The parish and its overseers were responsible for relieving paupers
Were your ancestors poor? Were they reduced to the necessity of claiming relief from the parish? Or did the authorities believe that they might do so in the future? If so, then they may have been examined by a justice of the poor to determine where they were ‘settled’, and thus the parish liable to support them.
‘Settlement’ was a key legal concept. The Elizabethan Poor Law made the parish and
