CENTRAL COURTS 



203 



there is an attempt to make an issue of the fact as to whether 

 a lord needed this particular villein, the court rules that this 

 point is not issuable/ 



As far as these cases go, if the above analysis be correct, 

 it- is clear that at this date neither the compulsory service 

 nor the contract clause interfered with the legal bond be- 

 tween a lord and his villeins ; he merely had to state that he 

 required their labour and was then entitled to take them.^ 

 In other words the relation of a lord to his villeins or to 

 his tenants who were not villeins ^ was equivalent to the re- 

 lation of a master to a free servant under the terms of a 

 contract; * both relations stood in the way of the rights of 

 a new employer. 



The real difficulty comes up in the interpretation of an 

 action at the very end of the reign including the compli- 

 cation of the escape of villeins into another county.^ Ac- 



' Case 9, app., F, 6. The report had left the matter in doubt, but the 

 record shows that the issue was not allowed. 



^Fitzherbert, op. cit., 391: "The Lord may take his Villain out of 

 the Service of another if he hath need of Servants, otherwise not." 

 (19 R. II, 50 Edw. Ill, 22.) Hale's note somewhat modifies this bald 

 statement; he quotes 30 Edw. Ill, 31 (case 9) and also reports of later 

 reigns where the lord re-took his villeins. Reeves, op. cit., ii, 247, 

 note: "a lord could take away his villein even from the service of 

 another person." Vinogradofif, /or. «V. : " One of the difficulties in work- 

 ing the statute came from the fact that it had to recognize two difTerent 

 sets of relations between the employer and the workman. The statute 

 dealt with the contract between master and servant, but it did not do 

 away with the dependence of the villain on the lord, and in case of con- 

 flict it gave precedence to this latter claim; a lord had the right to with- 

 draw a villain from a stranger's service." 



^ De Banco, iZ', Pasch., 181 d, Hunts.; in an action for retention and 

 departure, one of the defendants (the employer), claims that the other 

 defendants (the two servants), " ipsi fuerunt tenentes sui et tenuerunt 

 diuersa tenementa sua in villenagio." Apparently they were not villeins 

 by status. *S. 5, p. 198. 



^ Case 43, app., F, 6, referred to by Fitzherbert as 50 Edw. Ill, 22; see 

 note 2, supra. Cf. pp. 198-199. 



