[413] In 1631 also a dispute about a poor rate in Marlborough was referred to the Lords of the Council and was sent by them to the Lord Chief Justice and judges of assize. _Privy Co. Reg._, 13th May, 1631. [Sidenote: 5 _a_. The work of the overseers in 1599.] The last authority who was responsible for the execution of the poor law was the overseer. He it was who had to do the work, the function of all the others was to make him do it. It was the duty of the overseers to know all about the poor in their parish; to fix the amount of the assessment and to levy it proportionately. They had also to provide pensions and habitations for the impotent poor, to find masters for apprentices and to procure work for the unemployed. The overseers' accounts for Staplegrove in the county of Somerset in the year 1599 will show us something of their ordinary work. Payments were made by twenty-two parishioners quarterly and by sixteen weekly, while two of the inhabitants took charge of two impotent people. Ten poor people received payment of a small sum every week on what we should now call the outdoor relief system. Besides this money had been disbursed in order to provide for a pauper's burial, to recompense tithingmen for receiving the poor strangers that were brought to them, and to purchase clothes and wood for the older poor and also outfits for apprentices[414]. In this account there is nothing about setting the poor to work, but the rest of the poor law seems to have been well executed in 1599. [414] See Appendix. [Sidenote: 5 _b_. When stirred to greater activity by scarcity measures.]