13. Assessment Made by the Justices of Wiltshire, Dealing Mainly with Textile Workers [Hist. MSS. Com., Vol. I, pp. 167-168, The Records of Quarter Sessions in the County of Wilts], 1605.

14. Administration of the Wage Clauses of the Statute of Artificers [Atkinson, North Riding Quarter Sessions, Vol. I, pp. 27, 60, 69, 99, 105], 1605-8.

Jan. 17th, 1605. [Presented by the Jury.] John Bulmer of West Cottam, husbandman, for hiring servants without recording their names and salaries before the Chief Constable, contra formam statuti, etc., and also Rob. Harrison and Will Keldell both of the same, for the like....

Helmesly, Jan. 8, 1606. The inhabitants of Thirkleby, (Great and Little), for refusing to give the names of their servants and their wages to the constables of the said town or to the Head Constables. The inhabitants of Kilbornes, Over and Nether, for the like and for giving their servants more wages than the statute doth allow.

Thomas Gibson, of Easingwold, for retaining and accepting into his service one Will Thompson without shewing to the Head Officer, Curate or Churchwarden any lawful testimonial.

Will Burnett, of Bawker, for refusing to pay pence for entering his servants' names; Cuthbert Ivyson, of Awdwarke, husbandman, for retaining Tim Johnson, servant, at husbandry for 46s., contrary to the rates assessed by the Justices.

Thirske, April 14, 1607. Thomas Grange of East Harlesey, for refusing to give a note of his servants and their wages.

Malton, Jan. 12, 1607. Jane Kay of Fawdington within the constabulary of Bagby, for denying to give the names of her servants, nor tickets nor rates of her servants.

Malton, Jan. 12, 1607. Alice Sharrow, of New Milnes in Seazey parish, for taking more wages of Will Bell of Kascall than, etc.

Malton, Jan. 12, 1607. Thos. Wawne of Thorp Rawe, yeoman, for giving wages to ... Rymer his servant, exceeding the rate set down by the Justices.

15. Administration of the Apprenticeship Clauses of the Statute of Artificers [Atkinson, North Riding Quarter Sessions, Vol. I, pp. 106 and 121], 1607-8.

16. The Organisation of the Woollen Industry[291] [S.P.D. James I, Vol. LXXX, 13], 1615.

The breeders of wool in all countries are of three sorts—

1. First those that are men of great estate, having both grounds and stock of their own, and are beforehand in wealth. These can afford to delay the selling of their wools and to stay the clothiers' leisure for the payment to increase the price. The number of these is small.

2. Those that do rent the king's, noblemen's and gents' grounds and deal as largely as either their stock or credit will afford. These are many and breed great store of wool; most of them do usually either sell their wools beforehand, or promise the refusal of them for money which they borrowed at the spring of the year to buy them sheep to breed the wool, they then having need of money to pay their Lady-day rent and to double their stock upon the ground as the spring time requireth, and at that time the clothiers disburse their stock in yams to lay up in stock against hay-time and harvest when their spinning fails. So that then farmers and clothiers have greatest want of money at one time.

3. The general number of husbandmen in all the wool countries that have small livings, whereof every one usually hath some wool, though not much. They are many in numbers in all countries and have great store of wool, though in small parcels. Many of these also do borrow money of the wool merchant to buy sheep to stock their commons. Their parcels being so small, the times of selling so divers, the distance of place so great between the clothier and them, it would be their undoing to stay the clothier's leisure for the time of their sale, or to be subject to him for the price....

These wools are usually converted by four sorts of people.

1. The rich clothier that buyeth his wool of the grower in the wool countries, and makes his whole year's provision beforehand and lays it up in store, and in the winter time hath it spun by his own spinsters and woven by his own weavers and fulled by his own tuckers, and all at the lowest rate for wages. These clothiers could well spare the wool buyers that they might likewise have wool at their own prices, and the rather because many of them be brogging clothiers and sell again very much, if not most, of the wool they buy.

2. The second is the meaner clothier that seldom or never travels into the wool country to buy his wool, but borrows the most part of it at the market, and sets many poor on work, clothes it presently, and sells his cloth in some countries upon the bare thread, as in Devonshire and Yorkshire, and others dress it and sell it in London for ready money, and then comes to the wool market and pays the old debt and borrows more. Of this sort there are great store, that live well and grow rich and set thousands on work; they cannot miss the wool chapman, for if they do they must presently put off all their workfolk, and become servants to the rich clothier for 4d. or 6d. a day, which is a poor living.

