In coastal communities, individuals fleeing the rebellion in Ireland had an important impact on perceptions of local safety, especially during the first few months after the outbreak of the rising. In inland parishes, Irish refugees appeared more often as fleeting inconveniences. In Wiltshire, large numbers of Irish poor passed through local parishes in the early 1640s, but do not appear to have caused many disruptions.

They also did not receive particularly generous treatment. Although the outpouring of sympathy for victims of the rebellion in print might suggest otherwise, in Wiltshire much of the evidence from local parishes suggests that local officers treated those displaced by the war as ordinary deserving poor. Refugees of English origins very occasionally appear in overseers' accounts, but the vast majority of Irish appear in churchwardens' accounts as recipients of outdoor relief. Often traveling in large groups, they received very limited charity from the local churchwardens before being shuffled on their way to other places of refuge.

By contrast, evidence suggests very positive responses to the national collections prescribed by parliament in the Act for a Speedy Contribution and Loan. From the very beginning, parliament intended that funds raised through the Act should assist refugees from Ireland. The statute made special mention of those who ‘for the sake of their lives have been enforced to forsake their habitations, means and livelihood in that kingdom and to [flee] for succor into several parts of His Majesty's realm of England and Dominion of Wales’.