Murder, Mayhem and a very small Penis

Frederik  Pedersen

"Investigates the 1375 murder of William Cantilupe. Argues that he was murdered because his brother, Nicholas, had a very small penis. (and no, this is not a piss-take). On 23 March 1375 a young English nobleman called William Cantilupe was murdered by his cook and his squire in his manor in Lincolnshire. Once he was dead the murderers cleaned the corpse, carried it on horseback for seven miles to an out-of-the-way place, dressed the body in clean clothes and riding gear and left it by the side of the road so that it might look as though William had been killed by robbers. Despite these precautions, the two were arrested and tried for William’s murder. However, during the trial it transpired that the two assassins had not acted alone: no less than sixteen people were summoned to answer to the King’s Bench in Lincoln concerning the murder. William had been a member of the highest nobility in the country-- his great-great uncle was St Thomas of Hereford and his grandfather (Nicholas, third baron Cantilupe) had been a friend and associate of Edward III. In his own brief life William had served as a retainer of Edward the Black Prince and of John of Gaunt. Therefore his murder was a particularly heinous crime. In addition, the murder was also the first instance of a murder that fell under the definition of petty treason found in the Statute of Treasons (1351). Among the accused were William’s wife, Maud Nevil, and his chambermaid, both of whom came from noble northern families. It transpired during the trial that, once they had rid themselves of the body, William’s assassins had traveled forty miles across the Lincolnshire Plain in the company of Maud and the chambermaid to seek refuge with another Lincolnshire noble, Sir Ralph Paynel. The case was heard by several sessions of the Sheriff’s Court presided over by the Lincolnshire sheriff, Thomas Kydale. The court eventually found the cook and squire guilty of the crime and condemned them to death for their petty treason, but Maud was found innocent of the charge of having let the assassins into her husband’s locked bed-chamber. Similar courts eventually acquitted both Maud and Ralph Paynel of aiding the criminals after the crime. In addition the chambermaid, Agnes Lovel, escaped justice by bribing her prison guards to let her go. However, a closer examination of the case indicates that the courts may have been willingly participating in at least a partial miscarriage of justice. First of all, the chambermaid, a member of the powerful Lovel family, was spirited out of prison - two prison guards were later accused of accepting a bribe to release her. In addition the sheriff Thomas Kydale – who had found both Maud Nevil and Ralph Paynel innocent – paid a fine to the king two years later when he admitted to have married William’s widow soon after the murder. We can thus see that Maud may have had a reason to become involved in William’s murder, and that Thomas Kydale may have had a reason to condone her involvement in such a murder. But what about Sir Ralph Paynel? Why would this powerful nobleman risk so much to offer sanctuary to a large group of assassins and their accomplices? Previous historians have pointed out that there was already bad blood between Ralph Paynel and the Cantilupe family, despite the fact that his daughter was married to Nicholas Cantilupe, William’s older brother. A decade earlier in 1366 Ralph had even lead a band of his men to attack the Cantilupe seat, Greasley Castle, carrying off his daughter, the wife of William’s brother Nicholas and her chattels. However, to date no-one has been able to identify the cause of this conflict. This article suggests that the root cause of the enmity between Ralph Paynel and the Cantilupe family was the fact that Nicholas Cantilupe suffered from a very rare congenital disorder which almost certainly meant that he was born with two X-chromosomes (and thus genetically was a woman) and that he would not have had external genitals. We learn this surprising fact from newly discovered proceedings in the York consistory court where Ralph Paynel’s daughter, Katherine, pleaded for the annulment of her marriage to Nicholas in 1367-68. Katherine had married Nicholas in 1364 when she was sixteen years old. Almost immediately after the nuptials she fled back to her parents’ manor where the terrified teenager reluctantly told her parents that when Nicholas was asleep “she had often sought that place in which his genitals should be but it was as flat as the back of a man’s hands”. Naturally, this caused much consternation among the Paynels. However, when the family raised their concerns with the Bishop of Lincoln he advised them that according to canon law Katherine had to complete two years of cohabitation with Nicholas before an annulment could be granted. She therefore returned to her husband’s castle and stayed there for two years, but in 1366 she returned to her family and approached the court in York to request an annulment. It was during these proceedings that Nicholas decided to take matters into his hands. He ordered his men to ride to the Paynel manor in Caythorp and there to abduct Katherine and bring her back to Greasley Castle. When she arrived, Nicholas threatened to detain her indefinitely and showed her a room equipped with manacles and foot irons in which he claimed he would keep her unless she desisted from the case in York. With this in mind, it is not surprising that Katherine’s father attacked Greasley castle in 1366."

