. This article argues for a more holistic approach to understanding the Old Poor Law. Using three detailed case studies from southern England, it focuses on the dynamics of differing social groups within the parish. It also looks at the role of the law, looking beyond the statutes to the parts played by King's Bench, Quarter Sessions and individual justices and petty sessions in creating a diversity of experiences for the poor. However, it also stresses the differential access to charitable funds, common rights, and poor relief in individual communities, and the ways in which parish elites attempted to put the total available resources to what they saw as the best uses. From to these combined resources allowed a generally humane approach to the treatment of poverty and misfortune, and maintained the independence of the cottager and labourer in southern England. Only after when population rose sharply and rural employment shrank did the flexibility of combined charitable and rate-based relief founder and more drastic devices were employed to cope with basic needs. In this process the independence of the labourer and cottager was undermined, charitable sources were marginalized, and the seeds were sown for the acceptance of the New Poor Law. IThe purpose of this article is to suggest new approaches to the study of the relief of poverty during the long eighteenth century and to sketch the outlines of a parochial economy of welfare. Some ten years ago, Tim Wales suggested that the life cycle needs of the poorest  or  per cent of the parish community on the verge of poverty were a powerful influence on the distribution of parish resources." Before the poor had recourse to the overseers for poor relief they used a range of other possibilities. These included personal and neighbourly charity, landlord and tradesman credit, subsidized housing, and whatever charitable sources were available. These last could add food, clothing, or fuel to family income, support the education, health, and training needs of young * Earlier versions of this article were read at the ' Long eighteenth-century ' seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, and at the University of Wolverhampton. My thanks are due for comments made by seminar members there, and more recently

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The history of rural landownership at the village level has been dominated by a series of particular problems. At one end of the spectrum the process of estate-building by gentry and aristocracy, the transition from feudal manorial tenures to compact tenanted estates, and the creation of ‘closed’ or estate villages, has been relatively well documented. At the other the ‘problem’ of the disappearance of the small landowner, prompted a century ago as the rural tradition began to become a minority interest, has shifted away from its original focus on the owner-occupied family farm. It has increasingly concentrated on the fate of the smallholder and cottager and more recently on the interplay of landownership and common rights. This particular emphasis has tended to narrow research to the post-1780 parliamentary enclosure period where sources such as land tax, enclosure awards, and tithe returns make nominal linkages more feasible at a lower wealth level in society, and on a year-to-year basis.This article concentrates not on the smallholder and cottager, but on the farming community – men (and occasionally women) making a living from holdings of 30 acres, or one to one and a half yardlands and upwards – and the choices and decisions they faced owning or tenanting lands. It examines the literature concerning communities in a broad band of central England south of the Pennines and north of the Thames. Detailed examples will be taken from mid- and northern-Buckinghamshire villages, an area of open fields but early and piecemeal enclosure, in the years between 1620 and 1800.