In Norfolk these sanguinary
fights must have been a passion; but one would have thought that,
while the plague was raging and after it had begun to subside, then,
if ever, men and women would have become less savage and ferocious.
So far from it, such records of the years 1349 and 1350 as I have
examined are fuller than ever of fights and quarrels At Lessingham,
about Christmas time, 1349, there was a free fight of a most
sanguinary character, men and women joining in it freely. It seems to
have arisen from some one finding a horse wandering about the
deserted fields. As a stray it belonged to the lord--the finder took
a different view, somebody cried "Halves!" and somebody else said,
"Til give information," and somebody else replied, "So will I,"
whereupon arose a bloody battle as has been told. About the same time
at Hunstanton, Catherine Busgey, evil-disposed old hag that she was,
had stript a dead man of his leather jerkin. Did she proceed to wear
the manly attire that she might be dagger-proof for the next
encounter? Rash woman! The dead man's friends recognized the well-
known coat, it was forfeited and delivered over to the lord.
It might well be supposed that, while the whole executive machinery
of the country was being subject to a tremendous strain, there would
be in some districts a condition of affairs which differed very
little from downright anarchy.
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