Murder, Mayhem, and a very small Penis Introduction On a Friday evening in the spring of 1375, William Cantilupe, a knight of the relatively young age of thirty and the great-great-nephew of St Thomas of Hereford, was murdered by members of his household. His murder, which took place in his wife’s family manor in Scotton in Lincolnshire, marked the final stage of the fall of the house of Cantilupe as a major baronial family in medieval England. However, although the legal records of the subsequent murder trials have been known since 1936 and the motives for the murder have been the subject of much speculation, we have hitherto been unable to understand the motives behind the involvement of Sir Ralph Paynel, powerful nobleman and a retainer of no less than two of the most powerful nobles in late fourteenth-century England, John of Gaunt and Sir Thomas Roos. As we shall see, this Lincolnshire murder case is spectacular in its mixture of sexual and secular motives and its final resolution and the complex interactions of the main protagonists in the decades preceding the crime make this particular murder, which was one of the first to be tried under the Statute of Treasons, worth considering more fully. In this paper we shall combine a re-examination of the murder of William Cantilupe with a case initiated seven years earlier between his brother, Nicholas and Nicholas’ wife which was heard by the consistory court in York in 1368-70. The latter case has not previously been linked to the murder of William Cantilupe, but it adds startling new information about a pre-existing conflict between the Cantilupe and Paynel families that can be traced back for almost two decades. The Murder of William Cantilupe On a Friday evening in the spring of 1375, most likely 23 or 30 March, William Cantilupe was preparing for bed in the manor of Scotton in Lincolnshire. Though he usually stayed at his family’s main seat, Greasley Castle in Nottinghamshire, on that night he had chosen to stay at a manor that was a long-standing part of his new wife’s patrimony. William had only succeeded to his own patrimony five years earlier when his brother Nicholas died abroad in 1370. Almost immediately after his brother’s death, William had become a retainer of John of Gaunt and from June 1370 until the month of December 1371 he served with him overseas. The records indicate that he served an additional tour of duty with John of Gaunt beginning in the summer of 1373, when he issued a letter of attorney for the duration of his stay abroad. Sometime during this period William had married Maud, the daughter of Sir Ralph Nevil. We do not know the date of their marriage nor indeed whether it had been preceded by any form of courtship or if it had been a marriage of convenience, but their cohabitation cannot have been of long standing and whatever time they did have together was interrupted by William’s service abroad. It is not possible to say whether William was aware that he had enemies: having come into his title only five years earlier, and having served as a man of arms since he was 25, he had had little opportunity to make enemies locally. If he was worried about any locals with a grudge he might have spared a thought for the family of Sir Ralph Paynel, whose daughter Katherine had married William’s brother, Nicholas, ten years earlier. That marriage had ended in disarray and it had only been Nicholas Cantilupe’s early death at the age of 27 that had prevented the scandalous details of their union from becoming public. On Nicholas’ death William inherited most of the family lands that had been assembled together during his grandfather’s generation. His brother’s wife, Katherine had married again almost immediately and as a consequence of the Royal Inquisitions Post Mortem William had been forced to argue with Katherine and her new husband, Sir John Auncell concerning the possession of three castles to which Katherine claimed she had been enfeoffed jointly with Nicholas. In the end, William had been successful in asserting his ownership of the castles. In September 1371 he was granted seisin of the three castles, but as he was abroad in Aquitaine, he did not take full possession of them until Christmas the same year. This grant gave him possession of almost the entire Cantilupe patrimony and made him a very substantial landowner with manors in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, and Buckinghamshire. The Paynel family should not have worried him too much: Katherine now lived with John Auncell and her closest family member, her father Sir Ralph Paynel, lived more than forty miles away over open land almost due south of Scotton and had little influence in the Nevil fee, so William had little reason to worry. In any case, as any sensible man would do at night, William locked the door to his room before he disrobed. He most likely said his prayers before climbing into bed - subsequent juries claimed that he “was at peace with God and the lord king” at the time of his death. His wife Maud was not in the bedroom with him. In the subsequent trial, Maud was indicted for having conspired with William’s chambermaid, Agatha Lovell, to unlock the door to William’s room to let in two other members of the household. These two, William’s squire, Richard Gyse, and his cook, Roger, were relatively