Clergy and Criminal Violence in Later Medieval England and Wales

Peter D. Clarke is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Southampton and President of the International Society of Medieval Canon Law. His publications include The Interdict in the Thirteenth Century: A Question of Collective Guilt (2007) and Supplications from England and Wales in the Registers of the Apostolic Penitentiary, 1410-1503 in three volumes (co-edited with Patrick N R Zutshi, 2013-15).

• List of tables; Preface; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Jurisdiction over violent clergy; 2. Protecting clergy from violence; 3. Clergy and contexts of criminal violence; 4. Clergy as killers; Conclusion; Appendix 1. The Richard Atte Halle case; Appendix 2. Penances imposed by English church courts in Si quis suadente cases; Bibliography; Index.

'This is an exciting and innovative study of the rules developed by medieval canon law in relation to serious violence committed by clerics and against clerics and how these were applied and interpreted in England during the later Middle Ages and how they intersected with (and arguably influenced) the workings of English royal criminal justice. It is also a valuable study of the social settings of such violence and one which draws upon an impressive volume of original evidence from English ecclesiastical courts, the records of the papal penitentiary as well as English royal courts.' Paul Brand, University of Oxford