56 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



At the same time, the peasants took advantage of the 

 general dislocation of affairs to evade the rule of astric- 

 tion which bound them to their manors ; and, leaving 

 their villages, wandered through the land seeking for 

 employers in town or country who would pay higher 

 wages, or lords of the manors who would let them land 

 at a low rent. Such employers they found, especially 

 amongst city men of wealth, many of whom had taken 

 advantage of the position of the lords of the manors to 

 buy up estates. 



The difficulties were, it will be seen, acute, and had to 

 be dealt with ; so the lords devised what they thought 

 would be a remedy. They decided to force men to 

 work at the old wages, and with this object secured 

 the issue of a royal ordinance and the passing of a 

 series of Acts of Parliament, 1 known as The Statutes 

 of Labourers. " Many," we are told, " seeing the 

 necessity of the masters and a great scarcity of 

 servants," will not serve unless they receive excessive 

 wages ; so it was decreed that every unemployed man 

 or woman under sixty, not having land or property, 

 was bound to serve the lord or other employer who 

 required him or her to work, and to take only the 

 wages which were customary before the plague began. 

 The men were to appear in the market-places, tools in 

 hand, and undertake the work offered. The old rule 

 whereby the tenants were attached to their manors was 

 re-enforced by statute, and those who wandered about 

 the country were to be treated as fugitives from justice 

 and subjected to imprisonment and branding. This 

 is the general outline of this series of statutes ; and 

 although the laws were often evaded, they definitely 

 set the men against the lords and were one of the causes 

 1 See Appendix, p. 167, 



