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The Social Context of Statute of Labourers Enforcement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

L. R. Poos
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Extract

Historians' impressions of the position of agricultural servants and wage labourers within the medieval English rural society and economy remain as imprecise as the picture which most contemporary documents provide. Research to date on medieval agricultural labourers has concentrated upon estate workers within the seigneurial economy, primarily because manorial accounts provide fairly detailed information about famuli or estate labourers employed by particular manors, their terms of employment, and the remuneration they received. But the role of servants and labourers employed on tenant holdings by medieval villagers, and their importance for non-agricultural production within rural communities, are still extremely uncertain. They appeared fleetingly if at all in manorial documentation, which seldom had reason to be concerned with them as such, while another source which historians have used to approach the problem, nominative polltax returns furnishing household or occupational information, poses serious difficulties of interpretation.

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Articles
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Law and History Review , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , Spring 1983 , pp. 27 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1983

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References

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6. Ibid. ‘…percipiat dumtaxat vadia liberaciones mercedes seu salaria que in locis ubi servire debeat conseuta sunt prestari anno regni nostri Anglie vicesimo vel annis communibus quinque vel sex proximis precedentibus…’

7. Ibid. ‘…moderatum lucrum non excessivum…’

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9. Text given in Statutes of the Realm, supra note 5, i, 311–13.

10. Ibid. 311: ‘…la malice de servantz queux furent preciouses et nient voillantz servir apres la pestilence…’

11. Putnam, Statutes of Labourers, supra note 3, 2.

12. Statutes of the Realm, supra note 5, i, 311: ‘…et quils soient allowes de servir pur lan entier ou autres termes usuels et nemys pur journes…’

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21. Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16,41:‘…communis operarius iuratus fuit coram … constabulario de eodem villa … ad operandum infra villatam de Appillay per totam estatem et autumpnum tunc proxime sequentes qui quidem Johannes … a predicta villata de Appillay recessit causa capiendi salarium excessivum.’

22. Putnam, Yorkshire Peace Sessions, supra note 15, 62: ‘…noluerunt iurare coram constabulariis ad tenendum statuta laborariorum…’

23. Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16, 47: ‘…requisitus fuit per constabularium de Hameryngham … ad laborandum in predicta villa in falcacione prati et alijs laboribus sufficientibus…’

24. Furber, Essex Peace Sessions, supra note 14, 169.

25. Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16, 46: ‘…requisitus per Johannem Haldayn de Staynton'et alios probos homines eiusdem ville ad serviendum de artificio suo in eadem villa de Staynton'…’; Putnam, B. H., ed., Proceedings before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Ames Foundation, 1938) 356Google Scholar.

26. Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16, 90: ‘…Ricardus Baward de Carlton est communis laborator et vagans circumquaque ossiosus … Willelmus de Shadwode… optulit eidem Ricardo servicium … in officio pro statu suo congruo’; ibid. 182: ‘…communis noctivagax contra pacem et de die in diem ad bonum apparatum et victum et vestitum et nichil habet in bonis in terris nee tenementis.’

27. Ibid. 48: ‘…nuper retenta per preceptum et assignacionem constabularii eiusdem ville prout moris est…’

28. Ibid. 226: ‘…extra servicium abbatis de Swynsheved contra assignacionem constabularii cepit et abduxit…’

29. Putnam, Yorkshire Peace Sessions, supra note 15, 33: ‘…allocatus fuit cum Willelmo de Murrers de serviendo eidem Willelmo in officio fugacionis unius caruci.’

30. Putnam, Proceedings before the Justices of the Peace, supra note 25, 374.

31. Kimball, E. G., ed., Sessions of the Peace for Bedfordshire 1355–1359, 1363–1364, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 48 (1969) 44–5Google Scholar.

32. Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16, 2: ‘…legitime conductum ad serviendum Johanni de Benyngworth de Haynton in officio carucarii et adiudicatum eidem Johanni per xij iuratores coram capitalibus constabulariis wappentaci predicti…’

33. E.g., R. K. Kelsall, ‘Wage Regulation under the Statute of Artificers,’ in Minchinton, Wage Regulation in Pre-Industrial England, supra note 13, 124–27; Emmison, F. G., Elizabethan Life: Home, Work, and Land (Chelmsford, 1976) 154Google Scholar.

