Steve Hindle
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199271320
- eISBN:
- 9780191709548
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199271320.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This book is a study of the negotiations which took place over the allocation of poor relief in the rural communities of 16th-, 17th-, and early 18th-century England. It analyses the relationships ...
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This book is a study of the negotiations which took place over the allocation of poor relief in the rural communities of 16th-, 17th-, and early 18th-century England. It analyses the relationships between the enduring systems of informal support through which the labouring poor made attempts to survive for themselves; the expanding range of endowed charity encouraged by the late 16th-century statutes for charitable uses; and the developing system of parish relief co-ordinated under the Elizabethan poor laws. Based on research in the archives of the trustees who administered endowments, of the overseers of the poor who assessed rates and distributed pensions, of the magistrates who audited and co-ordinated relief, and of the royal judges who played such an important role in interpreting the Elizabethan statutes, the book reconstructs the hierarchy of provision of relief as it was experienced among the poor themselves. It argues that receipt of a parish pension was only the final (and by no means the inevitable) stage in a protracted process of negotiation between prospective pensioners (or ‘collectioners’, as they came to be called) and parish officers. This running theme is itself reflected in a series of chapters whose sequence seeks to mirror the experience of indigence, moving gradually (and by stages) from the networks of care provided by kin and neighbours into the bureaucracy of the parish relief system, emphasizing in particular the importance of labour discipline in the thinking of parish officers.Less
This book is a study of the negotiations which took place over the allocation of poor relief in the rural communities of 16th-, 17th-, and early 18th-century England. It analyses the relationships between the enduring systems of informal support through which the labouring poor made attempts to survive for themselves; the expanding range of endowed charity encouraged by the late 16th-century statutes for charitable uses; and the developing system of parish relief co-ordinated under the Elizabethan poor laws. Based on research in the archives of the trustees who administered endowments, of the overseers of the poor who assessed rates and distributed pensions, of the magistrates who audited and co-ordinated relief, and of the royal judges who played such an important role in interpreting the Elizabethan statutes, the book reconstructs the hierarchy of provision of relief as it was experienced among the poor themselves. It argues that receipt of a parish pension was only the final (and by no means the inevitable) stage in a protracted process of negotiation between prospective pensioners (or ‘collectioners’, as they came to be called) and parish officers. This running theme is itself reflected in a series of chapters whose sequence seeks to mirror the experience of indigence, moving gradually (and by stages) from the networks of care provided by kin and neighbours into the bureaucracy of the parish relief system, emphasizing in particular the importance of labour discipline in the thinking of parish officers.
W. B. Patterson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- December 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199681525
- eISBN:
- 9780191773235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199681525.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History, Theology
Perkins was acutely aware of the pressing social and economic problems of his day, including poverty, homelessness, unemployment, begging, and crime, and he showed how biblical teachings could ...
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Perkins was acutely aware of the pressing social and economic problems of his day, including poverty, homelessness, unemployment, begging, and crime, and he showed how biblical teachings could provide a way to alleviate or even to eliminate them. He spoke out against practices by those in privileged positions that created or exacerbated such problems and he praised the Elizabethan Poor Laws for their attempts to relieve suffering and reclaim broken lives. In his books on vocation, the Christian household, and conscience, he emphasized the importance of family, church, and commonwealth in combating distress and in maintaining healthy and caring communities. This chapter takes sharp issue with Christopher Hill’s view of Perkins as helping to prepare the way for modern acquisitive capitalism, arguing that his emphasis on the parish as the vehicle for dealing with local problems helped to give it a new and constructive role in early modern English society.Less
Perkins was acutely aware of the pressing social and economic problems of his day, including poverty, homelessness, unemployment, begging, and crime, and he showed how biblical teachings could provide a way to alleviate or even to eliminate them. He spoke out against practices by those in privileged positions that created or exacerbated such problems and he praised the Elizabethan Poor Laws for their attempts to relieve suffering and reclaim broken lives. In his books on vocation, the Christian household, and conscience, he emphasized the importance of family, church, and commonwealth in combating distress and in maintaining healthy and caring communities. This chapter takes sharp issue with Christopher Hill’s view of Perkins as helping to prepare the way for modern acquisitive capitalism, arguing that his emphasis on the parish as the vehicle for dealing with local problems helped to give it a new and constructive role in early modern English society.
