[Footnote 276: This Act suggests that something like a factory system may have been growing up in the sixteenth century: See Ashley, _Economic History_, Vol. II, The Woollen Industry.] 4. ENACTMENT OF COMMON COUNCIL OF LONDON AS TO AGE OF ENDING APPRENTICESHIP[277] [_Arber, Stationers' Records, I, p. xli_],[278] 1556. For as much as great poverty, penury, and lack of living hath of late years followed, ... and one of the chiefest occasions thereof, as it is thought, ... is by reason of the over hasty marriages and over soon setting up of households of and by the youth and young folks of the said city [of London], which hath commonly used, and yet do, to marry themselves as soon as ever they come out of their apprenticehood, be they ever so young and unskilful, yea, and often times many of them so poor that they scantily have of their proper goods wherewith to buy their marriage apparel ... and forasmuch as the chiefest occasion of the said inconveniences, as it is very evident, is by reason that divers and sundry apprentices, as well of the said artificers as also of other citizens of the said city, are commonly bound for so few years that their terms of apprenticeability expireth and endeth oversoon, and that they are there upon incontinently made free of the said city; ... for remedy, stay, and reformation whereof it is ordained ... that no manner of persons ... shall be any manner of ways or means made free of the said city ... until such time as he and they shall severally attain to the age of 24 years. [Footnote 277: This enactment is interesting as offering a precedent followed in the Statute of Artificers (No. 6 of this section), and as showing one of the social reasons for compulsory apprenticeship, which probably somewhat postponed the age of marriage. (See No. 11 of this section.)] [Footnote 278: Quoted Dunlop and Denman, _English Apprenticeship and Child Labour_, pp. 52-3.] 5. WILLIAM CECIL'S INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME[279] [_Hist. MSS. Com. MSS. of the Marquis of Salisbury, Part I, pp. 162-3_], 1559. Considerations delivered to the Parliament, 1559. 1. _Vagabonds._--That the statute I Edward VI, Chap, viii., concerning idle persons and vagabonds being made slaves, now repealed, be revived with additions.