The Bishop Must Die
Michael Jecks
Copyright © 2009 Michael Jecks
The right of Michael Jecks to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by
Headline Publishing Group in 2014
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4722 1989 3
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
About the Author
Michael Jecks gave up a career in the computer industry to concentrate on his writing. He is the founder of Medieval Murderers, has been Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association, and helped create the Historical Writers’ Association. Keen to help new writers, for some years he organised the Debut Dagger competition, and is now organising the Aspara Writing festival for new writers at Evesham. He has judged many prizes, including the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. Michael is an international speaker on writing and for business. He lives with his wife, children and dogs in northern Dartmoor.
Michael can be contacted through his website:
www.michaeljecks.co.uk
.
He can be followed on twitter (
@MichaelJecks
) or on
Facebook.com/Michael.Jecks.author
.
His photos of Devon and locations for his books can be found at:
Flickr.com/photos/Michael_Jecks
.
The Last Templar
The Merchant’s Partner
A Moorland Hanging
The Crediton Killings
The Abbot’s Gibbet
The Leper’s Return
Squire Throwleigh’s Heir
Belladonna at Belstone
The Traitor of St Giles
The Boy-Bishop’s Glovemaker
The Tournament of Blood
The Sticklepath Strangler
The Devil’s Acolyte
The Mad Monk of Gidleigh
The Templar’s Penance
The Outlaws of Ennor
The Tolls of Death
The Chapel of Bones
The Butcher of St Peter’s
A Friar’s Bloodfeud
The Death Ship of Dartmouth
Malice of Unnatural Death
Dispensation of Death
The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover
The Prophecy of Death
The King of Thieves
No Law in the Land
The Bishop Must Die
The Oath
King’s Gold
City of Fiends
Templar’s Acre
‘Michael Jecks is the master of the medieval whodunnit’ Robert Low
‘Captivating … If you care for a well-researched visit to medieval England, don’t pass this series’
Historical Novels Review
‘Michael Jecks has a way of dipping into the past and giving it that immediacy of a present-day newspaper article … He writes … with such convincing charm that you expect to walk round a corner in Tavistock and meet some of the characters’
Oxford Times
‘Great characterisation, a detailed sense of place, and a finely honed plot make this a superb medieval historical’
Library Journal
‘Stirring intrigue and a compelling cast of characters will continue to draw accolades’
Publishers Weekly
‘A tortuous and exciting plot … The construction of the story and the sense of period are excellent’
Shots
‘This fascinating portrayal of medieval life and the corruption of the Church will not disappoint. With convincing characters whose treacherous acts perfectly combine with a devilishly masterful plot, Jecks transports readers back to this wicked world with ease’
Good Book Guide
The twenty-eighth novel in Michael Jecks’s medieval Knights Templar series.
1326: King Edward II’s estranged wife Queen Isabella shames him by refusing to return from France to England. When the king hears she has betrothed their son to the daughter of the French Count of Hainault, all England fears invasion.
The King’s knights, including Sir Baldwin de Funshill, are commanded to London to protect the realm. Meanwhile Bishop Stapledon, the Treasurer of England, is under severe threat – but from whom? He has made many enemies in a long political life and Sir Baldwin and his friend, Bailiff Simon Puttock, must do all they can to find the would-be assassin before they strike …
In memory of George MacDonald Fraser, whose writing influenced me enormously, whose research spurred me to accuracy, and whose war memoirs are still the very best record of the life of a WWII British soldier.
| annuellar | a chantry-priest, one who held specific masses dedicated to those who had paid for their services. |
| array | raising a force to fight for the king was increasingly problematic, so Commissioners of Array were sent out to assess all the men in every hundred or township between the ages of sixteen and sixty. The healthy were taken to form the troopers of his host. |
| burned wine | the medieval term for brandy. |
| centaine | the grouping of five vintaines to form a hundred men in the king’s host. |
| corrody | a form of medieval pension, in which a wealthy patron would buy a post in a religious institution for a retired servant. The retired man would be given food and drink as well as accommodation and a little spending money. |
| eyre | this was the term for the circuit of a king’s judge as he travelled from one county to the next. Often he was called a ‘Justice in Eyre’. In 1321 there was held the ‘Eyre of London’, an investigation into the powers and rights of the city of London with the aim of curbing them and probably taxing them to the benefit of the Crown. As Bishop Walter was the Lord High Treasurer at the time, many Londoners blamed him for the eyre, although I have seen no evidence to support this (only Walsingham, writing ninety years after the event, has suggested it). |
| familia | this was the term for a clerical household. |
| fosser | the gravedigger or sexton. |
| hobelar | a lightly armed man-at-arms on horseback (a ‘hobby’ thus the term ‘hobbler’). Unlike a knight or squire, they were lightly armoured, and were used more as a highly mobile infantry, leaving their horses to fight on foot. During the Hundred Years War, Edward III used archers on horseback extensively, giving him the strategic mobility his campaigns needed. |
| host | the word ‘army’ did not exist in the 1300s. That is a much more recent concept. Instead, there was the feudal host, which comprised all those who owed service to their lord. |
| hundred | the most basic unit of administration in the realm. Its initial purpose is obscure: it may have been intended to provide a hundred warriors to the king’s host, or to cover one hundred hides of land, but the most important aspect by 1326 was that each hundred had its own court. |
| millaine | a group of ten centaines would make a millaine in the military unit. |
| novel disseisin | a class of action very popular in medieval times, by which a plaintiff could bid a sheriff to gather a jury of twelve in order to hear that a plot or parcel of land had been stolen. |
| paindemaigne | at a time when all peasants were forced to consume vast quantities of bread to supplement their diet, only those of enormous wealth could afford the best, white bread, the paindemaigne . |
| seisin | seisin is one of the cardinal concepts of English and therefore American law. It is the basic law of ownership, and although some have assumed its roots come from a violent act of ‘seizing’ someone else’s property (and possession being nine-tenths of the law, that means they own it), in fact, legal historians generally reckon it implied peaceful ownership. |
| vintaine | twenty men-at-arms gathered into a unit for the king’s host. |