Gabriel Shadd and Christopher Smith specialised in forcible
distraint. Their habit was to appear, with several assistants, at a victim's house in the evening and make a night of it.
In the case of a chapter on the Essex Inquisitions of 1556, the records of two commissions that were established to investigate potential
distraints on the lands of religious fugitives are reproduced at great length.
Sawles Warde shows the cais had an evil reputation; but such translations of the word as |servant' or |retainer' do not express this.(10) The caisiaid have been defined as |the nucleus of a police force in the commote, delivering the writs, making
distraints, carrying out the decisions of the courts, and conducting the executions'.(11) The last is the nub.