During the fifty years (1558-1603) when Elizabeth held the sceptre, important changes took place. Her realm, we read, was “exceedingly pestered” by “disorderly persons, incorrigible rogues, and sturdy beggars,” while the lamentable condition of “the poor, the lame, the sick, the impotent and decayed persons” was augmented by the suppression of the monasteries and other religious organizations which had hitherto done much to assuage their sufferings. The noble band of men, whom that great woman attracted and stimulated, faced the subject as statesmen, and the epoch-making enactment of 1601 still bears fruit in our midst. Broadly, the position of the supporters in relation to the supported was considered, and for the advantage of both it was enacted that “a stock of wool, hemp, flax, iron, and other stuff” should be bought “to be wrought by those of the needy able to labour,” so that they might maintain themselves. “Houses of correction” were established, to which any person refusing to labour was to be committed, where they were to be clothed “in convenient apparel meet for such a body to weare,” and “to be kept straitly in diet and punished from time to time”. In this Act the duty of supporting persons in “unfeigned misery” was made compulsory, power being given to tax the “froward persons” who “resisted the gentle persuasions of the justices” and “withheld of their largesse”. Thus the system of poor rating was established, and the maintenance of the needy drifted out of the hands of the Church into the hands of the State. Neither of the motives which had ruled action in the previous centuries was disclaimed. That the idle poor deserve punishment, and that the suffering poor demand pity, were still held to be true, but to these principles was added the new one that the State was responsible for both. In order to ease the burdens of the charitable, the idle must be compelled to support themselves, and in the almost incredible event of any one who, having this world’s goods, yet refused to be charitable, provision was made to compel him to contribute, so as to hinder injustice being done to the man who gave willingly. _Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands scientific treatment”._