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. 



* Paston Letters, Introd. Ixvii, Nos. 201, 179. 



488 