34. Kimball, E. G., ed., Some Sessions of the Peace in Lincolnshire 1381–1396, Lincoln Record Society 49, 56 (1953, 1962) ii, 150Google Scholar: ‘…communis forstallator laborariorum et serviencum ita quod nemo potest aliquem famulum in patria conducere nee habere nisi ad voluntatem et procuracionem dicti Henrici…’

35. Ibid. 66; Putnam, Yorkshire Peace Sessions, supra note 15, 11. Although it is conceivable that in these cases the officials were not hundred bailiffs but rather manorial bailiffs, compelling workers into manorial labour, the terminology of the cases—as in the Yorkshire example, in which a ploughman ‘was ordered by the bailiff to serve him’ (requisitus fuit … ad serviendum ei)—would seem to imply that it was personal service to the bailiff himself which was at issue.

36. Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16, 220–21; cf. Kimball, Bedfordshire Peace Sessions, supra note 31, 75, for an assault upon constables while they were performing their duties; Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16, 10, for a case in which a township representative, summoned to give evidence before a peace sessions presentment jury, was so intimidated that he dared not appear.

37. Ibid. 32: ‘Robertus de Hagham de Wuluyngham … constabularium eiusdem ville in faciendo officium suum super Johannam uxorem ipsius Roberti et alios laboratores eiusdem ville … totaliter impedivit.’

38. Kimball, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 34, i, 64: ‘…non vult iustificari per constabularium sed semper est rebellis…’

39. Furber, Essex Peace Sessions, supra note 14, 105-06:‘…quendam Walterum Quapelet falcatorem et communem laborarium incarceratum per … constabularios vi et armis extra cippos ceperunt … nolentes permittere dictum Walterum Cuapelet securitatem invenire ad commorandum in dicta villa officium suum exercendo…’

40. Post, J. B., ‘Some Limitations of the Medieval Peace Rolls,’ Journal of the Society of Archivists 4 (1973) 633–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Post, J. B., ‘Criminals and the Law in the Reign of Richard II with Special Reference to Hampshire’ (unpublished D.Phil, thesis, Oxford, 1976) 111-13, 143–44Google Scholar; Hunnisett, R. F., ‘The Reliability of Inquisitions as Historical Evidence,’ in Bullough, D. A. and Storey, R. L., eds., The Study of Medieval Records (Oxford, 1971) 206–35Google Scholar. The author is grateful to Dr. Post for permission to cite his unpublished thesis.

41. Cam, H. M., The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls 2nd ed. (London, 1963) 192–94Google Scholar; Cam, H. M., ‘Shire officials: Coroners, constables, and bailiffs,’ in Willard, J. F., Morris, W. A., and Dunham, W. H., eds., The English Government at Work 1327–1336, iii (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1950) 169–71Google Scholar; Pollock, F. and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1968) i, 560–67Google Scholar; Bellamy, J., Crime and Public-Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1973) 93–4Google Scholar; Crowley, D. A., ‘Frankpledge and Leet Jurisdiction in Later Medieval Essex’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Sheffield, 1971) 209–42Google Scholar. The author is grateful to Dr. Crowley for permission to cite his unpublished thesis.

42. Public Record Office, London (hereafter P.R.O.) JUST 1.731 m. 8, for village-by-village presentments of labourers by constables.

43. Crowley, ‘Frankpledge and Leet Jurisdiction,’ supra note 41, 232-40; Searle, E., Lordship and Community: Battle Abbey and its Banlieu 1066–1538 (Toronto, 1974) 433–46Google Scholar. A number of students of medieval village society regard office-holding as a reliable index of villagers' socioeconomic status, although these writers have been concerned mainly with manorial officers rather than constables: Raftis, J. A., ‘Social Structures in Five East Midlands Villages,’ Economic History Review, 2nd series, xviii (1965) 83–100Google Scholar; Britton, E., The Community of the Vill (Toronto, 1977) 10-15, 70-6, 94–102Google Scholar.

44. Wrightson, K., ‘Two Concepts of Order: Justices, Constables, and Jurymen in Seventeenth Century England,’ in Brewer, J. and Styles, J., eds., An Ungovernable People: The English and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1980) 22Google Scholar. J. A. Sharpe has recently suggested that this hierarchy of essentially amateur officials, corresponding roughly with broader social hierarchies, was one of the most enduring characteristics of English law enforcement between the late-medieval and early-modern periods: Sharpe, J. A., ‘The History of Crime in Late Medieval and Early Modern England,’ Social History 7 (1982) 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Work along these lines is currently being pursued by the author for a number of communities in the county of Essex for the later fourteenth century.

