Some Persons Being Ordered By That Noble Lord Above Mentioned To
Consider Of Measures How The Said Poor People Should
Be provided
for, and whether they could be provided for or no without injury to
the public, the answer was
Grounded upon this maxim--that the
number of inhabitants is the wealth and strength of a kingdom,
provided those inhabitants were such as by honest industry applied
themselves to live by their labour, to whatsoever trades or
employments they were brought up. In the next place, it was
inquired what employments those poor people were brought up to. It
was answered there were husbandmen and artificers of all sorts,
upon which the proposal was as follows. New Forest, in Hampshire,
was singled out to be the place:-
Here it was proposed to draw a great square line containing four
thousand acres of land, marking out two large highways or roads
through the centre, crossing both ways, so that there should be a
thousand acres in each division, exclusive of the land contained in
the said cross-roads.
Then it was proposed to since out twenty men and their families,
who should be recommended as honest industrious men, expert in, or
at least capable of being instructed in husbandry, curing and
cultivating of land, breeding and feeding cattle, and the like. To
each of these should be parcelled out, in equal distributions, two
hundred acres of this land, so that the whole four thousand acres
should be fully distributed to the said twenty families, for which
they should have no rent to pay, and be liable to no taxes but such
as provided for their own sick or poor, repairing their own roads,
and the like.
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