poor men who had easy access to knives. We do not know if, like Polonius, they were secreted in the bed chamber or if they were let in after William locked the door. But we do know that they carried out an attack on William and stabbed him many times as he was sitting on the bed. There can be little doubt that Maud played a large part in the planning and execution of William’s murder, but she was not alone: in subsequent trials 15 members of the Cantilupe household were indicted for the murder. All these suspects were probably at least in the know about the murder: when the two assassins had finished their grisly deed, the household colluded in covering up the murder: the body was “dried out with heated-up water in order that they not be discredited by the effusion of the blood of their wounds”. The fact that ”heated-up water” water was used to wash the body implies that the court believed that the entire household was involved in aiding and abetting the murder. The boiled water would have had to be carried through the manor from the kitchen to William’s bed-chamber either before the murder (and thus be prepared ahead of time, implying premeditation) or have been carried in full view of the servants after the murder (thus implying their complicity). Thus, although there were many members of the Cantilupe household who must have known about the murder, the main perpetrators made elaborate attempts to hide the nature of William’s demise and to avoid capture and trial. When the body had been cleaned, the naked corpse was put in a sack and carried on horseback for four miles in a south-easterly direction to the edge of the village of Giringham. There William’s assassins clothed the body in clean clothes, boots, spurs and a belt to make it look like William Cantilupe had been attacked by highwaymen. Their plan seems to have worked: although the jurors of seven wapontakes agreed that the murder took place sometime in March (either a week before or after the feast of the Virgin) the King’s Bench records disagree over the date by up to two months. Such uncertainty over the dates can be taken to indicate that the body of William Cantilupe was not found for some time after the murder. How to get away with murder The murder of William Cantilupe had clearly been well prepared and executed. But the four main conspirators had not only prepared for the actual murder. An elaborate escape had also been planned. Though there were only four persons who sought refuge with Ralph Paynel it was not just the four main conspirators who left Scotton manor. The entire manor was closed down in an orderly fashion, and it was probably the sudden dispersal of the entire household that alerted the Lincolnshire juries to the murder. We do not know where the majority of the household sought refuge, but we do know that when William’s body had been deposited in the field near Grayingham, the main culprits –Maud Nevil, Agatha Lovell, Ralph Gyse and Roger the Cook – rode across the Lincolnshire plains to seek refuge in the manor of Sir Ralph Paynel at Caythorp, some 40 miles away. At the subsequent trial, Sir Ralph became the sixteenth person to be summoned to the King’s bench which demanded to hear him answer for his role in aiding and abetting the murderers. We have already seen that Paynel had reason to bear a grudge against William for his possession of three castles which Paynel’s daughter claimed as her own, and this may have been enough to decide him to provide shelter and protection for the killers. But we also learn from the Close Rolls that it was not the first time that he had sheltered murderers: some fifteen years earlier, on 12 November 1360, when Paynel was the Black Prince’s surveyor of deer in Yorkshire, Edward III sent a letter to the sheriff of Lincoln instructing him not to arrest Ralph Paynell for sheltering John Courcy and John de Scotton who had been indicted for the death of a certain Roger de Keleby. We learn the details of that incident--or at least the version of events that Paynell thought would get him and his servants off the criminal charge of murder-- from a chancery inquisition two years later: On the Friday before Michaelmas 1361 (i.e 25 September 1361) Roger de Keleby and John Courcy were travelling at night near Berghton near the city of Lincoln. Roger had an unspecified quarrel with Ralph Paynell and believed John to be an enemy because Ralph Paynell was John’s master. He therefore drew “a long knife called ‘baslard’” and assaulted John Courcy, chasing him and “Walter his servant” (possibly a mistake for John de Scotton?) for several miles during which he wounded John. John claimed he had no alternative than to draw his knife “in self-defence”. During the ensuing altercation he struck a fatal blow at Roger’s stomach from which Roger later died. We do not know the ultimate outcome of this case, but the case put forward was plausible and most likely, John was let of the murder charge. However, regardless of the outcome, it also shows that Ralph Paynel was a man who was not averse to taking risks and that he was loyal to his servants, to the extent of sheltering them from criminal charges. It is arguable that this willingness to take chances and act decisively to protect his own had made him appear to be a desirable father in-law for William’s grandmother, who at that time was searching for a suitable match for William’s brother, Nicholas. The Cantilupe murder Trial . During