EVEN at a distance of five hundred years, Alice Dymock emerges from the Yarmouth leet rolls as an unusually colourful character. The litany of presentments made against her begins unremarkably enough, in the mid 1480s with charges of petty larceny, quarrelling with her neighbours and selling ale against the assize, all of which were common misdemeanours. Her light-fingered husband, however, was already keeping a disorderly house; and in 1491 she herself was amerced as a procuress. She incurred a similar fine two years later, when her lover, one John Robbins, also ran into trouble for almost murdering her husband. We know that she and Robbins were conducting a liaison, because in the following year they were presented by the leet for adultery. Since she was fined 6s 8d, that is twice as much as he, for the offence, along with a further 6s for harbouring suspicious persons, we can understand why she expressed some free and frank opinions about the ruling elite. For this she subsequently faced accusations of being a common scold. Patience in Yarmouth was clearly wearing thin: in 1496 she incurred exemplary fines of 16s 8d for promoting immorality, scolding and receiving her lover. But Alice remained unrepentant. Still ‘keeping and promoting debauchery and a brothel in her house’ and selling ale without licence, she was back in court in 1498, and again in the following year, this time as a common whore and provoker of quarrels. By 1499 the now familiar catalogue of charges embraced keeping a suspicious house, bawdry and cursing her exasperated neighbours. A new century brought a new offensive on the part of the authorities. In 1500 Alice was presented as a leper, who committed a grave nuisance by mixing among adults and children. She was ordered to leave the borough within three months upon pain of £10, by far the highest fine ever imposed by any of the four leet courts up to that date. After a few defiant weeks of brothel keeping and sowing discord she departed, but not before assaulting various individuals in her ill-governed house and – as a nice touch of bathos – milking her neighbours’ cows.