CHAPTER XI

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_THE FIRST POOR LAW ACT._

The first Act for the relief of the poor was passed in 1535 (27 Henry VIII., c. xxv.).

“All governors of shires, cities, towns, etc., shall find and keep every aged poor and impotent person which was born or dwelt three years within the same limit, by way of voluntary and charitable alms, etc., with such convenient alms as shall be thought meet by their discretion,” etc.

It was in this year (1535) that the lesser monasteries were dissolved. So the first poor law was enacted, to provide for the poor and impotent, in the same year in which the dissolution occurred.

The total annual revenue of _all_ the monastic and chantry estates, together with the episcopal and chapter estates surrendered to the Crown, was about £300,000, which, if carefully managed—say by a Board of Commissioners—to provide for the poor, would now realize an annual revenue of eight and a half millions sterling, sufficiently adequate to defray all the expenses of the poor of England and Wales, without a penny expense to the ratepayers. All the vast properties were disgracefully granted away to unprincipled, poor, avaricious favourites and courtiers of Henry VIII., and his children.

It was Cromwell who, in his desire to promote the Reformation, advised the King to divide the abbey lands among the nobles and gentry, either by grant or sale on easy terms; and that by being thus bound by the sureties of private interest, they might always oppose any return towards the dominion of Rome.[232]

Cromwell’s views turned out to be correct, as we know from the conduct of members of Parliament who were in possession of monastic property. In Mary’s reign her Parliament, which was so obsequious in all matters of religion, adhered with a firm grasp to their Church lands. Nor could the papal supremacy be re-established by Mary until her sanction was given that they should be allowed the full enjoyment of their Abbey lands, and we may ascribe the zeal of the same class, in bringing back and preserving the reformed Church under Elizabeth, to a similar motive; that, according to the general laws of human nature, they gave a readier reception to truth, which made their estates more secure.[233] They would be any religion, provided they retained their church lands.[234]

The 31 Henry VIII., c. xiii., expressly states that the laity in possession of the lands of the dissolved monasteries were to maintain hospitality. But they never did any such thing, nor were they required to do so. They increased the rentals of the monastic, episcopal and capitular lands fourfold more than had previously been paid, for ecclesiastical lands were let at about one-fourth of their rack-rental value. A good deal of the land was tithe-free, and therefore higher rentals were demanded than for lands which paid tithes. These men made the poor laws; their increased rentals increased pauperism, but they had only a small fractional part to pay themselves towards the maintenance of the poor; the bulk of the rates for the relief of the poor (increased in number by the conduct of these new landlords) was paid by people unconnected with the land.

“The poor of England,” says Blackstone, “till the time of Henry VIII., subsisted entirely upon private benevolence, and the charity of well-disposed Christians. For though it appears by the ‘Mirror’ that by the Common Law the poor were to be ‘sustained by _parsons_, rectors of the church, and the _parishioners_, so that none of them die for default of sustenance;’ and though by the statutes 12 Rich. II., c. vii. and 19 Henry VII., c. xii. the poor are directed to be sustained in the cities or towns wherein they were born or where they had dwelt for three years (which seem to be the first rudiments of parish settlements), yet till the statute of 27 Henry VIII., c. xxvi., I find no compulsory method chalked out for this purpose; but the poor seem to have been left to such relief as the humanity of their neighbours would afford them. The monasteries were, in particular, their principal resource.”[235]

Here the “Mirror” distinctly states that by Common Law the parson and his parishioners sustained the poor, and by the same Common Law the parson, as trustee, received all the tithes, and by the same law the poor had a claim to a part of those tithes.

It is a favourite argument with Lord Selborne, and others who follow him, that the part allotted out of the tithes for the poor would be insufficient for their support. But he omits the important fact that in one of Edgar’s canons it was enacted that the people should also distribute alms to the poor, so that the part allotted out of the tithes was not intended to be the _whole_ maintenance which the poor should receive.[236]

In A.D. 960, when Edgar’s laws and canons were enacted, the population of England was about 800,000, with about 1,000,000 acres under cultivation. The provision for the poor was more than sufficient.

Mr. Blunt, in his “History of the Reformation,” tells us that “A large body of almost starving people was formed by the ruined monks, and those who had been maintained by them, either in labour or charity. Rents were enormously raised by those to whom the monastic grants fell by grants or purchase, the new landlords exacting three or four times more than had been required by the old church landlords. The poverty of the poor and the wealth of the rich drew away class from class and introduced that disintegration of society, which caused so much trouble in the 17th century.”[237]

Sir Simon Degge, in his “Parson’s Counsellor,” says “That there are many pluralists in England that hardly see either of their livings in a year; that all the greatest and best livings in the kingdom are now (1676) held by pluralists, and served by mean curates; that thereby many poor souls are neglected in danger to perish; that in many places two great parishes are left to the care of two boys, who came but the other day from school, and perhaps fitter to be there still, while the shepherd that takes the fleece either feasts it out in his lord’s family or takes his ease upon a prebend or deanery; that it is no other than hiring out the sacred trust to pitiful mercenaries at the cheapest rate; that it is a thing of high scandal for one to receive the fees and commit the work to some inferior or raw practitioners; that one end of the law of residence (21 Henry VIII.) was to maintain hospitality; that the best livings in the kingdom are served with poor curates and no hospitality; that we are now in a far worse condition than before making the Act, for that dispensations from Rome were slow and costly, and that there are ten dispensations for pluralities now to one then.” He further added that the revenues of the Church were divided into four parts, and referred to Pope Sylvester as having originated this division; and then used these words:—“_And I would wish every clergyman to remember that the poor have a share in the tithes with him_.”[238]

