Steve Hindle
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199271320
- eISBN:
- 9780191709548
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199271320.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter analyses the micro-politics at play in the assessment and disbursement of parish relief. In doing so, it both emphasizes the complexity and ambiguity of the relationships between the ...
More
This chapter analyses the micro-politics at play in the assessment and disbursement of parish relief. In doing so, it both emphasizes the complexity and ambiguity of the relationships between the various participants — the labouring poor, the parish officers, the county magistrates, the itinerant judiciary — in the ‘welfare process’, and argues that this process involved protracted and often antagonistic negotiations between and among the sectional interests who had a stake in the allocation of resources in the local community. It also critiques two of the most popular paradigms in the current historiography of social welfare, which has recently become polarized between emphases on entitlement on the one hand and subordination on the other.Less
This chapter analyses the micro-politics at play in the assessment and disbursement of parish relief. In doing so, it both emphasizes the complexity and ambiguity of the relationships between the various participants — the labouring poor, the parish officers, the county magistrates, the itinerant judiciary — in the ‘welfare process’, and argues that this process involved protracted and often antagonistic negotiations between and among the sectional interests who had a stake in the allocation of resources in the local community. It also critiques two of the most popular paradigms in the current historiography of social welfare, which has recently become polarized between emphases on entitlement on the one hand and subordination on the other.
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 ...
More
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.
