In January 1531, Richard Crosley of Smeeth went to the shop of Thomas Smith at Stone Hill to fetch a ladle of his, which he had left for repair. Smith told him he had already returned the ladle, and claimed that he had not been paid for his work,

Eventually, Smith responded to Crosley's challenge to come outside, and while the onlookers were trying to prevent a fight, ‘a doge of the seyd Richard Crosley came toward … Smythe & … Smythe thrugh astone at the seyd doge & Rebuked the doge & ther apon … Richard Crosley thrugh at the seyd Smyth ii stones …’ In the fracas which ensued, Smith appears to have been seriously injured, not by Crosley, but by a tinker, Richard Amore, one of two bystanders who had tried to separate them. If the participants had not between them been in possession of staffs variously described as five or six feet long, ‘a short bill’ and ‘a trencherknife’ as well as the stones, less damage would have been done.

Similar causes seem to have been behind a fight which took place in Sandwich in 1532: witnesses were questioned about a ‘fray’ between Richard Cristmas, shoemaker, and John Gefferey, in the course of which Cristmas ‘hurling an iron belonging to his occupation called a Stopping stick, brake the said Gefferaie his hede’. Cristmas's servant deposed that Gefferey had come to his master's stall, and