It was part of the policy of the town rulers to recognise the apprentice's possible future citizenship, and withdraw him somewhat from his master's authority. The lad was therefore forced by the ordinance of 1494[487] to take the oath "to the franchises," and bring his twelve pennies to the steward for the town use when his term of service began. We see from the list of those who took the oath in 1495 that the apprentice lived in his master's house, serving him usually--though not invariably--for seven years' space. He earned a nominal sum, perhaps a shilling, or even 4d., the first six years, and a larger one, perhaps 10s. or 13s. 4d., during the seventh. Thus the son of John Preston, of Stafford, "gentleman," who was apprenticed to a grocer, earned 12d. a year, the wages of his last year of service--the ninth--being unfixed; while another lad, learning the same trade, received 13s. 4d. as his last year's earnings. The son of a Durham "husbandman" took from his master, a hat-maker, 4d. a year for six years, and 6s. 8d. during the seventh. The crafts seem to have made it their business to see that the boys were properly cared for. If any one of them complained that his master did not give him sufficient "finding," _i.e._ food and raiment, the offender was to receive first an "admonition," and on the repetition of the offence to pay a reasonable fine; if matters did not mend, the lad was to be removed and placed elsewhere.[488] The master exercised a superintendence over the apprentice's moral well-being. In an early indenture of the time of Richard II. the lad promises to haunt neither taverns nor houses of ill-fame, nor hold illicit intercourse with any of the women of the household.[489]