 Walter was also to be a close ally of his brother-in-law the Earl of Oxford in the politically turbulent years towards the end of Richard's reign.The criminal activities and disregard for the law demonstrated by men such as John FitzWalter, says Elisabeth Kimball, suggests that "the lack of governance associated with fifteenth-century England seems to have had its roots in the fourteenth".FitzWalter, argues the historian G. L. Harriss, was fundamentally "flawed in character" and from his youth had been on a "downward spiral of violence which brought the withdrawal of lordly and neighbourhood protection" both by the crown and by the rest of the local gentry.