1^8 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



tained him. This appeal to the compulsory service clause 

 seems to prove that it was more effective than had been 

 indicated by the few cases brought directly on it. Now 

 the ordinance had stipulated that the vagrant must be alteri 

 non serniens; from the above discussion it results that if 

 a new employer is honestly ignorant of the previous con- 

 tract, he is not punishable for employing a vagrant, even if 

 the latter has left his legitimate service. He runs two risks, 

 however, from the rights of a previous employer : ^ the lat- 

 ter may chance to come across his servant and in this case, 

 as has been shown, has a right to re-take him,^ and thus 

 to cause the employer of the vagrant to lose his service; 

 or the first employer may serve notice on the new employer 

 demanding back the servant, and the new employer must 

 either restore the vagrant or be sued.^ Toward the end 

 of the reign certainly, and possibly before, a distinction 

 grew up between the employment of vagrants in the same 

 county as that in which their first retainer had been and their 

 employment in a different county from that of the first 

 retainer. Greater laxity is allowed in the latter case: the 

 new employer is not obliged to recognize the retainer in the 

 other county unless the previous master has served him 

 notice ; * or to put it in the other way, the first master, if his 



'Granting that he be a bona-fide employer. Cf. case 13, list in app.; 

 to the defendant's plea in a compulsory service action of a previous 

 contract, the plaintiff replies that the contract was a fraud as the alleged 

 master was only a child and did not, in any case, have enough land to 

 entitle him to a servant. 



^ See supra, p. 196. 



* In case 3, list in app., an action against two servants for departure 

 and against a master for their retention, the plea of the latter is that he 

 had found the servants vagrants and out of service; the plea is accepted 

 provided that it can be proved that the servants were really not in the 

 plaintiff's service. 



* Case 43, app., F, 6, if correctly interpreted by Fitzherbert in his 



