Reopening a 688-year-old murder case reveals a tangled web of adultery and extortion in medieval England

The sun was setting on a busy London street on a May evening in 1337 when a group of men approached a priest named John Forde. They surrounded him in front of a church near Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, stabbed him in the neck and stomach, and then fled. Witnesses identified his killers, but just one assailant went to prison. And the woman who might have ordered the brazen and shocking hit — Ela Fitzpayne, a wealthy and powerful aristocrat — was never brought to justice, according to historical records describing the case. Nearly 700 years later, new details have come to light about the events leading up to the brutal crime and the noblewoman who was likely behind it. Her criminal dealings included theft and extortion as well as the murder of Forde — who was also her former lover. Forde (his name also appeared in records as “John de Forde”) could have been part of a crime gang led by Fitzpayne, according to a recently discovered document. The group robbed a nearby French-controlled priory, taking advantage of England’s deteriorating relationship with France to extort the church, researchers reported in a study published June 6 in the journal Criminal Law Forum. But the wayward priest may have then betrayed Fitzpayne to his religious superiors. The Archbishop of Canterbury penned a letter in 1332 that the new report also linked to Forde’s murder. In the letter, the archbishop denounced Fitzpayne and accused her of committing serial adultery “with knights and others, single and married, and even with clerics in holy orders.” The archbishop’s letter named one of Fitzpayne’s many paramours: Forde, who was rector of a parish church in a village on the Fitzpayne family’s estate in Dorset. In the wake of this damning accusation, the church assigned Fitzpayne humiliating public penance. Years later, she exacted her revenge by having Forde assassinated, according to lead study author Dr. Manuel Eisner, a professor at the UK’s University of Cambridge and director of its Institute of Criminology. This 688-year-old murder “provides us with further evidence about the entanglement of the clergy in secular affairs — and the very active role of women in managing their affairs and their relationships,” Dr. Hannah Skoda, an associate professor of medieval history in St. John’s College at the UK’s Oxford University, told CNN in an email. “In this case, events dragged on for a very long time, with grudges being held, vengeance sought and emotions running high,” said Skoda, who was not involved in the research. The new clues about Forde’s murder provide a window into the dynamics of medieval revenge killings, and how staging them in prestigious public spaces may have been a display of power, according to Eisner. Map of murder Eisner is a cocreator and project leader of Medieval Murder Maps, an interactive digital resource that collects cases of homicide and other sudden or suspicious deaths in 14th century London, Oxford and York. Launched by Cambridge in 2018, the project translates reports from coroners’ rolls — records written by medieval coroners in Latin noting the details and motives of crimes, based on the deliberation of a local jury. Jurors would listen to witnesses, examine evidence and then name a suspect. In the case of Forde’s murder, the coroner’s roll stated that Fitzpayne and Forde had quarreled, and that she persuaded four men — her brother, two servants and a chaplain — to kill him. On that fateful evening, as the chaplain approached Forde in the street and distracted him with conversation, his accomplices struck. Fitzpayne’s brother slit his throat, and the servants stabbed Forde in the belly. Only one of the assailants, a servant named Hugh Colne, was charged in the case and imprisoned at Newgate in 1342. “I was initially fascinated by the text in the coroner’s record,” Eisner told CNN in an email, describing the events as “a dream-like scene that we can see through hundreds of years.” The report left Eisner wanting to learn more. “One would love to know what the members of the investigative jury discussed,” he said. “One wonders about how and why ‘Ela’ convinces four men to kill a priest, and what the nature of this old quarrel between her and John Forde might have been. That’s what led me to examine this further.” ‘Thirst for revenge’ Eisner tracked down the archbishop’s letter in a 2013 dissertation by medieval historian and author Helen Matthews. The archbishop’s accusation assigned severe punishments and public penance to Fitzpayne, such as donating large sums of money to the poor, abstaining from wearing gold or precious gems, and walking in her bare feet down the length of Salisbury Cathedral toward the altar, carrying a wax candle that weighed about four pounds. She was ordered to perform this so-called walk of shame every fall for seven years. Though she seemingly defied the archbishop and never performed the penance, the humiliation “may have triggered her thirst for revenge,” the study authors wrote. The second clue that Eisner unearthed was a decade older than the letter: a 1322 investigation of Forde and Fitzpayne by a royal commission, following a complaint filed by a French Benedictine priory near the Fitzpayne castle. The report was translated and published in 1897 but had not yet been connected to Forde’s murder at that point. According to the 1322 indictment, Fitzpayne’s crew — which included Forde and her husband, Sir Robert, a knight of the realm — smashed gates and buildings at the priory and stole roughly 200 sheep and lambs, 30 pigs and 18 oxen, driving them back to the castle and holding them for ransom. Eisner said he was astonished to find that Fitzpayne, her husband and Forde were mentioned in a case of cattle rustling during a time of rising political tensions with France. “That moment was quite exciting,” he said. “I would never have expected to see these three as members of a group involved in low-level warfare against a French Priory.” ‘Violence experts’ During this time in British history, city dwellers were no strangers to violence. In Oxford alone, homicide rates during the late medieval period were about 60 to 75 deaths per 100,000 people, a rate about 50 times higher than what is currently seen in English cities. One Oxford record describes “scholars on a rampage with bows, swords, bucklers, slings and stones.” Another mentions an altercation that began as an argument in a tavern, then escalated to a mass street brawl involving blades and battle-axes. But even though medieval England was a violent period, “this absolutely does NOT mean that people did not care about violence,” Skoda said. “In a legal context, in a political context, and in communities more widely, people were really concerned and distressed about high levels of violence.” The Medieval Murder Maps project “provides fascinating insights into the ways in which people carried out violence, but also into the ways in which people worried about it,” Skoda said. “They reported, investigated and prosecuted, and really relied on law.” Fitzpayne’s tangled web of adultery, extortion and assassination also reveals that despite social constraints, some women in late medieval London still had agency — especially where murder was concerned. “Ela was not the only woman who would recruit men to kill, to help her protect her reputation,” Eisner said. “We see a violent event that arises from a world where members of the upper classes were violence experts, willing and able to kill as a way to maintain power.” Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine. She is the author of “Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control” (Hopkins Press).