Pagina 372 van 2651

This statute, therefore, rendered it almost impracticable for a

poor man to gain a new settlement in the old way, by forty days

inhabitancy. But that it might not appear to preclude altogether

the common people of one parish from ever establishing themselves

with security in another, it appointed four other ways by which a

settlement might be gained without any notice delivered or

published. The first was, by being taxed to parish rates and

paying them; the second, by being elected into an annual parish

office, and serving in it a year; the third, by serving an

apprenticeship in the parish; the fourth, by being hired into

service there for a year, and continuing in the same service

during the whole of it.