<P> The earliest medieval Poor Law was the Ordinance of Labourers which was issued by King Edward III of England on 18 June 1349, and revised in 1350 . The ordinance was issued in response to the 1348--1350 outbreak of the Black Death in England, when an estimated 30--40% of the population had died . The decline in population left surviving workers in great demand in the agricultural economy of Britain . Landowners had to face the choice of raising wages to compete for workers or letting their lands go unused . Wages for labourers rose, and this forced up prices across the economy as goods became more expensive to produce . An attempt to rein in prices, the ordinance (and subsequent acts, such the Statute of Labourers of 1351) required that everyone who could work did; that wages were kept at pre-plague levels and that food was not overpriced . Workers saw these shortage conditions as an opportunity to flee employers and become freemen, so Edward III passed additional laws to punish escaped workers . In addition, the Statute of Cambridge was passed in 1388 and placed restrictions on the movement of labourers and beggars . </P> <P> The origins of the English Poor Law system can be traced back to late medieval statutes dealing with beggars and vagrancy but it was only during the Tudor period that the Poor Law system became codified . Monasteries, the primary source of poor relief, were dissolved by the Tudors Reformation causing poor relief to move from a largely voluntary basis to a compulsory tax that was collected at a parish level . Early legislation was concerned with vagrants and making the able - bodied work, especially while labour was in short supply following the Black Death . </P> <P> Tudor attempts to tackle the problem originate during the reign of Henry VII . In 1495, Parliament passed the Vagabonds and Beggars Act ordering that "vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town . Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid ." Although this returned the burden of caring for the jobless to the communities producing more children than they could employ, it offered no immediate remedy to the problem of poverty; it was merely swept from sight, or moved from town to town . Moreover, no distinction was made between vagrants and the jobless; both were simply categorised as "sturdy beggars", to be punished and moved on . </P> <P> In 1530, during the reign of Henry VIII, a proclamation was issued, describing idleness as the "mother and root of all vices" and ordering that whipping should replace the stocks as the punishment for vagabonds . This change was confirmed in the 1531 Vagabonds Act the following year, with one important change: it directed the justices of the peace to assign to the impotent poor an area within which they are to beg . Generally, the licences to beg for the impotent poor were limited to the disabled, sick, and elderly . An impotent person begging out of his area was to be imprisoned for two days and nights in the stocks, on bread and water, and then sworn to return to the place in which he was authorized to beg . An able - bodied beggar was to be whipped, and sworn to return to the place where he was born, or last dwelt for the space of three years, and there put himself to labour . Still no provision was made, though, for the healthy man simply unable to find work . All able - bodied unemployed were put into the same category . Those unable to find work had a stark choice: starve or break the law . In 1535, a bill was drawn up calling for the creation of a system of public works to deal with the problem of unemployment, to be funded by a tax on income and capital . A law passed a year later allowed vagabonds to be whipped . </P>

Who made changes in old laws preventing the rich from taking from the poor