The clash of forces in Stowe Park joined a series of local battles fought over the forests, chases, and parks of southern England during late spring and summer, 1642. Among many reports of riot from Windsor Forest and elsewhere, on 2 May the House of Lords received a distressing affidavit from the officers of Waltham Forest in western Essex. John Peacocke, an underkeeper of Newlodge Walk in Waltham Holy Cross, and his assistant Richard Stocke reported that a “riotous assembly” had taken place on 25 April under the leadership of John Browne, a veteran offender against the forest laws. Browne and at least eighteen companions used “guns, bills, pitchforks, and clubs” as well as “a mastiff dog” to “kill diverse of the king's deer” in the forest. When Peacocke demanded an explanation, several muttered defiantly that “they came for venison, and venison they would have,” but Browne “made answer” more cogently that “there was no law settled at this time.” Peacocke then presented a general warrant from James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, chief keeper of Newlodge Walk and lord of the manor of Waltham, for the arrest of “such as did spoils in the forest.”