Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ...retained him, two judges out of three held that the action did not lie at common law unless the defendant procured him to leave the service. In all these cases the words 'servant' and ' service ' are used; but there is nothing to indicate the kind of servant or of service in respect of which the dicta and decisions occurred. " There is a case in the Year-Book, Mich. 10 H. 6, pl. 30, fol. 8 B, in which it is said that an action does not lie against a chaplain upon the statute of laborers for not chanting the mass; for it is said he may not be always disposed to sing, and can no more be coerced by force of the statute than a knight, esquire or entleman. There is no doubt but t at the statute of laborers only applied to persons whose only _means of living was by the labor of their hands. It was passed in the 25th year of Edward the Third, stat. 1, and recites that so many of the people, especially workmen and servants, had died of the plague, that those that remained required excessive Wages, and that there was lack of ploughmen and such laborers, and then obliged every person within the age of sixty, not living in merchandise, nor exercising any craft, nor having of his own whereof he may live, IIn Blake '0. Lanyon, 6 T. R. 221, the first count in the declaration stated that the plaintiff, who was a currier, nor proper land which he may till himself, to serve whoever might require him to such wages as were paid in the twentieth year of the king's reign, or five or six other years before. The remedies and penalties given by this and the next subsequent statute of laborers were limited to the persons described in them; but the remedies given by the common law are not in terms limited to any description of...