Replies to Minor Queries.

_Hiring of Servants_ (Vol. ii., p. 89.).--It was provided by several old
statutes, the first of which was passed in 1349, that all able-bodied
persons who had no evident means of subsistence should put themselves as
labourers to any that would hire them. In the following year were passed
several other acts relating to labourers, by one of which, 25 Edward
III. stat. i. c. i., entitled, "The Year and Day's Wages of Servants and
Labourers in Husbandry," it was enacted that ploughmen and all other
labourers should be hired to serve for the full year, or other usual
terms, and not by the day; and further,

"That such labourers do carry openly in their hands, in market
towns, their instruments of labour, and be there hired in a
public place, and not privately."

For carrying into effect these provisions, it would be necessary to have
certain days, and a fixed place set apart for the hiring of servants. In
the former particular, no days would be so convenient as feast days:
they were well known, and were days commonly computed from; they were,
besides, holidays, and days for which labourers were forbidden to
receive wages (_see_ 34 Edw. III. c. 10. and 4 Henry IV. c. 14.); so
that, although absent from labour, they would lose no part of the scanty
pittances allowed them by act of parliament or settled by justices. As
to the latter requirement, no place was so public, or would so naturally
suggest itself, or be so appropriate, as the market-place.

Thus arose in our own land the custom respecting which W.J. makes
inquiry, and also our statute fairs, or statutes; thus called on account
of their reference to the various "Statutes of Labourers." I was not