mpton. They were fined four shillings each, and ordered
peremptorily to throw down the hedge.

Here is an episode characteristic of the period. It is a Tuesday evening
in the month of August, 1347, and about the hour of vespers. The scene
is laid in "the field of Wolverhampton, called Wyndefield, in a place
called Le Ocstele, near Le More Love-ende." A body of men, all carrying
arms, are seen to approach their victim, who is described as a clerk, and
therefore presumably defenceless. He is Roger Levessone, son of Richard
Levessone. His assailants are Robert le Clerk, of Sedgley, two Dudley
men, a man from Bloxwich, and several others, all duly named in the
records of the law courts.

What the cause of quarrel may have been these meagre records do not
inform us, but on the evidence of a number of witnesses, among whom was
Richard Colyns, of Willenhall, they freely used their spears and swords,
inflicting wounds upon the throat and other parts of the body, till the
unfortunate Roger was despatched.

In 1339, one Richard Adams, of Willenhall, was charged with slaying two
men in that place, one a townsman named John Odyes, and a certain John de
Bentley. As he was acquitted, probably he did it in self-defence.
Encounters of this character were of frequent occurrence in those lawless
times.

When the offences recorded are of a less serious nature than murder and
slaughter, they are nearly always described as being accompanied by the
violent use of lethal weapons--"vi et armis" is the old legal phrase.
Here are some examples of this kind of lawlessness:--

In 1352, William de Hampton (probably of the Dunstall family of that
name) prosecuted a gang of fourteen men, including a chaplain, the parson
of Sheynton (? Shenstone), and two men from Tettenhall, for robbing him
of his goods and chattels at Willenhall, Wednesfield, Tettenhall, and
Pendeford. Of the details of the robberies we are able to learn nothing,
except that they were all perpetrated forcibly, and with a reckless
display of violence.

A similar prosecution was undertaken in 1395 by another member of this
family, one Nicholas Hampton, against Thomas Marshall, of Willenhall, and
for a similar outrage in that place.

A Willenhall man named John Wilson, in 1373, had to invoke the law upon a
desperado who forcibly broke into his house and close at Homerwych
(Hammerwich), and stole from thence timber, household utensils, clothing,
corn, hay, and apparentl