the summer of 1375 seven Lincolnshire juries reported the murder of William Cantilupe to the Justices of the Peace. A trial was scheduled before the King’s Bench in Lincoln during the autumn that same year. Sixteen people were indicted, fifteen members of the Cantilupe household in Scotton and Sir Ralph Paynel. The first meeting of the county court took place in Lincoln on 25 June 1375 before the coroners and was convened by the sheriff of Lincoln, Thomas Kydale. Several of the accused appeared in person to answer their accusers at this meeting. Two of them--William’s wife, Maud, and one of the stewards, Robert de Cletham--were acquitted under mainprise, meaning that they were set free in return for a guarantee by members of the local community that they would ensure that the accused appeared at subsequent court meetings. Given her almost certain complicity in the murder it must have come as a surprise to the two assassins, William’s squire, Robert Gyse, and Roger the Cook, that Maud named them as the murderers. She may well have done so to deflect suspicion from herself for at the subsequent meeting of the King’s Bench--again presided over by Thomas Kydale--held in Lincoln at Michaelmas (29 September 1375), Maud withdrew her accusation and paid a fine for not pursuing her accusation. Therefore it fell to the Lincolnshire juries to uphold Maud’s accusation and subsequently they duly indicted Robert Gyse and Roger the Cook. These two were subsequently apprehended and in 1377 they were convicted of the murder and ordered to be hanged and drawn under the Statute of Treasons. We can only wonder at this apparent double-cross by Maud, but perhaps the fact that Robert Gyse and Roger the Cook were neither wealthy nor influential had something to do with it: the records of the King’s Bench proceedings in Westminster reported that Roger the Cook owned chattels to the value of 10 shillings and a half acre of land valued at six pence. Robert Gyse owned nothing according to the court. We can tentatively suggest that the two assassins had known of the risks and that they were promised by the other conspirators that their families would be looked after in case there were not able to flee the country and the decision of the King’s court went against the two assassins. The assassins may have thought that they had a good chance of escaping from harsh punishment for it is clear that the main conspirators had powerful allies and managed to secure the freedom of at least two other conspirators. The murder was not only spectacular, it was also the first murder of a noble magnate committed by servants after the passage of the 1354 Statute of Treasons and it was not forgotten by courtly society: at the special intercession of Queen Anne, 14 years after William Cantilupe’s death, a pardon was granted to John Taylor of Barnaby, one of William’s stewards who had been indicted for the murder. Thus, not only was the murder not forgotten one and a half decades later, but there were still people at court working to have the suspects let off the charge even such a long time after the actual murder had taken place. The legal aftermath of the murder . In the absence of clear evidence we can only presume that the gruesome punishment of the assassins was carried out. But there are also some signs that the Lincolnshire officials helped some of the culprits escape justice. Maud Nevil and the steward Robert de Cletham were treated more leniently by the court: some Lincolnshire juries had cited Maud as a principal of the murder while others saw her as an accessory. But the court sworn in by Thomas Kydale released her under mainprise until the other principals had been convicted and outlawed. Among the mainpernors who guaranteed her appearance when summoned to appear in London was the same sheriff of Lincoln, Thomas Kydale. The steward, Robert de Cletham, received the same treatment as Maud and a year later to the day, during the time when Ralph Paynel held the office of sheriff of Lincoln, Maud Nevil and Robert Cletham appeared before the King’s Bench in Westminster where they were acquitted, both of the actual murder and of any complicity in it. In fact, Kydale may also have been a co-conspirator in the murder plot: he married Maud Nevil soon after the last hearing of the murder case. The date of their marriage has not come down in the documents, but it must have taken place within two years: 4 October 1379 Thomas Kydale paid a fine of 40 shillings to the King for having married Maud Nevil without royal permission. He was certainly in a position to influence the outcome of the case: being the sheriff of Lincoln, Kydale was responsible for the selection and swearing in of the trial juries that had released Maud and the Cantilupe steward, Robert Cletham. Sir Ralph Paynel’s trial lasted longer than that of any of the other fifteen. He was indicted before the Lincolnshire court convened at Lincoln by Thomas Kydale for sheltering Maud, Richard Gyse, Roger the cook and Agatha Lovell in his house at Caythorpe knowing them to be guilty or complicit in William Cantilupe’s murder. Thomas Kydale, the sheriff of Lincoln, presided over the court that released Ralph Paynel under mainprise until Michaelmas term of the following year, but Paynel was not finally tried until six months later. In the Easter term, 1377 a Westminster jury acquitted Paynel nisi prius, i.e. because the facts of the case had already been examined locally