of Richard II. it was found necessary to provide some other means for the support of the aged and impotent; the monasteries not only having then begun to neglect their duty, but by the appropriation of benefices having actually deprived the parishes of their local and independent means of charity.[1] Licenses to beg were at that time granted to deserving persons; and it is noticeable that this measure was in a few years followed by the petition to Henry IV. for the secularization of ecclesiastical property.[2] Thus early in our history had the regular clergy forgotten the nature of their mission, and the object for which the administration of the nation's charities had been committed to them. Thus early, while their houses were the nurseries of dishonest mendicancy,[3] they had surrendered to lay compassion, those who ought to have been their especial care. I shall unhappily have occasion hereafter to illustrate these matters in detail. I mention them in this place only in order to dissipate at once a foolish dream. At the opening of the sixteenth century, before the suppression of the monasteries had suggested itself in a practical form, pauperism was a state question of great difficulty, and as such I have at present to consider it.
For the able-bodied vagrant, it is well known that the old English laws had no mercy. When wages are low, and population has outgrown the work which can
- ↑ Rich. II. 12, cap. 7, 8, 9; Rich. II. 15, cap. 6.
- ↑ Lansdowne MS. 1, fol. 26.
- ↑ Injunctions to the Monasteries: Burnet's Collect. pp. 77-8.
