benefited every month of the eight years under scrutiny. Widow Downe’s 1s. for relief (‘Doune’ in the list) indicates that she was not yet in regular receipt of payment, although this was just about to start; and two widows, Bristow and Morgan, received slightly more than usual because they happened to be unwell at this time.¹⁰ The circumstances of Elizabeth Bristow illustrate several points. At this time she had been a widow for eight years; from the death of her husband in October 1656 until her own death in May 1668 she received a monthly subsistence allowance of 2s. 6d. rising to 3s. in February 1662 and 3s. 6d. in May 1664. She eked out this allowance, as we shall see, by acting as a midwife.¹¹
   No men appear on the list at this time, although at other times they do feature. More intriguingly, three wives appear on the list; they must have had husbands, but received the money directly themselves. Maybe their husbands were incapacitated in some way, or in gaol, or maybe they were labouring outside the parish. The case of Thomas Barrow (Borrow) might help us to a greater understanding of the way in which the welfare system worked. He had a one-hearth cottage on which he was exempt from paying tax. Eighteen months after this list was issued he received considerable relief, being sick with smallpox; his wife Ann died of the pox in January 1666, but he recovered and found himself with two young children to look after, Richard and William, aged ten and five. The fact that he was subsequently sent to Bridewell, a place designed to deal with all kinds of petty crime and especially with sexual misdemeanours, suggests a possible reason for his wife having received the payments. Certainly both his children were fostered out immediately after his wife died, first with Widow Simms and then with Widow Chandler. He himself was looked after by Joan Faulkner, whose husband Solomon is recorded as working on the church bell ropes; the Faulkners’ surviving children were already of an age to have left home.
   Within four months of their mother’s death we find the boys’ grandfather, William Barrow, who must already have been in his late 60s, being paid by the parish to look after his five-year-old grandson William.¹² Meanwhile the elder son, Richard, spent a few months in the care of William Hopper before he was taken in by Elizabeth Sampson and her husband, Robert, a carpenter who frequently maintained the timbers of the church; she received 4s. per month for her services. Old man Barrow and Goody Sampson looked after their charges for a year, until April 1667, at which time the boys’ father, Thomas Barrow, married again, this time to widow Hovenden. Thenceforth Thomas, widow Hovenden, Thomas’s father and the younger son William all disappear from the Overseers’ accounts; the elder son, Richard, continued to be fostered by Goody Sampson.
   The apparently pejorative epithet applied to Judith Bluett in Table 1 is taken straight from the burial register, where she is shown to have been