Medieval kingship is quite a devolved process, with little direct rule outside of royal estates. Land was granted to the nobility, in return for taxes and military service, who would essentially sub-let to lesser lords and knights and so on downwards until the level of individual knights responsible for single villages. It was the responsibility of the various lords to see that law and order was maintained, tax collected and royal ordinances carried out in their lands. If a single village rebelled, therefore, it was very unlikely to come to the king's attention, having been dealt with on a local level far before that. If senior lords rebelled, that was obviously far more noticeable, and the king was often reliant on his army, and those of loyal nobles, to restore order.

This presents a major problem in England during the reign of Edward II, which collapsed into anarchy involving failed invasions of Scotland and wars with his barons over their attempts to attain legal reforms and the king's relationship with a courtier called Piers Gaveston who was promoted to great seniority because he was potentially the king's lover. With open conflict between the king and the barons he would usually rely on to maintain law and order, banditry and rebellion became rife in the provinces as large numbers of soldiers roamed a country in which thousands were dispossed and famine was starting to bite. At one point, a royal force sent to fight bandits in Staffordshire found that when they arrived, the Stafford town gates had been barricaded against them. Some "bandits" were even led by knights as organised military companies, and the problem was only really resolved by the start of the Hundred Years War when they could essentially be exported to wreak havok on France instead.