I. The Customary Poor-Law of Three Cambridgeshire Manors

It is perhaps not surprising that the central thread of manorial land law should be found in the pauper problem; for one of the most urgent needs of any age or society is the prevention of destitution. The “sturdy beggar” and “such as walk by night and sleep by day” were the terror of Plantagenet as well as Tudor, while the distress of the aged and impotent was as bitter in the thirteenth as in the sixteenth century, though voiced by no popular poet or press. The Court rolls of the Abbot of Crowland's manors of Oakington, Cottenham and Drayton give constant evidence of the effort consciously or unconsciously made to obviate these unproductive elements of the population, which might become a burden upon the efficient classes.