Charity, Neighbors, and Gender in London Godly Sermons: John Downham and William Gouge

This article traces the response to the Elizabethan Poor Laws in two parishes in Jacobean London. The Elizabethan Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601 attempted to create a system of reliable poor relief in response to a series of late sixteenth-century economic and population crises. The establishment of an organized system of almsgiving formally centered in the parish and its officers shifted the understanding of charity from a voluntary and interpersonal act to a more bureaucratic process. Focusing on the diverging accounts of charity by John Downham and William Gouge, this essay demonstrates how the bureaucratic logic of the Elizabethan Poor Laws was debated and challenged in print and from two of London's most influential pulpits.