he
limit of personal almsgiving; and the money which men might be disposed to
offer was to be collected by the churchwardens on Sundays and holidays in
the churches. The parish priest was to keep an account of receipts and of
expenditure, and relief was administered with some approach to modern
formalities. A further excellent but severe enactment empowered the parish
officers to take up all idle children above the age of five years, "and
appoint them to masters of husbandry or other craft or labour to be
taught;" and if any child should refuse the service to which he was
appointed, or run away "without cause reasonable being shown for it," he
might be publicly whipped with rods, at the discretion of the justice of
the peace before whom he was brought.

So far, no complaint can be urged against these provisions: they display
only that severe but true humanity, which, in offering fair and liberal
maintenance for all who will consent to be honest, insists, not unjustly,
that its offer shall be accepted, and that the resources of charity shall
not be trifled away. On the clause, however, which gave to the Act its
especial and distinguishing character, there will be large difference of
opinion. "The sturdy vagabond," who by the earlier statute was condemned on
his second offence to lose the whole or a part of his right ear, was
condemned by the amended Act, if found a third time offending, with the
mark upon him of his mutilation, "to suffer pains and execution of death,
as a felon and as an enemy of the commonwealth." So the letter stands. For
an able-bodied man to be caught a third time begging was held a crime
deserving death, and the sentence was intended, on fit occasions, to be
executed. The poor man's advantages, which I have estimated at so high a
rate, were not purchased without drawbacks. He might not change his master
at his will, or wander from place to place. He might not keep his children
at his home unless he could answer for their time. If out of employment,
preferring to be idle, he might be demanded for work by any master of the
"craft" to which he belonged, and compelled to work whether he would or no.
If caught begging once, being neither aged nor infirm, he was whipped at
the cart's tail. If caught a second time, his ear was slit, or bored
through with a hot iron. If caught a third time, being thereby proved to be
of no use upon this earth, but to live upon it only to his own hurt and to
that of others,