An industry of considerable interest from a domestic point of view came to the front in 1542; this was the manufacture of pins. These useful articles were originally made abroad, but the English pinners took to making them, and on their engaging to keep the public well supplied at reasonable prices, an Act of Parliament was passed in the year just named, forbidding the sale of any sort of pins excepting “only such as shall be double-headed, and have the heads soldered fast to the shank of the pin, well smoothed, the shank well shaven, the point well and round filed, canted and sharped.” The English pinmakers, however, either proved unable or unwilling to keep their part of the bargain, and complaints were so loudly made that the pins were not what they should be, that in 1545 the Act was declared “frustrate and annihilated, and to be repealed for ever.” Pins of good quality were of brass, but unscrupulous makers made pins of iron wire, blanched, and passed them off as brass ones. People who went from home then had no choice—they must either ride or walk. Kings, queens, and gentlefolk all mounted to the saddle, the ladies being accustomed to ride on pillions fixed on the horse, and generally behind some relative or serving-man. Rude carriages, however, made their appearance in England in 1555. Before the Reformation there were no poor’s rates. The poor had their wants supplied by charitable doles given at religious houses, and by contributions placed in the poor man’s box which stood in every church. In all parishes there was a church house supplied with dishes and cooking utensils. “Here,” says John Aubrey, “the housekeepers met, and were merry and gave their charity.” Begging, under certain conditions, was regulated by an Act of Parliament passed in 1530. By this Act justices of the peace were required to give licences under their seals to such poor, aged, and impotent persons to beg within a certain precinct as they thought had most need. If anyone begged out of the district assigned to him he was to be set in the stocks two days and two nights; and if anyone begged without first obtaining a licence he was to be put in the stocks three days and three nights, and be fed with bread and water only. Vagrants were very sternly dealt with; but in this Act, and in subsequent legislation on the same subject, we see that our sixteenth-century forefathers had an honest desire to do their duty in relieving such as were in “unfeigned misery.” In an Act passed in the first year of Edward VI.’s reign we find the curate of every parish required, “on every Sunday and holiday, after reading the Gospel of the day, to make (according to such talent as God hath given him) a godly and brief exhortation to his parishioners, moving and exciting them to remember the poor people, and the duty of Christian charity in relieving of them which be their brethren in Christ, born in the same parish and needing their help.”