The special emergencies in which the poor most often obtained relief in the seventeenth century were those arising from bad harvests, sickness, and fire.
We will first examine the methods of supplying the poor with corn after bad harvests. We have already seen that in 1608, 1621-3, and 1629-31 the central government issued orders with this object, which closely resembled the commands which had been issued during the reign of Elizabeth. We have now to see how these orders were executed in the early part of the seventeenth century.
In 1608 there is little evidence in this direction. A report however was sent from Colchester. There, the constables took an account of the number of persons that had corn by them; of the bargains they had made and of the number of acres they had sown, and in accordance with that survey every person was ordered to bring weekly to market so many bushels of corn unless they had already sold them to poor artificers and day labourers[421]. There were probably like reports from other places but there is nothing to make us think that the scarcity Book of Orders was better executed in 1608 than it had been in 1587 or 1597.
[Sidenote: 1. The methods in which the scarcity orders of the Privy Council were executed in 1623 and 1630-1.]
But in 1623 and in 1630-31 there are returns from many different parts of the country, and these seem to show that the orders which were occasionally put in force under Elizabeth were frequently put in force under James I., and were usually well executed in the season of scarcity in the reign of Charles I.
[Sidenote: _a._ The suppression of alehouses, and restrictions of malting.]
The Book of Orders issued in each period of scarcity contained directions for limiting the quantity of malt and for suppressing unnecessary alehouses. This was the case because barley bread was the chief food of the poor, and they would be more easily able to obtain a supply if the barley which would have been used for malt was brought to the markets. The corn reports of 1623 and 1630-1 for the most part state in general terms that these directions had been carried out[422]. Moreover sometimes the justices enter into details and show that they had taken great care in putting this part of the Council's orders into execution. Thus in 1623 the number of alehouses in Banbury was reduced by one-third, in Ripon by a half, while in Wycombe only nine were licensed out of twenty-one[423]. In April 1631 also in Bradford, in Hertford, and in Stafford more than half the alehouses were suppressed[424].