Garrett Hardin
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780195078114
- eISBN:
- 9780197560716
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780195078114.003.0027
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Economic Geography
Great is the power of words when manipulated by a master who has his finger on the public pulse. In the 1960s the Canadian Marshall McLuhan evidently ...
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Great is the power of words when manipulated by a master who has his finger on the public pulse. In the 1960s the Canadian Marshall McLuhan evidently tapped a major stream of consciousness when he proclaimed the coming of "the global village," a world in which nearly instantaneous communication would weld together the aspirations of mankind. A sharing world. A land of heart's desire. Unfortunately his image took no account of the effects of scale or the consequences of the rules of distribution. When these variables are plugged into the equation, the dream of a bucolic global village dissolves into a nightmare of global pillage. Humanity has now completed some political experiments that reveal the nightmare. How will our time be remembered a hundred years from now? It is at least plausible that the twentieth century will be commemorated as the era in which Marx's ideas were at last given a fair trial and found wanting. From the spring of 1917, when Lenin returned to Russia to stir things up, to the cataclysms of the autumn of 1989 was seventy-two years—the biblical lifetime of a man. Three generations. Quite enough time to allow Marxism in its various forms to reveal its inherent deficiencies. Yet, when the end came, almost everyone was surprised at the speed with which nearly 300 million people revealed their disillusionment and set about trying to put the pieces together into a better political pattern. We wonder of course why Marx's ideas were so resistant to the intellectual cold showers that beat against them for three score years and ten. The literary critic Lionel Trilling put his finger on a force that caused "intellectuals" to cling to the Left during the period between the two world wars. As Trilling expressed the-mind-set of these influential people: "One need not be actually for Communism; one was morally compromised, turned toward evil and away from good if one was against it."1 To use James Coleman's term, adopting the Marxist position was the most fashionable way to practice "conspicuous benevolence." Supporters of free enterprise were almost uniformly painted as promoters of unmitigated selfishness. Only one thread of Marxist thought need be followed here, a thread that is intimately involved in the theory of population.
Less
Great is the power of words when manipulated by a master who has his finger on the public pulse. In the 1960s the Canadian Marshall McLuhan evidently tapped a major stream of consciousness when he proclaimed the coming of "the global village," a world in which nearly instantaneous communication would weld together the aspirations of mankind. A sharing world. A land of heart's desire. Unfortunately his image took no account of the effects of scale or the consequences of the rules of distribution. When these variables are plugged into the equation, the dream of a bucolic global village dissolves into a nightmare of global pillage. Humanity has now completed some political experiments that reveal the nightmare. How will our time be remembered a hundred years from now? It is at least plausible that the twentieth century will be commemorated as the era in which Marx's ideas were at last given a fair trial and found wanting. From the spring of 1917, when Lenin returned to Russia to stir things up, to the cataclysms of the autumn of 1989 was seventy-two years—the biblical lifetime of a man. Three generations. Quite enough time to allow Marxism in its various forms to reveal its inherent deficiencies. Yet, when the end came, almost everyone was surprised at the speed with which nearly 300 million people revealed their disillusionment and set about trying to put the pieces together into a better political pattern. We wonder of course why Marx's ideas were so resistant to the intellectual cold showers that beat against them for three score years and ten. The literary critic Lionel Trilling put his finger on a force that caused "intellectuals" to cling to the Left during the period between the two world wars. As Trilling expressed the-mind-set of these influential people: "One need not be actually for Communism; one was morally compromised, turned toward evil and away from good if one was against it."1 To use James Coleman's term, adopting the Marxist position was the most fashionable way to practice "conspicuous benevolence." Supporters of free enterprise were almost uniformly painted as promoters of unmitigated selfishness. Only one thread of Marxist thought need be followed here, a thread that is intimately involved in the theory of population.
