23 Feb: MANTLE OF MALICE: Aspects of Tudor life: 1. The Poor

Unemployment was a major cause of poverty in Tudor England. The wool trade became all important and wealthy landowners turned from arable farming, which provided jobs, to sheep farming, which needed far fewer employees. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, more people lost their jobs and there were no monks to care for the poor and help feed them. Many of the monks were reduced to begging.

In the same way that there were different classes of wealthy people in Tudor England, there were also different classes of the poor. Generally, the poor were defined as farm workers, servants and vagrants. They had no voice or authority of any kind. The government divided them into three groups.

The Helpless Poor included the old, the sick and the disabled. The parish might give them money and possibly food and would also pay for their children to be given an apprenticeship. Wealthy citizens were expected to help the poor in their parish, but this was very hit and miss. The poor in one village might be well looked after whilst the poor in the next died because they were starving. Suffering always increased after a bad harvest when food prices soared and people could not afford to buy it.

The Able-Bodied Poor were people able and willing to work. Edward VI passed a law saying that all parishes should build a workhouse. The unemployed would work in the workhouse making cloth or doing whatever the authorities considered would benefit the parish.

Vagabond being whipped. 

The third group consisted of Rogues and Vagabonds. They roamed England begging and stealing. They were able to work but many didn’t want to. It was easier to attack travellers and steal from them. Sometimes people who would normally be in the Able-Bodied Poor group found work impossible to get, especially if the parish had not built a workhouse. They then had little option but to leave their villages and look for work elsewhere, but this was illegal and they would be classed as vagabonds. Unemployed people caught outside their parish were whipped through the streets to the boundary stone of that parish. If they were caught a second time, part of their ear would be sliced off. Execution was the punishment for a third offence.

Mantle of Malice, Book 3 in The Tudor Enigma will be published on 23rd February 2015.

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