α. Impotent poor. 1. Almshouses and endowed charities. (_a_) Old endowments which remained unchanged through the Reformation. (_b_) Old endowments regranted to the Corporation or other public body. (_c_) Fresh endowments. (_d_) Pensions and gifts from endowed charities. 2. Provision for the old from compulsory rates. (_a_) Relief from the county by pensions paid to soldiers and sailors and by hospitals maintained by county funds. (_b_) Relief from the parish by pensions paid to the destitute, by the grant of a house, or by arrangements for free board and lodging in the house of some parishioner. β. Children. 3. Provision for children by apprenticeship. (_a_) To masters. (_b_) To the masters of the Bridewells or industrial schools of the time. 4. Schools for little children and orphanages. γ. Able-bodied poor. 5. Relief given to prisoners. 6. Provision of funds to provide work for the unemployed. 7. Methods of providing work. (_a_) Stocks used to employ the poor in their homes or elsewhere. (_b_) Introduction of new trades. (_c_) Workhouses and Jersey schools. (_d_) Bridewells. (_e_) Emigration. (_f_) Pressure on employers. (_g_) Advancement of capital without interest. We have seen how the poor were relieved in times of special emergency; we will now examine the kind of help that was bestowed upon those classes of poor who in almost every community were more or less constantly in need of assistance. We will notice first the relief given to the impotent and aged poor; secondly, the measures adopted to provide for destitute children; and lastly, the methods used to find work for the unemployed or to suppress vagrants. [Sidenote: α. The impotent poor.] [Sidenote: 1. Almshouses and endowed charities.] [Sidenote: _a._ Old endowments which remained unchanged through the Reformation.] The method of relieving the impotent poor differed very considerably from that with which we are familiar. The workhouses of the seventeenth century were mainly places for people who could work, the aged and impotent poor were often relieved by almshouses controlled by public and by private authorities, but founded and maintained by private liberality. It was indeed an age in which almshouses or hospitals as they were often called abounded. Probably there were nearly as many in existence then as there are to-day, in spite of the fact that our population has increased sixfold. Some of these hospitals were old endowments that had survived the Reformation; others had been dissolved with the other religious houses and regranted to the municipal authorities of the place to which they belonged; many more were founded during the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I.