Agricultural Wages 99 



time as Young, speaks of the ill-contrived 

 laws of settlement which prevented the 

 natural migration of labour to its best 

 markets. There was scarce any man of 

 forty, he declared, who had not suffered 

 from these laws. But in their essence 

 these laws of settlement really brought 

 back one of the characteristics of mediaeval 

 serfdom. People were ascript to their 

 parishes, lest they should become chargeable 

 to some other for poor relief. 



In the mediaeval period, the anxiety of 

 the landowners was lest a valuable piece of 

 living capital should escape ; the serfs, or the 

 "souls," on the manor were too valuable 

 to lose. As soon as the modern period had 

 been well started under Elizabeth, it was 

 necessary to form an elaborate poor - law, 

 and also a great statute regulating the 

 employment and wages of labour. The 

 Elizabethan Poor-Law (1601) and the 