46. E.g., Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16, 27; Kimball, Warwickshire and Coventry Peace Sessions, supra note 17, 95, for examples of servants of monastic institutions.

47. Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16, 6: ‘…communes laboratores attachiati fuerunt per constabularios villate predicte ad laborandum [cum] vicinis ville predicte…’; Putnam, Yorkshire Peace Sessions, supra note 15, 19: ‘…renuit servire proximis suis.’

48. Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16, 36: ‘…ubi constabularii domini regis ville de Appelby … iuxta officij sui debitum attachiassent … laboratores eiusdem ville ad serviendum communitati eiusdem ville tempore autumpni … prout solebant…’.

49. Kimball, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 34, ii, 53–4, 70.

50. Ault, W. O., ‘Some Early Village By-laws,’ English Historical Review xlv (1930) 211–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ault, W. O., Open-Field Husbandry and the Village Community, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society new series 55 (1965) 13–16, 43–6Google Scholar.

51. Raftis, J. A., Tenure and Mobility (Toronto, 1964) 130–72Google Scholar; Britton, Community of the Vill, supra note 43, 136-37; cf. DeWindt, E. B., ed., The Liber Gersumarum of Ramsey Abbey (Toronto, 1976) 305Google Scholar (no. 3673), 319 (no. 3806), 335-36 (no. 3976): fines paid for permission for villagers to take villeins into their service; 250 (no. 3066): permission for a villein to enter service to others within his village; 172 (nos. 2024–25, 2027), 194 (no. 2293): permission for men to marry unfree women, and to have them in service until marriage; 285(no. 3451): permission for an unfree woman servant to change employers. Notices such as these, recorded for Ramsey Abbey manors in the fifteenth century, would have arisen in manorial courts because they usually embodied payments for permission for villeins to migrate.

52. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance, supra note 4, 340–42; Putnam, Statutes of Labourers, supra note 3, 98-149.

53. Calendar of Fine Rolls (hereafter C.F.R.) 1347–56, 190–98.

54. Johnson, C., ‘The Collectors of Lay Taxes,’ in Morris, W. A. and Strayer, J. R., eds., The English Government at Work 1327–1336, ii (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1947) 203–06Google Scholar.

55. Kimball, Bedfordshire Peace Sessions, supra note 31, 83–4; Sillem, Lincolnshire Peace Sessions, supra note 16,9, 17, 104; cf. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free, supra note 4, 148, and Maddicott, J. R., The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown 1294–1341, Past and Present supplement 1 (1975) 10–11Google Scholar, for comments on the social implications of subcollectors' roles within communities.

56. C.F.R. 1347–1356, 188–89; cf. Putnam, Statutes of Labourers, supra note 3, 100–101.

57. C.F.R. 1347–1356, 219–20.

58. Ibid. 265–66, 268.

59. P.R.O. JUST 1.266 m. 8: ‘…cum Rogerus Austyn de Herwardstocke sutor ratione excessus sui in artificio predicto … per probiores homines ville … et per … subcollectores xve eiusdem ville … assessus fuit in auxilium diminutionis taxationis pauperum ville … et eciam Rogerus Tracefel pro excessu … assessus pro ijdem quos dictis subcollectoribus non persolvit iidem tamen subcollectores dictos xiij s. iiij d. de prefato Rogero Austyn in auxilium predictorum pauperum levare noluerunt set summam integram taxationis ville predicte de predictis pauperibus levaverunt … Johannes Waleys … per longum tempus post dictam assessionem … de Rogero Austyn xvj s. viij d. et de Rogero Tracefel xl d. levavit…’

60. P.R.O. JUST 1.267 m. 35: ‘…pro acquietantia habenda … solverunt in oppresione. ‘It is not clear, though, whether this incident relates to the same collection as the previous one.

61. Ibid.

62. P.R.O. JUST 1.267 m. 7: ‘…in omnibus sessionibus suis habuit mariscallum [who took] de quolibet laborario iurato fere iiijd.’

63. P.R.O. JUST 1.267m. 54v: ‘…fist appeller devant luy toutz les artificers et laborers de chescun ville del hundred Daungre…’

64. Cf. Putnam, Statutes of Labourers, supra note 3, 104, for the confusion between justices and collectors.

65. P.R.O. JUST 1.267 m. 1. (Finchingfield); P.R.O. JUST 1.268 m. 6. (Sturmer); P.R.O. JUST 1.268 m.6v (Wethersfield). Northtoft died in 1372, holding the manor of Northtoft and other land in Finchingfield (Calendar of Inquisitions Post-Mortem) xiv, 193; Morant, P., The History and Antiquities of the County of Essex 2nd ed. (London, 1978) ii, 366Google Scholar.

