In a single year,
the year 1285, in the hundred of North Erpingham, containing thirty-
two parishes, the catalogue of crime is so ghastly as positively to
stagger one. Without taking any account of what in those days must
have been looked upon as quite minor offences--such as simple theft,
sheep-stealing, fraud, extortion, or harbouring felons--there were
eleven men and five women put upon their trial for burglary, eight
men and four women were murdered; there were five fatal fights, three
men and two women being killed in the frays; and, saddest of all,
there were five cases of suicide, among them two women, one of whom
hanged herself, the other cut her throat with a razor. We have in the
roll recording these horrors very minute particulars of the several
cases, and we know too that, not many months before the roll was
drawn up, at least eleven desperate wretches had been hanged for
various offences, and one had been torn to pieces by horses for the
crime of debasing the king's coin. It is impossible for us to realize
the hideous ferocity of such a state of society as this; the women
were as bad as the men, furious beldames, dangerous as wild beasts,
without pity, without shame, without remorse; and finding life so
cheerless, so hopeless, so very very dark and miserable, that when
there was nothing to be gained by killing any one else they killed
themselves.
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