Liege People claiming to have
Right to divers Lands, Tenements, and other Possessions, and some
espying Women and Damsels unmarried ... do gather them together to a
great Number of Men of Arms and Archers ... not having Consideration
to God, but refusing and setting apart all Process of the Law, do ride
in great Routs ... and take Possession of Lands and in some Places
do ravish Women and Damsels, and bring them into strange Countries."
Therefore the Statute of Northampton, the 2d of Edward III, is recited
and confirmed and the justices of the king's commission ordered to
arrest such persons incontinent without tarrying for indictment or
other process of law. But that this summary process was already
obnoxious to the people was shown by the fact that it was repealed the
very following year because the articles "seemeth to the said Commons
very grievous." Only the Statute of Northampton is preserved, and
those who had been so taken and imprisoned by virtue of said article
without other indictment "shall be utterly delivered."

[Footnote 1: See "Injunctions in Conspiracy Cases," Senate Document
No. 190, 57th Congress, 1st Session, p. 117.]

(1384) It is noteworthy that at the same time that this
extra-common-law process begins in the statutes, we have other
statutes vindicating the power of the common-law courts. For instance,
six years later, in the 8th of Richard II is a clause complaining that
"divers Pleas concerning the Common Law, and which by the Common Law
ought to be examined and discussed, are of late drawn before the
Constable and Marshal of England, to the great Damage and Disquietness
of the People." Such jurisdiction is forbidden and the common law
"shall be executed and used, and have that which to it belongeth ...
as it was accustomed to be in the time of King Edward." Again, four
years later, it is ordained "that neither Letters of the Signet, nor
of the King's Privy Seal, shall be from henceforth sent in Damage or
Prejudice of the Realm, nor in Disturbance of the Law."

(1388) The next year we find a new Statute of Laborers confirming all
previous statutes and forbidding any servant or laborer to depart from
service without letters testimonial, and if found wandering without
such letters shall be put in the stocks. Short of the penalty of the
stocks, a condition of things not very dissimilar is said to exist
to-day in the non-union mining towns of the West. In Cripple Creek,
for instance, no one is al