XVI.] LAWS ΟE HENRY VII. 415 and a number of restorations from attainder. Those of 1495 have a greater reputation in the law books, and especially cap. ι, which enacts that persons going with the king for the time being to war are not to be attaint of treason there-r fore ; an act passed in a true spirit of equity, but, I fear, ) quite inadequate to secure its end in critical times. Perhaps as a historical landmark and as enunciating a principle of public law it has its chief importance ; anyhow, it shows that the king felt himself so secure that he need not speculate for a fall^ Cap. 2 is a law on the disposal of ' vacabunds and beggars,' who are to be sent to their hundreds; if a university man is found begging he must produce a letter of the chancellor identifying his status, or else must go as a 'vacabund.'i Cap. 17 forbids the taking of pheasants and , partridges on other men's lands, an early definite game law on which I will simply observe that a popular error makes the introduction of pheasants much more modern than it was ; the canons of Waltham had pheasants in the eleventh century, by Harold's ordinance, every festival day from Michaelmas to Lent. Another act, cap. 22, settled servants' wages, and that at a rate which it would not be wise to mention to modern economists, unless we presume there was a handsome margin for perquisites^ the wages, for instance, of a bailiff are 26s. 8d. a year; and those of the agricultural labourer 4^. or 3Λ a day according to the season, his meat and drink being assumed to be worth 2d. or i\d. a day: perhaps the proportion was not so bad. Most of the other acts of 1495 are what we should call private acts ; the exceptions dealing with dishonesty in tradesmen, sheriffs' officers, and jurors. I The acts of 1497 are few and not important ; cap. 3 repeals V the wages act of the session of 1495; cap. 6 relieves the ' merchant adventurers of England from the fines imposed by the merchant adventurers of London, who claimed, under colour of a fraternity of S. Thomas of Canterbury, to tax