by a court in Lincolnshire. Thomas Kydale had stepped down as sheriff of Lincoln towards the end of 1375 and given the many other irregularities in this case, it is no surprise to learn that the sheriff who had examined the case locally in Lincoln was named Ralph Paynel and that he appeared before a jury of the King’s Bench in Westminster in the final weeks of his tenure as sheriff of Lincoln. So as we can see most of the suspects escaped the punishment of the law, most of them by manipulating the legal system either by packing the juries or by manipulating the legal system itself. In contrast to these sophisticated escapes, the chambermaid Agatha Lovell seems to have avoided appearing before the courts simply by bribing the bailiffs of Lincoln prison. In Michaelmas term 1376 John Bate and Thomas Thornhaugh, the two bailiffs of Lincoln were tried in Lincoln. The were accused of having allowed Agatha Lovell to escape from prison without due process of law and judgement. Thomas Thornhaugh produced the oath of several men (whose names are not given in the surviving sources) who swore to the fact that he was innocent of having let Agatha escape from prison. John Bate on the other side provided a somewhat more unusual defence. Having been captured by four officials of Lincoln he was produced before the King’s Bench in Hilary term 1377 to answer an accusation of having accepted a bribe of ten pounds. In response, he produced a letter from the King’s uncle, King Edward III, who had recently died, which granted him a blanket pardon for transgressions he had done during the exercise of his office, and in addition he also produced a letter close directed to the justices in his case dated 8 July 1377 which instructed the court to accept the validity of the pardons granted by Edward III. The murder of William Cantilupe was remarkably well planned and executed. It also bears all the hallmarks of having been planned well in advance and of its execution having been put on hold until everybody were in positions of power where they could cover for each other. All in all, despite the conviction and execution of the two assassins, the main conspirators appear to have got away with a brutal murder. Events both prior and subsequent to the murder point to a complex set of circumstances and motives both by those indicted and by royal officials. Most prominent among those who may have got away with murder are William’s wife, Maud Cantilupe, and Sir Ralph Paynel. Maud Cantilupe was indicted, but not convicted, of the crime. The reasons behind her acquittal appear relatively obvious and centre around her romantic involvement with Thomas Kydale. Although the circumstantial evidence concerning their involvement with each other was included in the narrative above, it is worth summarising it here: while William Cantilupe served abroad in the years leading up to his murder, Thomas de Kydale lived in Lincolnshire where he most likely befriended Maud Nevil. It is not unreasonable to speculate that the two were fond of each other before Maud was married to William, and that she married the latter not for love, but because William had unexpectedly become a powerful magnate. From 1374 to 1375, Thomas Kydale had taken up the office of sheriff of Lincoln. It was before him that the recent widow accused her fellow accomplices, Richard Gyse and Robert Coke; Thomas Kydale was responsible for summoning the trial juries to Lincoln when the King’s Bench convened around Michaelmas in October 1375; and he acted as one of Maud’s mainpernors during her trial. Kydale was succeeded as sheriff within a few weeks of the trial. From late 1375 to November 1377, Thomas Kydale did not hold public office, but he once more took up the office of sheriff in late 1377. Within two years of the murder Thomas Kydale paid a fine to the king for illicitly marrying Maud Cantilupe. It is therefore natural to suppose that Maud de Cantilupe either planned the murder with her lover, Thomas Kydale or at least that he colluded with her in helping her escape the consequences. Sir Ralph Paynel had strong personal and familial reasons to wish to eliminate the Cantilupes. Paynel would have expected his daughter to have been in possession of the three castles that ultimately fell to William and that may have provided a strong motive for revenge. Together, the Paynel, Kydale and Maud Cantilupe may have promised financial reward and safety to persuade two impoverished members of William’s household to become assassins and perform the actual deed. But when it came to the test, Maud Cantilupe unexpectedly accused these two in order to divert suspicion from herself while Kydale used his influence as sheriff to secure her acquittal by packing the juries which he assembled in Lincoln in September 1375 with men who were sympathetic to his cause. But the identification of the assassins by the Lincoln jury still left lingering suspicion that Maud had aided the murderers. It fell to another suspect, Ralph Paynel, to secure her acquittal as an accessory in Westminster while he was sheriff of Lincoln in 1376 and of himself at the local Lincoln court which allowed him to argue nisi prius before the court in Westminster in 1377. Being the Lincoln sheriff 1376-77, Sir Ralph Paynel, was acquitted of complicity in William Cantilupe’s death during the last months of his tenure of office. At the time of William Cantilupe’s murder Paynel was a retainer of Edward the