The poor

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Enclosed land was often turned over to sheep, which needed fewer workers, so labourers lost their jobs. Villagers also lost their right to graze animals and collect firewood on the common land.

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From 1585 England was at war with Spain. The Earl of Leicester took an army to the Netherlands in 1585, the Armada was defeated in 1588, and English forces fought in Portugal and France. From 1594 the Nine Years' War in Ireland needed many thousands of soldiers. These wars affected poverty in several ways.

First, the way armies were raised linked war and poverty. Soldiers were conscripted county by county, and JPs and constables often chose poor, idle or vagrant men, hoping to be rid of them. In the short term this removed some of the poor, but many came back in a worse state.

Secondly, returning soldiers and sailors added to the poor and to vagrancy. Many came home sick, maimed or unpaid. After the Armada many sailors died of disease and were not paid. Discharged soldiers wandered the roads, sometimes armed and used to violence, and gathered around London, where the government appointed provost marshals to round them up. This increased fear of vagrants and disorder. Parliament responded in 1593 with an Act that made parishes contribute to pensions for maimed soldiers and sailors, and later dealt with vagrant soldiers in the Rogues Act of 1598.

Thirdly, war damaged trade. Fighting with Spain disrupted markets in Spain and the Spanish Netherlands, so England's main export, woollen cloth, slumped at times, for example in 1586-87. Weavers, spinners and other cloth workers lost their jobs, adding to unemployment in clothmaking areas.

Finally, war was expensive. Parliament granted more taxes in the 1590s, and counties had to pay for soldiers' coats and transport. These burdens came at the same time as the terrible harvests of 1594-97, when food prices soared.

War therefore made poverty worse by adding sick and unpaid soldiers to the poor, by causing unemployment in the cloth trade and by increasing taxes at a time of crisis. Together with population growth and bad harvests, it helped to make the 1590s the worst decade of the reign and pushed Parliament to pass the poor laws of 1598 and 1601.

Model answer

Elizabethans believed that vagabonds were idle people who could work but chose to beg and steal, and they feared them as criminals, spreaders of disease and possible rebels. The authorities therefore used a mixture of control and punishment. Only licensed beggars, usually the impotent poor in their own area, were allowed to beg. The 1572 Act even classed travelling actors without a noble patron as vagabonds.

The 1572 Vagabonds Act was the harshest Elizabethan law. Vagrants over fourteen were to be whipped and burned through the right ear for a first offence, unless someone took them into service for a year. A second offence was a felony unless they were taken into service for two years, and a third offence meant death. The aim was to frighten the idle into work and to remove persistent offenders.

The next approach was forced work. London had used Bridewell since 1553 as a house of correction where vagrants were whipped and set to hard labour. The 1576 Act ordered houses of correction in every county for those who refused to work, reflecting the belief that labour would cure idleness.

The crisis of the 1590s, when bad harvests and war increased the numbers on the roads, led to new measures. Provost marshals were appointed to round up vagrant ex-soldiers around London. The 1598 Act for the Punishment of Rogues ordered vagrants to be whipped until they bled and then sent back to the parish where they were born or had last lived, so that their own parish would be responsible for them. 'Dangerous' rogues could be banished overseas or sent to the galleys, and executed if they returned. At the same time, begging was banned except within a person's own parish with permission. Towns such as Norwich also banned begging and set the able-bodied to work.

Over the reign, therefore, vagabonds continued to be treated harshly, but the methods changed from mutilation and the threat of death towards whipping, sending people back to their home parish and forced work in houses of correction. This reflected a growing belief that vagrancy could be controlled by tying the poor to their parishes and setting them to work, although enforcement still depended on local JPs and constables.

Model answer

Fear of disorder was an important reason why the Elizabethan government took action on poverty, and it explains many of the harsh measures against vagabonds. However, I think the main reason was the growing scale of poverty itself, which created the threat of disorder in the first place and which voluntary charity could no longer handle.

The case for fear of disorder is strong. Elizabethans saw vagabonds as 'masterless men' outside the control of any household or parish, and feared them as criminals and possible rebels. The rebellions of 1549, including Kett's Rebellion, and the Northern Rebellion of 1569 were remembered, and the harsh Vagabonds Act followed in 1572. The 1590s brought more alarming disorder: a riot in Southwark in 1592, riots by London apprentices over food prices in 1595, food riots in Kent and the planned Oxfordshire rising of 1596. In 1596 Edward Hext, a Somerset JP, warned Lord Burghley about wandering idle people committing thefts. The great Acts of 1597-98 followed directly after these events, which suggests that fear played a major part.

However, the scale of poverty was the underlying reason. England's population rose from about 3 million to about 4 million, and prices rose much faster than wages, so the number of poor people grew and became more visible, especially in London, which grew to perhaps 200,000 people. Voluntary charity could not cope, and the loss of monastic charity after the dissolution of 1536-40 had left a gap. This is why Parliament moved towards compulsion, first in 1563 and then with the compulsory poor rate of 1572.

The crisis of the 1590s added urgency. Bad harvests in 1594-97, starvation in parts of the north and the burdens of war created suffering on a scale that demanded action. Public health mattered too, since vagrants were thought to spread plague.

Religion also mattered. Christians had a duty to help the deserving poor, and Protestant teaching placed responsibility on the parish and valued work, while Puritans condemned idleness. The success of town schemes in London, Norwich, Ipswich and York showed that organised relief could work, and the JPs and MPs who passed the laws had seen the problem in their own counties.

These reasons were linked. The growing scale of poverty created the risk of disorder, and fear of disorder explains the harsh punishments for vagabonds and the timing of the Acts of 1598. But religion and the example of the towns explain why the government also built a system of relief for the deserving poor.

Overall, I only partly agree. Fear of disorder was the main reason for the harsh treatment of vagabonds and helped to trigger the laws of the 1590s, but the main reason for government action as a whole was the growing scale of poverty, which made the old system of voluntary charity inadequate.