England’s labour laws and associated legislation were subject to continuous development and enforcement from 1349 onwards. The laws specifically concerned with regulating wage labour were tightly related to those punishing vagrancy, which in turn shared aims with the poor laws in seeking to place certain categories of the poor, and those vulnerable to poverty, into employment. The laws demonstrate an increasingly subtle understanding of a variety of types of wage labour, beginning with the perspective of manorial lords in the fourteenth century, but adopting that of more varied types of employer from the mid-fifteenth century onwards. The young and the poor were particular targets of regulation and the laws aimed to push them into service or pauper apprenticeship in which they could be more effectively disciplined by employers. Compulsion was a central element of the laws and significantly compromised the freedom of people who lacked sufficient property or wealth. While many avoided punishment, the threat of punishment was surely significant in shaping social relations. The laws were hostile to the idea that terms of employment might be determined freely by supply and demand. As a consequence, people were compelled not just to work but to serve others and be subservient. In both their creation and their enforcement, the laws demonstrate a nascent class divide emerging within English society between employers and workers. These relations were not based on a free labour market but were instead shaped by the use of political and legal power to favour those who employed labour against those who provided it.