By 1776, when a parliamentary survey was held to assess poor law expenditure in England and Wales, the ‘settlement’ system was a familiar feature in local communities, regulating access to poor relief and if necessary removal since the previous century. The introduction explores the broad historiography on the topic and suggests how key provisions emerged in the Restoration era, a development examined in Chapter 1. The discussion proceeds to introduce the arguments of the remaining chapters, in which some of the unintended consequences of the legislation are explored: from the emergence of a huge body of administrative forms to the regulation of kinship and family for the purposes of migration, and on to impacts on parish and county administration, community life, and even the state’s capacity to mobilise forces for large-scale international wars.

The conclusion brings together the book’s several arguments to explain the impact of the settlement legislation on family, community, and national life during our period. Discussions highlight how legal changes taking place in the Restoration era, and developed thereafter, affected English society and state formation in ways little imagined by the legislators, and how the focus on parish settlement has brought together an array of fields not often studied together and has enabled the book to engage with local experiences as well as broad processes of historical change.