The 31 Henry VIII., c. xiii., expressly states that the laity in possession of the lands of the dissolved monasteries were to maintain hospitality. But they never did any such thing, nor were they required to do so. They increased the rentals of the monastic, episcopal and capitular lands fourfold more than had previously been paid, for ecclesiastical lands were let at about one-fourth of their rack-rental value. A good deal of the land was tithe-free, and therefore higher rentals were demanded than for lands which paid tithes. These men made the poor laws; their increased rentals increased pauperism, but they had only a small fractional part to pay themselves towards the maintenance of the poor; the bulk of the rates for the relief of the poor (increased in number by the conduct of these new landlords) was paid by people unconnected with the land. “The poor of England,” says Blackstone, “till the time of Henry VIII., subsisted entirely upon private benevolence, and the charity of well-disposed Christians. For though it appears by the ‘Mirror’ that by the Common Law the poor were to be ‘sustained by _parsons_, rectors of the church, and the _parishioners_, so that none of them die for default of sustenance;’ and though by the statutes 12 Rich. II., c. vii. and 19 Henry VII., c. xii. the poor are directed to be sustained in the cities or towns wherein they were born or where they had dwelt for three years (which seem to be the first rudiments of parish settlements), yet till the statute of 27 Henry VIII., c. xxvi., I find no compulsory method chalked out for this purpose; but the poor seem to have been left to such relief as the humanity of their neighbours would afford them. The monasteries were, in particular, their principal resource.”[235] Here the “Mirror” distinctly states that by Common Law the parson and his parishioners sustained the poor, and by the same Common Law the parson, as trustee, received all the tithes, and by the same law the poor had a claim to a part of those tithes. It is a favourite argument with Lord Selborne, and others who follow him, that the part allotted out of the tithes for the poor would be insufficient for their support. But he omits the important fact that in one of Edgar’s canons it was enacted that the people should also distribute alms to the poor, so that the part allotted out of the tithes was not intended to be the _whole_ maintenance which the poor should receive.[236] In A.D. 960, when Edgar’s laws and canons were enacted, the population of England was about 800,000, with about 1,000,000 acres under cultivation. The provision for the poor was more than sufficient.