June 2026

Before the state took any formal responsibility for the poor, it was the Church that stood between the destitute and starvation. For centuries, monasteries fed the hungry, hospitals housed the sick, and parish priests distributed alms to those who had nothing. But the Church also extracted a heavy price from the very people it claimed […]

Long before the first workhouse was ever built, the roots of poverty in England were already deeply embedded in the land itself. Two interlocking systems — feudalism and the manorial economy — ensured that for the vast majority of people, poverty was not a misfortune but a birthright. Understanding these systems is essential to understanding