The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville, Leicestershire, and their Associates in Crime, 1326–1347

Abstract

On a date which cannot be exactly discovered in 1340 or early in 1341, a priest called Richard de Folville, who had long been notorious as a habitual criminal, took refuge from justice, with some of his followers, in the church of Teigh, Rutland, of which he had been rector for twenty years. After he had killed one of his pursuers, and wounded others, by arrows shot from within, he was at length dragged out and beheaded by Sir Robert de Colville, a keeper of the peace.2 In itself this sordid occurrence is of no special interest, but if we look into the long career of crime which ended thus, we may find that we have come upon something of wider significance. This Richard proves to have been one of six brothers who were all criminals, and their history has left a considerable mark in the records. Thanks to the work of a number of scholars in recent years, we now know a good deal about the apparatus of criminal jurisdiction in the earlier fourteenth century, but of what might be called the forces of disorder, indispensable though they were to the working of the system of justice, we are still very ignorant. ‘Who were the burglars, robbers, and murderers … the sleepers by day and wanderers by night? What was their political, social, and economic status?’ These questions, given here in the words of Professor Putnam, are the reason for devoting this paper to so narrow a subject as the history of one obscure midland family during the early years of Edward III.

Factions, feuds and noble power in the lordship of Ireland,c. 1356–1496

“…The members of such gangs fled their natural habitats on being declared criminals and banded together because survival outside the law was better assured in groups than alone. 69 It was a similar process in Ireland that lay behind the banding together of English felons of Ireland and native Irish 'enemies' who lived by plundering the colonists. 70 Indeed, the connexion between the two was sometimes even more direct.…”

Attitudes to Royal Justice in Fourteenth-Century Yorkshire

“…52 Although its style and content were analysed briefly, he was concerned to set the letter in the context of the activities of 'dangerous criminals' and the alleged exacting of payments with menaces through letters quasi sub stilo regio (as if in royal style) that was alluded to in the powerful oyer and terminer commission of 1332 in the Midlands. The content of the letter deserves further comment as it is relevant to the issues being discussed here, but it should also be set in its own immediate context, for there is more to the story than the abstract letter.…”