In Barnstaple, Bristol, Newbury, Lichfield, Wolverhampton and Colchester[572] there were similar bequests, and apparently in most towns charitable funds of this kind were in existence during the reigns of the earlier Stuarts. It was one of the ways in which the philanthropists of the time endeavoured to give employment, only in this case it was not to the vagrant, but to the householder or skilled workman. Usually these sums were given by private people and administered by the town. But at Hitchin we find something of the kind suggested as a method of poor relief. The justices in their report recount the sufferings of the poor during the plague, and say that "three poore tradesmen who were shutt up And haue lost their custome and spent their meanes haue petitioned for stock to put them into Trade againe[573]." The matter was not yet decided, but from the justices' language it is clear that they regarded it as quite within their power to grant relief in this manner. John Lock, tailor of London, bequeathed gifts of £5 to £10 to the apprentices of Bridewell with a similar object, and, having regard to the circumstances of the time, few charities would probably have had a better effect if they had been honestly administered. [572] See _Reports of the Charity Commissioners_. Among these sums at Bristol were the following:-- Alderman Thorne's Gift £500 in 1532 to "succour young men that were minded to cloth making." John Heydon, 1579. £100 for two young men trading over seas at interest of £3. 6_s._ 8_d._ Alderman Whitson, 1627. £500, £250 to five young men for seven years at interest of ten shillings, £250 to twenty tradesmen for seven years, &c. _Report_ VIII., p. 597 seq. Such bequests were also sometimes in the hands of parochial officials. St Mary, Aldermary. John Kemp in 1569 gave £100 to the churchwardens that they might lend the same to ten poor occupiers without interest. Anthony Sprott in 1607 gave £20 to the churchwardens and parishioners to be lent by them to a young occupier at 16_s._ a year. _Rep._ VI., p. 201. [573] _Dom. State Papers_, Chas. I., Vol. 349, No. 70. We thus see that many different methods were employed to relieve the old, to train the young and to give work to the able-bodied. The examples we have already given afford some evidence that legal poor relief had become well established in many districts, but it was not equally well administered at all times and in all places. We will now inquire when and how the administration of the law was improved, and the answer to this question may suggest the reason why the history of the English Poor Law is different to that of the rest of Western Europe. CHAPTER XII. 1597-1644. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE POOR LAW AS A WHOLE. 1. Importance of the period 1597 to 1644. (_a_) Because it was the period when the relief of the impotent poor became established. (_b_) Because it is the only period in which many efforts were made to set the unemployed to work.