law sensed that they were on the defensive. Another deputy advanced a rather more creative response to the proposed law by turning its attack on vagabondage and brigandage into a justification for land redistribution: would it not be possible, he wondered, to give the itinerant indigent some of the lands lying fallow that were now in the possession of the nation as a result of the extensive confiscations of estates and Church lands? The landless poor would then have work and sustenance, and hence no reason for taking to the roads as they normally did in times of need.
