1 62 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



have discovered, contains many indictments for the giving 

 and taking of excess wages "contrary to the statute;" ^ a 

 fair proportion of the rolls that I have examined, of the 

 hundred courts and of the ordinary manorial courts (not 

 counting the court leets) include among a relatively larger 

 number of the usual entries, scattered instances ~ of offences 

 against the new legislation, usually for the receipt of ex- 

 cess wages and for breach of contract by the eloigning of 

 servants already in service. In the case of the latter class 

 of actions it is exceedingly difficult to determine whether 

 they are based on the ordinance, or whether they are simply 

 the old actions of covenant that have already been in use 

 in the local courts. A comparison of the form of the action 

 for breach of contract brought on the ordinance of labourers 

 in the Hereford quarter sessions,^ with a similar action 

 brought in the Ruthin manorial court at a date previous to 

 1349,* reveals exactly the same phraseology in both cases, 

 with the addition in the former of contra statutum after 

 de placito conuencionis. In the manorial courts after 1349 



quite at random, and in these I noted all instances of offences against 

 the labour legislation; cf. app., E. The results of such a limited in- 

 vestigation have value only if these few rolls are typical of hundreds of 

 others; my own belief is that they may be so considered, but it is, of 

 course, possible that some future investigation will prove that this belief 

 was ill-founded. 



'While examining Chester Assize Rolls {List of Plea Rolls, no. iv) 

 in my search for sessional records, by accident I stumbled across a roll 

 of a county court from which I print extracts in the appendix, (391-392) , 

 inasmuch as so few county court records have as yet been discovered. 

 Mr. Turner, however, who is preparing for the Selden society a volume 

 on the old county court, warns me that it is not safe to infer the action 

 of a court of a normal county from that of a county palatine. 



-The courts of Ruyton are an exception and are dealing with an un- 

 usually large proportion of offences against the statutes; cf. app., 397- 

 399- 



*App.. 185. * Ruthin Court Rolls, 47; cf. pp. 158-159. 



