ART. II.-THE RIGHTS, USAGES OF THE PEASANTRY. DISABILITIES, AND ANCIENT ENGLISH PART VII.-The Parliamentary Regulation of Labour in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. 'HE rural inhabitants of England-if really straitened in the time of Edward the Third, were destined to be relieved by the coming of an awful visitant "Ther came a privee theef, men clepen Deth, That in this contree all the peple sleth . he hath slain this yere Hence over a mile, within a gret village, Both man and woman, child, and hyne, and page." The plague of the years 1348 and 1349, called the Great Death, is said to have destroyed nearly two-thirds of the population. A mightier power than King Edward encountered him in the midst of his career, and forced him to utter the penitential words impressed upon some of his gold coinsDomine! Ne in furore tuo arguas me! At this time numbers of men were drawn off by the wars, while the growing manufactures attracted increasing numbers, and the pestilence was naturally followed by a lack and dearth of agricultural labour. The lack could hardly be supplied by human means, but the dearth was supposed to be within the compass of an Act of Parliament, and therefore after the following preamble :— "Because a great part of the people, and especially of workmen and servants, late died of the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters, and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive wages, and some rather willing to beg in idleness than by labour to get their living, . considering the grievous incommodities which of the lack, especially of ploughmen and such labourers, may hereafter come, It was ordained "That every man or woman in the realm of England, of whatsoever condition, whether freeborn or servile, if able-bodied and under the age of sixty years, not living by merchandise, nor having any certain craft, nor means of his own to live upon, nor land of his own, in the cultivation of which he may be employed, and not retained in any one's service, if required to labour in any service suitable to his condition, shall be bound to serve the person who chooses to engage him, for the wages, liveries, rewards, or salaries, accustomed to be offered in the districts in which he ought to serve, in the twentieth year of the King's reign-the year 1346— or in the five or six ordinary years immediately preceding."* The breach of this ordinance was visited by heavy penalties, both upon the employers and the employed. No man might give alms to any person able to serve, under pain of imprisonment. At the end of two years there were complaints that the new statute of labourers had not been observed :— "Forasmuch as it is given the King to understand that the said servants, having no regard to the said ordinance, but to their ease and singular covetise, do withdraw themselves to serve great men and other, unless they have livery and wages to the double or treble of that they were wont to take the said twentieth year." And it seemed good that the wages of labourers and artificers should be definitely fixed. Another Act of this year, 1351, shook one of the bulwarks of freedom: it allowed a lord to seize his villein and allege villenage, in an action brought against him by the villien, although there might be a writ de Libertate Probanda depending. The law could no longer justly boast of its patronage of liberty.† The statutes concerning labourers were re-enacted or confirmed in the thirty-fourth and forty-second years of Edward the Third, and again in the second year of Richard the * 23 Ed. 3. † F. N. B. 177. Co. Litt. 124 b. Second. By the Act of 1360, a fugitive labourer might be outlawed, and after capture, might be imprisoned, and branded with the letter F if the person aggrieved demanded it; but this punishment of burning was deferred until the succeeding Michaelmas, and then could only be done by the advice of the magistrates, and the consent of the sheriff who kept the branding iron. The landlords were not merely unwilling to pay good wages, they tried to get agricultural service without payment; their tenants were still nominally subject to tributary labour, but in the counties around London, this labour had become almost obsolete; it was considered irksome and degrading. The attempt to enforce it seems to have been the main cause of the great rising in 1382. The Kentish men had been stirred by the preaching of John Ball; there was a general prejudice against the thrifty Flemish weavers who had settled in England, and were supposed to be taking bread out of English mouths; and we should say that the poll-tax had more than an accidental connexion with the rebellion; the poll-tax must have been odious, not as a tax alone, and as a tax levied in an unpleasant, oppressive manner, but as a symbol of villenage. Were English freemen to be slaves, were they to be subject to head-money-the old charge upon bondmen, to tributary labour, to every badge and burden of servitude? No sound can be more terrible than the voice of a mad dened people. The disciples of John Ball came out with an uproar which had a powerful effect upon Chaucer, and Gower, and Walsingham, and all others who were conscious of it; they came out to conquer the realm with clubs, and rusty swords, and twibills; with bows ruddy by long hanging in smoky cottages, and a scanty provision of poorly trimmed arrows.