Analysis On The Operating Mechanism Of The Poor Relief In The Early Modern England

Early modern England appeared serious poverty problem, W.K. Jordan thinks reasons are various, such as sensitive to poverty, a large number of monasteries dissolution, the influence of the agricultural revolution, the growth of population, the development of urbanization and industrialization, inflation and the spread of the disease. Compared with the middle ages, the church strength weakened greatly, but its charitable spirit always affected the British public. As Yang Changdong said, "we admired medieval philanthropist, because of their spirit, not their method." Folk charity is an important part of the British poor activity, and it promotes the emergence of the British official system. When the traditional way of poor relief has been unable to meet the social demand, the official started to focus on and dominate the country’s poor relief. Although the official poor relief mainly in order to develop economy and stabilize the social order, but the official intervention marked the British public charity began to convert to social assistance. So far, because of the mutual cooperation and joint efforts of a joint force including the church, folk and official power, the UK formed a parish based and complete system of poor, also has laid the foundation for the emergence of the British welfare system.This paper consists of introduction, text and epilogue. Introduction mainly introduced the selected topic reason, the definition of related concepts and the research status at home and abroad. Text is divided into five parts, The first part mainly aims at the main bodies of poor of early modem England, teasing out the transformation of historical position of the church, and non-governmental forces and official and its influence in the poor activity, thus understanding the traditional British charity relief to the modern welfare state’s early history. The second part introduces the object of poor operation, mainly including "worth being rescued people" and "people" who are not worthy of rescuing, proper assistance to the former, punish education to the latter. The third part explores the way of the Poor mechanism, including Poor organization establishment, the source of the Poor supplies and poor management and supervision mechanism, understanding the necessary conditions of the poor implementation. The fourth part illustrates the categories of poor operation which can divide into emergency poor and routine poor according to the poor time. The fifth section summarizes and analyzes the characteristics and influence of the poor pattern. The conclusion part summarizes the operation mechanism of the summary.