Black Prince and when the Prince died in 1376 he transferred his allegiance to John of Gaunt in addition to taking annuities from Sir Thomas Roos. Although Ralph Paynel was acquitted of the murder of William Cantilupe, complaints continued to be heard in London concerning his abuses of power right up to his death in 1383. But his position in Lincolnshire was secure and he provided valuable service both to Edward III and to Richard II on numerous occasions. A dish best served cold?. But castles were lost and won all the time, and Paynel would have needed additional motives for his cold-blooded plan. Perhaps he master-minded the whole event: the obvious attention to detail, the involvement of a large group of conspirators, the almost a virtuosic use of the courts, and the ruthless sacrifice of the two assassins indicate a long-held grudge, possibly even a feud. Above we gave one reason why Paynel had reason to dislike William Cantilupe, but going further back in time gives an additional and much stronger motive. The circumstances of the succession of the two Cantilupe brothers to their lands are shrouded in mystery and they must have created a certain amount of uncertainty around the legality of their possession of the lands. The lands came to the brothers through the bequest of their grandfather, Nicholas, who had succeeded his brother, William, to become third baron Cantilupe around 1321. He served in the Flemish and Scottish wars of Edward III and was summoned to almost every parliament held between 1336 to 1354. Edward III twice sent him to Canterbury to summon Archbishop Stratford to London in December and January 1340-41, and commissioned him to try corruption and other crimes throughout the north-east Midlands. His first wife, Tiffany, gave birth to a son, whom they named William, who served in the French wars with distinction. In 1343, after the death of his first wife, Cantilupe married the daughter of Sir Humphrey de Littlebury, the already widowed Joan Kymas. Because the two were related withing the forbidden degrees Nicholas obtained a papal dispensation to continue his marriage. With this marriage, Cantilupe became an even richer magnate than his brother had been: the Cantilupe lands included manors and their lands in Eselburgh (Buckingham), Ilkeston (Derby), the castle of Greasley (Nottingham), and Livington in addition to other lands in Lincolnshire. Cantilupe was a pious man with an eye to the usefulness of religion: In October 1349 when his oldest grandson was seven years old he hosted the translation of the relics of St Thomas of Hereford (Thomas de Cantilupe), his kinsman, in Hereford cathedral. Between 1339 and 1354 he received a series of licences to endow the Carthusian priory of Beauvale, which he founded within his park at Greasley in December 1343. He also founded Cantilupe College in Lincoln Cathedral close, whose priests celebrated at the altar of St Nicholas within the cathedral and in 1354, as one of the barons of the realm, he signed a petition to the Pope asking him to determine the English right to the French crown giving his name as Nicholas de Cantilupo, dominus de Grisley. For currently unknown reasons, when Cantilupe died in 1355 he excluded William, his own son, from inheritance. Instead, Cantilupe’s grandsons --Nicholas (born 1342, died 1370 in Avignon) and William (who was the victim of the 1375 murder)-- were given half the estate. Until her death seven years later the under-age children thus shared the Cantilupe lands with their step-grandmother, Joan de Kymas. When she died in 1362, the twenty year- old Nicholas Cantilupe, junior, was given possession of her half of the inheritance left by Nicholas’ grandfather in accordance with his wishes. But towards the end of her life, this arrangement created an unstable situation for the twice-widowed Joan Kymas: as an aging single woman she was left to defend the Cantilupe estates which had been bequeathed to her and her under-age step-grandchildren. It must have been increasingly difficult for the aging widow to protect their lands and it therefore should come as no surprise that in her final years, sometime between 1360 and 1362 when he was between 18 and twenty years of age her step-grandson Nicholas Cantilupe was engaged to Katherine, the daughter of her powerful neighbour, Ralph Paynel. Nicholas may still have been too young to inhabit the title but given time by rights he should have grown into an influential magnate: in addition to his extensive ancestral lands which gave him wealth, he could count as his immediate ancestors several chancellors, bishops and even a saint, which would have given him political influence and social status. Ralph Paynel was already a powerful magnate in 1355--powerful enough for his servants to be considered threatening to the servants of other local magnates because of enmity between Paynel and their master. Indeed, Paynel was well connected: in the first half of the 1360s Paynel served as the Black Prince’s surveyor of game in Yorkshire and he remained a retainer until the Prince’s death in 1376. However, Paynel also seems to have been a bit of a local loose canon and was cited to answer for his excesses before the King’s council in 1355 and 1360. In other words, Ralph Paynel with his combination of wealth, connections and recklessness may well have appeared to Joan Kymas to have been the ideal protector of Nicholas’ interests if she should die before he