The State and Economic Regulation

National Control.—As the reader will already have observed, the regulation of economic activity in the Middle Ages was left mainly to local authorities, to municipalities, gilds and manorial courts. But England had long enjoyed political unity and from the first some economic duties were undertaken by the central government. The control of the currency and of the tariff are early examples, and later, the regulation of wages under the Statute of Labourers (1351). Other instances are the attempt to secure uniform weights and measures by the Assize of Measures (1197); the provision (in the same Assize) for the certification by officials called aulnagers of the size and quality of cloth offered for sale; the regulation by the Assize of Bread and Ale ¹ of the weight of the farthing loaf and of the price of beer; and finally the statutory prohibition of the monopolistic practices of forestalling, engrossing and regrating. ² Down to the sixteenth century, however, State interference in economic affairs was the exception. It was not until a national economy began to supersede the town or local economies that the central government took over the main work of industrial regulation. This is what gives the economic legislation of the Tudors its chief importance. Tudor economic statutes did not contain much that was original. On the contrary, they usually copied expedients which had already been in common use by the local authorities. But they applied to the whole kingdom rules which had hitherto been enforced only locally, and in this way they reflected the economic revolution in progress in sixteenth-century England. Two of these Tudor statutes call for special mention, the Statute of Apprentices (1563), and the Poor Law (1601).