174 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



set and Leicester, lo each; Surre}^ 9; Middlesex, South- 

 ampton, Warwick and Wiltshire, 8 each ; Hertford, 7 ; Bed- 

 ford, Berkshire and Oxford, 6 each; Devon, Gloucester, 

 Somerset and Sussex, 5 each; Huntingdon, 4; Rutland and 

 Stafford, 2 each; Derby, Northumberland, Nottingham, 

 Westmoreland and Worcester, i each ; name of county- 

 illegible, 9. The three counties palatine are, of course, 

 omitted, but except for Cornwall, Cumberland, Hereford 

 and Shropshire, all the other counties are represented/ 

 London, with nearly a sixth of the whole number of cases, 

 has more than its share, possibly because of its propinquity 

 to the seat of the court of common pleas ; but on the whole, 

 it may be said that the enforcement of the statutes of 

 labourers by the upper courts was not sectional but was 

 fairly uniform throughout the kingdom. 



(3) Clauses of the ordinance and of the statute on zvhich 

 the actions are brought. — It has been already shown that 

 the justices of labourers in their sessions, while occasionally 

 dealing with all clauses of the legislation, gave the fullest 

 measure of their energies to the punishment of the receipt 

 of excess wages and excess prices ; ^ precisely the same 

 statement is true in regard to the juries that were making 

 presentments before the king's bench for offences against 

 the ordinance and the statute, as recorded in the series of 

 documents known as Ancient Indictments.^ Further pro- 

 cess as to these presentments should be sought on the Coram 

 Rege Rolls of corresponding years and terms ; my researches 

 in this direction were but slight and did not solve the prob- 

 lem of the ultimate fate of such indictments or of their con- 

 nection with the work of the court of king's bench.* The 



' It is more than probable that these counties will appear on the re- 

 maining rolls. ^Pt. I, ch.ii, ss. 3,4and5. ^ C7. s. i and app., F, i. 



*Is it possible that the suggestion made on p. 68 is true here also and 

 that these presentments were considered conclusive evidence of guilt? 



