Tea at Trianon: Stories of Murder, Witchcraft, Cheese Theft

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, July 7, 2019

Stories of Murder, Witchcraft, Cheese Theft

From Smithsonian:

For centuries, serious offenders from the region of Cambridgeshire, England, met their judgement in court in the Isle of Ely, a historic area that was accessible only by boat until the 1600s. There, judges heard cases of theft, witchcraft, assault and murder—and now, as Alison Flood reports for the Guardian, the University of Cambridge is working to make an archive of the court’s fascinating documents more accessible to the public.

In conjunction with the Cambridgeshire Family History Society, the university is cataloguing some 270 rolls and files from the Isle of Ely’s Assizes court— a local judicial system that was held periodically and presided over by visiting judges from higher courts in London. The documents date from 1557 to 1775, and they have not been catalogued before. Most are written in Latin, and they constitute a notable collection because, according to Cambridge, “this information is not available elsewhere. There are no surviving minute books or summary records for the Assizes during this period.”

The Ely court records offer a remarkably rich array of depositions, jury lists, inquests and examinations, which are helping experts learn more about historic crime trends and the application of justice within Ely’s court system. The collection also “enables us to hear the voices of people from all backgrounds whose names come tumbling out of the records,” says Sian Collins, an archivist at the Cambridge University Library.

There are stories of rage, desperation, indignation—like the 1580 case of yeoman John Webbe, who was called to answer a plea of defamation after he told one Joan Tyler that her husband was “a knave, a rascall & a thief.” Also in 1580, the court documented the crime of one William Sturns, who was brought to court for swiping three cheeses.

“Unfortunately we don’t know what type of cheese it was,” Collins tells Sabrina Imbler of Atlas Obscura. Sturns was ultimately found not guilty; juries tended to show leniency to people who stole “low value food and drink,” Collins explains, because they recognized that the perpetrators were likely driven to steal out of desperation. In fact, for all their tantalizing details, the Ely court records are often heart-breaking, testifying to the harsh realities of life in England’s past. In 1577, for example, a woman named Margaret Cotte was accused of killing the daughter of a blacksmith by “witchcraft.” She, too, was found not guilty, but the records “leave room for historians to wonder about the effects of the accusation and the acquittal on those involved and their community,” Cambridge says in a statement.(Read more.)