Appendix 3 - Legal control of mobility

Summary

Farm servants were mobile. No possession of land, household goods, or dependants inhibited their movement, and they were bound to stay in one place only by yearly contracts. Occasionally this mobility was a cause of concern to society. At times of extreme scarcity of labour, there was no assurance that the places of departing servants would easily be filled with newcomers. Masters could also be wary of hiring strangers: were they to be trusted? Had they run away from another master? Statutes were drawn up to deal with both aspects of the problem of mobility, and the Statute of Artificers represents a compilation of earlier solutions. Servants departing from the parish in which they had served were required by it to take with them letters of testimonial, sealed by the parish constable and registered with the vicar. The letters were to state that the servant had been licensed to depart the last master, and that he or she was at liberty to serve elsewhere. Earlier statutes anticipated this legislation. The Statute of Labourers simply forbade servants to leave the county in which they lived. Just as the Statute of 1388 (12 Ric. II, c. 4) had attempted to make the wage regulation of the Statute of Labourers workable, so did another statute of the same year (12 Ric. II, c. 3) with respect to restricting mobility. In it, travel outside the hundred, rape, or wapentake was forbidden unless the traveller had a letter patent, a copy of which was on deposit in the parish.