Another case seems even more interesting. It dates from 1355, that is from a time when the usual terminology had already become fixed. It arose under that celebrated Statute of Labourers which played such a prominent part in the social history of the fourteenth century. One of the difficulties in working the statute came from the fact that it had to recognise two different sets of relations between the employer and the workman. The statute dealt with the contract between master and servant, but it did not do away with the dependence of the villain on the lord, and in case of conflict it gave precedence to this latter claim; a lord had the right to withdraw his villain from a stranger's service. Such cross influences could not but occasion a great deal of confusion, and our case gives a good instance of it. Thomas Barentyn has reclaimed Ralph Crips from the service of the Prior of the Hospitalers, and the employer sues in consequence both his former servant and Barentyn. This last answers, that the servant in question is his villain regardant to the manor of C. The plaintiff's counsel maintains that he could not have been regardant to the manor, as he was going about at large at his free will and as a free man; for this reason A. the former owner of the manor was never seised of him, and not being seised could not transfer the seisin to the present owner, although he transferred the manor. For the defendant it is pleaded, that going about freely is no enfranchisement, that by the gift of the manor every right connected with the manor was also conferred and that consequently the new lord could at any moment lay hands on his man, as the former lord could have done in his time. Ultimately the plaintiff offers to join issue on the question, whether the servant had been a villain regardant to the manor of C. or not. The defendant asserts, rather late in the day, that even if the person in question was not a villain regardant to the manor of C. the mere fact of his being a villain in gross would entitle his lord to call him away. This attempt to start on a new line is not allowed by the Court because the claim had originally been traversed on the ground of the connexion with the manor[52].