About 15 years ago, I was on a cruise ship going around the Caribbean islands for a month. It was not a pleasure cruise; I was responsible for forming and teaching the passengers who had joined the cruise choir. Some of them hadn’t sung since they were at school, but they had to learn enough music to sing two concerts given in front of all the other passengers. It was fun.
But as I stared out at the port of Antigua, singing was the last thing on my mind. A phrase—Henry’s black-eyed boy—kept running through my head. I wanted to write a book about what might have happened had Anne Boleyn given Henry VIII the strong, healthy, male heir he so desperately wanted. Which meant, of course, changing history.
Well, that was a problem, because pedantic is my middle name and I didn’t want to change the history. So how could I change the history but only tweak it a bit? I couldn’t, so, in the end, I decided to not only change history but play into the beliefs and fears of magic and witchcraft so prevalent in the Middle Ages. The Tudor Enigma, featuring my apothecary at Hampton Court Palace was born, and the books were accepted and published by Harlequin.
Fast forward 8 years, and suddenly, an email from Pen and Sword Publishing popped into my inbox. The editor loved The Tudor Enigma books and how did I feel about writing a proper non-fiction book on crime and punishment in Tudor England?
How did I feel? Panicked, yes; enormously complimented, yes; terrified, yes. I said yes. Two years later, Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: From Alchemists to Zealots has just hit the bookshops. I won’t lie, it was sometimes a soul-searing experience. The depth of man’s inhumanity to man, not just in how the punishments were allocated, but how some were refined to extend the victims’ agony, led me to some very dark places.
Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: from Alchemy to Zealots, is not written for an academic audience, but for the Everyman reader. In other words, for those people who know a bit, or even, perhaps, very little about ordinary life in Tudor England and would like to know more; but in an accessible way and with some low-key humour thrown in.
The book begins with a review of how things were before that momentous day on 22nd August 1485 when Richard III was killed on Bosworth battlefield. Richard had worn his crown into battle but lost it while he was being hacked to death. It was found in a nearby bush, and Henry Tudor’s supporters lost no time in placing it on his head.
The book reviews the law as it developed from Roman law through the Vikings and King Alfred. The latter spent time in Rome soaking up the legal system and was familiar with it. He brought some of its tenets into English law when he became king. And, of course, it is to Roman law that we owe many of our current legal Latin terms.
I have to warn you there is a gory section, which details the punishments and exactly what happens to the body when those punishments are inflicted upon it. If you want to know what happens when you are decapitated, burned, boiled or hanged, this section is for you.
The foregoing sets the scene for Case Studies, where you will find the weird and the wonderful, and the far from wonderful. You will meet arch con-man Gregory Wisdom and find out that stupidity is not a 21st century attribute, nor limited to the poor; John Daniell, who tried to blackmail the puissant Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, favourite of Queen Elizabeth I; why many women accused of witchcraft confessed to things nobody today would believe; where Charles Dickens found his ideas for Oliver Twist; the different levels of treason, and many more.
"Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: From Alchemists to Zealots".
Here is the link:
https://t.co/LuiSW5trex
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