Thus we see that during this period the Council put pressure on merchants in order that manufacturers might give their men work; a proclamation was drawn up by its advice giving strict orders for the relief and employment of the poor all over the country; and it insisted in several different ways that in the districts most affected work should be found and relief given. We can see by the circumstances of this crisis something of the nature of the difficulty which the Stuart statesmen had to meet. The social organisation was based on the assumption that the conditions were fairly stable; a poor man had the greatest difficulty, as we have seen[355], in going from one part of the country to another, and the apprenticeship laws were fitfully if not rigorously enforced, so that, if a man's own trade failed, there was little prospect of employment in another. In our own time a sudden falling off in trade causes great hardship to the workmen, and in the seventeenth century the hardship was thus far greater. The demand for manufactured goods was essentially unstable; the social organisation was based on an underlying assumption that work was stable. The introduction of manufactures would therefore cause peculiar hardship to the poor employed in them, if exceptional measures of this kind could not be enforced. [355] See Chap. VII. There are several other references in the succeeding years which refer chiefly or wholly to the action of the Council in enforcing provision of work for the unemployed[356]. But after January 1631, regulations of this kind formed part of the Book of Orders of that date, and the Register of the Council, so far as it concerns the poor, relates chiefly to the Royal commission, then just appointed, or to the enforcement of the Book of Orders as a whole. [356] 15th Feb., 1630/1. Rutland justices ordered to see the poor were set to work. See Appendix. 31st March, 1631. Houses of Correction were to be erected in Herts. without any more delay. 22nd April, 1631. J.P.'s of Middlesex and to those of Westminster. Elsewhere much good had been done but they were negligent. Order them to look after Houses of Correction and set vagabonds to work there. 31st March, 1631. Lord-Lieutenants commanded to see the poor were set to work. 8th Jan., 1635-6. Several propositions for the employment of the poor were referred to a committee, who were to give such order as was fit for so good a work. 15th April, 1637. Inquiry into want of work at Godalming. 25th Aug. 1639. Inquiry into the grievances of the journeymen silk weavers, who complain of slack work and lowered wages, f. 615. All these are entered under their respective dates in the _Privy Council Register_. We shall see when we consider the relief of the different classes of poor in detail that there are evidences as to the result of the Privy Council action on other occasions. [Sidenote: 6. The Royal commission and Book of Orders as a whole.]