The 1662 Act stipulated that if a poor person (that is, resident of a tenancy with a taxable value less than £10 per year, who did not fall under the other protected categories) remained in the parish for forty days of undisturbed residency, he could acquire "settlement rights" in that parish.

However, within those forty days, upon any local complaint, two justices of the peace could remove the man and return him to his home parish.

[1] But sympathetic parish officers often hid the registration, and did not reveal the presence of new arrivals until the required residency period was over.

c. 11), and parish officers were obliged to publicly publish arrival registrations in writing in the local church Sunday circular, and read to the congregation, and that the forty days would only start counting from thereon.

The concept of parish settlement has been characterised as "incompatible with the newly developing industrial system", because it hindered internal migration to factory towns.