Problem of the poor

• Poverty


  • Spending more than 80% of your income on bread
  • Being unemployed or ill, so you could no longer provide for yourself or your family
  • Being unable to afford the rising cost of food
  • Needing financial help (poor relief) or charity (alms)
• Vagrants


  • People without a settled home or regular work
  • Many vagrants were seen as vagabonds- idle and dishonest people who wandered from place to place, committing crimes
• Types of poor people

  • Widows or women abandoned by their husbands and their families
  • The sick and the elderly who were incapable of work
  • Orphaned children - 40% of the poor under 16 years old
  • People on low wages
  • Itinerants, vagrants and vagabonds
• The population of England grew from 3 million in 1551, to 4.2 million by 1601
• Population growth


  Increased demand for food (driving up prices) while increasing the labour supply (driving down wages)
• Increasing demand for land

  Drove up rents and resulted in entry fees (up-front as paid at the start of land rental)
• Growth of towns, such as London and Norwich, drove up the cost of rents, while food prices rose as food had to be brought in from all areas to be sold
• Monasteries had provided help for the poor until their dissolution under Henry VIII in the 1530s
• Bad harvests in 1562, 1565, 1573 and 1586 hit subsistence farmers whose who ate what they grew, reduced the food supply and drove up prices
• Economic recessions caused by trade embargos such as those involving Spain over the Netherlands created unemployment and poverty
• Enclosure drove many people off the land altogether, leaving them with nowhere to live or farm. They became itinerants and vagrants
• The growth of the wool trade meant many farmers preferred to rear sheep, rather than grow food