The king hanged Armstrong and his 24 followers, refusing Armstrong’s pleas for mercy, even after Armstrong said he’d make all the men in Northern England pay their yearly rent to him. There’s no way for us to tell how much was stolen in these cases, if anything at all, nor how many other crimes they may have committed that slipped through the net. In the mid-14th century, England experienced something of an urban crime wave. (He kept “the Archpriest” as a nickname.) They’d already formed an association of criminals which operated across much of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, involved in systematic extortion and robbery. He and his organized gang extorted villages and towns unable to protect themselves and made off with their animals and belongings (or just burned their houses down) when they refused to pay.[11]. Declaring him a bandit, the Byzantines murdered him in 1305. Fortunately for them, Edward III was at war and in serious need of warriors. Through political pressure, the English persuaded Lord Angus to declare Johnnie and his band outlaws, though Angus’s efforts to raise an army to oust him failed when he struggled to find volunteers. According to the court, he’d given Jordan le Fleming a ten-year tenancy at his manor in Swaninton but forcibly ejected him after just a year, taking some of le Fleming’s belongings as he did. After stealing animals from the estate of Henry de Beaumont, they were once again wanted for arrest, this time by the corrupt judge Richard Willoughby. After John was defeated by the Black Prince at Poitiers, France, England signed a peace treaty and the mercenaries were dismissed. The Catalans were mildly successful against the Turks, but they also looted Byzantine land and openly fought rival Byzantine soldiers. Belle Starr, nicknamed Queen of the Oklahoma Outlaws for her style and crack shot, fled authorities by hiding in the San Bois Mountains caves, now known as Wilburton and Robbers Cave State Park. In 1375, Owain led the Guglers, a massive army of mercenaries that invaded Switzerland, only to be ambushed in a night attack by the enraged Swiss citizens. The fourth sibling was again accused later in the year. In many ways, however, he is very unlike the Robin Hood of myth. Now the tables were turned, with the merchant and his family trying to get out and Adam keeping them in until they tossed out the jewels. Then they pulled off another underdog victory over the duke’s larger army and established their own petty kingdom in Greece, which lasted for the next 80 years. Hajduk Momcilo was a Bulgarian bandit who built a personal army of peasants in the Rhodope Mountains. Roger Godberd is one of the people thought to be the inspiration behind the Robin Hood legend. [6] He effectively treated Essex as his own personal kingdom and was too strong to be brought to justice by the king. During the early medieval period, most outlawries were for criminal acts. Many bandit groups plagued rural areas, but towns and cities could also be the haunt of the medieval gangster. He dutifully paid his fine in annual increments until his death ten years later. During the Anarchy, Stephen shored up his position by hiring sellswords from Flanders, who soon developed an evil reputation. This allowed daring rogues to run wild, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The Folvilles fought in the queen’s army, and when she successfully seized the kingdom, they were pardoned. The date of James Coterel’s death is ultimately unknown, but the last record mentioning him reveals that he owed over £100 to the Folville gang. Stephen made him Earl of Essex in return for his support, but Geoffrey betrayed Stephen and defected to Matilda, who gave him virtually unlimited control of Essex. Though he had an extensive criminal record, he was officially a vassal of the Scottish lord of the West March, Lord Maxwell, who refused to punish him for his acts when asked to by the English wardens. Roger, who was called the leader of outlaws in Leicester, Nottingham, and Wiltshire by Reginald de Grey, the Sheriff of Nottingham at the time, was imprisoned at Bridgnorth Castle in 1272 and put on trial in 1275, where he tried to defend himself by showing them the royal pardon he’d received nearly a decade earlier and arguing that he’d committed no crime since. We don’t think of the middle ages. These appeals, along with royal writs ordering (or exacting) the appearance of the defendant, were recorded by the coroner on his rolls (now in JUST 2). After Henry I died without a son, the throne was claimed by the Empress Matilda (who was Henry’s daughter and rightful heir) and Stephen of Blois. In most cases, only the eldest son of a landowner would stand to inherit any of his property. By this time, he was apparently the leader of a band of outlaws who lived around Sherwood Forest. He briefly served Stefan Dusan of Serbia but really came into his own during the Byzantine Civil War of 1341–1347. The average wage of a laborer in 1331 was three pennies a day, and twelve pennies went into a shilling, so eight shillings was roughly a month’s wages. Led by James Coterel and his brothers, Nicholas and John, they were likely the sons of Ralph Coterel, who owned land in Derbyshire. When the merchant refused, the gangsters set fire to the house and burned it down, seizing the treasure anyway. They also twisted the king’s opinion against their own great enemies, Roger Mortimer, Damory, and Audley, and directed royal power against them, cementing their own power. Because of his power and influence, even royal justices simply refused to bring cases against him. Roger recruited 6,000 into a mercenary band known as the Catalan Company and signed a lucrative contract with the Byzantines. It took a civil war to break their grip on the kingdom.