English soil was exposed to relatively little warfare in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but military forces were not infrequently on the march, gathering for foreign wars or the defence of England's frontiers, and they – together with soldiers returning from the wars – could present threats to urban security. To take just one example, in August 1415 soldiers accompanying the Duke of Lancaster to France were camped outside Salisbury; for reasons unknown there was a brawl between a large group of them and some citizens, leading to the deaths of four of the latter; the conflict was sufficiently serious to set the city's warning bells ringing. One of the deceased was buried at city expense.

Although hostilities with France and Scotland continued to consume English resources, the military history of fifteenth century England is more remembered for the so-called Wars of the Roses. It has been questioned whether they merit the descriptor "war" since there were few large-scale battles; many encounters between opposing forces were more akin to the skirmishes of well-armed rival street gangs, and the time spent fighting was only a fraction of the total period over which the war stretched.

Nor were most English towns heavily implicated in the contention between aristocratic factions for control of power. On the whole, English urban fortifications were on a more modest scale than many of those of continental Europe; even some of the more important towns were still without walled circuits, and those that were fortified invested in improvements at a far more modest level than in the fourteenth century. Yorkist and Lancastrian/Tudor factions were uninterested in, or incapable of, extended sieges of towns, and their contention was apparently not perceived as the clear and present danger that was earlier the case for French raids against coastal towns or Scottish incursions directed towards northern towns. The challenge to York's defences in 1487 was an empty one, although it may have achieved its desired effect (see Notes), and the city's rebuff of the assailants was sufficient relief to Henry VII that he knighted mayor William Todd in gratitude. The city faced threats from rebellious barons in 1216 and 1264, from the Scots in 1319 and 1327, and from local rebels in 1469 and 1489; but it underwent no real test until the siege of 1644.

A less direct, but perhaps more serious, impact on towns of the civil war in the fifteenth century was in promoting division within communities, adding a complicating or amplifying factor to existing local rivalries for political or socio-economic reasons, in part by developing new networks of loyalty that allied those questing for power at the higher levels with those having ambitions or grievances at lower levels of society, and thereby reducing the traditional sense of loyalty (expected if not actual) to one's community. Internal conflict proved a bigger threat to local security than assaults by external forces. The long-standing national legislation requiring citizens to have weapons and armour on hand and the ability to use bow and arrow, for purposes of national defence, together with the dependence on local recruitment of soldiery (with bloodied survivors being fed back into their communities), proved a double-edged sword. It has been observed that "The possession of arms combined with the passionate emotional tendency of the day left the temptation to violence irresistibly strong." [J.R. Lander, Conflict and Stability in Fifteenth-Century England. London: Hutchinson, 1969, 165.]

We should of course beware of tarring everyone with the same brush. In any society some people are, for various reasons, more predisposed than others to try to resolve their problems through violence (physical or psychological). Studies of the social background of court juries suggest that the pool from which jurors were chosen represented the more upright and reputable members of a community, rarely themselves accused of any serious offences [on this see Anthony Musson, Medieval Law in Context, Manchester University Press, 2001, 116-118]. In an age when the principle of rule of law was only beginning to impress itself upon the cultural psyche, there seems to the modern eye to have been a stronger habit of resorting to violence than we would like to believe the case today. Yet it is the nature of many medieval sources to give more attention to the violent members of medieval society than those who were law-abiding; and often those sources tend to give one-sided portrayals of violent events.

The trouble at Nottingham in 1471 may well have been exaggerated; the accusation contains various elements of standard formulae – such as specifying vi et armis and giving a list of weaponry – used to convey to judges or to the king the seriousness of an offence. But, after stripping away the formulae, what remains clearly describes a significant breach of order. Stevenson believed it was the work of Yorkist partisans, taking advantage of the collapse of the Lancastrians after the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury. Although those had taken place weeks earlier, partisans may have been waited for assurance that Edward IV was secure on the throne before taking action against Lancastrians. During the course of the civil war, Nottingham authorities had been careful to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, so that it cannot be described as evidently Lancastrian or Yorkist in its sympathies, but both parties may well have had known supporters among the townspeople.

