[339] Ib. III. 191.
[340] Jessopp (l. c.) giving a general reference to the Foedera, and probably having the Sandwich letter in view, says there was “mad, unreasoning, insensate panic among well-to-do classes—the trader and the moneyed man, the bourgeoisie of the towns,” and “a stampede,” (presumably to foreign parts). But the mortality was all over by 1st December, 1349; and the exodus, whatever motive it may have had, was almost certainly deliberate.
[341] Foedera, III. 198.
[342] The last clause of the ordinance implies that not only the labourers but also the employers of labour were taking the natural advantage of the situation. There appears to be some particular evidence of this for Bristol (Rev. W. Hunt, Bristol, p. 77): the masters in various crafts and trades were so reduced in numbers that the survivors could charge what they pleased. Thus, the attempt to coerce labourers and skilled workmen was a one-sided affair; although, in practice, it related mostly to farm-labour, where the one-sidedness did not appear.
[343] Foedera, III. 210.
[344] Rot. Parl. II. 225.
[345] This was the first parliamentary Statute of Labourers (25 Ed. III. cap 2). The king’s ordinance of 18th June, 1350 (re-issued for Suffolk and Lindsey on 18th Nov.), is usually reckoned the first Statute of Labourers, and is invariably assigned to the 23rd year of Edward III., being so entered in the Statutes of the Realm. It is clear, however, from the text of the ordinance in the Foedera that it belongs to the 24th of Edward III., its exact date being 18th June, 1350. Longman, in his History of the Life and Times of Edward III., correctly states in one place (I. 309) that the ordinance of 18th June, 1350, was “the first step,” but on the very next page, after stating that the ordinance failed, he proceeds, according to the usual chronology of 23 Ed. III. and 25 Ed. III., to say that “therefore, two years afterwards,” the statute of 25 Ed. III. was made in Parliament. The interval was only some eight months.
[346] Rot. Parl. II. 234.
[347] Knighton, in Twysden’s Decem Scriptores, l. c.
[348] Seebohm, The English Village Community. Chapter I.