2o6 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



cases in the courts on this clause may be interpreted to 

 mean that, a lord instead of bringing suit to recover his own 

 fugitive villein, found it easier to employ the vagrant villein 

 of some other lord. 



The epoch is one of transition during which the position 

 of villeins was undergoing radical changes by no means due 

 to direct legislation. Nowhere are these changes more em- 

 phatically revealed than in the cases already quoted in which 

 villeins were bringing actions on the statutes of labourers 

 against their lords ; especially, perhaps, in the case in which 

 it appears that villeins were themselves employers of 

 servants and were suing their lords for eloigning these 

 servants.^ 



(7) Judgments and verdicts. — Of the 312 actions consid- 

 ered in the preceding pages, 299 were on the contract clause.^ 

 These, as has been pointed out, were classified as follows : ' 

 136 against servants for departure, 116 against masters for 

 retention, and 47 against both masters and servants for re- 

 tention and departure respectively. Of the 6 actions in- 

 volving the contract clause, there is one of false imprison- 

 ment brought by a servant against a master,* and five of 

 trespass vi et armis brought by masters against other 

 masters, four of them for taking servants ^ and one for 

 taking villeins." There is in addition a report of a case 

 of which I have not found the record, an action for debt 

 brought by a servant against a master and which involves 

 the contract clause.'' 



^See pp. 95-Q6. *S. 3. 



^S. 4. *Case 10, app., F, 5. 



*Case 17, app., F, 5; case 30, list in app.; De Banco, 40, Pasch., 

 175, Suff.; 40, Mich., 175 d, Essex and 41, Trin., 312, Essex. In the last 

 case the servant was being punished by stocks. 



®Case 43, app., F, 6. 



'Case 18, Hst in app.; see p. 193, note i. 



