Appleby History > Alan Roberts > Early Modern Villagers > Poor & Destitute
Appleby Families: Villagers in Early Modern Times
Part 9: The Poor and Destitute
An Emerging Social Group
by Alan Roberts
The early Restoration period saw the emergence of a new social group identified primarily by their dependence upon parochial charity. The registers first begin to use the terms 'poor man' and 'pauper' after 1700, as for example in Appleby at the burial of Elizabeth Heward 'a poor widow' in 1701 and at the baptism of Susanna, the daughter of John and Mary Woodham, 'a poor man', in 1705. But poverty was a familiar ingredient of town life well before then. At Ashby between 1624-38, for example, Moxon estimates that some 230 adults, or 38 per cent of the town's population, were in receipt of weekly payments from the overseers of the poor. The more prosperous Elizabethan inhabitants of the parishes customarily made at least a token bequest to the poor in their wills, a tradition continued by the parson of Appleby in 1572 when he promised 'evere poore cotier a hoope of Wylyne corne'. In 1582 Richard Orton of Lea Grange in Orton distributed 6d to every cottier in Orton and Twycross at the discretion of his executors. Thomas Page (1592) and William Becke (1600), both rich husbandmen, gave 12d and 2s respectively for 'the poor man’s box' in Austrey.
By the early 1600s the increasing numbers of poor were putting a severe strain on charitable resources. The Poor Law legislation of 1601 attempted to come to grips with the pauper problem by giving churchwardens power to impose levies on the principal landholders to establish workshops and houses of correction for vagrants. By the 1650s however, this ad hoc system, based upon punitive legislation and dependent to a large extent upon the enthusiasm of the parish officers, had begun to falter. The plaintive cry of one Appleby inhabitant in 1635 that the rector 'doth cause our towne to spend our money needlessly' is a symptom of a general malaise: the growing reluctance of the wealthier inhabitants to carry the burden of the poor.
In Appleby, as in Myddle, some relief came through a series of substantial endowments and cash legacies provided by the principal landholders. Between 1679 and 1723 bequests and legacies amounting to £150 were collected and invested on behalf of the poor. These included a gift of £20 from John Erpe for 'books and schooling' (1679), £25 from Abraham Mould 'to be laid forth in land' (1683) and £10 from Wolstan Dixie of Market Bosworth. Altogether twelve principal landholders provided legacies ranging from 5s to 25s annually. In 1691 the landholders were set a generous example by Sir John Moore, the patron of the Grammar School, who provided £500 for investment in lands at Upton for the relief of the poor. Although these measures undoubtedly helped to alleviate poverty the 'structural' problem of poverty remained. There are no surviving traces of any listings of the poor in response to the 1691 statute. However lists of accounts for town rents and disbursements in the Appleby Churchwardens' Brief Book from 1682 show increasing expenditure on poor relief after this date. In April 1684 two separate accounts for disbursements totalling £49.14.4 left the churchwardens £8.19.9 out of pocket. Disbursements did not fall below £20 until the early 1700s.
Sources and Notes
C.J.M. Moxon, Ashby thesis, 65.
P.R.O. wills Roger Banyster, PROB 11/54/29, Richard Orton, 1582, PROB 11/65/15.
Ref. Austrey poor man’s box in L.J.R.O. wills, Thomas Page, 1592/42; William Beck, 1600/40.
The vagrancy act is summarised in J. Pound, Poverty and Vagrancy in Tudor England (London, 1971), 44-57; for a more jaundiced view, see R.M. Garnier, Annals of the British Peasantry (London, 1908), 249-50.
Archdeaconry case, 1635, L.R.O. 1D 41/4/XVIII/23.
L.R.O. Churchwardens' Briefs: 15 D55/14; Cf. D. Hey, Myddle, 177. Nichols IV, 435.
Parliamentary Returns under the Act of 1785 reveal that Moore's investment yielded £144.10.0 p.a., Nichols I, ccviii; doles for aged, impotent and poor householders were raised from levies on property and rents from town stock with annual accounts drawn up.
©Alan Roberts
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