The law against vagrancy, which, as we have seen, was extremely severe during the preceding reigns, reached its most barbarous stage soon after the accession of Edward the Sixth. It is the irony of circumstance which associates the name of so mild a prince with one of the most atrocious measures ever imposed upon Englishmen, for Edward was but a child when the Statute in question was passed, and can have had no hand either in the inception or application of its provisions.[91] The responsibility belongs to the Protector, Somerset, yet it will always remain a mystery how he could sanction such a measure, for he is well known to have felt much sympathy for the masses of his countrymen, and was ever anxious to please. After remarking in the preamble that "idle and vagabond persons are worthy of death, whipping, imprisonment, and other corporal pain," the Statute proceeds to enact that "the offender there described to be an idle person shall be taken before a Justice of the Peace, who shall cause him to be marked with a hot iron in the breast, the mark "V," and adjudge him to be a slave to the person presenting him for two years, to be fed with bread and water, and be put to work (how vile soever it be) by beating, chaining, etc.: and if he runs away, the Justice, on conviction, shall cause such slave to be marked on the forehead or ball of the cheek with the sign of an "S," and shall further adjudge him to be his master's slave for ever:[92] and if he again run away, he shall suffer death as a felon."[93] No record tells how many unfortunates suffered the pains above recited, but the number is not likely to have been considerable, because vagabondage was by no means stamped out: the conclusion is forced upon one, however, that whilst law-making of such a type was in vogue, the infirmity of the police, whose business it was to enforce its enactments, cannot be considered as an unmitigated evil.