Ref; Chris Burgoyne's email of 8-12-13. A most interesting detailed research. However, why blame the Church for lack of charity? At that time the Church was, when carrying out such duties, doing what the law demanded of it. The state had since the time of the Tudors used the church authorities to administer much of the civil law. That is why the Anglican Church was by law ordered to keep parish registers. That law still stands today. No other denomination is bound by law to keep such records. Why, because King Henry 8th. insisted that all his subjects had to be Anglican with the result that there were no other denominations recognised by the state. That was the only way in those days that the king could keep tabs on all his subjects. A mixed blessing for family historians! Dennis Bramble

While it was the parish which was the unit which was required to carry out the provisions of the Poor Law, the money came from rates levied on the owners/tenants of property in the parish according to the value of each holding. This money was collected and disbursed by the overseers of the poor who were "elected" by those same owners/tenants. I put "election" in quotes because (at least in our parish) the appointment was in strict rotation by property. By 1826 the whole system was having severe difficulties and this ultimately led to the introduction of Poor Lawn Unions. -----Original Message----- From: dennis bramble Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 11:18 AM To: devon@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [DEV] Removal orders Ref; Chris Burgoyne's email of 8-12-13. A most interesting detailed research. However, why blame the Church for lack of charity? At that time the Church was, when carrying out such duties, doing what the law demanded of it. The state had since the time of the Tudors used the church authorities to administer much of the civil law. That is why the Anglican Church was by law ordered to keep parish registers. That law still stands today. No other denomination is bound by law to keep such records. Why, because King Henry 8th. insisted that all his subjects had to be Anglican with the result that there were no other denominations recognised by the state. That was the only way in those days that the king could keep tabs on all his subjects. A mixed blessing for family historians! Dennis Bramble ------------------------------------------ The DEVON-L mailing list is co-sponsored by GENUKI/Devon ( http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/ ) and the Devon FHS (http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ ) List archive for Devon can be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index/DEVON/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to DEVON-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message