3. The third sort are such clothiers that have not stock enough to bestow, some in wool and some in yarn, and to forbear some in cloth as the rich clothiers do, and they buy but little or no wool, but do weekly buy their yarn in the markets, and presently make it into cloth and sell it for ready money, and so buy yarn again; which yarn is weekly brought into the markets by a great number of poor people that will not spin to the clothier for small wages; but have stock enough to set themselves on work, and do weekly buy their wool in the market by very small parcels according to their use and weekly return it in yarn, and make good profit thereof, having their benefit both of their labour and of the merchandise, and live exceeding well. These yarn-makers are so many in number that it is supposed by men of judgment that more than half the cloths that are made in Wilts, Gloucester, and Somersetshire is made by the means of these yarn-makers and poor clothiers that depend weekly upon the wool chapman, which serves them weekly with wool either for money or credit.

4. The fourth sort is of them of the new drapery, which are thousands of poor people inhabiting near the ports and coasts from Yarmouth to Plymouth and in many great cities and towns, as London, Norwich, Colchester, Canterbury, Southampton, Exeter and many others. These people by their great industry and skill do spend a great part of the coarse wools growing in the kingdom, and that at as high a price or higher than the clothiers do the finest wools of this country, as appeareth by a particular hereunto annexed....

17. Proceedings on Apprenticeship Clauses of 5 Eliz., c. 4 [Reports of Special Cases Touching Several Customs and Liberties of the City of London, collected by Sir H. Calthrop, 1655], 1615.

18. A Petition To Fix Wages Addressed to the Justices by the Textile Workers of Wiltshire [Historical MSS. Commission, Vol. I, p. 94. The Records of Quarter Sessions in the County of Wilts.], 1623.

May it please you to be informed of the distressed estate of most of the weavers, spinners, and others that work on the making of woollen clothes, that are not able by their diligent labours to get their livings, by reason that the clothiers at their will have made their work extreme hard, and abated wages what they please. And some of them make such their workfolks to do their household businesses, to trudge in their errands, spool their chains, twist their list, do every command, without giving them bread, drink, or money for many days' labour. May it please you therefore, for the redressing of these enormities done by the clothiers, to appoint certain grave and discreet persons to view the straitness of works, to assess rates for wages according to the desert of their works, now especially in this great dearth of corn, that the poor artificers of these works of woollen cloth may not perish for want of food, while they are painful in their callings, so shall many families be bound to pray for your worships' happiness and eternal felicity.

Order signed by nine justices.

The petitioners to set down their names to this petition, and the place of their dwelling, and the clothiers dwelling next to the places of their habitations to be warned to be at Devizes the Thursday in the next Whitsun week, to confer with us hereabouts, that they call others grieved herein to attend us at that time.[292]

19. Appointment by Privy Council of Commissioners to Investigate Grievances of Textile Workers in East Anglia [Privy Council Register. Charles I, Vol. 6, pp. 350-1], 1630.

Whereas a petition was this day presented to the Board by Sylvia Harbert, widow, on the behalf of herself and divers others, showing that the poor spinsters, weavers and combers of wool in Sudbury and the places near adjoining thereunto, in the counties of Suffolk and Essex, are of late by the clothiers there (who are now grown rich by the labours of the said poor people) so much abridged of their former and usual wages, that they (who in times past maintained their families in good sort) are now in such distress by the abatement of their wages in these times of scarcity and dearth, that they are constrained to sell their beds, wheels and working tools for want of bread, as by the petition itself doth more at large appear, wherein the petitioners humbly sought to be relieved by some directions from this Board:—their Lordships upon consideration had thereof, have thought fit and ordered that the petition being first signed by the Clerk of the Council attendant shall be recommended to Sir Robert Crane, Bart., Sir Thomas Wiseman, Sir William Maxey, Sir Drewe Deane, Kt., Thomas Eden, Doctor of the Civil Law, Henry Gent, Esq., and Robert Warren, Justices of the Peace of the counties aforesaid, Richard Skinner and Benjamin Fisher, Aldermen of Sudbury, or to any four of them, whereof one Justice of the Peace of each county, and one of the said aldermen, to be three, who are hereby authorised and required to call before them such persons on either side, as they think fittest to inform them of the true state of these complaints, and thereupon to settle such a course for the relief of the petitioners by causing just and orderly payment to be made them of their due and accustomed wages, as that they may have no further cause to complain, nor the Board be further troubled herewithall. And in case any particular person shall be found (either out of the hardness of his heart towards the poor, or out of private ends or humours) refractory to such courses as the said commissioners shall think reasonable and just, that then they bind over every such person to answer the same before the Board.

