The provisions are chiefly repressive; designed to limit the number of beggars rather than to provide relief. For this reason therefore they were not effectual, and a second statute (27 Hen. VIII. c. 25) was passed also in this reign. This Act was probably drawn up by Henry himself and is similar to measures passed at almost exactly the same time in France and Scotland. The preamble refers to the former statute and states that, "forasmuch as it was not provided what was to be done when the sturdy beggars and impotent poor arrived in their hundreds nor how the inhabitants were to be charged for their relief and for keeping at work the able-bodied, it is now ordered that the authorities of the Cities, Shires, etc." are to "charitably receive" the beggars and relieve them "by way of voluntary and charitable alms in such wise that none of them shall be compelled to wander idly and openly ask alms." The same officers are also to compel the valiant beggars to be kept at continual labour so that they may earn their own living. Very few people were excepted from the operation of these provisions. Beggars with letters, travelling home at the rate of ten miles a day, are to be relieved; lepers and bedridden people may remain where they are; friars mendicant may beg and receive as they have been accustomed; and servants, leaving their service and having letters to that effect, may be free for a month from the operation of the statute. But with these exceptions, all who have not work or property were to be set to work or relieved. Authority was also given for the compulsory apprenticing of vagrant children, between the ages of five and fourteen, and thus for the first time this prominent feature of the later administration of poor relief appears in a statute. The execution of these provisions involved considerable expenditure, and the Act therefore proceeds to provide for the raising of funds. The Mayor or Governor of every city, borough and town corporate, and the churchwardens, with two others of every parish, were to collect alms every Sunday. This plan is similar to that already adopted in London where, in 1533, the aldermen were ordered to supervise the Sunday collections for the poor. There was no attempt at compulsion, but parsons, vicars and curates, when preaching, hearing confessions or making wills were to exhort people to be liberal. Certain games were forbidden by the same Act and the fines for breaking this or any part of the statutes were to go to the poor.