nd combinations of workingmen; and then what
the courts promptly applied to them was not the old line of statutes,
the historical common-law growth, deriving from a guild which in its
origin was a lawful body and so making the union free and lawful, but
naturally--for the magistrates were capitalists and land-owners, and
all the courts were in sympathy with that class--they went back to the
long series of Statutes of Laborers, and said "this is a combination
of workingmen to break the law by getting more than lawful wages,"
and consequently found both combinations unlawful, trades-unions and
strikes, as well as when they were combinations to injure somebody,
what we should now call a boycott.

The great Statute of Laborers which was for centuries supposed to
settle the law of England is that of Elizabeth in 1562. Meantime,
agricultural labor as well as industrial was getting to be free. A
statute of 1377, which requires villeins refusing to labor to be
committed to prison on complaint of the landlord, without bail, itself
recognizes that villeins fleeing to a town are made free after a year
and day's habitation therein. In 1383 came Wat Tyler's rising; the
villeins demanded a commutation of agricultural labor to a money rent
(four pence) and full freedom of trade and labor in all the market
towns; and about this time was great growth of small freeholders.

(1388) The Statute of Richard II restricts laborers to their hundred
and makes it compulsory for them to follow the same trade as their
father after the age of twelve. The wages of both industrial and
agricultural laborers are again fixed-shepherds, ten shillings a year;
ploughmen, seven; women laborers, six shillings, and so on. Servants
are permitted to carry bows and arrows, but not swords, and they may
not play tennis or foot-ball. And here is the historical origin of
the important custom of exacting recommendations: servants leaving
employment are required to carry a testimonial, and none are to
receive servants without such letter--the original of the blacklist.
Here, also, we find the beginning of poor-law legislation, those
unable to work are to be supported in the town where born. Villeinage,
which began at the Norman Conquest, according to Fitz-Herbert,
"because the Conqueror gave lordships with all the inhabitants to do
with them at their pleasure to his principal followers, and they,
needing servants, pardoned the inhabitants of their lives, and caused
t