As the complexity of rural society increased, the vestry meetings pragmatically acquired greater responsibilities, and were given the power to grant or deny payments from parish funds. Although the vestry committees were not established by any law, and had come into being in an unregulated ad-hoc process, it was highly convenient to allow them to develop. This was convenient when they were the obvious body for administering the Edwardian and Elizabethan systems for support of the poor on a parochial basis. This was their first, and for many centuries their principal, statutory power.