66. For the dates of the Essex peace and Coram Rege sessions, cf. Furber, Essex Peace Sessions, supra note 14, 26 29, 53; Putnam, Statutes of Labourers, supra note 3, appendix, 169, 401; for the Exchequer process against Lacy, Northtoft, and Waleys, P.R.O. E159.128, Trinity Term, Recorda (unnumbered membranes).

67. Putnam, Statutes of Labourers, supra note 3, 105. The penalties, instead of ‘excess,’ were now termed ‘fines, ransoms, excess, and amercements' (Statutes of the Realm, supra note 5, i, 313), and Putnam seems to imply that this represented a further concession by Edward to the Commons (Statutes of Labourers, supra note 3, 82–7, 103–108), but it is difficult to believe that in practice either the ‘excess’ or the fines were more than vaguely related to the perceived gravity of the offence.

68. This grant was supposed to end at Easter 1351 (C.F.R. 1347–1356, supra note 53, 265–66, 268), while in Essex the combined peace and labourers' sessions held under this commission were meeting between May and September of the same year (Furber, Essex Peace Sessions, supra note 14, 26–9).

69. P.R.O. E163.4.39.

70. Ibid. ‘…par serement des bones et loials chivalers et altres de chescune hundred… de chescune ville de le hundred et de chescun hamel le gast le mischiefs et lempoverissement des yceles…’

71. Putnam, Statutes of Labourers, supra note 3, 115–19.

72. P.R.O. E368.123, Trinity Term, Brevia, m. 208; P.R.O. E368.124, Michaelmas Term, Brevia, m. 186; cf. Furber, Essex Peace Sessions, supra note 14, 27–8.

73. C.F.R. 1347–1356, 333.

74. P.R.O. E159.128, Easter Term, Brevia (unnumbered membranes).

75. A similar chronology, with a similar, strikingly long interval between offence and fine collection, could conceivably be reconstructed for other counties. One of the extant estreat rolls, for Yorkshire's North Riding (P.R.O. E137.49.1), has several names of offenders and their fines struck through, with the word mortuus added, indicating only one of the obstacles which this slow process could encounter.

76. P.R.O. E159.129, Michaelmas Term, Recorda (unnumbered membranes).

77. Ibid. ‘…rebelles exciterant … ipsi tamen levaverunt certum denarium inde terminum iuxta videlicet summam dictum Burgum contingentem de decima predicta intelligentes homines eiusdem Burgi allocationem de residuo summe predicte habere debuisse in allocationem firme sue iuxta libertatem eis alias per Regem confirmatam…’

78. Ibid.

79. For Essex: P.R.O. E137.11.2 (estreat of fines), P.R.O. E179.107.41 (subsidy, particulars of account), P.R.O. E179.276.67 (subsidy, collectors'account). For Yorkshire: P.R.O. E137.49.1 (estreat of fines), P.R.O. E179.211.24 (subsidy, particulars of account). Other fragmentary estreats include P.R.O. E101.121.2 (Derbyshire, 1353), and P.R.O. E137.7.4 (Derbyshire, 1354).

80. E.g., Allison, K. J., ‘The Lost Villages of Norfolk,’ Norfolk Archaeology xxxi (1957) 130–31Google Scholar; Beresford, M. W., ‘Analysis of Some Medieval Tax Assessments: Ongar Hundred,’ in Powell, M. R., ed., Victoria County History of Essex iv (1956) 297Google Scholar; Baker, A. R. H., ‘Changes in the Later Middle Ages,’ in Darby, H. C., ed., A New Historical Geography of England before 1600 (Cambridge, 1976) 189Google Scholar.

81. P.R.O. E137.49.1; P.R.O. E179.211.24.

82. The sources for the 1377 Essex poll tax are: P.R.O. E179.107.46; P.R.O. E179.107.47; P.R.O. E179.107.48; P.R.O. E179.107.50; P.R.O. E179.107.51; P.R.O. E179.107.52; P.R.O. E179.107.53; P.R.O. E179.107.54; P.R.O. E179.107.55; P.R.O. E179.107.56; P.R.O. E179.107.57; P.R.O. E179.107.58.

