The gang was one of many armed civilian groups to emerge from the political turmoil that ravaged England during and after the Despenser War, in the last years of Edward II's reign.
The gang committed a variety of depredations in the extralegal pursuit of justice, including robbery, kidnapping, and murder, frequently on behalf of others, suggesting they may have acted as mercenaries as much as served their own motives.
[2] On 1 March a warrant was issued to multiple commissioners and named the suspects as:[2] The listing of the la Zouches of Lubbesthorpe first implies their leadership, which is backed up by an order on 24 March to the Sheriff of Leicestershire to seize the lands of Sir Roger la Zouch, Lord of Lubbesthorpe, as he had been indicted of "assenting to and counselling" the death of Roger de Beler.
[6] Isabella, Mortimer, and Trussell began their invasion of England by landing at Orwell, Suffolk, on 24 September 1326 with a small army of about 1500 (perhaps including the recently exiled Folville gang).
[7] The incident is memorialized with the 'Folville Cross', a 1 m-high (3 ft 3 in) fragment of an ancient crucifix, supposedly on the site of the murder, at a crossroads 1 km northeast of Ashby Folville.
Upon their return to Leicestershire after the revolution, they appear to have initially targeted Beler's lands at Kirby Bellars and elsewhere,[8][c] but within a few years petitions were issued to the Sheriff of Nottingham, "complaining that two of the Folville brothers were roaming abroad again at the head of a band, waylaying persons whom they spoiled and held to ransom".
[10] Members of Sempringham Priory and Haverholm Abbey, both in Lincolnshire, seem to have made use of their services, and at one stage the gang was apparently under the patronage of Sir Robert Tuchet, a major lord of Derbyshire and Cheshire.