There was also an improvement with regard to the administration of relief to the more deserving classes of the poor. We have already seen that special energy was displayed in the West Riding of Yorkshire at this time, and that there the justices found it very difficult to administer the law, but did execute it to a considerable extent. In Devonshire also the justices received a letter from the Lord Lieutenant, urging them to take especial care for the relief of those in want, and they too began to take measures for carrying out the law. They revoked the licenses granted for beggars, put in order the Houses of Correction and authorised a system of organised billeting on the rich. The poor were to be relieved with two meals a day, one to every household or two or more according to the ability of the householder. If there was any default the justices might assess any sum up to eighteenpence weekly "for every pole[577]." Moreover the justices were to raise stocks for setting the poor to work. All this points to a great increase in vigilance after the Order in Council of 1597 and it also points to the fact that the administration was recent. A general system of billeting was seldom adopted when the legal relief of the poor had been long put in practice. Moreover Devonshire and Yorkshire in later times were backward in administering the law, so that the improvement was probably at least as great in other counties. [577] Hamilton's _Quarter Sessions from Queen Eliz. to Queen Anne_, p. 16. We should also derive a favourable opinion as to the good execution of the law at that time from the Duke of Stettin's account of his journey through England in 1602. Speaking of the Royal Exchange he states, "It is a pleasure to go about there, for one is not molested or accosted by beggars, who are elsewhere so frequently met with in places of this kind. For in all England they do not suffer any beggars except they be few in number and outside the gates. "Every parish cares for its own poor, strangers are brought to the hospital, but those that belong to the kingdom or have come from distant places are sent from one parish to the other, their wants being cared for until at last they reach their home[578]." The Duke of Stettin judges favourably most things that he sees in England but still his account could not have been written unless beggars had been out of sight in the parts visited by him and unless the poor had seemed to be relieved in England more effectually than in his own country. [578] Translation from the "Diary of the Duke of Stettin's Journey," pp. 12 and 13, _Trans. of Royal Hist. Soc._ After 1597 therefore the execution of the law appears to have been more vigorous and the improvement is likely to have been connected with the action taken by the Privy Council in that year. [Sidenote: 5. Action of the Privy Council and administration between 1605 and 1629.]