and the Act would have been inoperative except on that basis. That fundamental intention of the statute of the 9th February, 1351, comes out, not only in the explicit clause against migrations, but also by contrast, in the special permission given to the labourers of the counties of Stafford, Derby and Lancaster, to the people of Craven, and to the dwellers in the Marches of Wales and Scotland, to go about in search of work in harvest “as they were wont to do before this time[346].” The immediate effect of the depopulation had been to mobilise, as it were, the labouring class. Many of them must have taken the road at once; for, in the first ordinance of 18th June, 1350, before the harvest of that year had begun, it is stated that certain of the labourers preferred to live by begging instead of by labour, and it is therefore forbidden to give alms to beggars. According to Knighton, the effect of the ordinance itself was to swell the ranks of the wandering poor; when some were arrested, imprisoned, or fined in terms of the commission to the sheriffs, others fled to the woods and wastes (_ad silvas et boscos_)[347]. These escapes continued for years after; the rolls of the Manor Court of Winslow have entries of many such cases long after the pestilence[348]. Many of these fugitive villeins formed the class of “wasters,” often referred to in the _Vision of Piers the Ploughman_: “waster would not work, but wander about,” or he would work only in harvest, squander his earnings, and for the rest of the year feel the pinch of hunger “until both his eyen watered.” But it is clear that others went to distant manors, and settled down again to steady employment, freed from their bonds as _nativi_; and it cannot be doubted that some went to the towns[349].