reached maturity. But after Joan’s death, discord soon arose between Nicholas and Ralph Paynel. In 1367 Paynel and Cantilupe crossed swords in a violent confrontation which culminated in Paynel’s storming of Nicholas’ ancestral stronghold, Greasley Castle. In a complaint dated March 1367, Nicholas Cantilupe alleged that Sir Ralph Paynel and others had broken into Nicholas’ castle at Greasley, ravished his wife, Katherine, and carried her away, together with goods and chattels belonging to Nicholas. A commission was appointed to investigate the accusation as a consequence of this approach to the King. But at first glance Nicholas’ suit appears to have been unsuccessful. When Sillem first analysed this case in 1936 she believed that the commission never interrogated witnesses. Her mistake was an easy one to make because the commission of the King’s bench was delayed by the fact that Nicolas was already engaged in litigation against the Paynels at the ecclesiastical court in York. Because spiritual cases took precedence over secular cases, it was therefore not until late 1369 that three witnesses were interrogated concerning this attack on Greasley Castle. Since the publication of Sillem’s study, one of the three depositions have been published, and by following its lead it is now possible to suggest why Ralph Paynel might want to see any Cantilupe dead by combining witness accounts from this enquiry and the case Nicholas was defending before the archbishop’s consistory court in York. Paynel versus Cantilupe: a quarrel over a small thing with large consequences The murder of William Cantilupe has been referred to occasionally in the academic literature, but discussion has always been based on Sillem’s initial analysis and her printed selection of the sources. Although we have added a few details to Sillem’s examinination and analysis of the evidence of secular criminal trial records above, we have in the main expanded on her ideas: she concluded that the murder was planned by Thomas Kydale, his lover Maud Cantilupe/Nevil and Sir Ralph Paynel together and she had no problem suggesting a romantic liaison between Thomas Kydale and Maud Nevil. But she found it difficult to account for Paynel’s motivations in aiding and abetting the other two. She was particularly unhappy that she could not find enough supplementary evidence to connect together Nicholas’ brief life and the entry in the calendar of patent rolls that documented that there was previous bad blood between Cantilupes and Paynels. Referring to the then unknown interrogation records of the commission of oyer and terminer she commented: [their absence] is particularly unfortunate because Paynel was accused of complicity in the younger William’s murder in 1375 and one would be glad to know more of his relations with the Cantilupes. Ultimately, Sillem was unable to identify the nature of the quarrel between Ralph Paynel and Nicholas Cantilupe, even though she felt it was key to understanding Paynel’s motives. Since 1936 a few further scraps of evidence have been published by various legal history societies. But they have mostly been ignored by the academic literature and their evidence providing further clues to the case has not yet been gathered together. We find the first pointer to the Ralph Paynel’s motives in the case of Nicholas Cantilupe c. Robert the Chamberlain of Ralph Paynel which was heard by the King’s Bench during Trinity Term 1369 and published by Arnold in 1987. This case adds strong evidence to Sillem’s suspicion that the murder of William Cantilupe was Ralph Paynel’s long-sought revenge against the Cantilupes for a challenge to his honour which reached an early culmination in Paynel’s attack on Nicholas’ manor, Greasley castle in Nottinghamshire, some 18 miles from the Paynel manor of Caythorpe. It also confirms that Nicholas’ accusation was essentially true: Paynel did attack Greasley castle in 1367 and he abducted Nicholas’ wife. In addition the deposition provides the key to unlock the motives behind Sir Ralph’s involvement in the murder of Nicholas’ brother and a pointer for where to look for more information. The published record shows that three secular persons, two men and one woman, were cited to give evidence to the court: Robert Raufchaumberlayn Paynel, John de Hevore, and Margaret de Halton of Holland. Naturally they rejected the accusations that they attacked Greasley and ravished Katherine Paynel and during his deposition Robert informed the court that: the aforesaid Katherine when she was underage was espoused to the aforesaid Nicholas, and this Katherine when she came of age did not consent to the matrimony since the same Katherine had a cause for divorce against the same Nicholas; and so the same Katherine left the said Nicholas of her own free will to sue the said cause and she went to the aforesaid Ralph Paynel her father at Gasthorpe in the county of Lincoln. And she sued for a divorce before the official of the archbishop of York at York and process continued therein until the said divorce was decreed between them there, namely on the Saturday next after the feast of St George (21 April) last past. The court allowed the release of the accused under mainprise until another scheduled meeting of the court a fortnight before the feast of St Michael (15 September 1369) but no further action appears to have taken place in the case. As we shall see below, this was because Nicholas had decided to