Elizabethan England Practice Test

In Elizabethan policy, poverty was treated largely as a moral and social control issue rather than a welfare concern. The idle poor were seen as a threat to order and to parish burdens, so relief was limited and tightly regulated. The state relied on local parishes to provide for the “deserving” poor, while punishing or deterring the able-bodied who begged or wandered, through vagrancy laws and forced labor. There were no automatic employment schemes or generous subsidies from a central government. Voluntary charity existed, but the overall approach toward idleness was not sympathetic or expansive. That makes the idea that the government was unsympathetic toward the idle poor the best description.