The White Ship

March 30, 2024

Charles Spencer, The White Ship, Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I's Dream, (London, 2020). The book is a history of England in the early 1100s, especially about the struggle for royal succession to Henry I caused by the death of his heir in a ship that sank crossing from France to England.

Seeking Sanctuary

March 30, 2024

Shannon McSheffrey, Seeking Sanctuary, Crime, Mercy, and Politics in English Courts, 1400-1550, (Oxford, 2017). My genealogy research has found one of my putative ancestors was involved in a murder. While researching this I found a web page by the author that was about the incident. The book is an interesting and readable story about how sanctuary was for a time an established practice used to escape the harsh penalties of English common law.