Other practices in which the citizens indulged were looked upon with an unfavourable eye by the rulers of the town, brawling being expressly forbidden. No one was allowed to carry defensive weapons through the streets, and hosts were charged to bid their stranger guests leave their swords behind them, when they had occasion to leave the hostels wherein they had taken lodging.[627] The penalty for smiting "with a knife drawyn" was half a mark, unless the smiter were "himself defendant." "No man of craft," another order runs, "bear no bills, nor gysarnes, nor great staves," upon pain of forfeiture of the same weapons. Those who were driving cattle to market could, however, carry a small staff in their hands.[628] These orders did not suffice by any means to abolish brawls, and sometimes lords, knights and squires, the "mighty" men of the country round, fought out their ancient family quarrels among the dwellings of the burgher folk;[629] at others the citizens had their own grievances to urge against one or other of these mighty men, and drew sword upon him and his retainers. In these cases there would be, most likely, death or shedding of blood, while in disputes arising among the citizens themselves merely blows and beatings would be given on either side, but with such violence that combatants were afterwards often spoken of as "in despair of their lives" from the injuries they had received. Troubles of this kind were a feature of the times when the gentry flocked into the city to see the far-famed Corpus Christi shows, or to be near the Court, for Henry VI. and his Queen tarried frequently at Coventry. On Corpus Christi even in the year 1448 Sir Humphrey Stafford and his son Richard were attacked in the Broadgate[630] after nightfall, as they came from Lady Shrewsbury's[631] lodging, by Sir Robert Harcourt and his men. Richard was slain and his father wounded in the darkness and confusion, while two of the Harcourt faction died also in the fray. All this took place, says John Northwood, writing to Viscount Beaumont, "as men say, in a Paternoster while." It was a terrible business; Northwood, evidently striving to be exact, could hardly describe how it happened. The two chief enemies, he says, "fell in handes togyder, and Sir Robert smot hym (Sir Humphrey) a grette stroke on the hed with hys sord, and Richard with hys dagger hastely went toward hym, and as he stombled on of Harcourts men smot hym in the bak with a knyfe, men wotte not ho hytt was reddely; hys fader hard noys and rode toward hem and hys men ronne before hym thyderward, and in the goyng downe of hys hors, on, he wotte not ho,[632] be hynd hym smot hym on the hede with a nege tole,[633] men know not with us with what wepone, that he fell downe and hys son fell downe be fore hym as goode as dede." And the whole affray--characteristically enough--was "be cawse of an old debate that was betwene heme for takyng of a dystres as hyt is told." The law was not always prompt in bringing