LABOURERS AND THEIR WAGES 87 



to pay wages to hired labourers than to board agricultural servants, 

 especially if, as Tusser says, they required roast meat on Sundays 

 and Thursdays. Free labour, sometimes, but not invariably, 

 still associated with the occupation of land, was becoming in the 

 southern and midland counties the chief agent in cultivating the 

 soil. Where enclosures were fewest, the largest number of labourers 

 supplemented their wages by the profits of their land, their rights 

 of common, and their goose-runs. Where enclosures were most 

 extensive, those labourers were most numerous who were dependent 

 only on their labour-power. Apparently there was difficulty in 

 lodging this increasing class of landless labourers, and an attempt 

 was made to use existing cottages as tenement houses. The Govern- 

 ment endeavoured to check these tendencies by legislation.^ Not 

 more than one family was allowed to occupy each cottage, and to 

 every cottage four acres of land were to be attached. 



But the most important attempt to regulate the labour-market 

 was the Statute of Apprentices (1563).^ This industrial code 

 '' touching divers orders for artificers, labourers, servants of 

 husbandry, and apprentices " deals with labour in the towns as 

 well as in the country. It was framed, partly as a consoHdating 

 Act, partly because, as the Preamble states, the allowances 

 Limited in previous legislation had, owing to the advance in 

 prices, become too small. It was passed in the hope that its 

 administration would " banish idleness, advance husbandry, and 

 yield unto the hired person both in the time of scarcity and in 

 the time of plenty a convenient proportion of wages." It pro- 

 ceeds on the old Lines that men could be compelled to work. But 

 it contemplates a minimum wage at the rates current in the 

 district, estabhshes a working day for summer and winter, and 

 endeavours to provide for technical instruction by a system of 

 apprenticeship. Any person between the age of twelve and sixty, 

 not excepted by the Statute, could be compelled to labour in 

 husbandry. All engagements, except those for piecework, were to 

 be for one year. Masters unduly dismissing servants were fined. 

 Servants unduly leaving masters were imprisoned. No servant 

 could leave the locahty where he was last employed without a 

 certificate of lawful departure. Hours of labour were twelve hours 

 in the summer and during dayhght in winter. Wages were to be 

 annually fixed by the Justices of the Peace, after considering the 

 1 1589, 31 Eliz. c. 7. '^ 1562-3, 5 Eliz. c. 4. 



