Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/487



CHAPTER XVI.

PAUPERISM AND THE FYLDE UNION.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was not customary to recognise the pauper as a person whose misfortunes, however brought about, called for charitable aid, but all legislature was directed against his class under the common title of vagabonds. A statute of 1384 decreed that all vagrants should be arrested and either placed in the stocks, or imprisoned until the visit of the justices, who would do with them whatever seemed best by law; and in 1496 the punishment of incarceration was abolished, but the stocks were retained. The sixteenth century initiated a little more considerate state of things, and justices of the peace were authorised in 1531 to grant begging licenses to any necessitous persons in their districts unable to work for a livelihood. An act of 1547 ordained that any vagabond, not incapacitated by old age or illness, loitering and not seeking work for three days should be brought before a magistrate, who was directed to adjudge such vagrant to be, for two years, the slave of the person by whom he had been apprehended, in addition to which he had to be branded with the letter V on the breast. In case he ran away the law ordered that a further branding of the sign S should be inflicted, this time on his forehead or the ball of his cheek, and that slavery should be his perpetual portion. A third escape entailed death when re-captured. This enactment was never really enforced as popular indignation at its extreme severity was aroused at once, and after lingering two years it was repealed in favour