Today I learned I need to get an oil change on my car.
Today I learned...
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Sounds likely, only, the UK didn't institute the income tax until 1799. It was abolished in 1816, then reestablished in 1842. It definitely was not a thing in the first Queen Elizabeth's time. Moreover, no one with an annual income under 60 quid a year was taxed under the 1799 act, which exempted your ordinary labouring man or woman from obligation.
That said, this line here from the 1597/98 Act, " . . . being persons able in body, vsing loytering, and refusing to worke for such reasonable wages, as is taxed or commonly giuen in such parts . . . " does appear at first glance to be saying that wages were taxed in that part. But if the AI overview is correct, "taxed" refers to "officially set or regulated wage rates for different types of work."
I expect the strictures against "Anyone wandering about and refusing to work for just wages" came about because a) idle hands are the devil's workshop--- such behaviour was against good civil order; and b) why should the parish have to feed, clothe, and house someone capable of doing it for himself?
I notice, reading the act, that fines collected from such "sturdie beggars" were to be set aside for the care of the impotent (helpless) poor.
This anti-vagrancy act was part of the overall system of Elizabethan Poor Laws that assured that no one in the realm who could not support themselves was allowed to starve. The parish was required to set aside funds for their relief. Nothing to do with paranoia at all.
How Elizabethan law once protected the poor from the high cost of living – and led to unrivalled economic prosperity
There are valuable lessons to be learned from the England of the 1600s.
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Yeah, it's wrong. What we're talking about is long after the poor laws, which were designed for a time when unemployment didn't really exist.
Sounds reasonable ... only, if an English king (George III or not) actually cared, he might touch them for the King's Evil (aka scrofula).
Yes, the last such monarch to do so was Queen Anne in 1712; after her, the ritual was abandoned. Given the medical understanding of the time, perhaps "touching for the King's Evil" might have been kinder.
Fair enough. Thank you for correcting me ... if I remember, the income tax was introduced because of the rise of Napoleon, right? A measure to help cover the cost of the UK's wars with France. I think it was only meant to be temporary. (Maybe we should remind Westminster of the fact).
As for Queen Lizzy I: sorry, but I thought there were plots galore to assassinate her or similarly remove her from power? I wouldn't be surprised if she was paranoid about those -- after all, she had a famously efficient counter-espionage service. So, having people wandering about her realm with seemingly nothing to do might also look like espionage, right?
Oh, definitely, Good Queen Bess had her spies out . . . Always had to watch out for foreign operatives and, domestically, for Roman Catholics who might try to bring back That Old Time Religion and remove her from power. But from my studies I get the idea that intransigent noble families were more the target, not common citizens. Sure, your random low-class rascal might be a spy in disguise, but there were so many such leeches that they posed their own, obvious threat to the peace of the realm.Sounds reasonable ... only, if an English king (George III or not) actually cared, he might touch them for the King's Evil (aka scrofula).
Yes, the last such monarch to do so was Queen Anne in 1712; after her, the ritual was abandoned. Given the medical understanding of the time, perhaps "touching for the King's Evil" might have been kinder.
Fair enough. Thank you for correcting me ... if I remember, the income tax was introduced because of the rise of Napoleon, right? A measure to help cover the cost of the UK's wars with France. I think it was only meant to be temporary. (Maybe we should remind Westminster of the fact).
As for Queen Lizzy I: sorry, but I thought there were plots galore to assassinate her or similarly remove her from power? I wouldn't be surprised if she was paranoid about those -- after all, she had a famously efficient counter-espionage service. So, having people wandering about her realm with seemingly nothing to do might also look like espionage, right?
Reading the Act, I learned that England and Wales in the late 16th century was as worried about scam artists as we are, even if the con games were different.
And yes, Prime Minister William Pitt (Pittsburgh's namesake!) pushed through the income tax in 1799 to fund the wars against Napolean. Property taxes, etc., weren't cutting it. The act was repealed when the Emperor was finally defeated. But the temptation was too great and Westminster reestablished them again in 1842.
Our income tax here in the States was only supposed to target the wealthy. "Soak the rich!" the middle and lower classes cried. We see now where that got us . . .
Today I learned that bees like to get cozy.
Fair enough. Thank you for correcting me ... if I remember, the income tax was introduced because of the rise of Napoleon, right? A measure to help cover the cost of the UK's wars with France. I think it was only meant to be temporary. (Maybe we should remind Westminster of the fact).
The Elizabethans were concerned about vagrancy and begging, and the disruption that could cause, not tax revenue. Taxation had to granted to the monarch by Parliament and was the exception not the rule. From memory, it was only levied in 21 out of the 45 years of her reign and that, I think, was to fight the Spanish.
Speaking of Elizabethian times, Shakespeare only made his plays to help run his friend's bar and sell muffins, if my memory serves me correctly.
Today I learned that H.P. Lovecraft was influenced by short-story writer Algernon Blackwood (who some call a proto-cosmic horror writer) - and whom Lovecraft called a master of supernatural horror.
Lovecraft in fact opens one of his famous stories - The Call of Cthulhu - with a quote from Blackwood:
“Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival . . . a survival of a hugely remote period when . . . consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity . . . forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds. . . .”
Lovecraft in fact opens one of his famous stories - The Call of Cthulhu - with a quote from Blackwood:
“Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival . . . a survival of a hugely remote period when . . . consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity . . . forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds. . . .”
—Algernon Blackwood.
Our native son here in Providence. Cormac McCarthy was born in Providence, too, but moved when he was like three. Lovecraft at least had the decency to die on Wickenden St.
