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About the Book
Stories of murderous monks, tavern brawls, robberies gone wrong, tragic accidents and criminal gangs from court records reveal how the English of medieval Ireland governed and politicized death and collectively decided what passed for ‘truth’ in legal proceedings. This study of the social practices underlying the lordship’s legal culture centres on the coroner’s jurisdiction, homicides and sentences of capital punishment between 1257 and 1344. It highlights how the English of Ireland relied on collective memory, customary law, oral histories, common fame and social networks to assess truth in legal contexts. In the period when courts increasingly emphasized written evidence, the politics of death offered opportunities to employ these social practices to both strengthen and contest the authority of the written word. Exploring how they functioned alongside developing literate practices brings Ireland’s place in the history of medieval literacy into sharper focus.
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About the Author
I grew up in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; Stuttgart, Germany; and Huntingdonshire, England. As a kid, I never appreciated the history of these amazing places—I only discovered my deep love for history when I was an undergraduate at the University of Alabama. After returning to Massachusetts and entering the 9–5 working world, I hungered for more. I enrolled part-time in the history M.A. program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. That's where I met Dr. Aidan Breen, a brilliant medieval scholar who led me to Ireland's often overlooked primary sources and humored my interest in faerie folklore. He guided me through writing my thesis, a literary history of the Island of Avalon. In 2009, I embarked on the toughest and most rewarding challenge of my life, the University of Connecticut's medieval studies Ph.D. program. After twelve years of researching, writing, rewriting, editing, and proofreading, Dublin's Four Courts Press (my first choice!) published my transformed dissertation in 2023. I am currently a full-time copy editor with Dragonfly Editorial and a part-time independent scholar. My current research focuses on social memory and reputation in early modern witchcraft trials.​
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