A Study On The Evolution Of Supporting Patterns In Early Modern England(1500-1760)

The elderly are the most vulnerable group in the society.The assistance and support of this group have been paid more and more attention by countries all over the world,which not only represents social progress,but also is an important sign to measure a country’s social service level.As a country which established the social assistance system earlier,the England continuously strengthened the government’s participation in the construction of the social public service system in the early modern times,and formed a set of distinctive supporting patterns.To Explore the supporting patterns of Early Modern England and their evolution process will help people to comprehensively investigate the elderly assistance system in the transition England,and deeply understand the importance of how to build a strong public service security system in contemporary society.There were many important changes in supporting patterns since the later medieval age to the early modern England,namely: the loose pattern of supporting old people undertaken by families,church institutions(mainly composed of monasteries and hospitals),guilds and scattered relief(such as rich families’ relief,funeral relief and ales relief)had gradually changed to a new pattern combination model dominated by families,supplemented by government relief outside and in hospital,and guild and scattered relief.Among them,the government,as an important rescue force,constantly get rid of the shackles of the church and actively participates in the activities of helping the poor elderly,thus forming the characteristic of the supporting patterns in early modern England.A detailed description of this system can not only enrich the content of the history of social relief,but also examine the government as the main body of relief in the implementation of rescue policies,allocation of rescue resources,development of rescue publicity,supervision of the rescue process and other measures.All these will have reference significance for effective social governance.This article is divided into three parts,namely introduction,four chapters and conclusion.The introduction part expounds the significance and research value of the topic,review the development of academic history,Define the concept,explain the ideas,methods and innovations.The second chapter mainly introduces the situation of old age group in early modern England.In early modern England,the number of old people increased,but their status was generally low.They faced with the weakened function of land security,the increasing pressure of family supporting and the shortage of social support resources.The third chapter analyzes the changes of the traditional supporting patterns in early modern England.In the late Middle Ages,the social supporting patterns structure was loose,with the family supporting patterns as the main model,supplemented by church institutions,guilds and scattered supporting patterns.Until early modern times,most of the elderly were still supported by their families,which provided more support in terms of food,clothing,medical care and spiritual comfort.After the religious reform,the number of monasteries shrank and many old people lost their retirement places.During this period,the society transformed into a guild,and the relief member system for the elderly continued to exist,while the scattered relief mode gradually disappeared in people’s life,and the environment for the elderly in the whole society was not optimistic.The forth chapter describes the emergence and practice of the new supporting patterns in early modern England.Faced with the not optimistic social supporting environment,the government plays a prominent role in the field of social assistance(including pension),and a new supporting pattern and dominated by the government appears accordingly.The new supporting patterns includes outdoor relief and indoor relief,which gradually emerged in the process of promulgating the Poor Law and were part of the practice of poverty relief.The outdoor relief mainly provided pensions,but also included the provision of clothing,food,medical care,rent,accommodation arrangement,job and so on,which were arranged by the parish according to the needs of the elderly.The indoor relief arrangements for the elderly to stay in the institution of the poor,where they receive clothing,food,medical care,mental comfort and other resources,also to undertake certain work.The two supporting patterns had their own characteristics in practice,and their sources of funds,modes of operation and supervision mechanisms were different.So far,the two modes together with the integrated traditional mode form a combination of supporting patterns with the family supporting pattern as the main body,the outdoor relief supporting pattern and indoor relief supporting pattern,occasionally with the companies supporting pattern and scattered supporting pattern.The five chapter expounds the characteristics of the evolution of the supporting patterns in Early Modern England and makes its evaluation.The early modern England supporting patterns showed the following characteristics in its evolution: First,the formation had the characteristics of meeting people’s living needs and adapting to social transformation and development;Second,the government played a prominent role in practice,showing the characteristics of secularization.That was,the government weakens the role of the church in the traditional supporting pattern,changed the church into a parish,and formed two new supporting patterns as the government’s grass-roots administrative unit.The government constantly improved the operation and supervision mechanism of the supporting patterns system.Third,the result had normative characteristics,which required most of the elderly to provide for the aged at home,while others can choose the supporting patterns according to the situation.In the two modes of outdoor relief and indoor relief,the government arranges resources according to the actual situation of the elderly,rather than the traditional mode of random charity.The new supporting patterns break the combination structure of the traditional social endowment resources and alleviates the uneven distribution of endowment resources.It had a wider coverage and stronger relief,which reduces the living pressure of the people at the bottom,improved the living quality of the elderly at the bottom,and alleviates social contradictions to some extent.However,the new supporting patterns also had some limitations: first,the benefit group was still limited,can’t solve the pension problem of all poor elderly.Second,the mental health needs of the elderly are ignored.Third,there were gender differences in the supply of endowment resources.The conclusion summarizes the whole article.This part firstly summarizes the main conclusions of the evolution of the supporting patterns in early modern England,that was,social transformation promotes the evolution of the supporting patterns.The conclusion summarizes the whole article,especially points out the causes,functions and reference significance of the new supporting patterns in early modern England.The transformation of early modern society was the foundation and soil of the evolution of the supporting patterns.In this process,although family supporting pattern was in the dominant position,the function and role of the government in social assistance was increasingly prominent.This kind of mutual integration and mutual embedding of family,government and social pension subjects expands the coverage of supporting institutions and injects harmonious social factors into the development of industrial society in England.Although there are many historical limitations,it still had important reference significance.