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Dead Man's Ransom
''Dead Man's Ransom'' is a medieval mystery novel by Ellis Peters, first of four novels set in the disruptive year of 1141. It is the ninth in the Cadfael Chronicles, and was first published in 1984 in literature, 1984. The book was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 1995. The Sheriff of Shropshire is wounded and taken prisoner by Welsh on the side of Empress Maud in a major battle. His return requires an exchange, bringing two lively young Welshmen into the castle where the Sheriff's daughter resides. Welshmen on the border with England see opportunities for their own benefit as the chaos in England continues, with the King captured. This novel received some enthusiastic and positive reviews at the time of publication. The plot includes "a denouement that combines rough justice and love triumphant." The novel overall was described as "charmingly inventive, textured with intriguing subplots, and as rich as ever in fresh period details." Another reviewer found that "local color is at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ellis Peters
Edith Mary Pargeter (28 September 1913 – 14 October 1995), also known by her ''nom de plume'' Ellis Peters, was an English author of works in many categories, especially history and historical fiction, and was also honoured for her translations of Czech classics. She is probably best known for her murder mysteries, both historical and modern, and especially for her medieval detective series The Cadfael Chronicles. Personal Pargeter was born in the village of Horsehay (Shropshire, England), daughter of Edmund Valentine Pargeter (known as Ted) and his wife Edith ''nee'' Hordley. Her father was a clerk at the local Horsehay Company ironworks. She later moved with her parents to Dawley where she was educated at Dawley Church of England School and the old Coalbrookdale High School for Girls.Article by Toby Neal, part of series on West Midlands worthies. She had Welsh ancestry, and many of her short stories and books (both fiction and non-fiction) are set in Wales and its borderla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Owain Gwynedd
Owain ap Gruffudd ( 23 or 28 November 1170) was King of Gwynedd, North Wales, from 1137 until his death in 1170, succeeding his father Gruffudd ap Cynan. He was called Owain the Great ( cy, Owain Fawr) and the first to be styled "Prince of Wales". He is considered to be the most successful of all the North Welsh princes prior to his grandson, Llywelyn the Great. He became known as Owain Gwynedd ( wlm, Owain Gwyned, "Owain of Gwynedd") to distinguish him from the contemporary king of Powys Wenwynwyn, Owain ap Gruffydd ap Maredudd, who became known as Owain Cyfeiliog. Early life Owain Gwynedd was a member of the House of Aberffraw, the senior branch of the dynasty of Rhodri the Great. His father, Gruffudd ap Cynan, was a strong and long-lived ruler who had made the principality of Gwynedd the most influential in Wales during the sixty-two years of his reign, using the island of Anglesey as his power base. His mother, Angharad ferch Owain, was the daughter of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert, 1st Earl Of Gloucester
Robert FitzRoy, 1st Earl of Gloucester (c. 1090 – 31 October 1147 David Crouch, 'Robert, first earl of Gloucester (b. c. 1090, d. 1147)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 200Retrieved 1 Oct 2010/ref>) (''alias'' Robert Rufus, Robert de Caen ( Latinised to Robertus de Cadomo), Robert Consul) was an illegitimate son of King Henry I of England. He was the half-brother of the Empress Matilda, and her chief military supporter during the civil war known as The Anarchy, in which she vied with Stephen of Blois for the throne of England. Early life Robert was probably the eldest of Henry's many illegitimate children. He was born before his father's accession to the English throne, either during the reign of his grandfather William the Conqueror or his uncle William Rufus. He is sometimes and erroneously designated as a son of Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, last king of Deheubarth, although his mother has been identified a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Anarchy
The Anarchy was a civil war in England and Normandy between 1138 and 1153, which resulted in a widespread breakdown in law and order. The conflict was a war of succession precipitated by the accidental death of William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I, who drowned in the sinking of the ''White Ship'' in 1120. Henry sought to be succeeded by his daughter, known as Empress Matilda, but was only partially successful in convincing the nobility to support her. On Henry's death in 1135, his nephew Stephen of Blois seized the throne, with the help of Stephen's brother Henry of Blois, who was the bishop of Winchester. Stephen's early reign saw fierce fighting with disloyal English barons, rebellious Welsh leaders, and Scottish invaders. Following a major rebellion in the south-west of England, Matilda invaded in 1139 with the help of her half-brother Robert of Gloucester. In the initial years of civil war, neither side was able to achieve a decisive advantage; the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
One Corpse Too Many
''One Corpse Too Many'' is a medieval mystery novel set in the summer of 1138 by Ellis Peters. It is the second novel in the Cadfael Chronicles, first published in 1979. During the Anarchy, King Stephen takes Shrewsbury Castle and hangs all of the surviving defenders. Cadfael, a Benedictine monk of the nearby Shrewsbury Abbey discovers a murdered man hidden amongst the slain. He also has to help a young girl escape the siege, and discover the motives of Hugh Beringar – her betrothed fiancé. When the novel was first published, the author was remarked for her knowledge of the historical era and ability to create it for the reader, yet "she never lets the meticulously researched place-and-time interfere with the canny puzzle, the flesh-and-blood characterization, or the sharp tension." It was adapted for television in 1994 by Central for ITV. Plot summary In August 1138, King Stephen is besieging rebels now loyal to Empress Matilda in Shrewsbury Castle. Brother Cadfa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen, King Of England
