384 



dMUtttors against % Statute of Jaiotttm 

 in MiMjitt, g.g. 1849- 



Translated and communicated by Miss E. M. Thompson. 



-q HE Assize Eoll translated below, 1 while it is of local interest 

 »«g to the Wiltshire antiquary as preserving many names of 

 the rural population, and as throwing some light on their occu- 

 pations and their sources of livelihood, of which by far the most 

 common for both sexes was brewing, is also to be considered as an 

 illustration of the difficulties left in its train by the Black Death. 

 The great pestilence had first appeared in July in A.D. 1348, at 

 Melcombe Kegis, Dorset, and thence had spread rapidly over the 

 West of England. That the death-roll had been large in Wiltshire 

 is evident from the number of victims among the clergy, to which 

 fact must be attributed the frequent entries of fresh institutions 

 of incumbents in the episcopal registers of Salisbury,* 2 and it is to 

 be presumed that pastors and flocks suffered alike. The Wiltshire 

 labourers and artificers, like their brethren elsewhere, were not 

 slow to take the opportunity afforded by the consequent scarcity 

 of their class for demanding more wages and higher profits for 

 their services and their crafts and wares. An example is entered 

 on this roll of almost every kind of offender against the Statute of 

 Labourers of the 25th year of Edward III., which was an expansion 

 and re-inforcement of that short-sighted attempt at the restoration 

 of the old relations of employer and employed, the Ordinance 

 concerning Labourers and Servants, issued the year after the fatal 

 plague, in A.D. 1349. It was on the farms that the lack of 

 labourers was mostly felt, agriculture with its demand for many 



1 Though containing all the matter of the roll, the translation is slightly 

 abridged. The original is in the Public Record Office. 



2 Tide Dom Gasquet's The Great Pestilence, p. 163. 