20. Report to Privy Council of Commissioners Appointed Above[293] [S.P.D. Charles I, Vol. 189, No. 40], 1630.

Right Honourable and our very good Lord,

We have according to your lordship's order from the Council Board, dated the 16th day of February, 1630, under the hand of the Clerk of the Council, called before us the saymakers, spinsters, weavers and combers, of Sudbury and the towns adjoining, and have examined the cause of the saymakers abating the wages of the spinsters, weavers and combers; and asking the saymakers why they did so abate, their answer was that all of that trade in other parts of the Kingdom did the like; but if it might be reformed in all other parts, they were content to give such wages as we should set down. Whereupon we did order, with the good liking of all parties, as in this enclosed paper is set down. We therefore humbly pray your lordships that the like order may be taken throughout all the kingdom with men of that trade, by way of His Majesty's proclamation, or any other order which may seem best to your lordships' wisdoms; for if the like order be not more general than to Sudbury and the towns adjacent, it must necessarily be their ruin and utter undoing. And so commending the same to your lordships' further direction, we humbly rest, your lordships' in all services to be commanded.

This xxvith of April, 1631.

Endorsed,

27 April, 1631.
from the Justices of the Peace in the county of Essex concerning the Saymakers, Spinsters, Weavers and Combers of Sudbury.

Essex. An order made at our meeting at Halsted in the said county the eighth day of April Anno domini 1631 by virtue of an order from the Lords of the Council.

It is ordered and agreed upon by us whose names are hereunder written, that the saymakers within the town of Sudbury in Suffolk shall pay unto the spinsters for spinning of every seven knots, one penny, and to have no deduction of their wages, and that the reel whereon the yarn is reeled to be a yard in length, and no longer, and we do further order, that for all the white sayes under five pounds weight the saymaker shall give unto the weaver twelve pence the pound for the weaving thereof, and for the sayes that shall be above five pounds and under ten pounds to give twelve pence the pound, abating six pence in the piece for the weaving thereof, and for the mingled sayes containing eight or nine pounds, nine shillings, and so proportionably as it shall contain more or less in weight. This our order to continue until the 15th day of May next ensuing, except from the Council there shall be other order taken.

21. High Wages in the New World [Winthrop's Journal, Vol. II, p. 220], 1645.

22. Young Men and Maids Ordered to Enter Service [Hist. MSS. Com., Vol. I., p. 132], 1655.

At an adjourned sessions on 5 June an order was made that, whereas the rate of wages fixed for servants and labourers had been proclaimed, but young people, both men and maids, fitting for service, will not go abroad to service without they may have excessive wages, but will rather work at home at their own hands, whereby the rating of wages will take little effect, therefore no young men or maids fitting to go abroad to service (their parents not being of ability to keep them) shall remain at home, but shall with all convenient speed betake themselves to service for the wages aforesaid, which if they refuse to do the Justices shall proceed against them.

23. Request to Justices of Grand Jury of Worcestershire to Assess Wages [Hist. MSS. Com., Vol. I, p. 322], 1661.

Presentments by the Grand Jury. 1661, Ap. 23. We desire that the overseers of parishes may not be hereafter compelled to provide houses for such young persons as will marry before they have provided themselves with a settling. We desire that servants' wages may be rated according to the statute, for we find the unreasonableness of servants' wages a great grievance so that the servants are grown so proud and idle that the master cannot be known from the servant except it be because the servant wears better clothes than his master.[294] We desire that the statute for setting poor men's children to apprenticeship be more duly observed, for we find the usual course is that if any are apprenticed it is to some petty trade, and when they have served their apprenticeship they are not able to live by their trades, whereby not being bred to labour they are not fit for husbandry. We therefore desire that such children may be set to husbandry for the benefit of tillage and the good of the commonwealth.

