This was not, of course, the old English tradition. The very earliest of our Poor Laws drew a very clear distinction between the normal poor--the "aged, poor, and impotent persons compelled to live by alms," as they are described in the Act of 1530--and the idle beggar and vagabond. While provision was made for the due relief of the former, penal measures were consistently directed against the latter.[1] And when such methods of repression as the felon irons, the stocks, the whip, serfage, and transportation no longer commended themselves to the public conscience, there remained the method of summary despatch home to the town or village of legal domicile in the custody of zealous parish constables who relieved the monotony of their dignified calling with many a pleasurable jaunt over country in those old leisurely days. But the noteworthy thing about the old laws against vagrants is that their uniform purpose--whatever their effect--was not the mere restriction of this class within due numerical bounds, or the regulation of its movements within decorous limits of liberty, but its absolute extinction. In those brave days the idea of maintaining the vagrant at the public expense, and of encouraging him in idleness and vice, never occurred to the Legislature. [Footnote 1: An Act of 1495 (11 Henry VII.) ordered local authorities to search for all "vagaboundes, idell and suspecte persones lyvyng suspeciously," to put them in the stocks for three days, giving them bread and water only, and then to turn them out of the town or township; failing their departure they were to be put in the stocks for six days more, yet still they had to go. An Act of 1530 (22 Henry VIII.), said in the preamble to be due to the increase of vagrancy, and consequently of crime and disorder, enjoined whipping as an alternative to the stocks, and extended the statute to fortune tellers; a second offence by the latter was made punishable by whipping on two successive days, three hours in the pillory, and the loss of one ear. An Act of 1535 (27 Henry VIII.) made further provision for the able-bodied and infirm poor, but meted severer punishment to the ruffler, sturdy vagabond, or valiant beggar, who on a second apprehension might have the upper part of the right ear cut off, and on conviction at Quarter Sessions of "wandering, loitering, and idleness," might be sentenced to death as felons.