The Purpose of Earlier Vagrancy Law (1274)

I think the purpose of the earlier vagrancy law (1274) was to help the sick and homeless, and give help to the churches for the food they gave to them. When it was revised in (1349) it made it a crime to help anyone that was able to work, so I think they were trying even back then to get people to work and help themselves instead of relying on someone else to do it. Today we try to get people off welfare and get them to work, but it is still a work in progress I think. They soon started putting people in prison for vagrancy, in 1351 you could not quit a job you had without good reason or you would go to jail, I guess because with no job then you would go back to being a vagrant again and that’s what they were trying to stop. This would help the landowners get and keep cheap labor, because it was unlawful to turn down any paying job also. This was intended to make people work so the landowners would not have to compete for laborers. The punishments got a lot stiffer over time for the law of vagrancy, you could be whipped for two days and after the third offense you would get whipping, standing on a pillar and an ear cut off!: I think their changing social structure also has to do with this law changing and making it a felony, so there are now trying to keep felons off the street instead of just vagrant’s if Ai read it right. Well I bet that made some people just take innocent people in that couldn’t find work, and say they were vagrants then they would be branded on the chest with a V and if they tried to run branded with an S on their forehead and have to be that persons slave for two years, what a way for some people to get free workers dang.
We still have the vagrancy laws here in the United States, but we do not brand people that would be unconstitutional we do however lock them up in jails to keep them off the streets. There are so many homeless people in our big cities that in the Winter and Summer they die from extreme cold or heat because they have no place