 Eighteenth-century historians argued that the area's prosperity attracted the "wicked and ungovernable"; the cloth, left outside and unattended, presented easy pickings, and hence justified severe punishment to protect the local economy.James Holt on the other hand, writing in 1997, sees the Halifax Gibbet Law as a practical application of the Anglo-Saxon law of "infangtheof".Royal assizes were held only twice a year in the area; to bring a prosecution was "vastly expensive", and the stolen goods were forfeited to the Crown, as they were considered to be the property of the accused.