and one notes that the Irish are frankly termed the Enemy.  As a method of meeting this evil, the Saxon intelligence of the day could find no better remedy than to lay it to “marriages and divers other Ties and the nursing of Infant Children among the English and the Irish, and Forewarnings and Espyals made on both Sides by the Occasions aforesaid,” and it therefore forbids such marriages to be contracted between English and Irish, “and other private Ties and nursing of Infant Children.”  The statute notes that these dissensions do not occur only between the English and those of Irish blood, but as well between the English of birth and the English of descent living in Ireland; a condition which has, indeed, continued till to-day, Parneil and a host of famous Irishmen being of pure English descent.

In 1360 the exportation of corn is forbidden.  We now, therefore, have that principle applied to wool, iron, and bread-stuffs—­corn, of course, meaning all kinds of grain.  There is another statute requiring Parliament to be held once a year; and, more interesting, that pleas should be made in the English language, for “the French tongue is much unknown in said Realm of England,” but the judgments are to be enrolled in Latin.  In 1363 another statute concerning diet and apparel fixes the price of poultry, a young capon three pence, an old one four pence, a hen two pence, and a pullet one penny “for the great Dearth that is in many Places.”  Department stores are anticipated by a clause complaining that the merchants called grocers do engross all manner of merchandise “by Covin and Ordinance made betwixt them, called the Fraternity and Gild of Merchants,” and anticipates the prejudice against the modern department store by ordaining that merchants shall deal in only one sort of merchandise; and furthermore handicraftsmen are allowed to “use only one Mystery,” that is, trade—­which also anticipates a principle dear to modern trades-unions.  The statute then regulates the diet and apparel of servants.  They may eat once a day of flesh or fish, but the rest of their diet must be milk or vegetarian.  Their clothing may not exceed two marks in value.  People of handicraft and yeomen, however, are allowed to wear clothing worth forty shillings, but not silk, silver, nor precious stones.  Squires and gentlemen of a landed estate less than one hundred pounds a year may wear clothing to the value of four marks and a half, but not gold nor silver, precious stones nor fur.  Merchants having goods to the value of five hundred pounds may dress like esquires and gentlemen to a value of six marks.  Clerks, that is to say, persons having degrees from colleges, may dress like knights of the same income and may wear fur in winter and lawn in summer, and clothiers make clothes accordingly and drapers and tailors charge proportionately.  This most interesting effort to interfere with private life stops short of regulating the use of wine or beer; and tobacco had not yet been discovered.