Nearly 700 years ago, Priest John Forde was ambushed by four men on a busy London street and stabbed to death while walking with an acquaintance.
Researchers have uncovered new evidence which they say helps explain what happened that day so long ago and why.
Criminologist Manuel Eisner now points to a letter by Simon Mepham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as a key piece of evidence, the Express reported. The letter suggests a tawdry tale of sex, deceit, and revenge.
The newspaper reported that Eisner searched through archival records and coroner reports to piece together a plausible story of what led up to Forde's seeming execution.
In the letter, sent from Mepham to a bishop in 1332, Mepham describes the tawdry sexual exploits of excommunicated aristocrat Ela Fitzpayne. The letter accuses her of hooking up with "knights and others, single and married, and even with clerics in holy orders".
The only man named in the letter was Forde, leading Eisner to conclude that Forde must have admitted to an affair, the Express reported.
Eisner also found a record of allegations that Fitzpayne, her husband, and Forde lead a gang of "extortionists that raided a church priory, breaking into buildings and holding livestock to ransom," according to a press release.
Despite his connections to Fitzpayne, Forde participated in her later denouncement by the church. The noblewoman was ordered to enact years of degrading penance, such as barefoot walks of shame across Salisbury Cathedral.
Five years later, Forde was attacked by four people, including Fitzpayne's brother and two of her former servants.
"We are looking at a murder commissioned by a leading figure of the English aristocracy. It is planned and cold-blooded, with a family member and close associates carrying it out, all of which suggests a revenge motive," Eisner said. "Attempts to publicly humiliate Ela Fitzpayne may have been part of a political game, as the church used morality to stamp its authority on the nobility, with John Forde caught between masters."
Eisner said the killing might have been meant as a reminder to the clergy of the power of the nobility.
"Taken together, these records suggest a tale of shakedowns, sex and vengeance that expose tensions between the church and England's elites,
culminating in a mafia-style assassination of a fallen man of god by a gang of medieval hitmen," Eisner said.
