Offenders against the Statute of Labowrers 385 
hands taking a more important part in the medieval rural economy 
than grazing, though this, too, was crying out for herdsmen to look 
after the wandering sheep and cattle. Hence it is not surprising 
to find among the culprits the masters and landowners themselves, 
whom the statute intended to benefit, tempting away the servants 
of others by the promise of higher wages to fill up the blanks 
caused by the mortality in their households and estates, and to 
find that a large number of the offences concerned out-door 
labour. The statute fixed all “ Wages, Livery, Meed, or Salary,” 
and all profits for the divers mysteries or crafts at the scale 
prevalent in the 20th year of Edward III., and ordered that all 
labourers in husbandry should be bound to serve by the year or 
the yearly term instead of by day, and that these and other servants 
should be sworn twice yearly before the lords, stewards, bailiffs 
and constables of the places of their abode, to observe the statute, 
and not to withdraw from those places, because in departing to 
seek more profitable work elsewhere they would leave their former 
masters with insufficiency of workmen. But in vain; the carter 
of the parson of Elyndon takes more grain for his livery than he 
was wont, the servant of Bradenstoke Priory grows dissatisfied 
with his allowance and withdraws against his agreement “ without 
license or reasonable cause” before his year of service is up, and 
many a man and woman breaks his or her oath, refusing to serve 
at all, or not resisting the temptation of obtaining higher gains for 
work or goods. There is a case of one who “went on strike.” 
John Lavrok, vagabond, had come out of service all the way 
from Oxfordshire, but if he hoped for sympathy in money or other 
alms, he experienced in Wiltshire how the statute was against 
those who were * rather willing to beg in Idleness than by Labour 
to get their Living”; indeed one of the clauses of the ordinance of 
the 23rd year forbade on the pain of imprisonment this kind of 
help to the able-bodied and idle labourer. The discontent, however, 
was not confined to the tradesmen and labourers; one or two 
household servants, too, are entered on the roll. The case of 
“John Bryan, clerk” (m,1.) who took 1s. 6d. in excess of his 
accustomed stipend, may be an ecclesiastical example of the same 