* King Richard bore himself well for once in his life, and Sir Robert Knollys-one of the ablest of the Holinshed. Walsingham's Chronicle in Camden's Collection, 248, 251. Chaucer's Tale of the Nun's Priest. Froissart, lxxv. at leaders trained in the school of King Edward-was hand; but an English government has seldom been in greater peril; and the end might have been otherwise if the peasants of Norfolk and Lincolnshire could have reached London before the men of Kent, and Essex, and Hertfordshire had been dispersed. The peasant lived thenceforth under still stricter discipline. Although perhaps a freeman, he was almost attached to the soil. He could not step out of his hundred or wapentake without a licence under the King's seal;† complaint had been made that servants and labourers were wont to fly from county to county, because the ordinances were not uniformly executed; these migrations were usually made under the colour of a pilgrimage. A man brought up to the craft of husbandry until the age of twelve years was not allowed to adopt another trade. By statutes of Henry the Fourth, it was ordained that a man spending less than twenty shillings. a year, should not make a handicraftsman of his son, and that no labourer should be retained by the week. Until 1416, the employer had been punished for a breach of the statute of labourers; in that year the penalty was confined to the labourer, but such penalties ultimately fall upon the employer, or upon the general public. The rate of wages was repeatedly settled in Parliament; we can notice only those Acts which were in force for any length of time. Wages were regulated in 1388-the twelfth year of Richard the Second, in 1444-the twenty-third year of Henry the Sixth; in 1515 -the seventh year of Henry the Eighth. The statute of the last-named year enacts that no bailye of husbandry shall take for his wages by the year above 26s. 8d., and for his clothing, com * Hob the Robber, who is threatened by John Ball, may mean Sir R. Knollys; he for a time commanded one of the predatory bands called " panies of adventure," in the fourteenth century, and "Skinners”—Ecorcheurs-in the fifteenth. en † Such a seal has the legend Sigillum Regis in comitatu de N circling the name of the hundred or wapentake. Seals of the hundreds of Walshcroft (Lincoln), Staploe (Cambridge), South Erpingham (Norfolk), and Wangford (Suffolk), may be seen in the British Museum. 5s., with meat and drink; no chief hind, as a carter, or chief shepherd, above 20s. by the year, and for his clothing, 5s., with meat and drink; no common servant of husbandry above 16s. 8d. by the year, and for his clothing, 4s., with meat and drink; no woman servant, above 10s., and for clothing, 4s., with meat and drink; no child within the age of fourteen years, above 6s. 8d. by the year, and for clothing, 4s., with meat and drink. The wages of each class, excepting the woman's wages, were slightly raised above the rates of 1444. Under the Act of 1388, the yearly wages of a bailiff were 13s. 4d.; of a chief hind or shepherd, 10s.; of an ordinary labourer, 7s.; of a woman, 6s. The Statute of 1515 proceeds to determine the wages of other workmen and artificers, and then ordainsthat in the time of harvest every mower shall take by the day 4d., with meat and drink, and without meat and drink, 6d.; a reaper and a carter, every of them, 3d. by the day, with meat and drink, and without meat and drink, 5d.; a woman labourer and other labourers, every of them, 24d. by the day, with meat and drink, without it, 44d.* Any servant in husbandry refusing to work according to this ordinance to be committed. Any labourer taking higher wages than the legal rate to forfeit for every default, 20s.; and every artificer and labourer to be at work between the midst of the month of March and the midst of the month of September before five of the clock in the morning; to have but half an hour for his breakfast and an hour and a half at his dinner, at such time as he hath season to him appointed for to sleep. And at such time as he hath no season to him appointed for to sleep, then he shall have but an hour at his dinner, and half an hour for his noon-meat, and he shall not depart from his work during that season till between seven and eight of the clock in the evening.† * Compare the rates of 1351 .. no labourer for making of hay shall take but a penny on the day, and the mower 5d for the acre, or 5a for the journey, without meat or drink: no labourer reaper in the first week of August shall take but 24 a day-the second day 3d... No man shall take for threshing of a quarter of wheat or rye, but 2a ob., and for a quarter of barley or oats 14 ob. † We may doubt whether these rules were ever strictly observed. The |