substantial improvement in agriculture” took place, and a new growth of commercial enterprise. The vigour of the municipalities had abated, so that in Henry VIII.’s time they had become the very humble servants of the government; and the government, on the other hand, had become strongly centralized—in itself a sign of the general withdrawal of self-sustaining activity in all administration, in the administration of charitable relief no less than in other departments. A system of endowed charities had been built up, supported chiefly by rents from landed property. These now had disappeared, and thus the means of relief, which Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth might have utilized at a time of general distress, had been dissipated by the acts of their predecessors. The civil independence of the monasteries and religious houses might have been justified, possibly, when they were engaged in missionary work and were instilling into the people the precepts of a higher moral law than that which was in force around them. But afterwards, as the ability and intelligence of the community increased, their privileges became more and more antagonistic to charity, and tended to create a non-social and even anti-social ecclesiastical democracy actuated by aims and interests in which the general good of the people had little or no place. There was a growing alienation between religious tradition and secular opinion, as Lollardism slowly permeated the thought of the people and led the way to the Reformation. While this alienation existed no national system of charity, civic and yet religious, could be created. But worse than all, the ideal of charity had been degraded. A self-regarding system of relief had superseded charity, and it was productive of nothing but alms, large or small, isolated and unmethodic, given with a wrong bias, and thus almost inevitably with evil results. Out of this could spring no vigorous co-operative charity. Charity—not relief—indeed seemed to have left the world. The larger issues were overlooked. Then the property of the hospitals and the gilds was wantonly confiscated, though the poor had already lost that share in the revenues of the church to which at one time they were admitted to have a just claim. A new beginning had to be made. The obligations of charity had to be revived. A new organization of charitable relief had to be created, and that with an empty exchequer and after a vast waste of charitable resources. There were signs of a new congregational and parochial energy, yet the task could not be entrusted to the religious bodies, divided and disunited as they were. In their stead it could be imposed only on some authority which represented the general community, such as municipalities; and in spite of the centralization of the government there seemed some hope of creating a system of relief in connexion with them. They were tried, and, very naturally, failed. In the poverty of the time it seemed that the poor could be relieved only by acompulsory rate, and the administration of statutory relief naturally devolved on the central government—the only vigorous administrative body left in the country. The government might indeed have adopted the alternative of letting the industrial difficulties of the country work themselves out, but they had inherited a policy of minute legislative control, and they continued it. Revising previous statutes, they enacted the Poor Law, which still remains on the statute book. It could be no remedy for social offences against charity and the community. But in part at least it was successful. It helped to conceal the failure to find a remedy.

Part VI.—After the Reformation

During the Reformation, which extended, it should be understood, from the middle of the 14th century to the reign of James I., the groundwork of the theory of charity was being recast. The old system and the narrow theory on whichThe Reformation theory of charity.it had come to depend were discredited. The recoil is startling. To a very large extent charitable administration had been in the hands of men and women who, as an indispensable condition to their participation in it, took the vows of obedience, chastity and “wilful” poverty. Now this was all entirely set aside. It was felt (seeHomilies on Faith and Good Works, &c.,A.D.1547) that socially and morally the method had been a failure. The vow of obedience, it was argued, led to a general disregard of the duties of civic and family life. Those who bound themselves by it were outside the state and did not serve it. In regard to chastity theHomilystates the common opinion: “How the profession of chastity was kept, it is more honesty to pass over in silence and let the world judge of what is well known.” As to wilful poverty, the regulars, it is urged, were not poor, but rich, for they were in possession of much wealth. Their property, it is true, was heldin communi, and not personally, but nevertheless it was practically theirs, and they used it for their personal enjoyment; and “for all their riches they might never help father nor mother, nor others that were indeed very needy and poor, without the license of their father abbot” or other head. This was the negative position. The positive was found in the doctrine of justification—the central point in the discussions of the time, a plant from the garden of St Augustine. Justification was the personal conviction of a lively (or living) faith, and was defined as “a true trust and confidence of the mercy of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and a stedfast hope of all good things to be received at His hands.” Without this justification there could be no good works. They were the signs of a lively faith and grew out of it. Apart from it, what seemed to be “good works” were of the nature of sin, phantom acts productive of nothing, “birds that were lost, unreal.” So were the works of pagans and heretics. The relation of almsgiving to religion was thus entirely altered. The personal reward here or hereafter to the actor was eliminated. The deed was good only in the same sense in which the doer was good; it had in itself no merit. This was a great gain, quite apart from any question as to the sufficiency or insufficiency of the Protestant scheme of salvation. The deed, it was realized, was only the outcome of the doer, the expression of himself, what he was as a whole, neither better nor worse. Logically this led to the discipline of the intelligence and the emotions, and undoubtedly “justification” to very many was only consistent with such discipline and implied it. Thus under a new guise the old position of charity reasserted itself. But there were other differences.

