Stat. 39 Eliz. c. 4.]

AFTER the restoration, a very different plan was adopted, which has
rendered the employment of the poor more difficult, by authorizing the
subdivision of parishes; has greatly increased their number, by
confining them all to their respective districts; has given birth to
the intricacy of our poor-laws, by multiplying and rendering more easy
the methods of gaining settlements; and, in consequence, has created
an infinity of expensive lawsuits between contending neighbourhoods,
concerning those settlements and removals. By the statute 13 & 14 Car.
II. c. 12. a legal settlement was declared to be gained by birth,
inhabitancy, apprenticeship, or service for forty days; within which
period all intruders were made removeable from any parish by two
justices of the peace, unless they settled in a tenement of the annual
value of 10_l._ The frauds, naturally consequent upon this provision,
which gave a settlement by so short a residence, produced the statute
1 Jac. II. c. 17. which directed notice in writing to be delivered to
the parish officers, before a settlement could be gained by such
residence. Subsequent provisions allowed other circumstances of
notoriety to be equivalent to such notice given; and those
circumstances have from time to time been altered, enlarged, or
restrained, whenever the experience of new inconveniences, arising
daily from new regulations, suggested the necessity of a remedy. And
the doctrine of certificates was invented, by way of counterpoise, to
restrain a man and his family from acquiring a new settlement by any
length of residence whatever, unless in two particular excepted cases;
which makes parishes very cautious of giving such certificates, and
of course confines the poor at home, where frequently no adequate
employment can be had.

THE law of settlements may be therefore now reduced to the following
general heads; or, a settlement in a parish may be acquired, 1. By
birth; which is always _prima facie_ the place of settlement, until
some other can be shewn[o]. This is also always the place of
settlement of a bastard child; for a bastard, having in the eye of the
law no father, cannot be referred to _his_ settlement, as other
children may[p]. But, in legitimate children, though the place of
birth be _prima facie_ the settlement, yet it is not conclusively so;
for there are, 2. Settlements by parentage, being the settlement of
one's father or mother: all children being r