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CHAPTER XVI.
PAUPERISM AND THE FYLDE UNION.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was not
customary to recognise the pauper as a person
whose misfortunes, however brought about, called
for charitable aid, but all legislature was directed
against his class under the common title of vagabonds. A statute
of 1384 decreed that all vagrants should be arrested and either
placed in the stocks, or imprisoned until the visit of the justices,
who would do with them whatever seemed best by law; and in
1496 the punishment of incarceration was abolished, but the
stocks were retained. The sixteenth century initiated a little
more considerate state of things, and justices of the peace were
authorised in 1531 to grant begging licenses to any necessitous
persons in their districts unable to work for a livelihood. An act
of 1547 ordained that any vagabond, not incapacitated by old age
or illness, loitering and not seeking work for three days should be
brought before a magistrate, who was directed to adjudge such
vagrant to be, for two years, the slave of the person by whom he
had been apprehended, in addition to which he had to be branded
with the letter V on the breast. In case he ran away the law
ordered that a further branding of the sign S should be inflicted,
this time on his forehead or the ball of his cheek, and that slavery
should be his perpetual portion. A third escape entailed death
when re-captured. This enactment was never really enforced
as popular indignation at its extreme severity was aroused at
once, and after lingering two years it was repealed in favour
