(1387) The barons protested that they would never suffer the kingdom to be governed by the Roman law, and the judges prohibited it from being any longer cited in the common-law tribunals;[1] and in 1389 we find another statute complaining of the courts of the constable and marshal having cognizance of matters which can be determined by the common law, and forbidding the same; and the statute of the previous year concerning laborers is confirmed, except that wages are to be fixed by a justice of the peace, “Forasmuch as a Man cannot put the Price of Corn and other Victuals in certain.”  Shoemakers are forbidden to be tanners, and tanners to be shoemakers; a statute which seems to have been much debated, for it is continually being repealed and re-enacted for a hundred years to follow.

[Footnote 1:  Spence, I Eq.  Jur., 346.]

(1392) The Statute of York, giving free trade to merchants, is re-enacted, and it is specified that they may sell in gross or by retail “notwithstanding any Franchise, Grant or Custom,” but they are forbidden to sell to each other for purposes of regrating and they must sell wines in the original package and “Spicery by whole Vessels and Bales.”  “All the weights and measures throughout the Realm shall be according to the Standard of the Exchequer”—­save only in Lancashire, where they are used to giving better measure.

(1402) Laborers are forbidden to be hired by the week or to be paid for holidays or half days.  In 1405 the old Statute of Laborers is re-enacted, particularly the cruel law forbidding any one to take up any other trade than husbandry after the age of twelve, nor can any one bind his child as apprentice to learn a trade unless he has twenty shillings per annum in landed property.

(1414) The 2d of Henry V recites the Statute of the 13th of Henry IV against rioters, but power to suppress them is intrusted to the justices of the peace and the common-law courts “according to the law of the land.”  Only if default is made in suppressing them the king’s commission goes out under the great seal, showing the beginning of the use of the executive arm in suppressing riots, of which our most famous instance was the action of President Cleveland in the Pullman-car strike in Chicago in 1893.  And in the same statute the chancery arm is invoked, that is to say, if any person complain that a rioter or offender flee or withdraw himself, a bill issues from the chancery, and if the person do not appear and yield, a writ of proclamation issues that he be attainted, a more severe punishment than the six months’ imprisonment usually meted out to our contemners.  It is interesting to notice that the bills (petitions for legislation) are now in English; though the statutes enacted are still in French or Latin.

(1425) A statute recites that “by the yearly Congregations and Confederacies made by the Masons in their general Chapiters and Assemblies, the good Course and Effect of the Statute of Labourers be openly violated ... and such Chapiters and Congregations are forbidden and all Masons that come to them are to be punished by imprisonment and fine”—­an excellent example of the kind of statute which led to the doctrine that trades-unions were forbidden by the common law of England.