[2][3] It was titled "An Act for Amending the Laws relating to the Settlement, Employment, and Relief of the Poor".

[5] No one else was permitted to receive relief (except in cases of disease, plague or smallpox) except by authority of a justice of the peace who lived in or near the parish or who was visiting during quarter sessions.

[5] The Act claimed that "many persons have applied to some justices of peace without the knowledge of any officers of the parish, and thereby, upon untrue suggestions, and sometimes upon false and frivolous pretences, have obtained relief, which hath greatly contributed to the increase of the parish rates".

[5] The Act also empowered churchwardens and overseers (with the consent of the vestry) "to purchase or hire any house or houses, and to contract with any persons for the lodging, keeping, maintaining and employing any or all such poor persons in their respective parishes, etc., as shall desire to receive relief, and there to keep, maintain, and employ all such poor persons, and take the benefit of Parishes their work, labour, and service".

[6] If a poor person refused to be lodged in a workhouse, the Act ordered them to be "put out of the book in which the names of persons who ought to receive relief are registered, and [they] shall not be entitled to ask or receive relief from the churchwardens and overseers".