164 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



legislation in its entirety.^ The regularity with which the 

 jurisdiction was exercised can be learned only by an ex- 

 tensive study of the sources, but it seems unlikely that this 

 phase of the enforcement of the statutes was important in 

 comparison with the vigorous administration effected by the 

 special justices appointed for the purpose.^ 



Even if the local courts made use of their rights spas- 

 modically, there must have been some instances of conflicts 

 of jurisdiction and some occasions on which a given in- 

 dividual ran the risk of being punished twice for the same 

 offence. My only definite information on this point is in re- 

 gard, not to the communal courts or the ordinary feudal 

 courts, but to seignorial courts that were the result of a 

 special franchise and therefore included the right to enforce 

 the assizes of bread and ale. In Warwickshire,^ a long list 

 of such franchise-holders complain to king and council that 

 their tenants are being punished by the justices of labourers 

 for the infraction of these two assizes, even when they have 

 already been fined for this offence in the seignorial court. 

 The petitioners succeed in obtaining royal writs addressed 

 to the justices quoting the clause in the supplementary 

 statute of victuallers as to the rights of the holders of 

 franchises,"* and ordering the justices to cease proceedings 

 against delinquents who had been already fined in the lords' 

 courts. Exactly the same course of events takes place in 



^ This is contrary to the view expressed by Professor Beard in Justice 

 of the Peace, 56: " Unless specially mentioned the statutes did not fall 

 within the competency of private jurisdictions." 



^Creighton's theory that the act applied especially to fugitive villeins 

 and would have been inoperative except on the basis of the manorial 

 court as the unit of government is certainly wide of the mark. Hist, 

 of Epidemics, i, 183. 



^App., 219-221. 



^App., 220. 



