iling rate of wages, was met by the
strenuous opposition of the law. In the summer of 1349, while the
pestilence was still raging in the north of England, the king, acting
on the advice of his Council, issued a proclamation to all the
sheriffs and the officials of the larger towns, declaring that the
laborers were taking advantage of the needs of their lords to demand
excessive wages, and prohibiting them from asking more than had been
due and accustomed in the year before the outbreak of the pestilence
or for the preceding five or six years. Every laborer when offered
service at these wages must accept it; the lords of manors having the
first right to the labor of those living on their manors, provided
they did not insist on retaining an unreasonable number. If any
laborers, men or women, bond or free, should refuse to accept such an
offer of work, they were to be imprisoned till they should give bail
to serve as required. Commissioners were then appointed by the king in
each county to inquire into and punish violations of this ordinance.

[Illustration: The Stocks at Shalford, near Guildford. Present State.
(Jusserand: _English Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century_.
Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.)]

When Parliament next met, in February, 1351, the Commons sent a
petition to the king stating that his ordinance had not been obeyed
and that laborers were claiming double and treble what they had
received in the years before the pestilence. In response to the
petition what is usually called the "First Statute of Laborers" was
enacted. It repeated the requirement that men must accept work when it
was offered to them, established definite rates of wages for various
classes of laborers, and required all such persons to swear twice a
year before the stewards, bailiffs, or other officials that they would
obey this law. If they refused to swear or disobeyed the law, they
were to be put in the stocks for three days or more and then sent to
the nearest jail till they should agree to serve as required. It was
ordered that stocks should be built in each village for this purpose,
and that the judges should visit each county twice a year to inquire
into the enforcement of the law. In 1357 the law was reenacted, with
some changes of the destination of the fines collected for its breach.
In 1361 there was a further reenactment of the law with additional
penalties. If laborers will not work unless they are given higher
wages tha