Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/530

 A HISTORY OF NORFOLK sheriff Jermyn, who was friendly to him, that he had received orders from the king to make up a panel to acquit Lord Molynes.^ Norfolk does not seem to have taken any important part in the struggle between York and Lancaster, but the confusion into which England was. thrown during the reign of Henry VI resulted locally in many feuds, riots, and disturbances. A very graphic account of some of these is preserved in the Paston Letters, for the Paston family seem to have suffered considerable annoyance and ill treatment during the period. The year 1452 was apparently an especially unfortunate one in Norfolk. To such a pitch did the troubles rise that the king sent down the duke of Norfolk in this year to restore some order in the county, and we find in the Paston Letters a formidable list of the misdoings which had been going on in Blofield hundred. It appears that this district had been put in a state of terror by the behaviour of Robert Ledeham of Witton, Charles Nowell, and others. Robert Ledeham is said to have kept his house at Witton ' in manner of a forcelet ' — a little fort — and to have issued out like a moss trooper with six, twelve, or thirty men, as the need were, armed, jacked, and salletted with bows, arrows, spears, and belts, to over-ride the country, oppressing the king's people. '^ Some of the specific charges against this gang were that they lay in wait for Philip Berney, esq.,* in Thorpe Wood, shot his horse with arrows, and so beat him that he soon afterwards died. On the same day they attacked Edmund Browne, and 'spoiled ' him. Then on 6 April, 1452, forty of them boldly rode into Norwich armed, and tried to get into the White Friars there, ' feigning they would hear service,' but afterwards admitting that they wanted to have out some persons quick or dead, so the friars had to keep their place by force. They also assaulted John Witton in Plumstead churchyard, leaving him in doubt of his life, broke into the house of John Coke at Witton, and not only gave him seven great sword wounds and robbed him, but also cut his poor mother, aged eighty and more, over the head with a sword, her wound never healing ; and in fact reduced the whole hundred to such a condi- tion that the principal inhabitants fled for shelter to ' strong places ' — Philip Berney and Edmund Browne to Caister, Thomas Holler and John Witton to Norwich, Oliver Cubitt to St. Benet's, Robert Spang to Aylsham, and Thomas Baret and others to ' Much ' (Great) Yarmouth. Another complaint was that twenty of the rioters came out under cover of hunting and broke up the gates and closes of Osborn Mundford, lord of the manor at Breydeston, and that twelve of them with bows bent and arrows ready in their hands lay in wait from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon for his servants. Seven of the rioters chased two of his servants coming home from Acle market so hotly that if they had not been ' well horsed and so escaped they had been dead and slain.'* On the coming of the duke of Norfolk this gang seem to have changed their modus operandi from violence to chicanery. One of them, Roger Church, got himself arrested and charged before the duke for unlawful assembly at Postwick Wood. The whole affair seems to have been a bogus conspiracy in which certain respectable people were induced to take part. ' Paston Letters, Introd. Ixvii, No. 155. * Ibid. No. 201. ' He was connected with Robert Paston by marri.igc, the latter having married his niece. 488
 * Paston Letters, Introd. Ixvii, Nos. 201, 179.