Monastic Poor Relief in Sixteenth-Century England

The amount of poor relief providedby religious houses and hospitals in pre-Reformation England on the eve of the Dissolution, as well as its proportion to income, can be retrieved from the government's fiscal assessment of the Church--the Valor Ecclesiasticus(1535). An accurate calculation, however, requires the use of a statistical methodology to model, and correct for, the bias inherent in the members of the commission appointedby the state to perform the audit.This novel approach to the Valor Ecclesiasticus,the only source for the data in question, extracts valuable information about the effect of the Dissolution on English society.