On the Parish? The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England, c.1550-1750 (review)

Scottish historians may wonder about the point of reading a book whose only explicit reference to Scotland is an oblique one made while discussing the badging of the begging poor in the north of England (p. 441). They would be losing out, for Steve Hindle here offers a wide-ranging, up-to-date and well conceptualised analysis of the English poor relief system in a stimulating book that is rich in ideas.

The modern historiography of Scottish poor relief from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century conventionally portrays it as an undeveloped version of the English system. On paper at least Scottish poor-relief provision was distinct from that of England until the nineteenth and even the twentieth century. Relief was discretionary and recipients had fewer rights than in England (or at least they were less clear-cut and harder to obtain). It was usually supplementary. What compulsory rural assessment there was from the third quarter of the seventeenth century till the end of the eighteenth century tended to be short-lived, and payers resented any rating, however firmly it was based in law. Voluntary giving, begging and informal charity were an integral part of the 'system'. There were fewer institutions like poorhouses or workhouses and most paupers received out-relief. Recent interpretations have questioned whether the contrasts between the countries have been overdrawn. For example, there were more institutions in England, but the bulk of the poor still received outdoor relief. Collections held in Scottish churches may have been 'voluntary', but there were expected levels of contribution from individual donors. Yet differences remain apparent. One enduring theme in historical commentary is the different role of the parish in Scotland and England, which arose from the particular political circumstances of early-modern Scotland and which resulted in the marked localism of its poor relief administration.

Steve Hindle's book tells us about the early history of this differentiation from the English angle. English poor relief has been much more heavily researched than Scottish and Hindle builds on an enormous range of scholarship from the last twenty years. He covers virtually every angle of charity, the main focus being on the development of poor relief based on compulsory rating in rural England and its likely social meaning. The book is remarkably mature and reflective for so young a scholar. Its most original contribution is to be found in the chapters 4 to 6. This half of the book 'seeks to demonstrate not only that the nature and scale of provision for the poor is a useful index of social and cultural change, but that a persistent concern with parameters of eligibility for, and entitlement to, various forms of relief did a very great deal to fashion the distinctive shape of rural social relations' (p. 7). This contribution builds on his remarkable first book, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England (2000). He makes a multitude of important points. Collecting, giving and receiving relief united as well as divided communities. Work made a financial contribution to a poor per-son's budget, but also added to his or her store of moral or cultural capital—vital in negotiating with givers. The poor were active participants in the process of securing relief until the late seventeenth century, when to discretion was added deterrence backed up by the threat of the workhouse, radically altering the power relationship between collectors/givers and receivers. Written with clarity and style, and armed with an awesome bibliography—which might nevertheless have benefited from incorporating more European work, such as Stuart Woolf's Poor in Western Europe (1986) and Marco van Leeuwen's The Logic of Charity (1999)—this book deserves immediate paperbacking for use as a textbook. But it should also be re-issued with a fuller and better laid out subject index: important headings like 'gift', 'Puritan...