ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates in a regional context how and why a person came to appear before quarter sessions in the seventeenth century. Common assault frequently involved what appears to have been a spontaneous attack by a man, or woman, on his or her neighbours. Such acts seem only rarely to have been carefully premeditated, or the consequences calculated. Violence could also emerge from bitter family quarrels. Again, although it is often difficult to judge from the very limited evidence available, it does not seem that the assaults were the result of premeditation as much as personal passion. Family quarrels, even when they did not reach the level of violence, could cause problems within the local community. The official law enforcement agencies, then, did not alone attempt to resolve disputes which had run beyond the bounds of the normal control of family or neighbourhood.
