In October 1602 Widow Dixe of Kelling petitioned Sir Nathaniel Bacon, JP, for relief. Her plea is that she has three children at her charge, that she ‘hath no meanes for living but hir hand labor: is sett on worke by a comber onely of whom shee is sometyme not wrought by a weeks space: That shee had no relief of the overseers since Christmas, except iis vid for her rent at Midsomer’, that her landlord has turned her out and that the overseer is refusing to help. In January 1662 George Cock of Holt was granted an annual pension of 40s out of county funds in response to a petition subscribed by ‘most of the Chiefe inhabitants of the same towne’ and sworn to by ‘severall persons of Creditt’. In it he claimed that about thirty years earlier he had been pressed and wounded in Charles I's overseas wars; ‘but he beinge then younge & somewt able to gett a poore livelyhood by mendinge of shoes would not put the country to any charge for his maintenance, but he being now very old & very lame by reason of his sayd wounds is not able to worke any longer for his liveinge’.

Neither of these pleas for relief is particularly remarkable in itself, but both are valuable for focusing on the way in which institutional relief fitted into the livelihood of the poor.