DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 117 



constrained to leave off work after noon, for more than half the 

 day, under a penalty of twenty shillings. It is clear, however, 

 from the account of the building of Merton College tower, that 

 the statute was inoperative, for the labourers are paid full 

 wages during some of the weeks in which the most sacred 

 holidays of the church occur. 



The 7 Hen. IV asserts that there is great scarcity of 

 labourers in husbandry, and that the gentlemen are greatly 

 impoverished by the charge of wages. It discovers the cause 

 of this scarcity in the general practice of apprenticeship, by 

 which is probably meant that at this time great numbers of 

 persons were becoming weavers, since from various acts of 

 Parliament it is manifest that the weaver's craft had extended 

 into all parts of the kingdom. The statute then enacts that no 

 servant in husbandry who has pursued that calling up to twelve 

 years of age shall be capable of being bound apprentice, and 

 that no person who was not possessed of at least twenty shil- 

 lings a year in land should be at liberty to bind his son, though 

 he might send him to school. The proof of such an income 

 from land shall be in the certificate of the justices of the peace, 

 and the transgression of the statute shall be visited by a fine of 

 a hundred shillings. It is probable that this statute was in- 

 operative, but it is remarkable as anticipating one which was 

 effectually operative more than a century and a half later. But 

 the earlier statutes were very indifferently kept, unless they 

 referred to rights over land, to forms of conveyance, and to 

 other similar proceedings of which the judges at once took 

 cognisance, and on which they rapidly formed precedents. 

 Besides, it was a theory long with lawyers that statute law was 

 merely expository of common law, to say nothing of the fact 

 that parliamentary ordinances were very frequently limited to 

 the time before Parliament might meet again. It is well 

 known that many statutes enacted in Parliament were obsolete 

 from the very day that they were published in county court 

 by the sheriff. 



By the 4 Hen. V, cap. 4, the Statute of Labourers is re- 



