How the Tudors Decided Who Deserved to Eat

In 1547, Parliament passed a law saying that if you refused to work, even for nothing but food, you could be branded and handed over as a slave for two years. Your children could be taken. They repealed it in two years. Not because anyone softened toward the poor, but because barely anybody would enforce it. This episode is about how England spent the sixteenth century building a welfare system…