24. Proceedings on Apprenticeship Clauses Of Statute of Artificers[295] [Privy Council Register, Oct. 29, 1669].

Upon reading this day at the board the humble Petition of Francis Kiderbey of Framlingham ... draper, setting forth that he served his apprenticeship for 7 years in the City of London to a Tailor, whereby he came to the knowledge and skill of all sorts of cloth, and used and exercised the same for a long time; that the petitioner's occasions calling him to live in Framlingham aforesaid, and that town wanting one that dealt in cloth, the petitioner set up a shop for selling the same, and thereby got a good livelihood for himself and family; yet some, out of malice, hath caused three bills of Indictment to be presented against him at the sessions held at Woodbridge for that county upon the Statute made 5 Eliz. c. 4, whereby it is provided that none shall use any manual occupations but he that hath been bound seven years an apprentice to the same, which Statute, though not repealed, yet has been by most of the Judges looked upon as inconvenient to trade and to the increase of inventions; that the Petitioner hath removed the said indictments into the Court of King's Bench, where judgment will be given against him, that statute being still in force, and therefore praying that his Majesty will be pleased to give order to his Attorney-General to enter a non prosequi for stopping proceedings against him. It was ordered by his Majesty in Council that it be and it is hereby referred to Mr. Attorney-General to examine the truth of the Petitioner's case, and upon consideration thereof to report to his Majesty in Council his opinion thereupon, and how far he conceives it may be fit for his Majesty to gratify the Petitioner in his said request.

[On Dec. 17, 1669, the Attorney-General reported that Kiderbey was liable to the penalty of the Statute, but that the indictments being in the King's name, his Majesty might order a non processe to be entered; which was ordered to be done.]

SECTION IV

THE RELIEF OF THE POOR AND THE REGULATION OF PRICES

The national system of Poor Relief which was built up in the course of the sixteenth century was composed of three elements, experiments of municipal authorities, Parliamentary legislation, supervision and stimulus supplied by the Privy Council. The first step taken by towns was usually to organize begging by granting licences to certain authorized beggars, while punishing the idler (No. 1); the next to provide establishments where necessitous persons could be set to work on materials provided at the public expense (No. 3). The action of the State followed the same lines of development. During the first three quarters of the sixteenth century it (a) left the provision of the funds needed for relief to private charity, (b) directed the relief of the "impotent poor," but treated all able-bodied persons in one category, that of "sturdy rogues." But in 1572 it recognized the inadequacy of voluntary contributions by directing the levy of a compulsory poor rate (No. 4), and in 1576 made the important innovation of discriminating between persons unemployed because they could not get work and persons unemployed because they did not want work, by enacting that the former should be set to work on materials provided for them, and that the latter should be committed to the House of Correction (No. 5). The system was completed by the Act for the Relief of the Poor of 1601 (No. 8). Its administration was in the hands of the Justices of the Peace, who were much occupied with questions of settlement (Nos. 9, 10, 17), with carrying out instructions sent to them by the Privy Council for relieving distress (Nos. 12 and 19), and with making reports to the Privy Council of their proceedings (No. 18).

The provision of relief was never intended to be, and down to 1640 was not, the sole method of coping with problems of distress. It was in its origin associated with measures of a preventive character, attempts to prevent the eviction of peasants (Part II, Section I, Nos. 9, 10, 13-17, 20 and 21), occasional attempts to raise wages (Part II, section III, Nos. 10, 18, 19 and 20), attempts to prevent employers dismissing workpeople in times of trade depression (No. 11), attempts to regulate the price of food stuffs and to secure adequate supplies for the markets (Nos. 2, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20). In the latter matter, as in many others, the Tudor governments tried to make a regularly administered national system out of what had for centuries been the practices of local bodies. The Justices of the Peace were required in 1545 to inspect barns and to compel the owners of supplies of grain to sell it in open market (No. 3). Under Elizabeth the system was elaborated. The Justices from time to time made returns to the Privy Council of the stocks of grain available (No. 6), and of the prices ruling (No. 18); and extremely detailed instructions for their guidance were drawn up by Burleigh in 1586 (No. 7). The licensing of "Badgers," or dealers in corn, was part of their regular business (Nos. 13 and 14); the movement of grain from one district to another was carefully supervised (No. 15); and engrossers and regrators were frequently brought before them (No. 16). The efficiency of the system depended very largely on the close supervision of local government and economic affairs by the Privy Council, and on the fact that offenders against public policy could be tried before the Court of Star Chamber. One case before that Court is printed below (No. 20). It is interesting as showing both the economic ideas upon which the policy of regulating prices was based, and the way in which attempts to supervise economic relationships brought the government into collision with the interests of the middle and commercial classes.

