 Marney, like FitzWalter, was a seasoned soldier from the French wars and something of a gangster in his own right.With the support of powerful and influential local men like these, FitzWalter earned himself "a considerable reputation... as a thug of the first order", and the most feared man in Essex, wrote Harris.The names of many of FitzWalter's gangsters are known to historians by the survival of their later indictments.