LABOUR AND WAGES. 6ll 



means by which the sick and destitute were maintained. On 

 the ground that they were given for superstitious uses, they 

 were confiscated, and employed to assist in enriching the 

 adventurers who were about the young King's throne. Upon 

 these impoverished and disinherited peasants, and upon these 

 artisans, who had not, like the old London companies, con- 

 trived to get an exemption from the statute, was induced the 

 Act of 5 Elizabeth, cap. 4, under which the magistrates in 

 quarter sessions were empowered to fix the rate of wages for 

 husbandmen and artificers, were directed to enforce their 

 assessment by fine and imprisonment, and to compel under a 

 severe pecuniary penalty all artisans to pass through a period 

 of apprenticeship. The penalty on infringing this part of the 

 statute was 40^. a month, or nearly double the wages which it 

 will be seen ordinary artisans earned by a month's labour. 



This celebrated Act, the effect of which was so considerable 

 in the history of English labour, was passed in 1562. The 

 fact then belongs to a period earlier than is comprised in these 

 volumes, but the effect of the law is made so conspicuous in 

 the period before me, that it is expedient to give a summary 

 of its provisions, of the machinery by which it was to be 

 enforced, and of the penalties which it threatened. 



The first clause repeals all previously enacted statutes, 

 thirty-four in number, since 23 Edw. Ill ; the second enacts 

 that servants in certain employments should be hired by the 

 year ; the third, that every single person under thirty years of 

 age, not having 40^. a year of his (or her) own and not being 

 otherwise employed, shall be compellable to serve as a yearly 

 servant, in the craft in which he (or she) has been brought up ; 

 the fojurth, that such a person is not to be dismissed except 

 upon some cause allowed by two justices of the peace, nor at 

 the end of the year without a quarter's warning ; the fifth, 

 that all persons between the ages of fifteen and sixty, not 

 otherwise employed or apprenticed, are compellable to serve in 

 husbandry; the sixth, that masters unduly dismissing servants 

 are liable to a penalty of 40.?., while servants unlawfully 



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