Nearly 700 years ago, a priest named John Forde was chatting on the streets of London near St. Paul’s Cathedral when he was attacked, his throat slit open by a 12-inch dagger. Today, researchers believe they have finally uncovered exactly what happened that day in 1337.
Those researchers are part of Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology Medieval Murder Maps project, led by Professor Manuel Eisner. Their article on the murder was published Friday in the Criminal Law Forum journal. It is one of hundreds of cases that the team has catalogued.
Forde’s brutal murder appears to lay at the center of class tension, politics, sexual mores and growing animosity between England and France going into the Hundred Years’ War. To understand what happened the researchers has to go back to records from five years before the incident.
“Looking into the Forde case, Eisner found a letter from Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Mepham to the Bishop of Winchester, sent in January 1332, claiming Ela Fitzpayne conducted sexual liaisons with ‘knights and others, single and married, and even with clerics in holy orders,’” Cambridge University explained in a press release.
Fitzpayne was an aristocrat married to the knight Sir Robert Fitzpayne, lord of Stogursey castle. One of her alleged lovers was Forde, the murder victim. He is, in fact, the only specific lover named in the letter. At the time, he was he rector of the church of Okeford Fitzpaine, a village on the Fitzpayne family’s Dorset estate.
In March 1332, shortly after the letter about Ela Fitzpayne’s letters was sent, records show that she and Forde were both indicted by a Royal Commission for raiding a Benedictine priory along with her husband. According to Cambridge, they “smashed priory gates and buildings, felled trees and robbed the quarry, seizing up to 18 oxen, along with 30 pigs and some 200 sheep and lambs, and driving them back to the castle.”
That priory was actually an outpost of a French abbey, the university noted. Eisner said it is possible that Forde colluded with the couple to take advantage of diplomatic tensions by stealing from the priory.
“John Forde may have had split loyalties,” said Eisner. “One to the Fitzpayne family, who were likely patrons of his church and granted him the position. And the other to the bishops who had authority over him as a clergy member.”
Eisner’s research indicates that Forde possibly confessed to a liaison with the noblewoman under pressure from the Archbishop following the raid. Then, the Archbishop may have “weaponized sexual slander to pronounce humiliating punishment on a high-ranking noblewoman who defied the moral authority of the church,” Cambridge said.
In his 1332 letter, the Archbishop calls for Ela Fitzpayne to face several punishments, from a ban on wearing gold, pearls or precious stones to annual public penance walks. Modern readers might want to imagine the walks through King’s Landing shown on the popular HBO show “Game of Thrones”.
“The most public penance was a walk of shame in bare feet the length of Salisbury Cathedral – the longest nave in England – carrying a four-pound wax candle to the altar, which Fitzpayne was told she must do every autumn for seven years,” said Cambridge.
She apparently refused to comply and hid out in Rotherhithe, then in the Diocese of Winchester, and was excommunicated.
“Attempts to publicly humiliate Ela Fitzpayne may have been part of a political game, as the church used morality to stamp its authority on the nobility, with John Forde caught between masters,” Eisner said.
However, he posits that she got her revenge in 1337 when Forde was murdered. According to the new research, one of Forde’s killers was recognized as Ela Fitzpayne’s own brother. Another two were her recent servants.
Per the jury records, Forde was in the Cheapside neighborhood of London on the evening of May 3, 1337, when a fellow priest identified as Hasculph Neville, distracted him with a “pleasant conversation,” as four men approached him. High Lovell, Ela Fitzpayne’s brother, is said to have opened Forde’s throat with the 12-inch dagger while her two former employees – Hugh Colne and John Strong – stabbed him in the belly.
“The jury, including a rosary-maker and a hatmaker, identified all assassins but claimed ignorance of their whereabouts,” said Cambridge. “They also noted the Fitzpaynes were in a longstanding feud with Forde.”
Colne was the only one to face charges for the crime. He was indicted for it in 1342 and imprisoned in Newgate. Eisner believes that the humiliation brought upon Ela Fitzpayne fueled the murder.
“Feeling humiliated motivates wars, extremism, mass killings, and here it's probably a motivation for assassination,” he said. “Humiliation creates emotions of anger and shame in the short term. Over time this can harden into a desire for violence.”
He also said the murder could be seen as a demonstration “reminding the clergy of the power of the nobility, and that Ela Fitzpayne doesn’t forget or forgive.”
“Taken together, these records suggest a tale of shakedowns, sex and vengeance that expose tensions between the church and England’s elites, culminating in the mafia-style assassination of a fallen man of god by a gang of medieval hitmen,” said Eisner.
As for where the killing falls on the Medieval Murder Map, the area of Westcheap, where Forde was slain, was something of a hotspot for murders. There were many markets, taverns, alehouses and powerful guilds in the area, meaning it was busy and sometimes chaotic.
“Records also show that the area hosted several premeditated revenge killings, such as the one that ended John Forde,” said Cambridge.
While Forde’s murder is locked in old scrolls written in Latin, now digitized for further study, revenge killings are unfortunately not something lost to the past.
“The public execution style of Forde’s killing, in front of crowds in broad daylight, is similar to the political killings we see now in countries like Russia or Mexico. It’s designed to be a reminder of who is in control,” said Eisner.