Note 193 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

Nor were the labourers any longer allowed to dispose freely of their labour power. “While the plague was actually raging parliament could not meet, but a proclamation was at once issued by the king with the advice of certain prelates and nobles, of which the preamble states that, “many seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants will not serve unless they get excessive wages”, and that consequently the land can be scarcely tilled. Everyone, free or villan, who can work and has no other means of livelihood, is not to refuse to do so for anyone who offers the accustomed wages; each lord is to have the preference in hiring the men on his own estate, but none is to have too many men for his work; no labourer is to leave his employment before the specified time; nor to receive more rations or wages than he did in the twentieth year of the king and the common years before that; none are to give or take more wages in town or country”193.