On the Parish?: The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England C.1550-1750On the Parish? is a study of the negotiations which took place over the allocation of poor relief in the rural communities of sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth century England. It analyses the relationships between the enduring systems of informal support through which the labouring poor made attempts to survive for themselves; the expanding range of endowed charity encouraged by the late sixteenth century statutes for charitable uses; and the developing system ofparish relief co-ordinated under the Elizabethan poor laws. Based on exhaustive research in the archives of the trustees who administered endowments, of the overseers of the poor who assessed rates and distributed pensions, of the magistrates who audited and co-ordinated relief and of the royal judges whoplayed such an important role in interpreting the Elizabethan statutes, the book reconstructs the hierarchy of provision of relief as it was experienced among the poor themselves. It argues that receipt of a parish pension was only the final (and by no means the inevitable) stage in a protracted process of negotiation between prospective pensioners (or 'collectioners', as they came to be called) and parish officers. This running theme is itself reflected in a series of chapters whose sequenceseeks to mirror the experience of indigence, moving gradually (and by stages) from the networks of care provided by kin and neighbours into the bureaucracy of the parish relief system, emphasising in particular the importance of labour discipline in the thinking of parish officers.By illuminating the workings of a relief system in which notions of entitlement were both under-developed and contested, On the Parish? provides historical perspective for contemporary debates about the rights and obligations of the poor in a society where the dismantling of the welfare state implies that there is, once again, no right to relief from cradle to grave. |
Other editions - View all
On the Parish?: The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England 1550-1750 Steve Hindle Limited preview - 2004 |
On the Parish?: The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England 1550-1750 Steve Hindle No preview available - 2009 |
On the Parish?:The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England c.1550 ... Steve Hindle No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
accounts alms apprentices archives argued assessment Assize badge begging Beier bench Buckinghamshire Buntingford Cambridge Cambridgeshire cent Chalfont St Peter Charities of Rural church churchwardens collection communities cottages Crime Dearth doles Early Modern England Ease for Overseers eighteenth century endowments England Essex Family Geddington gleaning Gnosall hearth tax Hertford County Hertfordshire Hindle households impotent indigent inhabitants inmates Jordan justices Kent labouring poor Lancashire late Layston Life-Cycle magistrates manorial marriage migrants neighbours nonetheless Norfolk Northamptonshire Oxford parish officers parish pensions parish relief parishioners parochial pauper apprenticeship payments petitions Politics poor rates Poor Relief Population Poverty and Policy Quarter Sessions Quarter Sessions Records ratepayers Record Society Rural England SBTRO settlement settlement laws seventeenth century significant Slack Social History Somerset statute Suffolk survival theft tion town Tudor unfol vagrant vestry vols Warwick County Warwick County Records Warwickshire welfare widow Wiltshire Wiveton workhouse Wrightson Yorkshire