squires sore hurt. The Earl of Wiltshire, Thorpe, and many others fled, and left their harness behind them cowardly, and the substance of the King's party were despoiled of horse and harness. This done, the said Lords, that is to wit, the Duke of York, the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Warwick, come to the King, our Sovereign Lord, and on their knees besought him of grace and forgiveness of that they had done in his presence, and besought him of his Highness to take them as his true liegemen, saying that they never intended hurt to his own person, and therefore the King our sovereign Lord took them to grace, and so desired them to cease their people, and that there should no more harm be done; and they obeyed his commandment, and let made a cry in the King's name that all manner of people should cease and not so hardy to strike any stroke more after the proclamation of the cry; and so ceased the said battle, _Deo gratias_. AN UNRULY NOBLE (1455). =Source.=--_Rotuli Parliamentorum_, vol. v., p. 285. ... There be great and grievous riots done in the West Country at the city of Exeter by the earl of Devonshire, accompanied with many riotous persons, as it is said, with eight hundred horsemen and four thousand footmen, and there have robbed the church (cathedral) of Exeter, and taken the canons of the same church and put them to ransom, and also have taken the gentlemen in that country, and done and committed many other great and heinous inconveniences; that in abridging of such riots ... a Protector and Defensor must be had ... and that he, in abridging of such riots and offences, should ride and labour into that country, for but if the said riots and inconveniences were resisted, it should be the cause of the loss of that land, and if that land were lost, it might be the cause of the subversion of all this land. THE LITIGIOUSNESS OF THE AGE (_circa_ 1455). =Source.=--Gascoigne's _Loci e Libro Veritatum_, edited by Rogers, pp. 108, 109. (Oxford: 1881). Formerly, when there were many good and mature rectors of churches resident there, the quarrels and dissensions which arose within a parish or between parishioners, were generally settled by the good handling and advice of such rectors, and there were few pleas and actions through lawyers.... But now, by the lack of such good rectors, strifes, quarrels, dissensions, actions and pleas are multiplied and prolonged, and thus the money, which might have gone to good works, owing to the number of the quarrels goes to the lawyers, advocates, and counsel; whence by the multiplication of such dissensions and actions, the number of these lawyers, jurists, advocates and defenders of evil (who defend evil for love or for fear of evil) is far greater than it need be. And yet many times the cause which has been pleaded long and at great expense is settled and concluded by the interference of the great. THE TRIAL AND RECANTATION OF BISHOP PECOCK (1457).