In today’s blog Dr Simon Payling, senior research fellow in our Commons 1461-1504 project, once again turns his attention to crime and punishment in the medieval period. In the 14th century, the criminal law system may have worked slowly, but it was particularly harsh to those convicted of ‘petty treason’…
In the first months of 1316 there was a notable series of deaths in the knightly family of Gayton.In the space of four days in January the head of the family, Sir Philip, a former Warwickshire MP, and his son and heir, Theobald, died at their manor of ‘le Grave’ in that county, and it may be that the two men were victims of some infectious disease.Disease, however, was emphatically not the explanation for the third of the deaths. The heirs to the Gayton estates were Theobald’s two sisters, both married, the elder of the two, Juliana, to Sir…
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