THE JUSTICES OF LABOURERS 



39 



tices of labourers does not appear in any of the separate 

 commissions for labourers in towns, or even within 

 private franchises, although occasionally, in the letters 

 patent appointing justices of labourers for a county, it is 

 specified that a given town is excluded from their juris- 

 diction/ Usually, however, the final clause in their 

 commissions ends: tarn infra quam extra libertates^ — a 

 phrase that seems almost meaningless when one con- 

 siders the numerous private franchises within which 

 special justices were acting. The discussion of the 

 latter belongs to a later section,^ but it should be em- 

 phasized here that since a given franchise frequently con- 

 sisted of widely separated holdings, these special justices 

 must have cut into the jurisdiction of the county or bor- 

 ough justices in a strangely confusing manner. I have 

 no information as to the extent to which conflicts actu- 

 ally arose, nor as to the principle in accordance with 

 which they were settled ; but in general it is assumed 

 that a justice had full jurisdiction within the district to 

 which he had been appointed, and that his writs would 

 be obeyed only by the sheriff of the county within which 

 this district lay. There was, however, a special provision 

 in the statute of labourers that in case of a fugitive flee- 

 ing from one county to another, a justice could issue a 

 writ to the sherifif of the county to which the delinquent 

 had fled, bidding him send the latter to the gaol of the 

 first named county. "* 



A study of the list of 97 districts shows some over- 

 lapping, especially in Yorkshire ; this means that at a 



^ App., 138, notes i, 2 and 3. *App., 27. 



^ Cf. pt. I, ch. iii, s. 2, B; and also the response to the petition 

 {Rot. Pari., ii, 252 b-253 a) embodied in 2-/ Edvv. Ill, st. i, c. 3 (app., 

 17) quoted p. 27. 



*App., 17. 



