The picture we get of the utter lawlessness of the whole county, however, at the beginning of King Edward's reign is quite dreadful enough. Nobody seems to have resorted to the law to maintain a right or redress a wrong, till every other method had been tried. Starting with the squires, if I may use the term, and those well-to-do people who ought to have been among the most law-abiding members of the community--we find them setting an example of violence and rapacity, bad to read of. One of the most common causes of offence was when the lord of the manor attempted to invade the rights of the tenants of the manor by setting up a fold on the heath, or _Bruary_ as it was called. What the lord was inclined to do, that the tenants would try to do also, as when in 1272 John de Swanton set up a fold in the common fields at Billingford; whereupon the other tenants pulled it down, and there was a serious disturbance, and the matter dragged on in the law courts for four years and more. Or as when the Prior of Wymondham impleads William de Calthorp for interfering with his foldage at Burnham; Calthorp replying that the Prior had no right to foldage, and that he (Calthorp) had the right to pull the fold down. In these cases, of course, there would be a general gathering and a riot, for every one's interest was at stake; but it was not only when some general grievance was felt that people in those days were ready for a row. It really looks as if nothing was more easy than to collect a band of people who could be let loose anywhere to work any mischief. One man had a claim upon another for a debt, or a piece of land, or a right which was denied--had the claim, or fancied he had--and he seems to have had no difficulty in getting together a score or two of roughs to back him in taking the law into his own hands. As when John de la Wade in 1270 persuaded a band of men to help him in invading the manor of Hamon de Clere, in this very parish of Tittleshall, seizing the corn and threshing it, and, more wonderful still, cutting down timber, and _carrying it off_. There are actually two other cases of a precisely similar kind recorded this same year, one where a gang of fellows in broad day seems to have looted the manors of Dunton and Mileham; the other case was where a mob, under the leadership of three men, who are named, entered by force into the manor of Dunham, laid hands on a quantity of timber fit for building purposes, and took it away bodily! A much more serious case, however, occurred some years after this when two gentlemen of position in Norfolk, with twenty-five followers, who appear to have been their regular retainers, and a great multitude on foot and horse, came to Little Barningham, where in the Hall there lived an old lady, Petronilla de Gros; they set fire to the house in five places, dragged out the old lady, treated her with the most brutal violence, and so worked upon her fears that they compelled her to tell