When the Monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII, the first authorised parochial machinery was established for the relief of the poor and for suppressing vagrancy. An act was passed authorising the head officers of every parish to receive and keep all poor applicants, putting the able-bodied to constant labour. The necessary funds were to be derived from voluntary contributions collected by the officers, and also the proceeds of stimulating sermons in the churches. But the voluntary system proved a failure, and it was left for Elizabeth to introduce the principle of compulsory taxation for this purpose. The statute 43rd Elizabeth, chap. 2, was kept in full operation till the passing of the Poor-law Amendment Act, in 1834. In the time of Elizabeth, cottage building for the poor was an object of great jealousy to the inhabitants of towns and villages, who dreaded the location of paupers amongst them, and took immense pains to "pass on" any mendicants who happened to stray within their boundary. Officers were usually appointed to "remove intruders," and these knowing "porrochials" would not infrequently offer a bribe when no other means had availed for ejecting the obnoxious tramp from a parish. By an act (31 Eliz.) it was declared that "no cottage should be erected unless there be four acres of ground of their own freehold to be continually used therewith." The operation of this statute was often attended with great 'privation and suffering to the poor, and the Sessions Rolls of this county abound with petitions and memorials to the bench on the subject. In 1612, William Dench, labourer, of Longdon, in his petition, set forth that "being destitute of habitation, and having a wife and seven small children, William Parsons, of Longdon, in charity took him to live in a little sheepcot of his in the said towne, with the consent of the churchwardens and overseers; but because yr poor orator (the usual term for "petitioner") had not licence in open Quarter Sessions, nor under the hands and seals of the lords of the manor, and because the said sheepcot standeth on the freehold of William Parsons, and not on the waste, contrary to the act 43rd Elizabeth, chap. 2, therefore he was indicted and is sued to an outelary (outlawry), petitions for pardon and for a licence to continue in the said sheepcot." The Worcester County Quarter Sessions, 1660, made an order that all cottages erected since the late war should be "pluckt downe" as a "greate grievance," and that no house-room should be provided for "lusty young married people," who, if they unwisely married before they had got houses, were told to "_lye under an oke_." A few years previously, one Corbett, a Parliamentary soldier, settled at Bricklehampton, and purchased half-an-acre of land to build a house upon. The parishioners, it seems, were content, but the lord of the manor refused. On application to the Sessions, leave was granted to build.