The following statute of artificers regulated labor for the next two centuries: No master or mistress may employ a servant for a term less than one year in the crafts of clothiers, woolen cloth weavers, tuckers, fullers, clothworkers, shearmen, dyers, hosiers, tailors, shoemakers, tanners pewterers, bakers, brewers, glove- makers, cutlers, smith, farriers, curriers, saddlers, spurriers, turners, cappers, hatmakers, feltmakers, bow-makers, arrow-makers, arrow-head-makers, butchers, cooks, or millers, so that agriculture will be advanced and idleness diminished. Also, every craftsman unmarried or under age 30 who is not working must accept employment by any person needing the craft work. Also, any common person between 12 and 60 who is not working must accept employment in agriculture. And, unmarried women between 12 and 40 may be required by town officials to work by the year, the week, or day for wages they determine.
All artificers and laborers hired by the day or week shall work from 5 am to 7 PM. All artificers must labor at agriculture at haytime and harvest to avoid the loss of grain or hay. Every householder who raises crops may receive as an apprentice a child between 10 and 18 to serve in agriculture until he is age 21. A householder in a town may receive a child as an apprentice for 7 years, but merchants may only take as apprentices children of parents with 40s. freehold. (This was designed to inhibit migration to the towns. It excluded three fourths of the rural population.)
No one may be a craftsman until he has served seven years as an apprentice. These artificers may have children as apprentices: smith, wheelmaker, ploughmaker, millmaker, miller, carpenter, rough mason, plasterer, a timber sawer, an ore burner, a lime burner, brickmaker, bricklayer, tilemaker, tiler, layer of slate roofs, layer of wood shingle roofs, layer of straw roofs, cooper, earthen potter, linen weaver, housewife who weaves wool for sale or for household use.
Fish, but no meat, may be eaten on Wednesdays so that there will be more fishermen and mariners and repair of ports. (This was done because fishing had declined since the dissolution of the monasteries. Eating fish instead of meat in Lent in the springtime remained a tradition.)
For repairing of highways, the supervisors may take the rubbish or smallest stones of any quarry along the road in their precinct.
Embezzlement or theft by a servant of his master's goods of 40s. or more is a felony.
No one shall forge a deed of land, charter, sealed writing, court roll or will.
No one shall libel or slander so as to cause a rebellion.
Cut-purses and pick-purses shall not have benefit of clergy.
A debtor may not engage in a fraudulent collusion to sell his land and goods in order to avoid his creditors.