But the provision for the unemployed workmen is by far the most characteristic part of the early seventeenth century administration. A man who was unemployed and had no resources had either to beg or to steal. If he begged, he was whipped; if he stole, he went to one of the terrible prisons of the time. The bands of armed vagrants, who made themselves terrible by their numbers and defied the law, were therefore only a natural consequence of the social conditions of the period. Repressive measures were tried but did not succeed because force could not restrain a man from begging if that was his only means of escaping starvation. The provision of work which had been made for the unemployed before 1597 was quite inadequate, and it remained for the earlier Stuarts to develope and extend the system. We will examine first some of the methods of raising funds which now came to be utilised, and secondly a few of the various plans adopted in different places at different times with the object of employing the poor. It is characteristic of the time that the money was frequently provided by private people. At Guildford Archbishop Abbot founded a workhouse, and we are told that the poor men of the town were employed to spin flax and hemp into cloth, and that this was found to be a "great comfort to many poore workefolke men, women and children[533]". [533] _Dom. State Papers_, Chas. I., Vol. 191, 42. At New Windsor several sums of money were left for this purpose. One of these was bequeathed by Andrew Windsor in a will dated 1621. He bequeathed £200, the annual interest from which amounted to fourteen pounds. With this the poor were to be set to work in the making of cloth. To some extent the donor's intentions were fulfilled up to the present century. During the eighteenth century and up to 1829 the money was expended in setting the poor to work to spin sheeting[534]. [534] _Rep. Char. Com._, XXXII. Pt. 1, p. 100. Other legacies left at New Windsor for this purpose were as follows:-- Mathias Jenis £20 "towards a stock for the setting of poor people of Windsor on work or to purchase some parcel of land for their relief." B. Chert gave a similar sum for the same purposes. _Rep._ XXXII. 1, p. 98. There were many other gifts of the same kind, but of some no farther trace has been found, while others are employed for a somewhat different purpose[535]. [535] Other charities of the same kind were those of Lawrence Atwill, Exeter, 1588, £600. _Rep._ VI. p. 136. George White, Bristol, 10 Chas. I., £100. _Rep._ VI. p. 530. Aldworth, Bristol, 1634, £1000 towards the setting of poor people on work. _Char. Com. Rep._ VIII. p. 58. Atwell's gift. A lost charity of Wolverhampton. _Rep._ V. 593. Croydon. Henry Smith gave £1000 in 1624, subject to certain trusts, which was partly to be used for this purpose. _Bibliotheca Topographica_, II. p. 79.