Page:The English Peasant.djvu/38

 iron on the breast with a letter V, and to be slaves for two years to the informer. The master was to feed his slave with bread and water, with small drink, and such refuse meat as he thought proper, and to cause his slave to work by beating, chaining, or otherwise, in any work or labour however vile it might be. If the slave ran away from his master for the space of fourteen days he was to be his slave for life, and to be branded on the forehead or cheek with the letter S; if he ran away a second time he was to suffer pains of death as a felon. The master could put a ring of iron on the neck, arm, or leg of his slave; he could sell, bequeath, or let out his slave after the like sort or manner he might do with any other of his movable goods or chattels. Any attempt to maim or wound such masters or mistresses either during or after the time of slavery, or any conspiracy to burn their houses or corn was to be deemed felony unless some person would take such offender as a slave for ever.

Any child above five years and under fourteen, found wandering with or without such vagabonds, might be seized by any person, and being taken before a justice of the peace, could be adjudged the servant or apprentice of the apprehender; if a girl until twenty years of age, if a boy until twenty-four; and if such child ran away he was to be treated as a slave, and punished with irons, or otherwise.

Well might the pious young king clasp his hands, and lift up his eyes to heaven, at the response in the Order for Daily Prayer: "O Lord, save Thy people!"

Robbed of their wages, and reduced to semi-serfdom by the Statutes of Labourers; robbed of their legal provision in unforeseen distress, or unprotected old age, by the confiscation of Church property for the benefit of the aristocracy; robbed by the commercial greed of the new gentry of their little farms and of the common land, the English poor were met by an atrocious law which condemned all who did not yield submissively to their fate to feel the hot iron plough into their own breasts, and into those of their wives and children, to be reduced to the vilest form of slavery, and to find no relief except in a felon's doom.

Such wrongs could only be met by insurrection, and the people rose in the East, and in the West, and in the Midland counties.