In 1339, one Richard Adams, of Willenhall, was charged with slaying two men in that place, one a townsman named John Odyes, and a certain John de Bentley. As he was acquitted, probably he did it in self-defence. Encounters of this character were of frequent occurrence in those lawless times.
When the offences recorded are of a less serious nature than murder and slaughter, they are nearly always described as being accompanied by the violent use of lethal weapons—“vi et armis” is the old legal phrase. Here are some examples of this kind of lawlessness:—
In 1352, William de Hampton (probably of the Dunstall family of that name) prosecuted a gang of fourteen men, including
a chaplain, the parson of Sheynton (? Shenstone), and two men from Tettenhall, for robbing him of his goods and chattels at Willenhall, Wednesfield, Tettenhall, and Pendeford. Of the details of the robberies we are able to learn nothing, except that they were all perpetrated forcibly, and with a reckless display of violence.
A similar prosecution was undertaken in 1395 by another member of this family, one Nicholas Hampton, against Thomas Marshall, of Willenhall, and for a similar outrage in that place.
A Willenhall man named John Wilson, in 1373, had to invoke the law upon a desperado who forcibly broke into his house and close at Homerwych (Hammerwich), and stole from thence timber, household utensils, clothing, corn, hay, and apparently everything he could lay his hands upon and carry away.
Twenty years later John Wilson (probably the same prosecutor) charged John Wilkes, of Darlaston, with stealing two of his oxen, though no violence is alleged on this occasion.
Two Willenhall men, William Colyns, and William Stokes, were, in 1399, arrested, and charged with cutting down trees and underwood at Bentley. Force and violence were used on that occasion; and it must be remembered that timber was then in much greater demand for building purposes than now, while underwood was in constant requisition as fuel and for the repair of fences and shelters.
Sixteen years later (1415) John Pype and a number of other Bilston men were prosecuted by Sir Hugh Burnell, Knt., for breaking into his closes at Willenhall, trespassing on his land, and treading down his grass with their cattle, committing damage to a grievous extent, and all in undisguised defiance to the law.
Enough has been quoted to illustrate, by incidents common to the social life of so simple a community as that of Willenhall, the gradual decay of feudalism, and the steady growth of English liberty by the vindication of constitutional law.