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not offer such advantages in the way of advances inimplements, stock, seed, or housing as the big landowners,notably the monasteries. As conditions grew more andmore acute (and 1601-3 were years of very bad famineand plague) they clamoured for full rights of reclaimingrunaway peasants, for the prevention of further acquisitionof peasants by the wealthier landowners, and for theabolition of any right of departure. From about 1580onwards a series of edicts were issued regulating thetime-limit for the right of recovery and laying down'forbidden years' during which departure was temporarilyprohibited. It is doubtful whether or not anedict of 1607 permanently abolished the right of departure,but in fact all years became 'forbidden years,'and after the Time of Troubles (1604-13) no more isheard of the right. But only too much continues to beheard of the fact of departure—flight. As we have seen,runaway peasants were a major problem of the seventeenthcentury, and finally in the code of 1649 no timelimitwas set in general for the recovery of runawaysthereafter.Another factor which helps to explain the hardeningand extension of serfdom is the influence of slavery.There had always been slaves in the Russian lands,though not in such numbers as to constitute a dominantelement in the structure of society. They had previouslybeen used mainly for domestic or managerial purposes,but in the sixteenth century they became more used forworking the land. Poverty and misrule forced meninto a class of 'referred,' temporary slaves, and the unrestrictedrights of a master over his slaves influenced hisdealings with the non-slave peasants.Slaves, however, were not 'black'; they owed notaxation to the state. Hence the state did what it couldto stop the growth of the slave class. After 1680 itlevied taxation from those slaves settled by their masterson the land; just as from 1631 it began to sweep into itstaxation net the swollen heterogeneous class of casuallandless labourers and craftsmen. Similarly in 1649drastic innovations were introduced whereby in thetowns 'self-pledgers,' i.e. non-taxpaying 'commended'152