The problem this book is concerned with is the compulsory apprenticeship of seven years required by the Statute of Artificers of 1563 for entry to existing crafts and retail trades. This statute was the most comprehensive expression of the internal policy of English mercantilism, and it initiated national regulation of apprenticeship that was uniform for town and country.

As a result of her penetrating study, Margaret Gay Davies establishes the predominance of private agencies and interests over public ones in enforcement, especially in the case of the common informer—accepted during the Elizabethan and Stuart periods as a normal and necessary instrument. Davies shows the consistent inattention of county authorities and of the central government to the apprenticeship requirements of the Act of 1563, central though these were to internal regulation of economic life.