Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Unnatural Murder: Poison at the Court of James l > Status Update

Charlie Fenton
is 82% done
Bacon had assured the King that there would be little public indignation if their death sentences were waived. He was confident that, because ‘the blood of Overbury is already revenged by divers executions’, there could be no grounds for protest, an argument that blithely overlooked the manifest injustice of failing to punish the Somersets for a crime for which others had previously paid the ultimate penalty
— Mar 03, 2022 01:42AM
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Charlie Fenton
is 88% done
“By a supreme irony, the royal favourite who was a murder victim was more reviled than the one convicted of murder.”
— Mar 05, 2022 03:13PM

Charlie Fenton
is 61% done
‘in 1531 there was a celebrated case of poisoning which Henry VIII considered ‘so odious’ that he decreed that poisoning should be regarded as a species of high treason, rather than a mere felony. Accordingly he ‘inflicted a more grievous and lingering death than the common law prescribed, viz that the offender should be boiled to death in hot water’.’
— Feb 15, 2022 05:21PM

Charlie Fenton
is 53% done
‘Abbot persisted, arguing that ‘George was of a good nature, which the other was not’ and that, even if Villiers’s character degenerated once he was sure of the King’s favour, it would be a long time before he became as odious as Somerset. In the face of these entreaties, and the representations of those other noblemen who were thrusting Villiers forward, Queen Anne relented’
— Feb 08, 2022 04:16AM

Charlie Fenton
is 44% done
‘Overbury added as an afterthought that his parents should not take seriously Suffolk’s warning that there would be some delay before the King would assent to his release. He proclaimed confidently, ‘For that word in the letter (“sometime”) is no long time, a week or ten days’. It is almost unbearably poignant to think that, within three weeks of writing this joyous note, Overbury was dead.‘
— Jan 31, 2022 03:53PM

Charlie Fenton
is 28% done
‘if a husband testified under oath that he was impotent, and his wife confirmed this, then their marriage could be considered void. The drawback was that, if the husband subsequently had sexual relations with another woman, this proved that he was guilty of perjury, and he would then be obliged to take back his former wife. This meant that there was little incentive for the male to be honest’
— Jan 18, 2022 06:46AM

Charlie Fenton
is 18% done
‘For some years prior to her husband’s death she had been having an affair with Sir Arthur Mainwaring, a carver to Prince Henry, who had fathered three of her children. Dr Turner, it seems, had been aware of the situation, and had accepted it. At any rate, in his will he was amiable enough to leave Mainwaring a bequest of £10, implying that this should be spent on a wedding ring for Mrs Turner’
— Jan 14, 2022 02:00PM

Charlie Fenton
is 9% done
‘Mrs Anne Turner, who was also found guilty of being an accessory, told the Sheriff of London as she awaited execution, ‘O, the court, the court! God bless the King and send him better servants about him, for there is no religion in the most of them, but malice, pride, whoredom, swearing and rejoicing in the fall of others. It is so wicked a place as I wonder the earth did not open and swallow it up.’’
— Jan 12, 2022 08:05AM

Charlie Fenton
is starting
(Audiobook version, not on here - and not easy to add on iPhone!)
— Jan 10, 2022 12:42AM