Poor Relief, Agrarian Laws, and Redistribution in England, c. 1450–1601

Abstract

This dissertation provides an intellectual history of redistribution in sixteenth-century England, extending from poor relief, through agrarian laws, to proposals to transform propriety itself. It begins with two chapters on poor relief, identifying a common inheritance from the Bible and early church which provided a model for how poor relief developed in sixteenth-century England, as well as a debate concerning whether relief should be granted from ecclesiastical revenues or from collections. By closely intertwining this debate with the inherited traditions, the dissertation draws out the intellectual origins of poor relief legislation in England before proceeding to trace its contested development towards the Old Poor Law of the final Elizabethan Parliament. It emphasises moments when poor relief became a matter of hot debate, such as in the exiled church of Frankfurt and the Admonition Controversy. Three chapters follow on agrarian laws, demonstrating not only that there was positive consideration of agrarian laws in sixteenth-century England, but that the statutes preventing engrossing and enclosure, which began under Henry VII, were actually identified with the Roman leges agrariae, and specifically conceptualised as controlling the distribution of landholding. Integrating examination of developing conceptualisation of these laws from John Fortescue to Francis Bacon with other redistributive proposals, including ecclesiastical disendowment and acts of resumption, produces a comprehensive image of redistributive agrarian laws in this period. A final chapter considers how propriety and inequality were justified, before turning to how this was challenged, including with proposals to abolish inheritance, and, finally, with the defence of communal ownership in Thomas More’s Utopia.