Administration of the Poor Law as a whole. 2. Negligent administration of the Poor Law in the North and extreme West. 3. The administration of the Poor Law in the rest of England varied with the action of the Privy Council. 4. Action of the Privy Council and administration between 1597 and 1605. 5. Action of the Privy Council and administration between 1605 and 1629. 6. Action of the Privy Council and administration between 1629 and 1644. (_a_) State of affairs in 1631. (_b_) Improvement effected in 1631 and 1632. (_c_) Improvement maintained between 1631 and 1640. Provision of Work for the Unemployed. 7. The improvement effected in 1631 especially concerned the unemployed. 8. The detailed report from Bassetlaw. 9. Provision of work: (_a_) in the North and extreme West, (_b_) in the towns, (_c_) in the Western counties, (_d_) in the Eastern counties. 10. Summary. [Sidenote: 1. Importance of the period 1597-1644.] We have already examined both the machinery which existed for the execution of the poor law and the different methods which were used for relieving the impotent, for training the young and for [Sidenote: 1. (_a_) Because it was the period when the relief of the impotent poor became established.] providing work for the unemployed. We have now to consider the administration as a whole; to find out when and where the machinery was put in motion and how far these methods were generally employed. The history of poor relief in the sixteenth century has already shown us that it was far more easy to pass a Poor Law than to procure a good system of administration. There were many poor laws before those of 1597 and 1601 but they were not well administered: they were never so generally or so effectively enforced as to become part of the practice as well as of the law of the country. If the last Elizabethan poor law had been no more successful than these earlier statutes the whole system of compulsory poor relief would probably have collapsed during the Civil War. The fact that the part of the poor law relating to children and the destitute survived that war, and has ever since formed part of our social organisation may be attributed therefore to the improved administration of the earlier Stuarts. The administrators of this period are thus responsible for the continued practice of any legal system of relief at all. [Sidenote: 1. (_b_) The period 1597 to 1644 is also the only period in which many efforts were made to set the unemployed to work.]