While national factionalism – that is, Yorkist loyalties – could have played a part in motivating the Nottingham insurgents (see below), it remains possible that the disturbance was prompted at least in part by internal issues (of which we now know little), much the same way as were violent conflicts at London in the 1380s and Lynn in 1415. Political rivalries could on occasion take on the appearance of localized civil wars and lead to murderous assaults, as at Ipswich in the 1320s, Newcastle in the 1340s, and Nottingham in 1413. These outbreaks of violence were the exception rather than the rule, but show that risks to urban security could originate as easily within the community as from external threats. Constitutional adjustments in Nottingham during the fifteenth century, starting it along the road towards the closed corporation model, together with economic stresses that prompted a self-interested struggle between different trades for control of government, and dissatisfaction with what was perceived as corrupt and self-interested administration by the ruling elite, would culminate in the early sixteenth century with a popular revolt of sorts. Perhaps the White affair was an earlier manifestation of these stresses, although none of the principals named in the indictment (accused or victims) appear to have been among the borough rulers, and the attack on the mayor and sheriffs seems to have been a matter of resisting arrest rather than political hostility.

At the same time, we should not ignore the possibility that the Nottingham disturbance of 1471 was an outbreak of misrule (perhaps fuelled by political or social discontent) during the festival period between Corpus Christi (13 June) and midsummer (24 June), at a period when authorities were less tolerant of over-exuberant or disorderly popular expressions and were seeking to channel them into more controlled ceremonial forms. If misrule, it is a good example of how such expressions could get dangerously out of hand. Not for nothing did urban authorities give special attention to the town watch at midsummer, with a view to combatting misrule. Nor should we be blind to the possibility that Yorkist supporters in Nottingham may have taken advantage of the tradition of the midsummer season to attack local Lancastrians, under the guise of a misrule disturbance.

Whatever the case, evidently the disorder had subsided before the jury made its presentment, for, rather than try to arrest Whyte, the town's sheriffs were ordered to ensure he appeared at a session of the Justices of the Peace scheduled for 14 October, to answer the charges. Whyte managed to delay proceedings until the following April, to give himself time to purchase a pardon from the king (in March 8), which he submitted to the court, along with a royal writ (March 19) instructing the court to accept the pardon. Clearly Whyte had (or could obtain) the legal knowledge and the money to enable him to proceed in that way. In consequence, the town's records give us no further information about the affair.

However, further light seems to be thrown, if hazily, on the affair by a complaint brought before the king and his council in November 1471, based on a document dated 21 October in which the mayor, aldermen and community of Nottingham accuse Robert Hampson and three others of "grete riottis, excesses and misgovernances" [Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 2, 384] and request permission from the king to gaol them. The king refused, on the grounds that the charge had not been proven in any court, but it looks as though the accused (or some of them) had an affiliation with Lord Grey, or had obtained his protection, for he informed the king that they were his servants. The accused were ordered to put up bonds for good behaviour and appear before king and council (which Lord Grey was to ensure). Lord Grey, on the one side, and the mayor, and other complainants, on the other, were ordered to behave peaceably towards each other, and towards the accused. Lord Grey was further ordered to release from his service any Nottingham townsmen who had received his livery.

Interpreting the affair as a local offshoot of the national power-struggle between factions may possibly be given extra weight by the use of the term riota in the accusation against Whyte and his followers. The changing application of the term in the Late Middle Ages has been traced by John Bellamy [Criminal Law and Society in Medieval and Tudor England. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1984, 54-89]. Its earliest known use in official documentation occurs in 1361, in a statute empowering justices of the peace to arrest and imprison rioters. The primary target seems to have been soldiers returning from the war in France, unable to find employment and – whether individually or in bands – resorting to robbing, pillaging, and other unruly behaviour to live; "riot" may have been a term brought back from France with them. In the reign of Richard II, however, the term was redirected towards public disturbances in which the emphasis was more on group behaviour of an insurrectional character. During the reign of Henry VI it was again repurposed for application to violent offences committed by the gentry in the feuding inspired the high-level factionalism that would develop into the Wars of the Roses; for example, to armed bands waylaying victims, or to forcible entry into the property of others. Whether the usage in the Whyte affair stems from that later application, or had an earlier sense, remains uncertain.

