Offenders against the {Statute of Labourers 385 



hands taking a more important part in the medieval rural economy 

 than grazing, though this, too, was crying out for herdsmen to look 

 after the wandering sheep and cattle. Hence it is not surprising 

 to find among the culprits the masters and landowners themselves, 

 whom the statute intended to benefit, tempting away the servants 

 of others by the promise of higher wages to fill up the blanks 

 caused by the mortality in their households and estates, and to 

 find that a large number of the offences concerned out-door 

 labour. The statute fixed all " Wages, Livery, Meed, or Salary," 

 and all profits for the divers mysteries or crafts at the scale 

 prevalent in the 20th year of Edward III., and ordered that all 

 labourers in husbandry should be bound to serve by the year or 

 the yearly term instead of by day, and that these and other servants 

 should be sworn twice yearly before the lords, stewards, bailiffs 

 and constables of the places of their abode, to observe the statute, 

 and not to withdraw from those places, because in departing to 

 seek more profitable work elsewhere they would leave their former 

 masters with insufficiency of workmen. But in vain ; the carter 

 of the parson of Elyndon takes more grain for his livery than he 

 was wont, the servant of Bradenstoke Priory grows dissatisfied 

 with his allowance and withdraws against his agreement " without 

 license or reasonable cause " before his year of service is up, and 

 many a man and woman breaks his or her oath, refusing to serve 

 at all, or not resisting the temptation of obtaining higher gains for 

 work or goods. There is a case of one who " went on strike." 

 John Lavrok, vagabond, had come out of service all the way 

 from Oxfordshire, but if he hoped for sympathy in money or other 

 alms, he experienced in Wiltshire how the statute was against 

 those who were ;< rather willing to beg in Idleness than by Labour 

 to get their Living " ; indeed one of the clauses of the ordinance of 

 -the 23rd year forbade on the pain of imprisonment this kind of 

 help to the able-bodied and idle labourer. The discontent, however, 

 was not confined to the tradesmen and labourers ; one or two 

 household servants, too, are entered on the roll. The case of 

 "John Bryan, clerk" (m,l.) who took Is. 6d. in excess of his 

 accustomed stipend, may be an ecclesiastical example of the same 



