n those established by law, they can be taken and imprisoned
by lords of manors for as much as fifteen days, and then be sent to
the next jail to await the coming of the justices. If any one after
accepting service leaves it, he is to be arrested and sued before the
justices. If he cannot be found, he is to be outlawed and a writ sent
to every sheriff in England ordering that he should be arrested, sent
back, and imprisoned till he pays his fine and makes amends to the
party injured; "and besides for the falsity he shall be burnt in the
forehead with an iron made and formed to this letter F in token of
Falsity, if the party aggrieved shall ask for it." This last
provision, however, was probably intended as a threat rather than an
actual punishment, for its application was suspended for some months,
and even then it was to be inflicted only on the advice of the
judges, and the iron was to remain in the custody of the sheriff. The
statute was reenacted with slight variations thirteen times within the
century after its original introduction; namely, in addition to the
dates already mentioned, in 1362, 1368, 1378, 1388, 1402, 1406, 1414,
1423, 1427, 1429, and 1444.

[Illustration: Laborers Reaping. From a Fourteenth Century Manuscript.
(Jusserand: _English Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century_.
Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.)]

The necessity for these repeated reissues of the statutes of laborers
indicates that the general rise of wages was not prevented. Forty
years after the pestilence the law of 1388 is said to be passed,
"because that servants and laborers are not, nor by a long time have
been willing to serve and labor without outrageous and excessive
hire." Direct testimony also indicates that the prevailing rate of
wages was much higher, probably half as much again, as it had been
before the pestilence. Nevertheless, the enforcement of the law in
individual cases must have been a very great hardship. The fines which
were collected from breakers of the law were of sufficient amount to
be estimated at one time as part payment of a tax, at another as a
valuable source of income to the lords of manors. Their enforcement
was intrusted at different times to the local justices of the peace,
the royal judges on circuit, and special commissioners.

The inducement to the passage of the laws prohibiting a rise in wages
was no doubt partly the self-interest of the employing classes who
were alone represented in Parlia