These roads, thus followed in every direction by the king and the lords moving from one manor to another, by the merchants and peasants going to the fair, the market, or the staple, by sheriffs, monks and itinerant justices, by ladies in carriages and villains driving their carts, were they safe? The theorist studying the legal ordinances of the period, and the manner in which the county police and the town watch and ward were organized, might come to the conclusion that precautions were well taken for the prevention of misdeeds, and that travelling did not present more danger than it does at present. If we add, as Mr. Thorold Rogers has shown, that common carriers plied their trade between Oxford and London, Winchester, Newcastle, etc., and that the price of transport was not dear, we might be persuaded that the roads were quite safe, and we should be wrong; wrong too, if on the faith of romantic tales, we pictured to ourselves brigands in every thicket, a hanged man on {150} every branch, and robber barons at every cross-road. But _accident_, or the unexpected, must be taken into account. Accident played a great part in the social life of the fourteenth century. It was the moment when modern life began, the outward brilliancy of a novel civilization had recently modified society from top to bottom, the need to be constantly on the watch had become less apparent; the moated castle with its drawbridge, battlements and loop-holes, had begun to change into a villa or a mansion, while the hut was growing into a house. Confidence was greater, but not always justified: accidents are unexpected mishaps. More means were taken than formerly to hinder ill-doing; but numerous occurrences happened to destroy this incipient security. Society was in reality neither calm nor quite settled, and many of its members were still half savage. The term “half” may be taken literally. If a list were made of the characteristics of such or such an individual of the time, it would be found that some belonged to a refined, and some to a barbarous world. Hence these contrasts: on one side order, which it would perhaps be unjust not to consider as the normal condition; and on the other, the frequent ebullitions of the untamed nature. Let us select an example of such accidents which could take at times remarkable proportions. Here are a knight and his men at the corner of a road, waiting for a troop of merchants. The text itself of the victims’ petition gives all the details of the encounter.[175]