[Sidenote: 5. Summary.] Thus, before the sixteenth century, state and town had begun to make regulations for the relief of the poor. Some of these regulations were dictated by a desire to repress vagrants. They were closely connected with the enforcement of the labour legislation of the time, and were embodied in the same statutes, and administered by the same officials. But other provisions were due to the fact that there was a growing tendency for the state to interfere to prevent the maladministration of ecclesiastical revenues, and for non-ecclesiastical bodies to undertake the administration of charity. Still, before the sixteenth century, most of these measures were negative rather than positive. The orders concerning the repression of sturdy beggars were more prominent than those concerning the relief of the poor. The latter were as yet infrequent and had little practical effect. The main part of the charity of the time was still administered by ecclesiastics and was obtained from endowed charities and from voluntary gifts. But, in the sixteenth century, the older methods of relief failed to cope with the new social difficulties, and the older feeling in favour of the ecclesiastical control of charity was considerably lessened. At the same time, the tendencies that already led to the management of relief by public secular authorities were accentuated. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, therefore, the organisation of poor relief was more and more undertaken by municipality and state, and the English system of poor relief was created and first administered. CHAPTER II. THE CAUSES OF THE REORGANISATION OF POOR RELIEF. 1. Increase of vagrants. (1) Harman's description of vagrants in England. (2) Bands of vagrants on the Continent. 2. Reasons why men became beggars. (1) The destruction of the feudal system destroyed employments furnished by war and service. (2) Manufactures on a large scale less stable than old occupations. (3) Rise of prices affected food earlier than wages. (4) In England enclosures were made because sheep were more profitable than corn. 3. Old methods of charity. (1) Private individuals. (2) Monasteries. (3) Hospitals. 4. Attempts at reorganisation on the Continent. 5. Three factors in making of English poor relief: (1) the orders of the towns; (2) the regulations of the statutes; (3) the efforts of the Privy Council to secure the administration of adequate relief. Three periods in the history of the first making of the English system: (1) 1514-1569; (2) 1569-1597; (3) 1597-1644. The earlier years of the sixteenth century began a period of great changes in the position of the poorer classes, and these changes soon resulted in a series of attempts to reform and reorganise the whole system of poor relief. [Sidenote: 1. Increase of vagrants.] [Sidenote: (1) Harman's description of the bands of vagrants in England.]