222 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



To the question as to whether the statutes represent an 

 influence in favor of or opposed to the system of villein- 

 age, it is not easy to give a categorical answer. The en- 

 deavor to check the mobility even of the free labourer seems 

 at first sight an extension of the whole theory of villeinage; 

 but it is to be emphasized that this provision was merely 

 aimed at preventing a given labourer from refusing the 

 legal wages offered in his own district and from going to a 

 place where he could obtain higher wages. Likewise, the 

 compulsory service clause was not so much concerned with 

 stopping the vagrancy of either free or bond, as with 

 securing for the employer a sufficient supply of labour at 

 the normal rate. The specification that a lord could keep 

 only as many villeins as he actually needed is theoretically a 

 direct interference with the relations between lord and 

 villein and might conceivably have tended to put an end to 

 the old system; but the conservative attitude taken by the 

 upper courts on this question, as shown by their decision 

 that a lord might re-capture his villein in spite of a statutory 

 contract between the latter and another employer, neces- 

 sitates considerable modification of the statement that " the 

 Edwardian statutes struck a very heavy blow at the whole 

 fabric of the manorial system." ^ It has, however, been 

 suggested in the preceding pages that the provisions for the 

 employment of vagrants were an indirect admission that the 

 machinery of the manorial courts had become inadequate 

 for the task of recovering fugitive villeins, and that the 

 Hords needed some other means of securing labourers, and 

 . that therefore a remedy was provided for them by the 

 /^ ^^ency of the central government." The fact that villeins 



^ Petriishevsky, quoted by Savine, in " Bondmen under the Tudors." 

 in Trans. Royal Hist. Soc, new series, xvii, 254. 

 ' Pages 205-206. 



