CENTRAL COURTS 



205 



in which the lord plainly did reclaim his villein, without 

 anything being said as to notice.^ Undoubtedly, therefore, 

 this statutory interference between lords and their villeins 

 was limited to instances that involved a second county and 

 cannot be considered as introducing any serious innovation 

 into their legal relations. The requirement of notice was 

 more important practically than juridically; from the point 

 of view of law the distinction was one of procedure and 

 lay in the difference between a remedy offered by a posses- 

 sory as against that furnished by a petitory action.^ 



Out of the 312 cases occurring on the 59 Plea Rolls ex- 

 amined, only 9 deal with villeins ; ^ the reports naturally 

 show a much larger proportion, namely 6 out of 44, but on 

 the whole the inference is sound that the enforcement of the 

 statutes did not very often touch directly on the question of 

 villeinage.* It is, however, possible that since it had be- 

 come difficult to recover fugitive villeins by the ordinary 

 machinery of the manorial courts, lords w^ho needed la- 

 bourers made use of the compulsory service clause of the 

 ordinance ; " on this hypothesis the very absence of many 



' Cf. quotation from Hale, p. 203, note 2, supra; also the two later cases 

 quoted by Mr. Savine which contain decisions, as he himself recognizes, 

 contrary to his interpretation of my case 43; and make him admit that 

 it is " possible to overestimate the disintegrating influence of this labour 

 legislation," and also that " such judgments as those pronounced in the 

 last two cases certainly limited very much the action of the Statute of 

 Labourers as far as it concerned the villeins if they did not annul it 

 altogether." Op. cit., 255-256. 



-' I am indebted to Professor VinogradofT for pointing out this aspect 

 of the question. 



" Of the six reported cases the records have been found of all but one. 

 In addition there are four records of cases not reported and one record 

 dealing with villeins by tenure; these are all quoted in this section. 



' One instance has come to my notice in which the lord used the ordi- 

 nance as a means of recovering " natiuum et seruientem;" De Banco, 

 47, Mich., 406, Glouc. 



^ Cf. note to Reeves, op. cit., ii, 247, 