The relation of charity to prayer, fasting, almsgiving and penance was altsred. The prayerful contemplation of the Christ was preserved in the mysticism of Protestantism; but it was dissociated from the “historic Christ,” from the fervent idealization of whom St Francis drew his inspiration and his active charitable impulse. The tradition did not die out, however. It remained with many, notably with George Herbert, of whom it made, not unlike St Francis, a poet as well as a practical parish priest; but the absence of it indicated in much post-Reformation endeavour a want, if not of devotion, yet of intensity of feeling which may in part account for the fact that sectarianism in relief has since proved itself stronger than charity, instead of yielding to charity as its superior and its organizer. Fasting was parted from prayer and almsgiving. It was “a thing not of its own proper nature good as the love of father or mother or neighbour, but according to its end.” Almsgiving also as a “work” disappeared and with it a whole series of inducements that from the standpoint of the pecuniary and material supply of relief had long been active. It was no wonder that the preachers advocated it in vain, and reproached their hearers with their diminished bounty to the poor; the old personal incentive had gone, and could only gradually be superseded by the spontaneous activity of personal religion very slowly wedding itself to true views of social duty and purpose. Penance, once so closely related to almsgiving, passed out of sight. Charity, the love of God and our neighbour, had two offices, it was said, “to cherish good and harmless men” and “to correct and punish vice without regard to persons.” Correction as a means of discipline takes the place of penance, and it becomes judicial, regulating and controlling church membership by the authority of the church, a congregation, minister or elder; or dealing with laziness or ill-doing through the municipality or state, in connexion with what now first appear, not prisons, but houses of correction.

The religious life was to be democratic—not in religious bodies, but in the whole people; and in a new sense—in relation to family and social life—it was to be moral. That was the significance of the Reformation for charity.

Consistently with this movement of religious activity towards a complete fulfilment of the duties of civic life, the older classical social theory, fostered by the Renaissance, assumed a new influence—the great conception of the state as aThe organization of municipal relief.community bound together by charity and friendship, “We be not born to ourselves,” it was said, “but partly to the use of our country, of our parents, of our kinsfolk, and partly of our friends and neighbours; and therefore all good virtues are grafted on us naturally, whose effects be to do good to others, when it showeth forth the image of God in man, whose property is ever to do good to others” (Lamond, p. 14). Economic theory also changed. Instead of the medieval opinion of the “theologian or social preacher,” that “trade could only be defended on the ground that honestly conducted it made no profit” (Green, ii. 71), we have a recognition of the advantages resulting from exchange, and individual interests, it is argued, are not necessarily inconsistent with those of the state, but are, on the contrary, a source of solid good to the whole community.

Municipal laws for the suppression of the mendicity of the able-bodied and the organization of relief on behalf of the infirm were common in England and on the continent (Colmar, 1362; Nuremberg, 1478; Strassburg, 1523; London, 1514). Vives (Ehrle,Beitrage zur Geschichte und Reform der Armenpflege, p. 26), a Spaniard, who had been at the court of Henry VIII., in a book translated into several languages and widely read, seems to have summed up the thought of the time in regard to the management of the poor. He divided them into three classes: those in hospitals and poor-houses, the public homeless beggars and the poor at home. He would have a census taken of the number of each class in the town, and information obtained as to the causes of their distress. Then he would establish a central organization of relief under the magistrates. Work was to be supplied for all, while begging was strictly forbidden. Non-settled poor who were able-bodied were to be sent to their homes. Able-bodied settled poor who knew no craft were to be put on some public work—the undeserving being set to hard labour. For others work was to be found, or they were to be assisted to become self-supporting. The hospitals provided with medical advice and necessaries were to be classified to meet the needs of the sick, the blind and lunatics. The poor living at home were to work with a view to their self-support. What they earned, if insufficient, might be supplemented. If a citizen found a case of distress he was not to help it, but to send it for inquiry to the magistrate. Children were to be taught. Private relief was to be obtained from the rich. The funds of endowed charities were to be the chief source of income; if more was wanted, bequests and church collections would suffice. The scheme was put in force in Yprès in 1524. The Sorbonne approved it, and similar plans were adopted in Paris and elsewhere. It is in outline the scheme of London municipal charity promoted by Edward VI., by which the poor were classified, St Bartholomew’s and St Thomas’s hospitals appropriated for the sick, Christ’s hospital for the children of the poor, and Bridewell for the correction of the able-bodied. Less the institutional arrangements and plus the compulsory rate, the methods are those of the Poor Relief Act of Queen Elizabeth of 1601. At first the attempt had been made to introduce state relief in reliance on voluntary alms (1 Mary 13, 5 Eliz. 3, 1562-1563), subject to the right of assessment if alms were refused. But the position was anomalous. Charity is voluntary, and spontaneously meets the demands of distress. Such demands have always a tendency to increase with the supply. Hence the verylimitations of charitable finance are in the nature of a safeguard. At most economic trouble can only be assuaged by relief, and it can only be met or prevented by economic and social reforms. If a compulsory rate be not enforced, as in Scotland and formerly in some parishes in England, a voluntary rate may be made in supplementation of the local charities. In Scotland, where the compulsory clauses of the Poor Relief Act of James I. were not put in force, the country weathered the storm without them, and the compulsory rate, which was extended throughout the country by the Poor Act of 1844, came in very slowly in the 18th and 19th centuries. In France (1566) a similar act was passed and set aside. If a compulsory rate be enforced, it is inevitable that the resources of charity, unless kept apart from the poor-law and administered on different lines from it, will diminish, and at the same time, as has happened often in the case of endowed charities, the interest in charitable administration will lapse, while the charges for poor-law relief, drawn without much scruple from the taxation of the community, will mount to millions either to meet increasing demands or to provide more elaborate institutional accommodation. The principle once adopted, it was enacted (1572-1573) that the aged and infirm should be cared for by the overseers of the poor, a new authority; and in 1601 the duplicate acts were passed, that for the relief of the poor (43 Eliz. 2), and that for the furtherance and protection of endowed charities. Thus the poor were brought into the dependence of a legally recognized class, endowed with a claim for relief, on the fulfilment of which, after a time, they could without difficulty insist if they were so minded. The civic authority had indeed taken over the alms of the parish, and aneleemosyna civicahad taken the place of theannona civica. It was a similar system under a different name.

