Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 1 (2013), pp. 19–39

Under the Statute of Artificers, the youthful poor could be prosecuted for living out of service. This article explores the implementation of that law in rural England, especially in Norfolk and Essex, and at the contexts in which the fact of living out of agricultural service – frequently in the family home – became an offence to be prosecuted. It traces change over time and discusses the shifting tensions between the priorities of masters, parish officers, the young and their parents over such issues as economic need, the definition of work, and the policing of behaviour. The significance of the prominence of young women amongst the prosecuted in the seventeenth century is explored. The article suggests that the increased, if still patchy, concern with the offence after 1650 forms part of a contest in the redefinition of standards of living in the changed demographic circumstances of the later seventeenth century. 

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