78 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



men eligible for jury duty,' there would be in these 

 eighteen rolls scarcely a shred of evidence to show that 

 the question of freedom versus villeinage was at this date 

 a living issue;" since, however, in the proceedings before 

 the justices of labourers summoned into a higher court, 

 the point of the case depends precisely on the fact of 

 villeinage,^ the silence of these particular sessional records 

 indicates not that there were no villeins among the de- 

 linquents, — there must have been many, especially among 

 the agricultural labourers, — but that, as far as the actions 

 in quarter sessions went, the effect of the legislation on 

 free and unfree was identical, and that for this reason no 

 distinction between the two categories had to be made 

 by the justices. 



Leaving aside for a moment the question of wages and 

 prices, the sessional records show the justices enforcing 

 the remaining clauses of the enactments chiefly against 

 agricultural laborers and somewhat less frequently against 

 artisans and household servants, but in all cases as far as 

 my observation has gone against members of what are 

 technically known as the labouring classes, with no vis- 

 ible attempt to extend the application of the contract 

 clause to other than manual labourers.'* It has, how- 

 ever, been already emphasized that the justices were 

 mainly occupied with the task of keeping down wages 



» Cf. p. 69. 



■^Unless perhaps " extra feodum domini " (app., 214) and the frequent 

 departure " a patria " (app., 147) refer to the relation between villeins 

 and their lords; cf. also p. 81, note 2, for the meaning of " netrix." 



^ Cf. s. 7 of this section and pt. ii, ch. ii, s. 6. It will be shown later 

 that actions in the upper courts do involve the issue of villeinage ; un- 

 doubtedly the justices of labourers would have found it difficult to deal 

 with the complicated questions of law raised by such cases. 



^This limitation to manual labourers must be kept in mind in com- 

 parison with what proves to be the attitude of the upper courts. 