A phrase of Robert Cecil’s (1st earl of Salisbury) indicates the minute domestic character of the Elizabethan legislation (D’Ewes, 674). The question (1601) was the repeal of a statute of tillage. Cecil says: “If in Edward I.’s time aPoor Relief Acts and statutory serfdom.law was made for the maintenance of the fry of fish, and in Henry VII.’s for the preservation of the eggs of wild fowl, shall we now throw away a law of more consequence and import? If we debar tillage, we give scope to the depopulating. And then, if the poor being thrust out of their houses go to dwell with others, straight we catch them with the statute of inmates; if they wander abroad, they are within the danger of the statute of the poor to be whipt. So by this undo this statute, and you endanger many thousands.” A strong central government, a local authority appointed directly by the government, and a network of legislation controlled the whole movement of economic life. On this reliance was placed to meet economic difficulties. The local authorities were the justices of the peace; and they had to carry out the statutes for this purpose, to assess the wages of artisans and labourers, and to enforce the payment of the wages they had fixed; to ensure that suitable provision was made for the relief of the poor at the expense of rates which they also fixed; and to suppress vagabondage. Since 23 Edw. III. there had been labour statutes, and in 1563 a new statute was passed, an “Act containing divers orders for Artificers, Labourers, Servants of Husbandry and Apprentices” (5 Eliz. c. 4). It recognized and upheld a social classification. On the one hand there was the gentleman or owner of property to which the act was not to apply; and on the other the artisan and labouring class. This class in turn was subdivided, and the justices were to assess their wages annually according to “the plenty and scarcity of the time and other circumstances.” Persons between the ages of twelve and sixty, who were not apprentices or engaged in certain specified employments, were compelled to serve in husbandry by the year “with any person that keepeth husbandry.” The length of the day’s work and the conditions of apprenticeship were fixed. The assessed rate of wages was enforceable by fine and imprisonment, and refusal to be apprenticed by imprisonment. Thus there was created a life control over labour with an industrial settlement and a wage fixed by the justices annually. There are differences of opinion in regard to the extent to which this act was enforced; and the evidence on the point is comparatively scanty. It was enforced throughout the century in which it was passed, and it probably continued in force generally until the Restoration, while subsequently it was put in operation to meet special emergencies, such as times of distress when some settlement of wages seemed desirable (cf. Rogers, v. 611; Hewins,English Trade and Finance, p. 82; Cunningham,Growth of English Industry and Commerce: Modern Times, i. 168). It was not repealed till 1814.

From 1585 to 1622 there was, it is said, a slight increase in labourers’ wages, which fluctuated from 5s.3⁄8d. to 5s. 8 ¼d. a week, with a declining standard of comfort and at times great distress. Then there was a marked increase of wage till 1662 and “a very marked improvement; the rate of increase being very nearly double that of the earlier periods,” and reaching 9s., “as the highest weekly rate for the whole period.” Then from 1662 to 1702 there was “a slight improvement” (Hewins, p. 89). It would seem indeed that the stir of the times between 1622 and 1662 may have caused a great demand for labour. But with the Restoration, when the assessment system was falling into desuetude, came the Poor Relief Act of 1662 (13 & 14 Car. II. cap. 62), which brought in the law of settlement, and a settlement for relief of a very strict nature was added to the industrial settlement of the Artificers and Labourers Act. Thus, if the influence of that act, which had so long controlled labour, was waning, its place was now taken by an act which, though it had nothing to do with the assessment of wage, yet so settled the labourer within the bounds of his parish that he had practically to rely, if not upon a wage fixed by the justices, yet upon a customary wage limited and restricted as a result of the law of settlement. And the assessment by the justices, in so far as it may have continued, would therefore be of little or no consequence. Settlement also, like the Artificers and Labourers Act, would prevent the country labourer from passing to the towns, or the townsmen passing to other towns. At least they would do so at the risk of forfeiting their right to relief if they lost their settlement without acquiring a new one. Hence the industrial control, though under another name and other conditions, remained in force to a large extent in practice.

