384 
Ollenders against the Statute of Labourers 
im Gliltshire, AA. 1349. 
Translated and communicated by Miss KE. M. THompson. 
(me; HE Assize Roll translated below,’ while it is of local interest 
Wy N to the Wiltshire antiquary as preserving many names of 
the rural population, and as throwing some light on their occu- 
pations and their sources of livelihood, of which by far the most 
common for both sexes was brewing, is also to be considered as an 
illustration of the difficulties left in its train by the Black Death. 
The great pestilence had first appeared in July in A.D. 1348, at 
Melcombe Regis, Dorset, and thence had spread rapidly over the 
West of England. That the death-roll had been large in Wiltshire 
is evident from the number of victims among the clergy, to which 
fact must be attributed the frequent entries of fresh institutions 
of incumbents in the episcopal registers of Salisbury,” and it is to 
be presumed that pastors and flocks suffered alike. The Wiltshire 
labourers and artificers, like their brethren elsewhere, were not 
slow to take the opportunity afforded by the consequent scarcity 
of their class for demanding more wages and higher profits for i 
their services and their crafts and wares. An example is entered 
on this roll of almost every kind of offender against the Statute of 
Labourers of the 25th year of Edward III., which was an expansion 
and re-inforcement of that short-sighted attempt at the restoration j 
of the old relations of employer and employed, the Ordinance ‘ 
concerning Labourers and Servants, issued the year after the fatal Py 
plague, in A.D. 1349. It was on the farms that the lack of 
labourers was mostly felt, agriculture with its demand for “a 




! Though containing all the matter of the roll, the translation is slightly } 
abridged. The original is in the Public Record Office. 
2 Tide Dom Gasquet’s The Great Pestilence, p. 163. 

