1 68 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



31-37 Edw. Ill/ and the entire reign of Richard 11/ and 

 are frequently erroneous or misleading. It would there- 

 fore be necessary to establish authoritative versions of the 

 text by an examination and collation of all the manuscript 

 Year Books, — a task evidently beyond the scope of the 

 present work/ 



The course adopted for my investigation is a compromise 

 and as such has no claim to completeness. I extended my 

 period to the death of Edw. Ill, and using the seventeenth- 

 century edition of the Year Books, I noted for 1 349-1 377 

 all the reports of cases on the statutes or involving the 

 statutes, a total of 33, distributed between the two courts.' 

 An examination of the three great abridgments' showed 

 that Fitzherbert had discovered 10 additional reports, two 

 of which are for the date for which there are no printed 

 Year Books. "^ A search through the manuscript Year 

 Books in the British Museum and in the libraries of Cam- 

 bridge University, of Lincoln's Inn, and of the Temple, had 

 chiefly negative results; the 33 reports appeared in approxi- 



'This is equally true of the edition of 1678-1680, and of the numerous 

 sixteenth-century editions. 



*Bellewe's compilation to some extent supplies the reports of the 

 reign of Richard. 



^ It is scarcely necessary to add that Professor Maitland's incompar- 

 able editions for the Selden Society will ever remain the ideal to which 

 future editors will strive to approximate, and that his introductions are 

 invaluable for the whole subject of reports and records. 



* A comparison of this edition of 1678-1680 with the various sixteenth- 

 century editions in the Boston Public library, the Harvard Law library 

 and in the Library of Congress, did not increase this total. The cases 

 in the earlier editions are not only the same as those in the later, but 

 identical in form and phraseology. Cf. Pike, in introduction to the 

 Year Books of 12 and 13 Edw. Ill, xxxii, and also Soule, " Year Book 

 Bibliography," in Harvard Law Review, xiv, 568. 



^The abridgments of Statham and Brooke give many of the same 

 cases but add no new ones. 