By the Artificers and Labourers Act then, in conjunction with other measures, the labouring classes were finally committed to a new bondage, when they had freed themselves from the serfdom of feudalism, and when the control exercised over them by the gild and municipality was relaxed. The statute was so enforced that to earn a year’s livelihood would have taken a labourer not 52 weeks, but sometimes two years, or 58 weeks, or 80 weeks, or 72 weeks; sometimes, however, less—48 or 35. It followed that on such a system the country could only with the utmost good fortune free itself from the economic difficulties of the century, and that the need of a poor-law was felt the more as these difficulties persisted. A voluntary or a municipal system could not suffice, even as a palliative, while such statutes as these were in force to render labour immobile and unprogressive. Also, while wages were fixed by statute or order, whether chiefly in the interest of the employers or not, obviously any shortage on the wages had to be made good by the community. The community, by fixing the wages to be earned in a livelihood, made itself responsible for their sufficiency. And it is suggestive to find that in the year in which the Artificers and Labourers Act (1563) was passed, the act for the enforcement of assessments of poor-rate (5 Eliz. cap. 3) was also enacted. The Law of Settlement, to which we have referred, passed in the reign of Charles II., was due, it is said, to a migration of labourers southward from counties where less favourable statutory wages prevailed; but it was, in fact, only a corollary of the Artificers and Labourers Act of 1563 and the Poor Relief Act of 1601. These laws, it may be said, were the means of making the English labourer, until the poor-law reform of 1834, a settled but landless serf, supported by a fixed wage and a state bounty. By the poor-law it was possible to continue this state of things till, in consequence of an absolute economic breakdown, there was no alternative but reform.

The philanthropic nature of the poor-law is indicated by its antecedents: once enacted, its bounties became a right; its philanthropy disappeared in a quasi-legal claim. Its object was to relieve the poor by home industries, apprentice children, and provide necessary relief to the poor unable to work. The act was commonly interpreted so as to include the whole of that indefinite class, the “poor”; by a better and more rigid interpretation itwas, at least in the 19th century, held to apply only to the “destitute,” that is, to those who required “necessary relief”—according to the actual wording of the statute. The economic fallacy of home industries founded on rate-supplied capital early declared itself, and the method could only have continued as long as it did because it formed part of a general system of industrial control. When in the 18th century workhouses were established, the same industrial fallacy, as records show, repeated itself under new conditions. Within the parish it resulted in the farmer paying the labourer as small a wage as possible, and leaving the parish to provide whatever he might require in addition during his working life and in his old age. Thus, indeed, a gigantic experiment in civic employment was made for at least two centuries on a vast scale throughout the country—and failed. As was natural, the lack of economic independence reacted on the morals of the people. With pauperism came want of energy, idleness and a disregard for chastity and the obligations of marriage. The law, it is true, recognized the mutual obligations of parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren; but in the general poverty which it was itself a means of perpetuating such obligations became practically obsolete, while at all times they are difficult to enforce. Still, the fact that they were recognized implies a great advance in charitable thought. The act, passed at first from year to year, was very slowly put in force. Even before it was passed the poor-rate first assessed under the act of 1563 was felt to be “a greater tax than some subsidies,” and in the time of Charles II. it amounted to a third of the revenue of England and Wales (Rogers, v. 81).

The service of villein and cottar was, as we have now seen, in part superseded by what we have called a statutory wage-control, founded on a basis of wage supplemented by relief, provided by a rate-supported poor-law. But it follows that with the decay of this system the poor-law itself should have disappeared, or should have taken some new and very limited form. Unfortunately, as in Roman times, state relief proved to be a popular and vigorous parasite that outlived the tree on which it was rooted: assessments of wage under the Statute of Labourers fell into disuse after the Restoration, it is said, and the statute was finally repealed in 1814, and sixty years later the act against illegal combinations of working men; but the serfdom of the poor-law, theeleemosyna civica, remained, to work the gravest evil to the labouring classes, and even after the reform of 1834 greatly impeded the recovery of their independence. Nevertheless, by a new law of state alms for the aged, or by statutory outdoor relief with, as some would wish, a regulated wage, it is now proposed to bring them once again under a thraldom similar to that from which they have so slowly emancipated themselves.

