l8o ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



both free and bond, not living by trade or handicraft, and 

 without land sufficient to occupy them, are bound to ac- 

 cept service with the first employer who offers them work 

 at the legal rate of wages. ^ It is obvious that the clause 

 is not meant to apply to persons above the labouring class," 

 and that of the latter it would affect mainly agricultural 

 labourers and domestic serv^ants. The differentiation of in- 

 dividuals liable to compulsory labour from those not liable 

 is purely an economic one and naturally causes some diffi- 

 culties of interpretation. Accordingly, a petition in parlia- 

 ment complains that labourers make insufficient holdings an 

 excuse for idleness ; " in one reported case issue is taken on 

 the question of the performance of how many services 

 exempts a man from the clause ; * in another, a labourer, on 

 being put into the stocks for refusal to serve, brings an 



' Fitzherbert, op. cit., 389: " And if a Man be required to serve, and 

 hath not Lands nor Tenements to live upon, nor other Art or Trade, 

 and he refuseth to serve, then he who re(iuireth him to serve, shall have 

 this Writ . . . ." For the writ cf. app., 412. 



^Fitzherbert, op. cii.. 391: " He who hath not sufficient Lands of his 

 own to occupy, shall be compelled to serve." Again: " And so a Gen- 

 tleman by his Covenant shall be bound to serve, although he were not 

 compellable to serve. For if a Gentleman, or Chaplain, or Carpenter, 

 or such which shall not be compelled to serve, yet if they covenant to 

 serve, they shall be bound by their Covenant, and an Action will lie 

 against them for departing from their service." 



In Reeves, Hist. Eiig. Laiv. ii, 275, a Year Book report of an action 

 for departure against a chaplain (10 H. VI, f. 8, p. 30) is quoted to the 

 effect that the statute " was not made but for labourers in husbandry; as 

 in the case of a knight, or esquire, or a gentleman, you cannot compel 

 him to be in your service by the statute, for that the statute is not to be 

 understood [but] of labourers who are in grant, and have nothing 

 whereby to live." Evidently at this date there is some confusion be- 

 tween the contract and the compulsory service clauses. 



^Rot. Pari., ii, 261 b; labourers " pernent bovees de terre, ou demy 

 bovee, des Seignurs, quele n'est pas sufificiancie pur eux dount vivre, ou 

 estre occupez, de lour excuser de servir par termes . . . " cf.zXsoibid.. 

 iii, 17 a, and pp. 73-74 of this monograph. 



^Case 20, app. F, 4. 