We cannot necessarily place the blame entirely, or even predominantly, on the disturbed state of national politics for local disturbances in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There had long been within urban society, and between urban communities and rural neighbours, enough causes for hostility and enmity to create severe challenges for maintaining law and order. Among them, contests for political power. The compilation at Leicester, in October 1467, of a wide range of borough ordinances, many of them largely reiterating older versions, came at a time when the authorities were showing concern over orderly proceedings at local elections. It is not clear that any specific problem prompted these regulations. By contrast, concern on the part of London authorities, in 1383, over public gatherings was related to a specific occurrence of political conflict in the city, which saw both sides resorting to shows of force and killings of opponents. The prohibition was issued in late 1383 at the orders of mayor Nicholas Brembre and aimed at making it difficult for the followers of John Northampton, who had recently lost the mayoralty to Brembre and had since been conspiring to overturn the election, from further challenging his authority; that the order was the earliest entry in English in London's Letter-Books may reflect the fact that it was targeted at the general populace and needed to be proclaimed widely in the vernacular. This was the type of disturbance – news of which doubtless spread across the country – that was prompting the ruling class in various boroughs to try to impose more restrictive controls on the citizenry.

At Hereford, on the other hand, the principal security concern was attack by external forces; for Hereford was on the border between Wales and England and consequently the part of the frontier for hostilities. For example, in 1055 a Welsh army, after defeating the defending forces of the Earl of Hereford, was able to enter the city, plunder it, and burn much of it to the ground. It was immediately following this disaster that a strong defensive ditch, punctuated by gates, is said to have been dug (perhaps as an improved version of existing Mercian burh defences). But ca. 1125 this was described as being poorly maintained. During the civil war between Matilda and Stephen, parts of the city were again destroyed during a siege of the castle (1138). A new bank and ditch were constructed mid-century to protect a large section of the city. The erection of stone walls, along with four new rebuilt gates, was underway by the close of the century, with the work probably continuing throughout the next century, including enlargement of the circuit (suggested by a series of murage grants from 1224). In the civil war between Henry III and the Montfortian rebels, the former's supporters assaulted Hereford (which had sided with the latter) in 1265, but the walls were apparently sturdy enough by this time to resist entry, and the attackers satisfied themselves with setting fire to suburban houses. The city was once more feeling threatened during Owen Glendower's uprising against Henry IV, but escaped direct attack.

The prospect of sieges evidently still weighed heavily on local minds at the time Hereford's custumal was compiled. We are not certain when this was. Several post-medieval copies are known. They close with a note referring to their source, itself a copy made in 1486 by, or at the behest of, the mayor. However, the text mostly assumes that the city's chief executive is styled bailiff, so it must predate the change of title, which the king authorized in 1383. The heading of the custumal gives indications as to dating in the form of the reigning king (Henry II), Anno Domini (1154), and name of the bailiff then in office, but these are problematic, and it appears that some compiler or copyist was at pains to attribute an unwarranted antiquity to this set of customs, but without researching his fraud very thoroughly. Even though some of the content could heark back to the second half of the twelfth century, on the whole it has the ring more of late thirteenth to fourteenth century preoccupations and expression (partly due to probable rewriting and updating more than once during the course of its history). We are fairly safe to assume these customs were in force in the mid to late fourteenth century.

The custumal provides a rare look at urban arrangements in the event of a siege. It highlights the obligations of the city leaders: to offer protection to all who may be in the city (whether residents or outsiders), while the siege lasted; to arrange for the fortifications to be guarded; and to raise money from all within the city to cover the costs of defending it. It identifies the actions that needed to be taken to organize the defences, in terms of designating key officials to take charge, appointing a defence committee, and marshalling defenders and equipment. And it points to critical issues such as preventing treachery from within, ensuring the city is supplied with necessaries to withstand a siege, and discouraging any division or rancour within the community at a time when cooperation and a united front were essential. Everyone – resident or visitor, man or woman, layman or cleric – was expected to contribute to the defence in one way or another.

