CHAPTER I 



ACCOUNT OF THE JUSTICES OF LABOURERS 



The lack of accurate knowledge as to the extent of 

 the enforcement of the statutes of labourers is in no way 

 more clearly shown than by the fact that there has not 

 even been unanimity among historians as to whether 

 these statutes were, in the beginning, as was certainly the 

 case later, included in the jurisdiction of the justices of 

 the peace or whether they were left to a separate com- 

 mission.' My first task, therefore, is to establish the 

 identity of the justices mentioned in the ordinance and 

 the statute.^ 



^ I am indebted to Professor Cheyney for having called my attention 

 to this question and to Professor C. A. Beard for many valuable sug- 

 gestions. Lambard {Eirenarcha, 562-3), referring to the statutes for 

 the regulation of the sessions of the justices of the peace, v^^rites: "The 

 first of these foure Statutes" {i.e., 25 Edw. Ill, c. 8) "doth (in shew, 

 and in common opinion) concerne the Sessions of the Justices of Peace, 

 but in truth it belongeth not at all to them: for it was made to direct 

 the Justices of Labourers in the times of holding their sessions: and 

 they were not Commissioners of the peace, but speciall Justices for the 

 causes of Labourers alone, not resiant in the countrey, but sent downe 

 for the time of that seruice, as it may expressely appeare, not onely by 

 the preamble and all the parts of the said statute it selfe, but also by the 

 statutes 28 Ed. Ill, cap. 5, 31 E. Ill, cap. 6, and 34 E. Ill, cap. 11, 

 during all of which time also, the Wardens of the peace were neither 

 called lustices by any Statute, nor authorized to deale with Labourers." 

 For the same view cf. Howard, The Kind's Peace, 40, and Beard, 

 Justice of the Peace, 60-61. For the theory that the persons assigned 

 to execute the statutes of labourers were probably the keepers of the 

 peace, see Reeves, Hist, of Eng. Law, ii, 330. The historians of the 

 English Poor Law have usually shirked the question altogether. 



^The main portions of this section and of section 2 have already ap- 

 peared in my article on the "Justices of Labourers" in E. H. R., xxi. 



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