Note 498 — Chapter X
Reading edition
The common clerk at Hythe, John Smallwood, secured for himself a following of thirty-six men sworn to help him in all his undertakings, and in 1397 he had even gathered sixty men pledged to bring about the death of four of his enemies. For four years the town refused to have any clerk at all, until at last Smallwood made his peace in 1414 by the gift of certain tenements and lands. (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. part 1, 437-8.)