them thereof made." Powers were given by the acts of 1368 and 1388 to justices to determine matters under these statutes and to fix wages. Records show that workmen of various descriptions were pressed by writs addressed to sheriffs to work for their king at wages regardless of their will as to terms and place of work. These proceedings were founded on notions of royal prerogative, of which impressment of seamen survived as an example to a far later date. By an act of 1388 no servant or labourer, man or woman, however, could depart out of the hundred to serve elsewhere unless bearing a letters patent under the king's seal stating the cause of going and time of return. Such provisions would appear to have widely failed in their purpose, for an act of 1414 declares that the servants and labourers fled from county to county, and justices were empowered to send writs to the sheriffs for fugitive labourers as for felons, and to examine labourers, servants and their masters, as well as artificers, and to punish them on confession. Ordinance of Labourers 1349 Fifteenth century An act of 1405, while putting a property qualification on apprenticeship and requiring parents under heavy penalties to put their children to such labour as their estates required, made an exception, giving freedom to any person " to send their children to school to learn literature." Up to the end of the fifteenth century a monotonous succession of statutes strengthening, modifying, amending the various attempts (since the first Statute of Labourers) to limit free movement of labour, or demands by labourers for increased wages, may be seen in the acts of 1411, 1427, 1444, 1495. It was clearly found extremely difficult, if not impracticable, to carry out the minute control of wages considered desirable, and exceptions in favour of certain occupations were in some of the statutes themselves. In 1512 the penalties for giving wages contrary to law were repealed so far as related to masters, but it also appears that London workmen would not endure the prevalent restrictions as to wages, and that they secured in practice a greater freedom to arrange rates when working within the city. Several of these statutes, and especially one of 1514, fixed the hours of labour when limiting wages. During March to September the limits were 5 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m., with half an