Facts and fiction… leaving dead sheep in your garden will get you a fine!

I spotted this little factoid in Land and People in Medieval Lincolnshire by Graham Platts, proving that there were strange crimes even back in the Middle Ages:

“…Richard of Grayingham, an apparently prosperous butcher in the parish of St. Mary le Wigford, left forty dead sheep with flesh and hides on them in his garden, to the damage of the community, and was fined 40s.”

And who says that history is dull?

And, let it be known that yes, there are candy canes sitting on my coffee table in the middle of May.  I’m sure someone, at some future point in history, will come up with some interesting story about this (or may question my sanity).