Welfare State in Britain had its beginnings in 1598 when Elizabeth I's ninth parliament established by Elizabethan poor-law system (Bruce, 1966). According to Bruce, the "Acte for the Releife of the Poore" of 1598 consolidated and extended laws passed earlier in Elizabeth's reign. Essentially, these laws had originated in 1536, during the time of her father's reign, and were focused on raising local taxes as well as appointing overseers of the poor in every parish for the purpose of:

setting to work of the children of all such whose parents shall not be thought able to keep and maintain their children," together with "all such persons, married or unmarried, as, having no means to maintain them, use no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by";

providing a convenient stock of materials "to set the poor on work";

the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind...
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