Migration was common in medieval England. Serfdom, however, in theory severely restricted the mobility of villeins. This article explores servile migration through a close study of the manorial court rolls of the manors of Great Waltham and High Easter (Essex). By doing so, it contributes to ongoing debates over the nature and decline of serfdom in medieval England and over the role of towns as destinations for migration, which has been seen as contributing to the ‘Little Divergence’. Firstly, the article establishes the extent of servile migration as recorded in the manorial court rolls. In keeping with recent studies, almost half of recorded servile migrants stayed within ten miles of their home manor and, significantly, a sizeable majority (around two thirds) opted for rural destinations. The article then explores some dynamics of servile migration in detail. It suggests that enforcement of restrictions on the movement of villeins was attempted in the 1350s but that, in practice, the lord's coercive capacity was distinctly limited and ineffective.

The process of law enforcement helped to shape the state in the Middle Ages. This article uses an extensive array of court records to provide the first detailed account of royal efforts to police the illegal export of wool in mid-fourteenth century England, when the wool trade was subjected to unprecedented levels of taxation and discussed in moral, as well as fiscal, terms. It shows that these efforts remained heavily centralized in terms of both personnel and institutional form when many other areas of royal law enforcement were becoming increasingly devolved. The article then situates this centralized enforcement form within contemporary criticisms of royal taxation, the place of the royal courts in the wider legal geography of commercial regulation, and the localized dynamic underpinning many legal processes. It argues that the enforcement process was shaped and, indeed, blunted by a critical debate over the extent of royal power and its place within England’s “moral economy.” By situating the regulation of the wool trade in this series of regulatory and economic contexts at a particularly important moment in the development of the late medieval tax state, this article reveals wool smuggling to be a subject of wider significance to historians interested in the nature and—particularly—the limits of royal power and royal law in medieval England.