AUTHORITIES

1. Regulations made at Chester as to Beggars [Morris. Chester in the Plantagenet and Tudor Reigns, pp. 355, 356], 1539.

Henry Gee, Mayor, 31 Henry VIII. [1539]. Forasmuch as by reason of the great number of multitude of valiant idle persons and vagabonds which be strong and able to serve and labour for their livings, and yet daily go on begging within the same city, so that the poor impotent and indigent people and inhabiting within the same city and having no other means to get their living but only by the charitable alms of good Christian people daily want and be destitute of the same, to the great displeasure of Almighty God and contrary to good conscience and the wholesome statute and laws of our sovereign Lord the King in such case made and provided; for reformation whereof it is ordained and established by the said city ... that the number and names of all indigent and needy mendicant people shall be searched, known and written, and thereupon divided in xv parts, and every of them assigned to what ward they shall resort and beg within the said city, and in no other place within the same, and their names to be written in a bill and set up in every man's house within every ward for knowledge to whom they shall give their alms and to no other. And if any other person or persons come to any man or woman's door, house or person to beg, not having his name in the bill within that man's or woman's houses, then the same man or woman to give unto the same beggar no manner alms or relief but rather to bring or send him to the stocks within the same ward, or else to deliver him to the constable of the same ward or the alderman's deputy within the same ward, and he to put him in the stocks, there to remain by the space of a day and a night; and yet, every man and woman that shall offend in using themselves contrary to this ordinance concerning such valiant beggars shall for every such offence forfeit xiid. to be levied to the use of the common box by the commandment of the alderman of the same ward, and for default of payment thereof the same man or woman so offending to be committed to the ward by the mayor till it be paid.

And if any of the indigent and poor needy beggars [beg] at any time in any other place within this city out of the ward to them assigned as is aforesaid, then the same beggar so offending to be punished by the mayor's discretion. And further it is ordered that all manner of idle persons, being able to labour abiding within the said city and not admitted to live by alms within the said city, shall every workday in the morning in the time of winter at vi of the clock, and in time of summer at iiii of the clock, resort and come unto the high cross of the said city, and there to offer themselves to be hired to labour for their living according to the king's laws and his statutes provided for labourers; and if any person or persons do refuse so to do, then he or they so refusing to be committed to ward by the mayor of the said city for the time being, there to remain unto such time he or they so refusing hath found sufficient sureties to be bound by recognisance before the said mayor in a certain sum, so to [do] accordingly to the King's laws and statutes aforesaid.

2. A Proclamation ... concerning Corn and Grain to be Conveyed and Brought into Open Markets to be Sold [Br. M. Harleian MSS. 442, fo. 211][296], 1545.

Forasmuch as it is come to the knowledge of our Sovereign Lord the King, how that divers persons, as well his own subjects as others, having more respect to their own private lucre and advantage than to the common weal of this his Highness's realm, have by divers and sundry means accumulated and got into their hands and possession a great number and multitude of corn and grain, far above the necessary finding of their households, sowing of their lands, paying their rent-corn and performing of their lawful bargains of corn without fraud or intrigue; and the same of their covetous minds do wilfully detain and keep in their possessions without bringing any part or parcel thereof into any market to be sold, intending thereby for to cause the prices of corn to rise, so that they may sell their corn and grain at such unreasonable prices as they will themselves; by reason whereof the prices of corn and grains ... be raised to such excessive and high prices, that his Majesty's loving subjects cannot gain with their great labours and pains sufficient to pay for their convenient victuals and sustenance, and worse are like to be hereafter, unless speedy remedy be provided in that behalf; his Highness, therefore, by the advice of his said most honourable council, and by authority of the said act of parliament made in the said 31st year of his Majesty's reign, straightly chargeth and commandeth all justices of peace ... within 20 days next ensuing the publishing of this proclamation according to the said act, and oftener after that by their discretions, to assemble themselves together ... and that the said justices ... or two of them at the least, shall with all convenient speed search the houses, barns and yards of such persons as have been accustomed or used to sell corn and grain, and have abundance of corn and grain more than shall be necessary for the sowing of their lands, paying their rent-corn, performing their said lawful bargains of corn, and finding of their houses until the feast of All Saints next coming; and where they shall find any such abundance or surplus, shall by their discretions straightly ... command in the name of our said sovereign lord the king the owner or owners thereof to convey and bring or cause to be brought such part and portion of their said corn and grain unto the market or markets there near adjoining, or to have such other market or markets, where they afore time have used or accustomed to sell their corn there to be sold at, and during such time as shall be thought meet by the said justices of the peace or two of them at the least; the same justices delivering unto every of the said owner and owners a bill subscribed with their hands, mentioning and declaring the days, places, number and certainty of the bringing of the said corn and grain to the said market and markets to be sold, as is aforesaid, according to their said commandments and appointments; and if any person or persons do wilfully refuse to convey or bring or cause to be brought unto the said market or markets to be sold such part or portion of any such corn and grain as by the said justices or two of them at the least, shall be to him and them limited and appointed as is aforesaid, that then every such person and persons so offending shall lose and forfeit for every bushel ... 3s. and 4d. ... This proclamation to continue and endure until the feast of All Saints next coming and no longer....