The policy adopted by Queen Elizabeth for the relief of the poor (1601) included a scheme for the reorganization of voluntary charity as well as plans for the extension of rate-aided relief. During the century, as we have seen, endeavoursThe endowed charities.had been made to create a system of voluntary charity. This it was proposed to safeguard and promote concurrently with the extension of the poor-rate. Accordingly, in the poor-law it was arranged that the overseers, the new civic authority, and the churchwardens, the old parochial and charitable authority, should act in conjunction, and, subject to magisterial approval, together “raise weekly or otherwise” the necessary means “by taxation of every inhabitant.” The old charitable organization was based on endowment, and the churchwarden was responsible for the administration of many such endowments. What was not available from these and other sources was to be raised “by taxation.” The object of the new act was to encourage charitable gifts.

Towards the end of the 18th century, when the administration of poor relief fell into confusion, many charities were lost, or were in danger of being lost, and many were mismanaged. In 1786 and 1788 a committee of the House of Commons reported on the subject. In 1818, chiefly through the instrumentality of Lord Brougham, a commission of inquiry on educational charities was appointed, and in 1819 another commission to investigate (with some exceptions) all the charities for the poor in England and Wales. These and subsequent commissions continued their inquiries till 1835, when a select committee of the House of Commons made a strong report, advocating the establishment of a permanent and independent board, to inquire, to compel the production of accounts, to secure the safe custody of charity property, to adapt it to new uses on cy-près lines, &c. A commission followed in 1849, and eventually in 1853 the first Charitable Trusts Act was passed, under which “The Charity Commissioners of England and Wales” were appointed.