Referring to this author’s words, Lord Selborne says, “Sir Simon Degge was a (not particularly distinguished) lawyer of Charles the Second’s time. For his citation of Pope Sylvester, etc., he was called to account in his own day, and in a later edition he defended it lamely enough, maintaining on the authority of some Roman canonists the genuineness of the extracts from synodical Acts of Pope Sylvester published by Isidore, and it must therefore be supposed, of the forgeries in the same collection also.”[239]

He carefully avoids giving us the name of the writer who called Degge to account. It was the Rev. Henry Wharton, the author of the “Anglia Sacra.”

In 1693 this boy pluralist—the author of “A Defence of Pluralities”—published, under the name of Anthony Harmer, “A Specimen of some Errors and Defects,” in Bishop Burnet’s “History of the Reformation.” For an account of the malicious spirit in which this book was written, see Burnet’s Preface to the third volume of his “History of the Reformation.” “Here is a writer,” says the Bishop, “who is wanting in Christian temper and in decency, and I regret to see such facts and industry soured and spoiled with so ill a temper.”[240]

Dr. Cave, author of “Historia Literaria,” who employed Wharton as his amanuensis, in a letter to Archbishop Tillotson, fully corroborates Bishop Burnet’s character of Wharton. The bishop knew who Anthony Harmer was, and his caustic remarks on Wharton’s “Anglia Sacra” were well deserved.[241]

While Lord Selborne traduced the character of Degge, “as a not

## particularly distinguished lawyer,” he has not a word to say against

Henry Wharton’s _legion_ of blunders. I shall prove that Sir Simon Degge does not deserve the above character.

Sir Simon Degge was a judge of West Wales in 1660; recorder of Derby in 1661; Knighted in 1669; a bencher of the Inner Temple; in 1673 was high sheriff of Derbyshire. His “Parson’s Counsellor and Law of Tithes” was a leading text book for many years. He dedicated it to a bishop, and in his sixth and last edition in his lifetime, he writes: “To the parsons, vicars, and the rest of the reverend clergy of the Church of England. Your kind acceptance of the former impressions of the book has encouraged me this sixth time to appear in public.” He died in 1704.

In this edition he says, “Nor is there any doubt but that by the Canon Law _the poor ought to have a share in the revenues of the church_, which was all I endeavoured to prove.”[242]

Lord Selborne quotes his closing admonition from the seventh revised edition of 1820, _i.e._ 116 years after Degge’s death: “By all which it appears that _originally_ the poor had a share of the tithe.”[243] Degge never wrote these words, and it is not fair nor just to a dead author to publish a garbled edition of his work, and to quote against him from this garbled edition. I have given above his own words from his last edition published in 1703.

The 13 Eliz. c. xx. enacts that the lessor absent above eighty days in a year should lose one year’s profits of the benefice, to be distributed by the Ordinary among the poor of the parish.

A subsequent statute (18 Eliz. c. xi. s. 7) confirms the above; and provides that the Ordinary shall grant sequestration of the profits, and in default that every parishioner may retain his tithes; and the churchwarden will take the other profits of the benefice to distribute among the poor.

The rights of the Poor to a portion of the tithes were given by (1) The Act of 1014; (2) 15 Rich. II. c. vi.; (3) 13 Eliz. c. xx.; (4) 18 Eliz. c. xi. s. 7.

When we come to the Act for the relief of the Poor, (43 Eliz. c. ii.) it provides for the taxation of every occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate, propriation of tithes, coal mines and underwoods. But it does not take any portion of the tithes for the support of the poor; hence it is argued that the poor had no claim to any portion of the tithes. The fact is, that previously there was no machinery by which their claims could have been carried out. The parochial incumbents were trustees of their property, and as such had many claims on their incomes, the poor had to put up with whatever the trustees wished to give them. And finally the trustees _closed upon all the tithes_ as their own.

There is a remarkable instance on record, in which certain parochial rectors _closed upon all the tithes_ of their parishes.

Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, founded the Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester, by his charter dated A.D. 1137, in which he named sixteen churches, with their appurtenances and appendages, with which he endowed the Hospital. The commuted value of the tithes of these sixteen parish churches is £12,006 per annum. Now, the Hospital has only the tithe-rent charges, amounting to £3,462 per annum, of four out of the sixteen. The Hospital lost all the tithes of twelve parishes, and the twelve rectors are now in possession of them, giving in lieu the insignificant sum of £44 per annum, in the aggregate, as pensions.

Now, when did these twelve rectors close upon all the tithes? It was before the Reformation, because in the reign of Henry VIII. the Hospital had only the four churches. It is highly probable that the twelve rectors closed upon all the tithes during the period of the protracted quarrels between the Bishops of Winchester and the Priors of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, as to who should have the appointment of the master of the Hospital.[244]

The parochial incumbents commenced about the beginning of the fourteenth century to close upon all the tithes, and to ignore the claims of poor or church fabric upon these revenues. So at the period of the Reformation, the incumbents claimed to have a prescriptive right to _all the tithes_.[245]

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