In England the justices' reports concerning the administration of the poor cease after the year 1639. After that date either no more reports were sent or no care was taken to preserve them. The cessation of these documents probably marks the time when the system created by the Book of Orders began to disappear. Other and more pressing matters engaged the attention of the Privy Council, and were subjects for the special inquiries of the judges of assize. The justices devoted their zeal and attention to raising troops or to meeting the great demands in money made by both King and Parliament, while constables and overseers were used as collectors, not only of funds for the relief of the poor, but also of the revenues needed by the armies[644]. Under these circumstances the system created by the Book of Orders fell to pieces, and the whole administration of poor relief became lax. Still the effect of the execution of the Book of Orders remained. For nine years the overseers had been drilled by the justices, and the parishioners had been compelled to pay rates. The inhabitants had become accustomed to the organisation, and that part of it continued which was most easily enforced by the overseers, and which seemed to them most urgently necessary. The impotent were still relieved, and children were still apprenticed, though less efficiently than before, but the able-bodied poor were no longer found with work, except in a few isolated cases. [644] The Collectors responsible to Parliament for the gathering of the subsidies for the war were the overseers and petty constables in each parish. We will first examine part of the evidence bearing upon the lax administration of the whole system of poor relief and some of the efforts which were made under the Commonwealth to restore the old state of things. Sometimes we hear of the disorganisation of semi-voluntary charities; at other times of the bad administration of the laws for the poor; occasionally of fraudulent practices in connection with charitable endowments. [Sidenote: 1. Lax administration of system of Poor Relief in England during the years of the Civil War. _a._ Decline of charitable institutions.]