evidence shows that there was a broad cross-section of people in the parish who took in the poor and the indigent, and did so in housing arrangements which contributed to the welfare both of those accommodating and of those providing accommodation.

Conclusions

The evidence given above refers largely to Biddenden, but is closely paralleled by the evidence from Cranbrook, Goudhurst and Staplehurst; the likelihood, therefore, is that the pattern which one sees in Biddenden is true of the Wealden parishes in general at this time. Approximately 80 per cent of Biddenden householders indirectly supported the impotent poor through their assessed contributions. This financial support provided monthly means-tested subsistence for 20 individuals, mainly widows and spinsters, sufficient to keep body and soul together. These monthly payments were enhanced in times of crisis, and regularly supplemented by the provision of clothing (sometimes provided directly, sometimes subsidised), rents and fuel. Also supported were a similar number of the sick, the infirm and orphans, cared for by parishioners in their own homes, with provisions for medical assistance, maintenance of housing, and burial. The poorest children of the parish, usually orphans, were fostered out until they reached an age to be apprenticed or sent to service; provision was made for them on a regular monthly basis. These children rarely stayed with one carer for long, and the carers were not infrequently those already receiving support, who supplemented their subsistence thereby.
   Also providing housing or homes for the poor, and fostering children or taking them on as apprentices, were men of substance, members of the vestry group who ranked below the top flight in the social or economic hierarchy; they provided the overseers of the poor and the churchwardens. All carers, from whichever end of the spectrum, tended to be intimately connected with the parish, either as vestry members and officers or as people who worked on the church and its property.
   The parish funds had to meet extraordinary emergencies, like plague relief and apprenticeship payments, as well as the regular payments which could be predicted with more confidence. Age for apprenticeship started at eight years upwards. Unsubsidised care was also provided for unmarried mothers, with those carers including the wives of men of substance within the parish. Such women were quite prepared to travel the sixteen miles to Maidstone to state their cases before the Justices of the Peace.
   In conclusion, therefore, the evidence of the Biddenden Overseers’ Accounts, supplemented by similar evidence from Cranbrook and Frittenden, and from the Biddenden Churchwardens’ Accounts and the