Possibly this fact has an important influence on our national history. We are apt to consider the facts that we are a law-abiding people and that we have not suffered from violent revolutions to be entirely due to the virtues of the national character and the excellence of the British Constitution. But before the introduction of our system of relieving the poor we were by no means so free from disorder. The poor laws themselves were at least partly police measures, and, until they were successfully administered, the country was repeatedly disturbed by rebellions and constantly plagued by vagrants. The connection between the relief of the poor and orderly government in England appears fully during the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it may be that our legal system of poor relief has ever since contributed to the absence of violent catastrophes in our national history. But although the continuous existence of a system of public poor relief for nearly three centuries is peculiar to England, the English organisation was at first only one of a series of similar systems which began to arise during the sixteenth century in most of the countries of Europe. Both in England and on the continent, however, poor laws were difficult to administer. On the continent they fell gradually into abeyance, and the English system of poor relief was by no means enforced simply because a poor law was passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It survived almost alone among the similar organisations of the time chiefly in consequence of the policy adopted by the Privy Council in the reign of Charles I. and of the efforts made by English justices of the peace as a result of that policy. For nearly a century before the time of Charles I., however, experiments had been made in the organisation of public poor relief. Efforts in this direction were first undertaken by the towns, and the provisions of the earlier English poor laws appear to have been modelled on pre-existing municipal regulations. The City of London was apparently the first English secular authority to organise the public relief of the poor. Collections by the aldermen at the church doors were decreed by the Court of Aldermen in 1532: compulsory taxation was levied by the Common Council as early as 1547, while the Bishop and citizens persuaded Edward VI. to grant the royal palace of Bridewell for the creation of the first House of Correction. Before 1569 legislation also had been fashioned upon these pre-existing orders and bye-laws of the towns, but neither statutes nor municipal orders were successful.