Almost as soon as these labour statutes were passed, we hear that labourers fled from county to county in order to elude the operation of the law[9]. The workmen adopted many devices, in order to escape from any part of the country where these regulations were enforced. Some seem to have pretended to be crippled and diseased, and so, when undetected, could wander and beg with impunity. Others, apparently, joined bands of pilgrims, like the famous travellers from the Tabard to Canterbury, and, journeying with them, would reach a district, where they could obtain good wages and be undisturbed by the execution of the labour laws. In 1388, therefore, regulations were made, restricting the movements, not only of able-bodied beggars, but of all beggars and of all labourers and, at the same time, admitting the right to relief of those who were unable to work for themselves[10]. Servants who wished to depart from the hundred in which they lived, under colour of going a pilgrimage, or in order to serve or dwell elsewhere, were to have a letter, stating the cause of their journey and the time when they were to return, duly signed by the "good man of the hundred" appointed for the purpose. If they were found away from their district, without a letter of this kind, they were to be placed in the stocks and kept there, until they found surety to return to their own neighbourhood. However, a servant who had a certain engagement with a master in another part of the country, was always to be allowed to have a letter, allowing him freely to depart. Thus the statute prevented a man from wandering about in search of work, but did not prevent him from migrating, when an engagement was already concluded. All these regulations affected beggars: an able-bodied beggar who begged without a letter was to be put in the stocks in the same manner as a labourer without a letter. He could not escape by pretending that he was a labourer, because both were liable to punishment. Neither could he elude the vigilance of the law, by pretending to be disabled, because the impotent poor also were forbidden to wander; they were to stay where they were at the passing of the Act, or, if the people there were unable to support them, were to go, within forty days, to other towns in the same hundred or to the place where they were born. [9] _Rolls of Parliament_, 46 Edw. III. II. p. 312. Petition of the Commons. [10] 12 Richard II. c. 3 and c. 7.