refuse to be bound.

The 14th Elizabeth, cap. 5, requires the justices of the peace to
register all aged and impotent poor born or for three years
resident in the parish, and to settle them in convenient
habitations, and ascertain the weekly charge, and assess the amount
on the inhabitants, and yearly appoint collectors to receive and
distribute the assessment, and also an overseer of the poor. This
act was to continue for seven years.

The 18th Elizabeth, cap. 3, provides for the employment of the
poor. Stores of wool, hemp, flax, iron, etc., to be provided in
cities and towns, and the poor set to work. It empowered persons
possessed of land in free socage to give or devise same for the
maintenance of the poor.

The 39th Elizabeth, cap. 3, and the 43d Elizabeth, cap. 2, extended
these acts, and made the assessment compulsory.

I shall ask you to compare the date of these several laws for the
relief of the destitute poor with the dates of the enactments
against evictions. You will find they run side by side.

[Footnote: The following tables of the acts passed against
eviction, and enacting the support of the poor, show that they were
contemporaneous:

Against Evictions.
4 Henry VII., Cap. 19.
7 Henry VIII, Cap. 1.