24 



ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



guishing between the penalties arising from the sessions 

 of the peace and those arising from the sessions for 

 labourers/ the king replied by bidding the barons of the 

 exchequer stop all proceedings in the matter until the 

 following Michaelmas in order, as he said, that the whole 

 subject could be thoroughly discussed and the most suit- 

 able remedy adopted. The next step of which I have 

 knowledge is the writ of November. 1359, suspending 

 the action of all justices of labourers.' Of the parliament 

 of 1360 no record of enactments exists ;3 and with the 

 exception of proclamations to be made by sheriffs,'* the 

 statutes of labourers were apparently allowed to lapse ^ 

 until the meeting early in January of the parliament of 

 1361. In the meantime there must have been talk of the 

 re-organization of the of^ce of justice of the peace, and 

 the tendency proved to be in favor of a consolidation of 

 county administration. 



The statute of 1361, usually regarded as marking the 

 culmination for this century of the development of the 



'The estreats for Coventry mentioned supra, — a case where the two 

 commissions are practically identical — may have been one factor in this 

 special crisis. 



^See s. I and app., 31-32. The writ is signed by the king's son 

 Thomas, Edward being out of England from 28 Oct., 1359, to 18 May, 

 1360. Longman, Edward the Third, ii, 46, 57. 



^ Parry, Payliaments, Ivi. 



*Claus., 33. m. 5 d; 20 Nov.: " De proclamacione facienda de sti- 

 pendiis operariorum." Printed by Rymer, iii, pt. i, 459. 



*The commissions of the peace of this period do not refer to the 

 statutes of labourers; cf. Pat.. 34, pt. i, ni. 28 d, m. 9 d, m. 6d. There 

 is some evidence that it had not been intended that either the justices 

 or the statutes of labourers should be permanent; cf. e.g., the phrase 

 " tant come la iusticerie des laborers dure" of the statute of the 31st 

 year, or "durante statuto et ordinacione predictis " in a letter patent of 

 the 32nd year; app.. A. 2 and D, 6. 



