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Reviewed by:
  • Poor Relief in England, 1350-1600 by Marjorie Keniston McIntosh
  • Joel T. Rosenthal
Poor Relief in England, 1350-1600. By Marjorie Keniston McIntosh (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2012) 366 pp. $99.00

That the poor are always with us was a touch of worldly reality known only too well by the people of England—from whoever graced the [End Page 620] throne down to those who composed the ever-growing legions of the "aged, impotent, and poor . . . sick and maimed soldiers and mariners . . . [and] persons decayed," as characterized in the famous Elizabeth poor law of 1601.

In this wide sweep of social and legal history, McIntosh bravely overleaps the traditional boundary of the Reformation, discussing her subject from the early days of post-plague society (with its greatly diminished population and relative affluence for many of the survivors) to the turn of the seventeenth century. By the latter date, the malevolent conjunction of such forces as a growing population, inflation, and a series of poor harvests had conspired to make the problems of both rural and urban poverty ubiquitous—especially in a world that feared "masterless men" and idol vagrants who might turn to crime and violence whenever opportunity offered. McIntosh's chronology ranges from a medieval world of purgatory and indulgences, with doctrines and institutions that loosened pocketbooks and founded hospitals and almshouses, to a new world in which Protestant and humanistic mores worked in consort with governmental concerns and policies.

The Elizabethan poor laws of 1598 and 1601 came as the climax, or the logical conclusion, to several centuries of searching for a way to accomplish the worthy, if elusive, goal of regulating, controlling, and perhaps even ameliorating the conditions of people who lived on the margins of society. By 1601, volunteerism had given way to what, in effect, was a set tax to dull the sharpest edges of poverty. The parish was designated as the unit of government (and of social interaction) that would be the focal point of collecting and disbursing; it remained so until 1834. Licensed begging was no more. Its haphazard nature as a form of social welfare was made even more obsolete by the ease with which fraudulent letters of permission could be obtained, as well as by the chicanery of local authorities who were not held to account for money raised or bequests that they were meant to distribute.

McIntosh supports her positions with a database of statistical and tabular material (given in the appendixes) of her own construction, giving statistical support to an evolutionary or developmental view of social awareness and then of social change. McIntosh moves past fifteenth-century worries and early Tudor legislation in her close analysis of the various approaches that the haves took in their dealings with the have-nots. But beyond the numbers, McIntosh builds her argument by way of case studies and anecdotes or vignettes—for example, the 12d. given by Nottingham officials to "4 lame men coming from Kendall going unto the bath in Leicester shire" or those fortunate unfortunates at St. Thomas' Hospital in London who received some beef or mutton four days a week and then, as a supplement, some cheese or butter on the other three.

This study rests on the organization of data and the mining of the archives of thirty-five counties and regional repositories. It stands as a worthy sequel to the pioneering work of Jordan, whose research on this [End Page 621] topic inspired McIntosh's sympathetic studies. They show how large social issues can be illuminated when examined at the level of the village and the local community.1

Joel T. Rosenthal
State University of New York, Stony Brook

Footnotes

1. See, for example, Wilbur Kitchener Jordan, Philanthropy in England, 1480-1660: A Study of the Changing Patterns of English Social Aspirations (New York, 1959); idem, The Charities of London, 1480-1660: The Aspirations and Achievements of the Urban Society (North Haven, 1960).

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