The following are details of importance:—(1)Definition.—The definition of the act of 1601 (Charitable Uses, 43 Eliz. 4) still holds good. It enumerates as charitable objects all that was once called “alms”: (a) “The relief of aged, impotent and poor people”—the normal poor; “the maintenance of sick and maimed soldiers and mariners”—the poor chiefly by reason of war, sometime a class of privileged mendicants; (b) education, “schools of learning, free schools and scholars in universities”; and then (c) a group of objects which include general civic and religious purposes, and the charities of gilds and corporations; “the repair of bridges, ports, havens, causeways, churches, sea-banks and highways; the education and preferment of orphans; the relief, stock, or maintenance for houses of correction; marriages of poor maids, supportation, aid, and help of young tradesmen, handicraftsmen, and persons decayed”; and there follows (d) “the relief or redemption of prisoners or captives”; and, lastly, (e) “the aid and ease of any poor inhabitants concerning payment of fifteens” (the property-tax of Tudor times), setting out of soldiers, and other taxes. The definition might be illustrated by the charitable bequests of the next 60, or indeed 225, years. It is a fair summary of them. (2)Charitable Gifts.—A public trust and a charitable trust are, as this definition shows, synonymous. It is a trust which relates to public charities, and is not held for the benefit of private persons,e.g.relations, but for the common good, and, subject to the instructions of the founder, by trustees responsible to the community. Gifts for charitable purposes, other than those affected by the law of mortmain, have always been viewed with favour. “Where a charitable bequest is capable of two constructions, one of which would make it void and the other would make it effectual, the latter will be adopted by the court” (Tudor’sCharitable Trusts, ed. 1906, by Bristowe, Hunt and Burdett, p. 167). Gifts to the poor, or widows, or orphans, indefinitely, or in a particular parish, were valid under the act, or for any purpose or institution for the aid of the “poor.” Thus practically the act covered the same field as the poor-law, though afterwards it was decided that, “as a rule, persons receiving parochial relief were not entitled to the benefit of a charity intended for the poor” (Tudor, p. 167). (3)Religious Differences.—In the administration of charities which are for the poor the broadest view is taken of religious differences. (4)Superstitious Uses.—The superstitious use is one that has for its object the propagation of the rights of a religion not tolerated by the law (Tudor, p. 4). Consequently, so far as charities were held or left subject to such rights, they were illegal, or became legal only as toleration was extended. Thus by degrees, since the Toleration Act of 1688, all charities to dissenters have become legal—that is, trusts for schools, places for religious instruction, education and charitable purposes generally. But bequests for masses for the soul of the donor, or for monastic orders, are still void. (5)Administration.—The duty of administering charitable trusts falls upon trustees or corporations, and under the term “eleemosynary corporations” are included endowed hospitals and colleges. Under schemes of the Charity Commissioners, where charities have been remodelled, besides trustees elected by corporations, there are now usually appointedex-officiotrustees who represent some office or institution of importance in connexion with the charity. (6)Jurisdiction by Chancery and Charity Commission.—The Court of Chancery has jurisdiction over charities, under the old principle that “charities are trusts of a public nature, in regard to which no one is entitled by an immediate and peculiar interest to prefer a complaint for compelling the performance by the trustees of their obligations.” The court, accordingly, represents the crown asparens patriae. Now, by the Charitable Trusts Act 1853, and subsequent acts, a charity commission has been formed which is entrusted with large powers, formerly enforced only by the Court of Chancery. (7)Jurisdiction by Visitor.—A further jurisdiction is by the “visitor,” a right inherent in the founder of any eleemosynary corporation, and his heirs, or those whom he appoints, or in their default, the king. The object of the visitor is “to prevent all perverting of the charity, or to compose differences among members of the corporation.” Formerly the bishop’s ordinary was the recognized visitor (2 Henry V. I, 1414) of hospitals, apart from the founder. Subsequently his power was limited (14 Eliz. c. 5, 1572) to hospitals for which the founders had appointed no visitors. Then (1601) by the Charitable Uses Act commissions were issued for inquiry by county juries. Now, apart from the duty of visitors, inquiry is conducted by the charity commissioners and the assistant commissioners. By subsequent acts (see below) ecclesiastical and eleemosynary charities have been still further separated and defined. (8)Advice.—“Trustees, or other persons concerned in the managementof a charity, may apply to the charity commissioners for their opinion, advice or direction; and any person acting under such advice is indemnified, unless he has been guilty of misrepresentation in obtaining it.” (9)Limitation of Charity Commissioners’ Powers,—The commissioners cannot, however, make any order with respect to any charity of which the gross annual income amounts to £50 or upwards, except on the application (in writing) of the trustees or a majority of them. Their powers are thus very limited, except when put in motion by the trustees. If a parish is divided they can apportion the charities if the gross income does not exceed £20. (10)General Powers of the Charity Commission.—Subject to the limitation of £50, &c., the charity commissioners have power (Charitable Trusts Act 1860) to make orders for the appointment or removal of trustees, or of any officer, and for the transfer, payment and vesting of any real or personal estate, or “for the establishment of any scheme for the administration” of the charity, (11)Schemes and Remodelling of Charities.—Under this power charities are remodelled, and small and miscellaneous charities put into one fund and applied to new purposes. The cy-près doctrine is applied, by which if a testator leaves directions that are only indefinite, or if the objects for which a charity was founded are obsolete, the charity is applied to some purpose, as far as possible, in accordance with the charitable intention of the founder. This doctrine probably received its widest application in the City of London Parochial Charities Act of 1883. Under other acts doles have been applied to education and to allotments. About 380 schemes are issued in the course of a year. (12)Objects adopted in remodelling Charities.—In the remodelling of charities for the general benefit of the poor some one or more of thirteen objects are usually included in the scheme. These are subscriptions to a medical charity, to a provident club or coal or clothing society, to a friendly society; for nurses, for annuities, for outfit for service, &c.; for emigration; for recreation grounds, clubs, reading-rooms, museums, lectures; for temporary relief to a limited amount in each year; for clothes fuel, tools, medical aid, food, &c., or in money “in cases of unexpected loss or sudden destitution”; for pensions. (13)Parochial Charities.—By the Local Government Act of 1892, local ecclesiastical charities,i.e.endowments for “any spiritual purpose that is a legal purpose” (for spiritual persons, church and other buildings, for spiritual uses, &c.), are separated from parochial charities, “the benefits of which are, or the separate distribution of the benefits of which is, confined to inhabitants of a single parish, or of a single ancient ecclesiastical parish, or not more than five neighbouring parishes.” These charities, since the Local Government Act 1894, are under the supervision of the parish councils, who appoint trustees for their management in lieu of the former overseer or vestry trustees, or, under certain conditions, “additional trustees.” The accounts have to be submitted to the parish meeting, and the names of the beneficiaries of dole charities published. (14)Official Trustees.—There is also “an official trustee of charity lands,” who as “bare trustee” may hold the land or stock of the charity managed by the trustees or administrators. In 1905 the stock transferred to the official trustees amounted to £24,820,945. (15)Audit.—The charity commissioners have no power of audit, but the trustees of every charity have to prepare a statement of accounts annually, and transmit it to the commission. The accounts have to be “certified under the hand of one or more of the trustees and by the auditor of the charity.” (16)Taxation.—In the case of rents and profits of lands, &c., belonging to hospitals or almshouses, or vested in trustees for charitable purposes, allowances are made in diminution of income-tax (56 Vict. 35 § 61). From the inhabited house duty any hospital charity school, or house provided for the reception or relief of poor persons, is exempted (House Tax Act 1808). Also there is an exemption from the land-tax in regard to land rents, &c., in possession of hospitals before 1693. (17)The Digest.—A digest of endowed charities in England and Wales was compiled in the years 1861 to 1876. A new digest of reports and financial particulars has since been completed.The income of endowed charities in 1876 was returned at £2,198,463. It is now, no doubt, considerably larger than it was in 1876. Partial returns show that at least a million a year is now available in England and Wales for the assistance of the aged poor and for doles. Between the poor-law, which, as it is at present administered, is a permanent endowment provided from the rates for the support of a class of permanent “poor,” and endowed charities, which are funds available for the poor of successive generations, there is no great difference. But in their resources and administration the difference is marked. Local endowed charities were constantly founded after Queen Elizabeth’s time till about 1830, and the poor-rate was at first supplementary of the local charities. When corn and fuel were dear and clothes very expensive, what now seem trivial endowments for food, fuel, coal and clothes were important assets in the thrifty management of a parish. But when the poor were recognized as a class of dependants entitled by law to relief from the community, the rate increased out of all proportion to the charities. A distinction then made itself felt between the “parish” poor and the “second” poor, or the poor who were not relieved from the rates, and relief from the rates altogether overshadowed the charitable aid. Charitable endowments were ignored, ill-administered, and often were lost. After 1834 the poor-law was brought under the control of the central government. Poor relief was placed in the hands of boards of guardians in unions of parishes. The method of co-operation between poor-law and charity suggested by the acts of Queen Elizabeth was set aside, and, as a responsible partner in the public work of relief, charity was disestablished. In the parishes the endowed charities remained in general a disorganized medley of separate trusts, jealously guarded by incompetent administrators. To give unity to this mass of units, so long as the principles of charity are misunderstood or ignored, has proved an almost impossible and certainly an unpopular task. So far as it has been achieved, it has been accomplished by the piecemeal legislation of schemes cautiously elaborated to meet local prejudices. Active reform has been resented, and politicians have often accentuated this resentment. In 1894 a select committee was appointed to inquire whether it was desirable to take measures to bring the action of the Charity Commission more directly under the control of parliament, but no serious grievances were substantiated. The committees’ reports are of interest, however, as an indication of the initial difficulties of all charitable work, the general ignorance that prevails in regard to the elementary conditions that govern it, the common disregard of these principles, and the absence of any accepted theory or constructive policy that should regulate its development and its administration.

