Two years later, in consequence of great complaints of the country being much burdened and impoverished, the magistrates ordered that the constables should cause every parish to be surveyed and inspected as to how many cottages (and under what conditions) had been erected during the last forty years. It had also been ordered that every person apprehending a vagrant, and bringing him to a constable or tithingman, should have 12d. a piece for them--this step being considered necessary in consequence of "the great charge of wandering beggars and the efforts made in other counties to reduce them." Many persons were indicted for erecting cottages without having the necessary quantity of land attached; their cottages were pulled down, and all their little substance destroyed. Poor people were driven to herd together, great numbers in one house, or to sleep in sheds and in the open air; and thus a law which was intended to suppress mendicancy resulted in great suffering to the lower classes, and undoubtedly to the engendering of filth, disease, and crime. So scrutinizing were the precautions against a liability to support the poor, that no person who belonged to that unfortunate class could travel out of his parish into another, and accept employment and a lodging there, without a certificate from the churchwardens and overseers of his own parish that in case he should ever require relief they would take him back. The following memorials are sad pictures of poverty and suffering in the seventeenth century: