autrenecherche:

“There were in the 1530s already some indications of a more enlightened attitude.
Henry VIII’s government realised the inadequacies of the 1531 Act, and considered a
far more radical measure. A bill, possibly written by William Marshall, a close adviser to
Thomas Cromwell, was drawn up in 1535, which recognised that there was not
sufficient work available for all men. It proposed that this be rectified by an ambitious
programme of public works on roads, forts, harbours and rivers. Notice was to be given
of jobs available and the unemployed were to be set to work at reasonable wages,
while the impotent poor were to be maintained in their parishes. The whole effort was
to be funded by a tax on income and capital. It all sounds reminiscent of Roosevelt’s
New Deal four centuries later, and there was even an alphabet agency, the ‘Council to
Avoid Vagabonds’, to direct it all. This would certainly have represented a remarkable
advance – had it ever reached the statute book. 

However, despite Henry VIII publicly lending his support to the Bill, it was savaged in
parliament. The measure which was eventually passed in 1536 was far less sweeping.
Neither the scheme for public works nor the Council to Avoid Vagabonds survived, and
although the Act did place responsibility for the impotent poor on the parish or
municipal authorities, it relied on voluntary donations for the financing of poor relief.
Despite this advance, the 1536 Statute still embodied, in W.K. Jordan’s words, ‘the
stubbornly held persuasion that there were no genuine unemployed and that vagrancy
and begging could be driven from the realm by the application of the criminal law’.”

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