The income of endowed charities in 1876 was returned at £2,198,463. It is now, no doubt, considerably larger than it was in 1876. Partial returns show that at least a million a year is now available in England and Wales for the assistance of the aged poor and for doles. Between the poor-law, which, as it is at present administered, is a permanent endowment provided from the rates for the support of a class of permanent “poor,” and endowed charities, which are funds available for the poor of successive generations, there is no great difference. But in their resources and administration the difference is marked. Local endowed charities were constantly founded after Queen Elizabeth’s time till about 1830, and the poor-rate was at first supplementary of the local charities. When corn and fuel were dear and clothes very expensive, what now seem trivial endowments for food, fuel, coal and clothes were important assets in the thrifty management of a parish. But when the poor were recognized as a class of dependants entitled by law to relief from the community, the rate increased out of all proportion to the charities. A distinction then made itself felt between the “parish” poor and the “second” poor, or the poor who were not relieved from the rates, and relief from the rates altogether overshadowed the charitable aid. Charitable endowments were ignored, ill-administered, and often were lost. After 1834 the poor-law was brought under the control of the central government. Poor relief was placed in the hands of boards of guardians in unions of parishes. The method of co-operation between poor-law and charity suggested by the acts of Queen Elizabeth was set aside, and, as a responsible partner in the public work of relief, charity was disestablished. In the parishes the endowed charities remained in general a disorganized medley of separate trusts, jealously guarded by incompetent administrators. To give unity to this mass of units, so long as the principles of charity are misunderstood or ignored, has proved an almost impossible and certainly an unpopular task. So far as it has been achieved, it has been accomplished by the piecemeal legislation of schemes cautiously elaborated to meet local prejudices. Active reform has been resented, and politicians have often accentuated this resentment. In 1894 a select committee was appointed to inquire whether it was desirable to take measures to bring the action of the Charity Commission more directly under the control of parliament, but no serious grievances were substantiated. The committees’ reports are of interest, however, as an indication of the initial difficulties of all charitable work, the general ignorance that prevails in regard to the elementary conditions that govern it, the common disregard of these principles, and the absence of any accepted theory or constructive policy that should regulate its development and its administration.

