But the threat of prisons so unhealthy and of stocks so unpleasant did not hold back the labourers more and more weary of being tied to the soil. Every pretext for leaving their place was welcome; they even dared to use that of a devotional journey. They set out, staff in hand, “under colour of going far on a pilgrimage,” and {274} never returned. But a new restraint was to be applied to tame this turbulent spirit, the obligation for every one to furnish himself with a kind of letter of travel or passport, in order to move from one county to another. None might leave his village if he did not carry a “letter patent stating the cause of his going and the date of his return, if he were to return.” In other words, even with the right to go and settle definitively elsewhere, a permit for moving had to be procured. These letters would be sealed by a “good man” (_prod homme_), assigned in each hundred, city, or borough, by the justices of the peace, and special seals were to be expressly made, said the statute, bearing the king’s arms in the centre, the name of the county around, and that of the hundred, city, or borough across. Even the case of fabricating false letters was foreseen, which shows how well was realized the ardent desire of many men of this class to {275} leave the place where they were tied. Every individual surprised without regular papers would be sent to jail. [Illustration 53. A CRIPPLE AND OTHER BEGGARS. (_From the MS. 10 E. IV._)] Beggars were treated as “servants” who had no “testimonial letters.”[377] What was wanted was to impose immobility upon as many people as possible, and thus hinder the disquieting peregrinations of so many rovers. As for beggars incapable of work, they must nevertheless cease frequenting the highroads, and must end their days in the cities where they chance to be at the time of the proclamation, or at most in some town near the spot where they were born; they shall be taken there within forty days, to stay “for the rest of their lives.” What is stranger, and lacking other proofs, would show to what class students then belonged, is that they are included in the same category; they were accustomed, on returning to their homes, or on making pilgrimages, or going to the university, to hold out a hand for the charity of passers-by and to knock at the door of possible givers. They were ranked with the beggars, and put in irons if they lacked the regulation letter; this document was to be given them by the Chancellor, and that {276} was the only difference: “And that the scholars of the universities that go so begging have letters testimonial of their Chancellor upon the same pain.”[378]