Besides attack by external forces, the Hereford custumal addresses other security risks. One such was resistance to the authority of local officials. It was common for town ordinances to include provision for punishment of rebellious behaviour, whether by word or by deed. Equally, disrespect shown to officials needed to be punished, so that it did not escalate into contumacy. The power of local authorities was more consensual than coercive, so it was important to exert pressure towards conformity to standards of behaviour. Another risk was posed by quarrels between citizens, which could escalate into vendetta or other forms of more widespread public disorder. Mediation by local authorities (to urge reconciliation), or arbitration by individuals chosen by the parties to formulate a mutually acceptable settlement, were informal methods increasingly employed in the Late Middle Ages to settle problems of various kinds in preference to the formal method of dispute resolution through litigation.

One of the long-standing forms of social control, for purposes of security, was the curfew. The warning in Hereford's custumal (above) that anyone abroad after curfew was liable to arrest that is fairly representative of such prohibitions, although there might be local variations on the theme; for instance: at High Wycombe (1398) 10 o'clock was prescribed as the hour of curfew, whereas Beverley (1405) had a graduated curfew, with residents to be off the streets by 9 o'clock, but visiting outsiders an hour earlier; and curfew might be sounded by a civic bell or (more often) by one or more designated parish churches, as at London or Ipswich. Less trusted members of the community might be subject to special rules, as at Maldon. The frequency with which curfew orders were reissued by the authorities, men were accused of being night-walkers, or crimes were said to have been committed after curfew (see examples from Oxford and London), all point to the difficulty in winning respect for and enforcing curfew; some infringers were prepared to evade or resist arrest. On the other hand, enforcing curfew may not have been a high priority for all communities; when, in the context of mounting hostilities between Edward II and his baronial opponents (led by the Earl of Leicester), an order was issued in Leicester that no-one wander about in the town after curfew, the town authorities found it necessary to pay particular individuals to ring the curfew between December 1321 and April 1322.

Another common by-law associated with the preservation of the peace required any visitors planning to stay for more than two or three days to provide the authorities with guarantors for their good behaviour; residents who hosted them (whether innkeepers or householders) were to ensure this took place, and could be held liable for compensation due to anyone injured by their guests.

Later in the custumal there is elaboration of how to deal with citizens found to be persistent offenders in night-walking. They were subject initially to a fine, then (if unrepentant), progressively to disfranchisement, imprisonment, banishment from the city, and forfeiture of all property owned in the city. Any who supported such offenders were liable to the same punishments, "because by such maintainers or protectors a common contention might arise amongst us, and horrible manslaughter be committed amongst us, and the loss of the liberty or freedom of the city, to the disinheritance of us and our children." [p.479] This clause reflects a common underlying dread of urban authorities that, if law and order could not be upheld within a town, the king might intervene and take local government into his own hands. The type of disturbance that might lead to this was experienced at Hereford in the late thirteenth century, as a result of which

"it was agreed by the whole commonalty of all the liberties, that if any one should be taken by night leading any company, or by himself, making a noise, who shall be a vagabond, to the terror of his fellow citizens, that any one of the city may take him, not offending in any thing the officer of the bailiff, or his sub-bailiffs, or the watchmen; and when such an one shall be taken, he ought to be brought to the gaol of our Lord the King, and there he ought to stay until ... he hath made amends, as the bailiff and commonalty shall think fit."
[p.483]

The London prohibition of 1383 (above) was accompanied by a second proclamation reminding Londoners that it was forbidden for all (except the mayor and his officers, or those having explicit permission from the mayor) to wander around the city after 9 o'clock had struck, upon pain of immediate arrest by whoever found them in the streets. The following February, after Northampton and his closest associates had been arrested and one of his supporters summarily executed for trying (it was claimed) to raise an insurrection, the aldermen were instructed to ascertain the number of reliable men in their wards who could be used to keep an eye open for breaches of the peace; they were to report any such to the mayor, but apparently were expected also to assist with suppression of such breaches, for they were to be armed and issued with red uniforms. It will be noted that both the London ordinance and the Hereford custumal authorized citizen's arrests in particular circumstances where security was in jeopardy. National legislation of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century had empowered constables, the night-watch, and any officials responsible for preserving the peace to arrest suspicious characters pre-emptively (i.e. without due process of an indictment being officially registered). But later in the fourteenth century those responsible for peace-keeping were empowered to arrest anyone disturbing public order, and the provisions at London and Hereford may have taken their lead from this.