After the Poor-Law Act of 1601 the history of the voluntary parochial charities in a town parish is marked by their decreasing amount and utility, as poor-law relief and pauperism increased. The act, it would seem, was not adoptedCharity in the parish after 1601.with much alacrity by the local authorities. From 1625 to 1646 there were many years of plague and sickness, but in St Giles’s, London, as late as 1649, the amount raised by the “collectors” (or overseers) was only £176. They disbursed this to “the visited poor” as “pensions.” In 1665 an extra levy of £600 is mentioned. In the accounts of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, where, as in St Giles’s, gifts were received, the change wrought by another half-century (1714) is apparent. The sources of charitable relief are similar to those in all the Protestant churches—English, Scottish or continental: church collections and offertories; correctional fines, such as composition for bastards and conviction money for swearers; and besides these, income from annuities and legacies, the parish estate, the royal bounty, and “petitions to persons of quality.” In all £2041 was collected, but, so far as relief was concerned, the parish relied not on it, but on the poor-rate, which produced £3765. All this was collected and disbursed on their own authority by collectors, to orphans, “pensioners” or the “known or standing” poor, or to casual poor (£1818), including nurse children and bastards. The begging poor were numerous and the infant death-rate enormous, and each year three-fourths of those christened were “inhumanly suffered to die by the barbarity of nurses.” The whole administration was uncharitable, injurious to the community and the family, and inhuman to the child. If one may judge from later accounts of other parishes even up to 1834, usually it remained the same, purposeless and unintelligent; and it can hardly be denied that, generally speaking, only since the middle of the 19th century has any serious attention been paid to the charitable side of parochial work. Parallel to the parochial movement of the poor-law in England, in France (about 1617) were established thebureaux de bienfaisance, at first entirely voluntary institutions, then recognized by the state, and during the Revolution made the central administration for relief in the communes.

In the 17th century in England, as in France, opinion favoured the establishment of large hospitals ormaisons Dieufor the reception of the poor of different classes. In France throughout the century there was a continuous struggleCharitable movements after 1601.with mendicancy, and the hospitals were used as places into which offenders were summarily driven. A new humanity was, however, beginning its protest. The pitiful condition of abandoned children attracted sympathy in both countries. St Vincent de Paul established homes for theenfants trouvés, followed in England by the establishment of the Foundling hospital (1739). In both countries the method was applied inconsiderately and pushed to excess, and it affected family life most injuriously. Grants from parliament supported the foundling movement in England, and homes were opened in many parts of the country. The demand soon became overwhelming; the mortality was enormous, and the cost so largethat it outstripped all financial expedients. The lesson of the experiment is the same as that of the poor-law catastrophe before 1834; only, instead of the able-bodied poor of another age, infants were made the object of a compassionate but undiscerning philanthropy. With widespread relief there came widespread abandonment of duty and economic bankruptcy. Had the poor-rates instead of charitable relief been used in the same way, the moral injury would have been as great, but the annual draft from the rates would have concealed the moral and postponed the economic disaster. To amend the evil, changes were made by which the relation between child and mother was kept alive, and a personal application on her part was required; the character of the mother and her circumstances were investigated, and assistance was only given when it would be “the means of replacing the mother in the course of virtue and the way of an honest livelihood.” General reforms were also made, especially through the instrumentality of Jonas Hanway, to check infant mortality, and metropolitan parishes were required to provide for their children outside London. A kindred movement led to the establishment of penitentiaries (1758), of lock hospitals and lying-in hospitals (1749-1752).

In Queen Anne’s reign there was a new educational movement, “the charity school”—“to teach poor children the alphabet and the principles of religion,” followed by the Sunday-school movement (1780), and about the same time (1788) by “the school of industry”—to employ children and teach them to be industrious. In 1844 the Ragged School Union was established, and until the Education Act of 1870 continued its voluntary educational work. As an outcome of these movements, through the efforts of Miss Mary Carpenter and many others, in 1854-1855 industrial and reformatory schools were established, to prevent crime and reform child criminals. The orphanage movement, beginning in 1758, when the Orphan Working Home was established, has been continued to the present day on a vastly extended scale. In 1772 a society for the discharge of persons imprisoned for small debts was established, and in 1773 Howard began his prison reforms. This raised the standard of work in institutional charities generally. After the civil wars the old hospital foundations of St Bartholomew and St Thomas, municipalized by Edward VI., became endowed charities partly supported by voluntary contributions. The same fate befell Christ’s Hospital, in connexion with which the voting system, the admission of candidates by the vote of the whole body of subscribers—that peculiarly English invention—first makes its appearance.

A new interest in hospitals sprang up at the end of the 17th century. St Thomas’s was rebuilt (1693) and St Bartholomew’s (1739); Guy’s was founded in 1724, and on the system of free “letters” obtainable in exchange for donations, voluntary hospitals and infirmaries were established in London (1733 and later) and in most of the large towns. Towards the end of the 18th century the dispensary movement was developed—a system of local dispensaries with fairly definite districts and home visiting, a substitute for attendance at a hospital, where “hospital fever” was dreaded, and an alternative to what was then a very ill-administered system of poor-law medical relief. After 1840 the provident dispensary was introduced, in order that the patients by small contributions in the time of health might provide for illness without having to meet large doctors’ bills, and the doctor might receive some sufficient remuneration for his attendance on poor patients. This movement was largely extended after 1860. Three hospital funds for collecting contributions for hospitals and making them grants, a movement that originated in Birmingham in 1859, were established in London in 1873 and 1897.

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