302 THE ROAD TO FREEDOM
Norwich, it was not an impossibility, but the citizens required
the serf to produce his lord's licence before they would admit
him to their number,1 and in the fifteenth century free condition
was made an essential for entry to the gilds.2 An early poem,
dealing with the mason's craft, may perhaps be taken as
summarising the general view:
The fowrthe artycul thys moste be,
That the mayster hym wel be-se
That he no bondemon prentys make,
Ny for no covetyse do hym take;
For the lord that he ys bonde to,
May fache the prentys wheresever he go.3
To sum up: the towns, on the whole, certainly gave a consider-
able measure of protection to the serf, so long as he exercised due
caution in leaving the town. In general, however, their bene-
ficent activities stopped here. The advancement of the serf was
not particularly dear to the citizens' hearts: indeed I think we
shall not be far wrong if we look at it in quite another light. To
the majority of townsmen the landless serf was like the casual
labourer is to the contractor to-day. He assumes little responsi-
bility for him, but uses him as and when and where required,
and then turns him adrift. In the medieval town there was great
demand for casual labour; and the more highly organised the
gilds became, the more they found it beneath their dignity to
carry out the many necessary functions of day-to-day town life.
This is where the fugitive found his opportunity. We may
imagine him employed on sporadic scavenging; on digging the
foundations for buildings and doing navvy's work on the City
walls; acting as porter and carrying heavy loads from river to
warehouse; hanging about the inns and assisting carriers and
ostlers; doing the rough work incident on the housing and feeding
of a master's apprentices and journeymen. There was no end to
the work constantly to be done, and many serfs found they had
but exchanged the service of their manorial lord for that of a
burgher.
1 Norf. Arch, xii, 78.
* Norwich Records, ed. Hudson and Tingey, n, 291.
* J. O. Halliwell, Early History of Freemasonry, 16 (quoting from MS.
Reg. 17 A, f. 3). Knoop and Jones, The Mediaeval Mason, 107,168. Fache—
bring back.