20.—Who have sold ale or beer on the Sabbath day, or who have been drinking or tipling in any alehouse on that day. As the reader may surmise, from references to recusants and others who refused or neglected to attend church, or to acknowledge the supremacy of the King as the head, these instructions were drawn up and submitted by the Bailiff to the Constables of Madeley, Little Wenlock, Beckbury, and Badger, in the early part of reign of William and Mary. Vagrants and sturdy beggars, it appears, were to be strictly looked after; they swarmed through the country, giving themselves up to pilfering; the women breeding children whom they brought up to the same idle way of living, so that, according to a writer about that period, (1677) there were 100,000 paupers in England. Harsh measures were therefore resorted to: the law of Settlement was passed, and once more the poor were reduced to bondage to the soil from which they had been emancipated a century or two before. By this law, which remained in force 130 years, and which was not repealed till the close of the last century, the poor were imprisoned within their allotments; and upon the complaints of the Churchwardens or Overseers, any two Justices of the Peace had power to lay hold of the new comer and within forty days remove him to the Parish in which he was last settled, unless he could prove that he was neither a pauper nor a vagabond, or that he rented a tenement of the value of £10 per annum. Here, for instance, is a copy of a letter addressed to the constables of Madeley. Wenlock To the Constables of the p sh. of Madeley, Greeting. Whereas I have been informed yt. Thomas Richasson doth endeavour to make a settlement within the s’d p’ish of Madeley, contrary to the laws &c. I am therefore in the King and Queen’s Ma’ties names, of England that now are, to will and require you the said Constables, or one of you that you bring before me or some other of their Ma’ties Justices of the Peace for the said Town and lib’ties, the body of the said Thomas Richasson, to the Serjeant’s House in Much Wenlock, upon Tuesday the tenth day of this instant month of March, to answer to such matters as shall be objected against him by the overseers of the poor of the parish of Madeley. And you, the said constables, are required to give notice to John York of yo’r p’sh, Smith, that he be and appear before me &c. at the time and place above said, by nine o’clock in the morning, to put in sureties for his and his wife’s good behaviour towards Elinor Alnord, Widdy, and all their Ma’ties loyal people. And you are to make due returns of this warrant at the time above stated &c. Given under my hand and seal this second day of March, Anno domini 1690.