John FitzWalter, 2nd Baron FitzWalter

FitzWalter built a strong affinity around him, mainly from among leading members of the county's gentry, but also including men from elsewhere, such as a Norfolk parson.

Other victims of his Essex gang were local jurors, royal officials, a man forced to abjure the realm, and the prior of Little Dunmow Abbey.

[3] The family has been described as "warlike as well as rich" even before FitzWalter was born: his ancestor, also named Robert, had been a leading rebel against King John in the early 13th century.

[5] The medievalist Christopher Starr in his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on the FitzWalter family, suggests that John was raised by his widowed mother.

[3] Although by law he could not receive his inheritance until he was 21, in the event, King Edward III allowed him to enter into his estates and titles slightly early, in 1335, when FitzWalter was about 20.

According to the Elizabethan antiquarian John Stow, the last time the latter attempted this in 1347, FitzWalter's demands were "peremptorily"[12] refused by the mayor and Common Council.

Armed and ready to fight,[15] FitzWalter joined the retinue[5] of William de Bohun, who had recently been created Earl of Northampton.

[17] FitzWalter gained a reputation as a good soldier during Edward III's early campaigns,[7] and he periodically returned to fight in France over the course of his career.

[22] In 1342 FitzWalter was one of 250 knights to take part in a great tournament held at Dunstable,[23] alongside his later partner in crime, Sir Robert Marney.

[26] The Historian Margaret Hastings described FitzWalter as being of "good family and great possessions, but nonetheless a familiar racketeer type".

[29] Starr suggests that for many men of his generation, experience on the Scottish and then French fronts exacerbated a "natural appetite for aggression and intimidation".

[15][note 7] With the support of powerful and influential local men like these, FitzWalter earned himself "a considerable reputation ... as a thug of the first order",[15] and the most feared man in Essex, wrote Harris.

[39][40][note 8] In return for furthering FitzWalter's causes, his retainers could expect his full protection: on at least one occasion he broke one of his men, Wymarcus Heirde, out of Colchester gaol before he could be brought before the justices.

They seized cattle from Colchester's main monastic house, the Priory of St. John, for which the prior later denounced FitzWalter as "a common destroyer of men of religion".

He never reached the port: intercepted by FitzWalter's men outside Waltham, they—claiming to act "under the banner of God and of Holy Church", but actually at the command of their lord[41]—summarily beheaded Byndethese by the roadside.

The principal source of antagonism between the two parties was over disputed pasture rights in Lexden, and the area was the scene of many confrontations and assaults from both sides.

In 1342, claimed FitzWalter, Colchester men had invaded Lexden Park,[3] in an attempt to assert their own rights[63] of pasturing, hunting and fishing there.

The medievalist Richard Britnell has highlighted how "on this issue feelings ran sufficiently high for large numbers of burgesses to take the law into their own hands; pasture riots are more in evidence than any other form of civil disturbance" in Essex at this time.

[64] FitzWalter petitioned the king that about a hundred Colchester men had, in the course of their trespass, "broke [FitzWalter's] park at Lexden, hunted therein, felled his trees, fished in his stews, carried away the trees and fish as well as deer from the park and assaulted his servant John Osekyn there, whereby he lost his service for a great time".

He was paid another £40 to lift this siege,[61] and those who attempted to sue for the damage he and his men had caused found that local juries were too afraid to bring verdicts against FitzWalter and his gang.

[73] FitzWalter's expeditions to France—which periodically removed him from the theatre of conflict—were deliberate attempts by King Edward at solving the problem without a need for taking legal action.

Eventually, in response to FitzWalter's continuing outrages,[3] a commission of the peace, probably under the authority of William Shareshull, was despatched to Chelmsford early in 1351.

[83] Likewise, argues the medievalist Richard Partington, "Edward's anger was especially terrifying in cases where he believed nobles were abusing their position to oppress others".

The pardon was a substantial document, and covered murder, robbery, rape, arson, kidnapping, trespass, extortion and incitement, and ranged from thefboot[note 17] to illegally carrying off other's rabbits to the usurpation of royal justice.

[29] For ten years, comments Barbara Hanawalt, the pipe rolls "benignly enter payments to the king from his 'dear and faithful' John FitzWalter".

[85] Probably as a direct consequence of his violent behaviour in Essex, and although he sat in parliament and on the king's council, he never held royal office in the county, and nor was he appointed to any of its commissions.

[3] Walter, unlike his father, was to be a loyal servant of the crown and helped to suppress the Peasants' Revolt in Essex for King Richard II in 1381.

[26] The criminal activities and disregard for the law demonstrated by men such as John FitzWalter, says Elisabeth Kimball, suggests that "the lack of governance associated with fifteenth-century England seems to have had its roots in the fourteenth".

[76] FitzWalter, argues the historian G. L. Harriss, was fundamentally "flawed in character" and from his youth had been on a "downward spiral of violence which brought the withdrawal of lordly and neighbourhood protection" both by the crown and by the rest of the local gentry.

[32] Characters such as FitzWalter have traditionally been seen by historians as demonstrating Edward III's poor record with law and order; on the other hand, suggests Ormrod, although royal justice may have been delayed, it was still sure, and when it came, harsh.