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This book represents the first full-length study of the English criminal trial in a crucial period of its development (1300-1550). Based on prime source material, The Criminal Trial in Later Medieval England uses legal treatises, contemporary reports of instructive cases, chancery rolls, state papers and court files and rolls to reconstruct the criminal trial in the later medieval and early Tudor periods. There is particular emphasis on the accusation process (studied in depth here for the first time, showing how it was, in effect, a trial within a trial); the discovery of a veritable revolution in conviction rates between the early fifteenth century and the later sixteenth (why this revolut...
In 1573, George Saunders, a respected merchant tailor, was killed by his wife's lover. The conspiracy involved Saunders' wife, her best friend, and a servant. All were found guilty and hanged, but not before a suspended clergyman fell in love with Mrs. Saunders and sought to have her pardoned. Strange, Inhuman Deaths describes in vivid and exciting detail the Saunders murder and three other well-documented cases that occurred between 1538 and 1573. These violent stories are powerful and lively, and the motivations and personalities revealed speak to us directly across the centuries. Murder most foul, murder most English-be there as the tradition begins.
This title, first published in 1989, was one of the first to directly address the legal dimension of bastard feudalism. John Bellamy explores the role and vulnerability of local officials and juries, the nature of the endemic land wars and the interference in the justice system by those at the top of the social chain. What emerges is a focus on the role of land in disputes, the importance of royal favour and political advantage and the attempt to suppress disruption. This is an interesting title, which will be of particular value to students researching the nature of late medieval and early Tudor feudalism, royal patronage and legal procedure.
Professor Bellamy places the theory of treason in its political setting and analyses the part it played in the development of legal and political thought in this period. He pays particular attention to the Statute of Treason of 1352, an act with a notable effect on later constitutional history and which, in the opinion of Edward Coke, had a legal importance second only to that of Magna Carta. He traces the English law of treason to Roman and Germanic origins, and discusses the development of royal attitudes towards rebellion, the judicial procedures used to try and condemn suspected traitors, and the interaction of the law of treason and constitutional ideas.
This title, first published in 1979, was ground-breaking in its exploration of the understudied area of the Tudor law of treason. Bellamy first examines the scope of that law, noting the inheritance from the Middle Ages, the effectiveness of the new statutes and interpretation of the law by the judiciary. Mining the archives for official, legal and literary accounts, the following parts consider how the government came to hear of traitors, the use of evidence and witnesses in trials and finally the fate of the traitor at the gallows and beyond. This is a full, useful and interesting title, which will be of great value to students researching Tudor and late medieval statute law, the Tudor concept of treason and the mores of Tudor society.
First published in 1976, this fictional biography is the intimate and detailed portrait of the celebrated Bellamy family of the TV show Upstairs, Downstairs. No family in the past century - excepting perhaps the Forsytes - has been so dramatically exposed to public stare as the Bellamys of Eaton Place. Drawing from the diaries of Richard Bellamy, the personal letters of Lady Majorie, the Southwold Papers in the British Museum, as well as his own friendship with James Bellamy and his conversations with Mrs. Elizabeth (Bellamy) Wallace shortly before her recent death in New York City, John Pearson has written a sensitive and finely detailed portrait of this patrician English family. The Bellam...