So much for the beggars;[371] now for the robbers: “And the greater part of the said wandering servants commonly become strong robbers, and their robberies and felonies increase from one day to another on all sides,” acting in small bands of “two, three or four together,” and plundering “simple villages.” Energetic measures must be taken; let it be prohibited to give alms to this sort of people, and “let their bodies be put in the stocks or taken to the next gaol,” to be sent afterwards to where they belong. Edward III had already condemned to prison, by his ordinance of 1349, those who, under colour of charity “sub colore pietatis vel elemosine,” came to the aid of sturdy beggars, those vagabonds who went through the country “giving themselves to idleness and vice, and sometimes to theft and other abominations.” The same complaints recur in the time of Richard II. Hardly is he on the throne than they are repeated from year to year: 1377, 1378, 1379, revealing to us the existence of early unions and federations of villeins and labourers who, advised by men better informed than themselves, “lours counseillours, meyntenours et abettours,” defend their assumed freedom sometimes by force—“menassent les ministres de lours seignurs de vie et de membre”—sometimes by law, invoking written texts and “exemplifications” whose value they have learnt, and swear to remain “confederated” and to help each other at all cost against their masters.[372] {271} Statutes multiplied to no purpose; the king had to recognize in his ordinance of 1383 that the “feitors (idlers) and vagrants” overran the country “more abundantly than they were formerly accustomed.”[373] In 1388 he renewed all the orders of his predecessors, re-enacting for rustics rules similar to those of the _Inscription maritime_ still applied to-day in France, for what concerns seafaring, to the seaside population: any one who reached the age of twelve without having done anything else than “working at the plough and cart or other labor or service of husbandry,” will have to continue in this state his life long, “without being allowed to learn a trade or handicraft,” and if one is found to be a party to a contract of apprenticeship, the contract shall be void. The king reminds, at the same time, the mayors, bailiffs, stewards, and constables of their duties, and asks them in particular to repair their stocks and keep them always ready for wanderers to cease in them their wanderings.[374] No vain threats nor light penalties. The prisons of those days little resembled the well-washed buildings now to be seen in most English towns, at York for instance, where the guilty ones are apt to find more cleanliness and comfort than they ever knew before. They were mostly fetid dungeons, where the damp of the walls and the stationary position compelled by the irons corrupted the blood and engendered hideous maladies.