83. Eg., Hatcher, J., Plague, Population and the English Economy 1348–1530 (London, 1977) 13–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84. R. H. Britnell, ‘Utilisation of the Land in East Anglia, 1350–1500,’in E. Miller, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales iii (forthcoming); Dobson, M. J., ‘“Marsh fever” The Geography of Malaria in England,’ Journal of Historical Geography 6 (1980) 357–89CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. The author is grateful to Dr. Britnell and Mr. Miller for permission to cite their unpublished work, and to Dr. Dobson for discussing these points with him.

85. One recent writer has argued that broad regional differences in proportions of servants (employed on annual or other long terms) and labourers (employed for shorter periods) within the agricultural work force were directly related to this consideration: Kussmaul, A. S., Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1981) 22–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Whether such a correlation existed also in the medieval period awaits further empirical work.

86. Baker, ‘Changes in the Later Middle Ages,’ supra note 80, 220–26.

87. E.g., Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages, supra note 2, 21–36, 49–53; Razi, Z., ‘The Toronto School's Reconstitution of Medieval Peasant Society: A Critical View,’ Past and Present 85 (1980) 152–57Google Scholar.

88. E.g., Raftis, J. A., ‘The Concentration of Responsibility in Five Villages,’ Mediaeval Studies xxviii (1966) 92–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Britton, Community of the Vill, supra note 43, 115–23; Hanawalt, B. A., ‘Community Conflict and Social Control: Crime and Justice in the Ramsey Abbey Villages,’ Mediaeval Studies xxxix (1977) 402–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89. Putnam, Statutes of Labourers, supra note 3, appendix, 315–21, tabulates all surviving totals of Statute fines collected, compared with subsidy payments, for all counties during the triennial grant of 1352–1354.

90. The Statute of Labourers in one clause forbade workers to enter employment by the day instead of by the year or ‘other usual terms,’ but its next two clauses set maximum day-work or piece-work rates for a variety of jobs, such as threshing or construction work (Putnam, Statutes of the Realm, supra note 5, i, 311–12). This apparent conundrum merely recognized that both long-term and short-term hiring would continue to be necessary under different circumstances: haymaking or harvest would require seasonal labour for relatively short periods, possibly by smallholders augmenting their incomes from other sources. Some writers (e.g., Ritchie, ‘Labour conditions in Essex,’ supra note 3, 93) have remarked that employment for a relatively small number of days, even at the statutory maximum wages for day-work, could bring labourers sums in excess of the statutory annual rates, thus providing a further incentive for labourers to avoid annual hiring agreements. But the indictments for taking excessive daily wages which Ritchie cited in this context are likely to have related mostly to such occasional employment, rather than realistic opportunities for many general labourers to amass large sums throughout the year.

91. Eg., Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry, supra note 85, 97 119, for a cogent argument for the economic influences upon the ratio of servants to labourers in England between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Smith, R. M., ‘The People of Tuscany and their Families in the Fifteenth Century: Medieval or Mediterranean?’ Journal of Family History 6 (1981) 123–25CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, for a comparison of these influences with their analogous implications for later-medieval England.

92. E.g., Razi, Z., Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish (Cambridge, 1980) 76, 82Google Scholar; Razi, Z., ‘Family, Land and the Village Community in Later Medieval England,’ Past and Present 93 (1981) 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Britton, Community of the Vill, supra note 43, 135–37; Smith, ‘The People of Tuscany,’ supra note 91, 123–25.

93. Hilton, ‘Some Social and Economic Evidence,’ supra note 2, 123; Wall, R., ‘Regional and Temporal Variations in English Household Structure from 1650,’ in Hobcroft, J. and Rees, P., eds., Regional Demographic Development (London, 1977) 89–113Google Scholar; Smith. ‘The People of Tuscany,’ supra note 91.

94. Woodward, D., ‘The Background to the Statute of Artificers: The Genesis of Labour Policy, 1558–63,’ Economic History Review, 2nd series, xxxiii (1980) 32–44Google Scholar; Bindoff, S. T., ‘The Making of the Statute of Artificers,’ in Bindoff, S. T., Hurstfield, J., and Williams, C. H., eds., Elizabethan Government and Society: Essays Presented to Sir John Neale (London, 1961) 56–94Google Scholar.

95. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy, supra note 4, 328–29.