Stephen (1092 or 1096 – 25 October 1154), often referred to as Stephen of Blois, was King of England from 22 December 1135 to his death in 1154. He was Count of Boulogne ''jure uxoris'' from 1125 until 1147 and Duke of Normandy from 1135 until 1144. His reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda, whose son, Henry II, succeeded Stephen as the first of the Angevin kings of England. Stephen was born in the County of Blois in central France as the fourth son of Stephen-Henry, Count of Blois, and Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror. His father died while Stephen was still young, and he was brought up by his mother. Placed into the court of his uncle Henry I of England, Stephen rose in prominence and was granted extensive lands. He married Matilda of Boulogne, inheriting additional estates in Kent and Boulogne that made the couple one of the wealthiest in England. Stephen narrowly escaped drowning with Henry I's son, William Ade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Leper Of Saint Giles
''The Leper of Saint Giles'' is a medieval mystery novel by Ellis Peters, set in October 1139. It is the fifth novel in The Cadfael Chronicles and was first published in 1981. The book includes a map of the Abbey, the town of Shrewsbury, St. Giles, the winding River Severn and its small local brooks, and places in the environs mentioned in this story and others in the series. It was adapted for television in 1994 by Central for ITV. Two landed families arrange a marriage between an older baron and a young woman who loves someone else. The groom does not arrive at the altar. It falls to Cadfael to find his murderer, while the main suspect of the sheriff hides in the house for lepers. This novel was ranked number 42 in the 1990 list of The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time by the British Crime Writers Association. Citing the public confrontation and the main character's skills at deduction, one reviewer said it was "another Peters delight, featuring vital characters, a beautif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Crusade
The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Islamic rule. While Jerusalem had been under Muslim rule for hundreds of years, by the 11th century the Seljuk takeover of the region threatened local Christian populations, pilgrimages from the West, and the Byzantine Empire itself. The earliest initiative for the First Crusade began in 1095 when Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested military support from the Council of Piacenza in the empire's conflict with the Seljuk-led Turks. This was followed later in the year by the Council of Clermont, during which Pope Urban II supported the Byzantine request for military assistance and also urged faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This call was met with an enthusiastic popular response across all social classes in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cadfael
Brother Cadfael is the main fictional character in a series of historical murder mysteries written between 1977 and 1994 by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter under the name "Ellis Peters". The character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedictine monk living at the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in Shrewsbury, western England, in the first half of the 12th century. The stories are set between about 1135 and about 1145, during " The Anarchy", the destructive contest for the crown of England between King Stephen and Empress Maud. As a character, Cadfael "combines the curious mind of a scientist/pharmacist with a knight-errant". He entered monastic life in his forties after being both a soldier and a sailor; this worldly experience gives him an array of talents and skills useful in monastic life. He is a skilled observer of human nature, inquisitive by nature, energetic, a talented herbalist (work he learned in the Holy Lands), and has an innate, although modern, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galanas
''Galanas'' in Welsh law was a payment made by a killer and his family to the family of his or her victim. It is similar to éraic in Ireland and the Anglo-Saxon weregild. The compensation depended on the status of the victim, but could also be affected by the circumstances of the killing, for example a killing from ambush or by poison meant the payment of double ''galanas''. The payment was due from relatives as distant as the fifth cousins of the killer, with each degree of relationship paying double the rate of the next, for example first cousins of the killer paid double the sum payable by second cousins. Women paid half the rate of payment by men. The first third of the ''galanas'' falls on the homicide, his father and mother and brothers and sisters. The remainder is shared between the kindred, with two thirds falling on the father's kindred and one third on the mother's kindred. The same rules applied to the receipt of ''galanas''. In the existing texts, dating from the 13t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shrewsbury Abbey
The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Shrewsbury (commonly known as Shrewsbury Abbey) is an ancient foundation in Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire, England. The Abbey was founded in 1083 as a Benedictine monastery by the Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, Roger de Montgomery. It grew to be one of the most important and influential abbeys in England, and an important centre of pilgrimage. Although much of the Abbey was destroyed in the 16th century, the nave survived as a parish church, and today serves as the mother church for the Parish of Holy Cross. The Abbey is a Grade I listed building and is a member of the Greater Churches Group. It is located to the east of Shrewsbury town centre, near the English Bridge, and is surrounded by a triangular area which is today referred to as Abbey Foregate. History Foundation Before the Norman conquest a small Saxon chapel dedicated to St Peter stood outside the east gate of Shrewsbury; it had been built by Siward, son o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tregeiriog
Tregeiriog (a Welsh name translating roughly as "settlement n theRiver Ceiriog") is a village in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. It is in the community of Ceiriog Ucha on the B4500 road between Glyn Ceiriog and Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog. The Battle of Crogen, between Welsh forces under Owain Gwynedd and English forces under Henry II of England, took place near Tregeirog in 1165. Richard Jones Berwyn (1838–1917), one of the founders of the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, was a native of the village. Tregeiriog was formerly in the old ecclesiastical parish of Llangadwaladr, of which it was a detached township, surrounded by other parishes.Llangadwaladr The village of Tregeiriog and the surrounding area were tran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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