THE VAGRANT AND THE LAW.
BY GEORGE H. WESTLEY.
IN the days of King Hlothœre, who reigned
in Kent in the latter part of the seventh
century, those who gave shelter to a wan
derer had to be very careful. It was a law
under that monarch that " if any man enter
tained a stranger for three nights at his own
home, a chapman, or any other that has come
over the march, and then feed Ыы with his
own food, and he then do harm to any man,
let the man bring the other to justice, or do
justice for him." This is held by Mr. Rib
bon Turner, an authority on this subject, to
mean that " the host who entertained a
stranger did so at the risk of incurring re
sponsibility for any offence his guest might
subsequently commit."
There is an old English saying : " Two
nights a guest, the third night one's servant."
This was probably the idea on which the law
just quoted was based; it appears at any rate
to have been in the mind of Edward the Con
fessor when he enacted the following law in
1045 : " If any entertain a man known or
unknown for two nights, he may keep him as
a sojourner; and if the man do wrong the
host shall suffer no loss for him. But if he
to whom the man has done wrong makes
complaint to justice in that it was done by
the counsel of the host, then the host shall
purge himself by oath with two law-worthy
neighbors if he can, both of his counsel and
the deed. Otherwise he shall make good
the loss and the wrong. But if he shall en
tertain the man a third night, and that man
shall do wrong to any, the host shall bring
him to justice as though he were one of the
household. . . . And if the wrongdoer can
not make good the damage, the host who
entertained him shall make good the loss and
the forfeit."
Withroed, King of Kent, made a law di
rected against wandering monks who were in
his time rather more numerous than desira ble. " If any shorn man go wandering about for hospitality, let it be given him once; and, unless he have leave, let it not be that any one entertain him longer." King Henry I. enacted that if any friend less man or foreigner came to such a pass that he had none to befriend him, " let him, on the first accusation, be laid in prison, and there let his accuser sustain him till he shall come to trial." It was a law in the time of Richard II., 1388, that persons who had left service in one place and were travelling to another, should carry with them a testimonial from last employer. If found wandering without such letters they were to be put in the stocks and kept there until they could satisfy the authorities that they were not vagrants. About the year 1348, when the plague known as the Black Death was decimating England, there was a great demand for la borers. Wages rose to a great height and the toilers found themselves practically mas ters of the situation, being able to demand what they liked for their services. The num ber of laborers wandering about to sell their labor in the best market, swelled the ranks of vagrancy to the full. King Edward to meet this emergency prepared an instrument which is known as the Statute of Laborours. One clause of this provides " that every man or woman in England, of what condition he be, free or bond, able in body, and vil bin the age of threescore years, not living in merchandise, nor exercising any craft, nor having of his own whereof he may live, nor proper land about whose tillage he may him self occupy, and not serving any other . . . he shall be bounden to serve him which shall him require." And another clause compels him to "take only the wages, livery, meed,
