172 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



place in court/ A conservative estimate of the ratio be- 

 tween the number of records of this type and the number 

 of those first described is about eleven to one, showing that 

 there were, roughly speaking, 7700 actions that never went 

 beyond the initial stage. The addition to these figures of 

 the 700 cases already referred to results in a total of about 

 8400 suits brought in the court of common pleas between 

 1351 and 1377. 



For the king's bench, my investigation was unfortunately 

 less extensive, and my results therefore less conclusive. 

 Only 12 Coram Rege Rolls were examined; they contain 

 24 cases, varying from 4 to i per roll or per term, an aver- 

 age of 2. Assuming this average to hold for the remaining 

 95 terms, there will be a little over 200 cases for the whole 

 reign, corresponding- to the 700 in the other court. It is 

 also to be noted that one of the rolls contains an important 

 record consisting of proceedings begun before a joint com- 

 mission of the peace and for labourers, and removed into 

 the court of king's bench. Undoubtedly there are more 

 such cases, not originating in this court, and therefore not 

 to be included in the present discussion.^ The ratio be- 

 tween the number of actions in which only the plaintiff 

 appears and the number of those in which further stages arc 

 recorded, differs in degree from the corresponding ratio in 

 the other court, being only about 3 to 2. 300, therefore, 

 will represent the number of these unfinished actions, and 

 500 the total number of suits brought in the court of king's 

 bench during this period of twenty-six years. Since the 

 bulk of the De Banco Rolls exceeds that of the Coram Rege 



'I do not know what happened in such cases; cf. p. 207, note i, for 

 an explanation of the blanks on the rolls in actions that had reached 

 later stages. 



== App., 250-254 and p. 97. 



