Annie Whitehead has collated around 100 cases in Anglo-Saxon England, from regicides to robberies gone wrong, and from personal feuds to state-sanctioned slaughter, examining their veracity and asking what, if anything, they can tell us about the motives of those who recorded them and about Anglo-Saxon governance and society. The records contain many stories of […]
Felo de Se: the gruesome punishment that led to me writing The Low Road
Katharine Quarmby’s investigation into the gruesome burial of a suicide victim — for felo de se — with links to her home town inspired her first novel, The Low Road. For Women’s History Month, she explains why this punishment fell disproportionately onto poor women, and what made her want to tell this story. On a […]
Oliver Cromwell’s war on Christmas?
Probably the one thing that most people could tell you about Oliver Cromwell (other that that he had warts) was that he banned Christmas. It is a ‘fact’ that is often referenced today, with comparisons being made to modern restrictions on festivities due to Covid-19. Is it true though? Stuart Orme, curator of the Cromwell […]
Crime and Punishment under Henry II
E.M. Powell on how Henry II laid the foundations of English Common Law. King Henry II of England is best known in the popular imagination for the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, a murder for which the King was blamed. Four knights broke into Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170 and slew Becket in the most […]