Indians imprisoned for debt and the law of service in payment (1567)

A law of 20 June 1567, printed in the title on jail visits, regulates what happens to an Indian jailed for a debt he cannot pay. He may be handed to his own creditor to work it off — never sold to a third party — at a wage the judge must fix after asking what men of that trade earn, entered by name in the jail-visit book. Drunkenness and concubinage may not be punished with service at all. The law's own recital says why: the practice had already run past every limit.