We shall see later that all these expedients were adopted much more often after 1631 than before it, and it is at that date that our information is most complete. About that time we hear of several ways in which the poor were employed directly or indirectly by the public authorities, but in which we are not told of the erection of a workhouse or other building of the kind. In Winchester, for instance, the stock was placed in a clothier's hands; at Maidstone "the towne doth ymploy poore women and their children in spinning, making of buttons and twisting of threed for the same." In two of the hundreds[538] of Shropshire "the poore of euery paryshe w^{th}in the said hundreds are sufficiently provided for and are not permitted to wander or beg but are set to worke on husbandry as the state of the countrey doth require." [538] _Ib._ Chas. I., Vol. 188, 101; Vol. 186, 74; Vol. 194, 17. IV. All these and many other instances are reported in 1631, but there are examples at other times. At Norwich many plans were tried[539], but in 1625 it was resolved that the stone-mines should be used for that purpose. The workmen were to be "sett on worke" the next Monday at eight o'clock and surveyors were ordered to be present. "And the Belman ys required to warne all such as want worke and dwell not in infected howses to repaire thither at that hower w^{th} barrowes and fittinge tooles to digg stone & they shall be compounded w^{th}all for reasonable wages[540]." [539] In Dec. 1630 a certain "Nathaniell Crotch was appointed to sett the poore on worke in the Newhall," and certain aldermen were appointed to overlook the work done. _Court Books, Norwich_, 23 Dec. 1630. [540] _Court Books, Norwich_, 3rd Nov. 1625, f. 72. Other plans were even then contemplated at Norwich, and on Nov. 16th people were appointed in every ward to "sett the poore on worke." At King's Lynn also different expedients were adopted. As early as 1581 money had been spent in changing St James's Church into a workhouse, and shortly afterwards we have evidence of employment being then given to the poor. In 1623 the building was pulled down, and possibly in consequence of this we find an agreement made in that year between the citizens on the one side and a merchant taylor, a glover and a woolchapman on the other. These last undertook not only to teach children to spin worsted yarn, but also to give employment to the poor, and to pay proper wages to those who were not learners. In June, 1631, the Mayor and the Recorder sent in a report to the Sheriff, in which they said that then they had "bought materialls to sett the able-bodyed poore on worke not suffering to o^r knowledge anie poore to stragle and begg upp and downe the streets of this Burgh[541]." In Lynn, therefore, the authorities on several occasions made energetic efforts to find employment for those out of work, and very possibly some arrangement of this sort was in continuous operation from the year 1581.