CONCLUSION 223 



were being tried and convicted by the justices of la- 

 bourers exactly like free men, and that they were them- 

 selves bringing audacious suits in quarter sessions against 

 their own masters; the fact that these masters evidently 

 preferred to leave to the crown-appointed officials the brunt 

 of the work of enforcing these measures against their 

 tenants whether free or bond, while they themselves merely 

 received the fiscal profits resulting from convictions; these 

 facts, as well as many others, all point in the same direc- 

 tion. The cataclysm of the Black Death had hastened the 

 break-down of the old system and had accelerated changes 

 in economic and social relations throughout the community ; 

 the statutes of labourers must be regarded not as having 

 created a new system or a new set of economic relations, 

 but as affording proof that radical changes had occurred, 

 ushering in a new era. 



Finally, in defence of the theory that this legislation 

 was on the whole equitable, emphasis must be laid on that 

 aspect of the statutes which has been usually neglected, 

 namely their relation to the existing law of parol contract. 

 From a modern point of view the endeavor of the upper 

 courts to enforce contracts is obviously justified and com- 

 mands sympathy and approbation. Although to a certain 

 extent this endeavor was successful, the number of actions 

 on the contract clause against masters proves the truth of 

 the statement that it was in the end the keen competition of 

 employers that made it impossible permanently to check the 

 rise in wages. ^ 



For this decade, then, the evidence is conclusive in favor 

 of the belief that the statutes were enforced and tends to 

 show that they were by no means inoperative, but for the 

 course of events during the remainder of Edward's reign, 



^ Petrushevsky, reviewed by Savine in E. H. R., xvii, 781. 



