ished by
imprisonment. But sterner measures were soon found to be necessary. Not
only was the price of labour fixed by the Parliament of 1351 but the labour
class was once more tied to the soil. The labourer was forbidden to quit
the parish where he lived in search of better paid employment; if he
disobeyed he became a "fugitive," and subject to imprisonment at the hands
of justices of the peace. To enforce such a law literally must have been
impossible, for corn rose to so high a price that a day's labour at the old
wages would not have purchased wheat enough for a man's support. But the
landowners did not flinch from the attempt. The repeated re-enactment of
the law shows the difficulty of applying it and the stubbornness of the
struggle which it brought about. The fines and forfeitures which were
levied for infractions of its provisions formed a large source of royal
revenue, but so ineffectual were the original penalties that the runaway
labourer was at last ordered to be branded with a hot iron on the forehead,
while the harbouring of serfs in towns was rigorously put down. Nor was it
merely the existing class of free labourers which was attacked by this
reactionary movement. The increase of their numbers by a commutation of
labour services for money payments was suddenly checked, and the ingenuity
of the lawyers who were employed as stewards of each manor was exercised in
striving to restore to the landowners that customary labour whose loss was
now severely felt. Manumissions and exemptions which had passed without
question were cancelled on grounds of informality, and labour services from
which they held themselves freed by redemption were again demanded from the
villeins. The attempt was the more galling that the cause had to be pleaded
in the manor-court itself, and to be decided by the very officer whose
interest it was to give judgement in favour of his lord. We can see the
growth of a fierce spirit of resistance through the statutes which strove
in vain to repress it. In the towns, where the system of forced labour was
applied with even more rigour than in the country, strikes and combinations
became frequent among the lower craftsmen. In the country the free
labourers found allies in the villeins whose freedom from manorial service
was questioned. These were often men of position and substance, and
throughout the eastern counties the gatherings of "fugitive serfs" were
supported by an organized resistance and