CENTRAL COURTS 



185 



Apprentices. In one of the earliest cases on the contract 

 clause brought in the court of king's bench by a draper for 

 the retention of his servant, the latter is described in 

 the count as bound to him for seven years as apprentice in 

 the clothing trade; the plea of the defendants is an action 

 of ravishment of ward pending in the court of common 

 pleas between the same parties for the same cause, and in- 

 cludes no reference to the question of apprenticeship.^ It 

 looks therefore as if at first the courts permitted the con- 

 tract clause to apply to apprentices as well as to servants; 

 by 1365, however, it is distinctly ruled that an action for 

 departure on the statute does not lie against an apprentice: 

 the defendant is forced to plead that he was a servant, not 

 an apprentice.- 



Minors. The clearest statement of the law is in a report 

 of a case of which I have not found the record ; Mn an action 



^Case 2, list in app.: " seruientem ipsius Willelmi in seruicio suo, 

 videlicet, in officio apprenticii pannarii . . . nuper retentum ad com- 

 morandum . . . vsque ad terminum septem annorum." Note from the 

 record. Cf. also the case summarized on p. 211, in which the issue of 

 apprenticeship is not raised. 



^Case 16, list in app.; ^/. also case 31, app., F, 4. There are several in- 

 stances of this plea; e. g., De Banco, 47, Hill., 297, Lond. Cf. Fitz- 

 herbert, op. cit., 391: "And a Man shall not have an Action against an 

 Apprentice upon his Departure, upon the Statute;" also Reeves, op. 

 cit., ii, 247. 



^Case 27, list in app. In case 12, list in app., it is ruled that the 

 child in question w^as too young to make a contract but that neverthe- 

 less it was illegal to take him out of his service. The question had 

 been apparently decided in the same way some years before; cf. case 6, 

 app., F, 4, a case in which there is a strange difference between the 

 report and the record. Fitzherbert, op. cit., 390: "If a Man take an 

 Infant or other out of another's Service, he shall be punished, although 

 the Infant or other were not retained." Hale's note is based on the 

 reports of my cases 6 and 12: " See where a Servant was but 9 Years 

 old, in a Writ against him, and the Husband and Wife who had retained 

 him, the Infant was discharged, but the Husband and Wife put to 

 answer, and they plead that he was not retained by them, and Issue 