[7]. Owain Lawgoch (“Red Hand”) was the last male-line descendant of the old Welsh kings of Gwynedd and one of the finest warriors of the 14th century. However, they allied themselves with the infamous Coterel gang and together roamed Derbyshire openly armed, causing trouble and threatening travelers. The corruption of the Despensers turned the whole kingdom against them and infected the monarchy so thoroughly that when the king’s wife, Isabella, landed in England with an army (after unsuccessfully asking Edward to get rid of the Despensers) Edward’s reign ended with theirs. Arnaud de Cervole was Archpriest of Velines until he found that a career as a mercenary was more to his liking. Law and order broke down as England plunged into a civil war known as the Anarchy. The earliest mention of Malcolm Musard is Feb 13, 1296, after he and some friends had been arrested for trespassing in a royal forest while they were heading to join the king’s army in Scotland. They conquered large territories of Greece for him until they realized that their money was never coming. Despenser alarmed the other nobles to such an extent that by 1321, the kingdom was in open civil war, with those on the rebel side demanding restrictions on royal power and the removal of Despenser. However, rather than acquiesce to imprisonment, they captured the judge and ransomed him for 1,300 marks (a ludicrous amount of money at the time). Here, the Waraunts drop off the map, having stolen more than a year and a half’s wages worth of stuff and gotten away (mostly) unscathed. The Archpriest. Arguably the worst was the practically feral Robert fitz Hubert. Owain was assassinated in 1378 by an undercover agent of the English. Gangs in the middle ages, though, were a more local affair, often run by unscrupulous noble families or ex-soldiers looking for ways to put their skills to use. At the height of his career, Eustace the Monk was so feared that he was rumored to be a sorcerer. Fortune turned against Armstrong in 1530, when James V became king of Scotland. Unusually, they also enjoyed the protection of Queen Philippa, who helped James Coterel buy his own land in 1332, at the height of their criminal activities. He was determined to rid the countryside of bandits, and he tricked Armstrong into meeting him. When we hear the word “gangster,” we often think of the Bloods and Crips of California or the international cartels that control the drug trade. His favorite trick was occupying a town and demanding that the citizens pay him to leave. [9], One of the earliest accounts featuring Roger is a court case in which he is accused of unlawfully assaulting one of his tenants. In 401 B.C., the Hellenic soldiers-for-hire—many of them hardened veterans of the Peloponnesian War—fought alongside Cyrus and his rebel army in a clash with the King’s forces near Baghdad. Fulk FitzWarin found himself on the wrong side of the king after the latter granted the estate of Whittington to a Welshman instead of Fulk, who had paid £100 for it and whose father had spent his life fighting for it.[4]. Now that his position was secure, he began manipulating the king and the power he held to extort peoples’ lands and titles from them at a staggering rate. He was determined to regain his rightful throne and even launched two invasions, causing panic in England. We tend to think of the Middle Ages as a lawless time when desperate outlaws roamed the land. Any other sons would usually join the retinue of a knight in search of glory and fortune, either in the form of rewards for valor or in ransom money for capturing another noble. The royal commission which was ordered to investigate their crimes was cut off suddenly when war broke out between England and Scotland, and in 1338, the Coterels were included on a summons to join the royal army in Flanders. For example, in 1326, when Roger de Beler, the Baron of the Exchequer, made threats against the Folvilles, Eustace led a band of 50 men and captured and killed him on the road. A warrant was issued for their arrest, and they fled to join Queen Isabella’s army on the continent, where they were mustering to depose the king. He formed the first “Great Company” and led it into Provence, which had avoided serious damage in the war. Adam the Leper, whose gang operated in the area, somehow discovered that he had the jewels and led the gang to the trader’s house after dark, barricading him in and demanding that he hand over the jewels. Read more spellbinding tales of medieval outlaws on 10 Swashbuckling Mercenaries Who Ravaged Medieval Europe and 10 Notorious Rogues Who Terrorized Medieval Europe. Things came to a head when men from Colchester broke into one of his parks, looted and damaged it, and killed one of his men (probably in retaliation for his abusive behavior). Not all medieval men who ended up living the life of the outlaw did so by choice.

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