John the Little

On 12 December 1319 the king's justices at York were presented with a complaint by Simon of Wakefield that in December 1318 criminal gang had broken his houses and coffers at Hornington, west Yorkshire, and carried off his livestock, goods and cash.

This offence was committed by a large number of men (see attached), including Simon Ward and his brothers and several of the Bradburns. The leader of the Bradburns, referred to elsewhere as 'Master' John Bradburn, was the nephew of Sir Henry Bradburn of Derbyshire, who was drawn and hanged after the battle of Boroughbridge in March 1322. Henry's younger brother Roger and his sons avoided this dreadful fate, and were granted charters of pardon in April. Roger had his late brother's lands restored to him in 1327.

Master John and his brothers formed part of the vast system of gentrified gangsters that virtually ran the Midlands and northern England in the latter years of Edward II and early reign of Edward III. They were frequently found in the company of James Coterel and Eustace Folville, as the various gangs combined or split off into small groups to raid and pillage and extort money.

The Hornington raid of December 1318 was the first recorded offence of the so-called Bradburn gang. They and their associates mainly operated in Derbyshire and Notts, and used the forests of the High Peak and Sherwood as a refuge. For instance, on 18 December 1330 a royal knight, Sir Roger Wennesley, was ordered to hunt down the Coterels, the Folvilles and the Bradburns and imprison them at Nottingham castle. Wennesley was chosen because he was a sworn enemy of the Coterels: he had committed several crimes himself and killed Laurence Coterel, one of James's brothers, by stabbing him in the guts with a dagger.

Interestingly, one of John Bradburn's followers at the Hornington raid was a John the Little or Little John of Leicestershire.