s with
every effort at repression. It was in vain that Parliament after Parliament
increased the severity of its laws. The demands of the Parliament of 1376
show how inoperative the previous Statutes of Labourers had proved. They
prayed that constables be directed to arrest all who infringed the Statute,
that no labourer should be allowed to take refuge in a town and become an
artizan if there were need of his service in the county from which he came,
and that the king would protect lords and employers against the threats of
death uttered by serfs who refused to serve. The reply of the Royal Council
shows that statesmen at any rate were beginning to feel that repression
might be pushed too far. The king refused to interfere by any further and
harsher provisions between employers and employed, and left cases of breach
of law to be dealt with in his ordinary courts of justice. On the one side
he forbade the threatening gatherings which were already common in the
country, but on the other he forbade the illegal exactions of the
employers. With such a reply however the proprietary class were hardly
likely to be content. Two years later the Parliament of Gloucester called
for a Fugitive-slave Law, which would have enabled lords to seize their
serfs in whatever county or town they found refuge, and in 1379 they prayed
that judges might be sent five times a year into every shire to enforce the
Statute of Labourers.

[Sidenote: Edward and the Parliament]

But the strife between employers and employed was not the only rift which
was opening in the social structure. Suffering and defeat had stripped off
the veil which hid from the nation the shallow and selfish temper of Edward
the Third. His profligacy was now bringing him to a premature old age. He
was sinking into the tool of his ministers and his mistresses. The glitter
and profusion of his court, his splendid tournaments, his feasts, his Table
Round, his new order of chivalry, the exquisite chapel of St. Stephen whose
frescoed walls were the glory of his palace at Westminster, the vast keep
which crowned the hill of Windsor, had ceased to throw their glamour round
a king who tricked his Parliament and swindled his creditors. Edward paid
no debts. He had ruined the wealthiest bankers of Florence by a cool act of
bankruptcy. The sturdier Flemish burghers only wrested payment from him by
holding his royal person as their security. His own subjects fared no
better than foreign