pursue an alternative route to preserve his honour: since the consistory court in York had annulled his marriage without following proper procedure, he was granted leave to pursue an appeal at the papacy and he was probably travelling towards Avignon on the assigned date. It is clear from this that Ralph Paynel had at least two good reasons to hate the Cantilupes: on the one hand, William Cantilupe had successfully argued in 1370 that three castles which Katherine Paynel had presumed were hers because she received them as a dower from Nicholas believing them to be in his gift. On the other hand three years prior to this loss, something had happened that made Katherine initiate annulment proceedings in York. The deposition quoted above adds further weight to the contention that William Cantilupe’s murder should be tied in with the Paynel attack on Greasley castle. But it also leaves out many details and as we shall see Katherine was in a very difficult situation which caused her and her family considerable embarrassment. Ralph Paynel’s attack was the culmination of a long series of events that included Katherine’s husband’s forcible abduction of Paynel’s daughter and his threats to imprison her for life Greasley castle. The evidence above conceals the even more surprising fact behind the marital discord that had arisen between Nicholas Cantilupe and his wife --discord of such a nature that an annulment had been granted to her by the official of the archbishop of York only eight days before the three witnesses were interrogated before the commission. Sillem would perhaps have been even more keen to establish the motives of Ralph Paynel if she had realised that Ralph Paynel was Nicholas’ father in-law–a point she missed because she, like most of those who have followed her, relied on the English translation of the commission of oyer and terminer found in the Calendar of Patent Rolls rather than consulting the original Latin source. In addition, she had no knowledge of existence of the King’s Bench proceedings. Had Sillem followed the lead of the King’s Bench proceedings and pursued the case in the diocesan archives in York she would have learned that there was an attack on Greasley Castle and that it had been a successful attempt to rescue Ralph Paynel’s daughter from the prison that her husband kept her in to prevent her from revealing the startling fact that Nicholas had fraudulently married her knowing that he would never be able to consummate their marriage. The Paynel c. Cantilupe case before the consistory court in York In the same year as Sillem’s edition of the Lincolnshire Peace Rolls, the Early Yorkshire Charters dedicated an entire volume to the Paynel Fee. Today we are almost snowed under by information about the two families but the extent of the wealth and influence of the Paynels and the Cantilupes was less clear when Sillem wrote in 1936. I have already dedicated some attention to the career of Nicholas third Baron Cantilupe: the family is well known, not only for St Thomas of Hereford, the canon lawyer and last English pre- Reformation saint, but also because Nicholas, senior, was an important player in the early hundred years’ war, a close associate of King Edward III, a parliamentary representative, and a frequent Justice of the Peace in Lincolnshire and Derbyshire. In addition the Cantilupe family controlled much land across England. The Cantilupe family was one of the richest and most influential families in fourteenth-century England. The brothers Nicholas (1342-1370) and William Cantilupe (1344-1375) were to be the last generation of the Cantilupe family to be in possession of lands assembled across England by the family over the previous century. Their lives, had they progressed normally, would probably have seen the older brother, Nicholas, rising to the rank of baron of the realm, but both died close to completing their third decade. In his personal life, Nicholas exhibited some individual traits that marks him out as slightly different from the almost architypical career trajectory of his brother. Nicholas seems to have shunned a military career: among the 260,000 service records for the years 1369 - 1453 indexed in The Soldier in later Medieval England Database we only find one entry for Nicholas: on 5 July 1369--after his unsuccessful defence in York--he appointed an attorney to look after his affairs and set off overseas. This request was certainly a direct consequence of the annulment of his marriage by the consistory court in York. William, on the other hand, is far more visible in these records and had travelled a good deal more: 15 December 1367 during his brother’s trial at York when he was twenty- three he received royal letters permitting him to go abroad on pilgrimage, and in June 1370, four months after his brother’s death, William joined the English army in France. The latter letters of attorney described him as a man-at-arms--a title not claimed by Nicholas in 1369-- initially under the command of Edward, Prince of Wales in Aquitaine. He took out additional letters of attorney to serve under John of Gaunt in July 1371, and again in October 1373. Thus, in comparison to his brother William, Nicholas Cantilupe seems to have been remarkably unsuccessful in his public career. It is noticeable that he appears to have no military service record and that he never became a royal retainer. His brother William became a retainer of the Black Prince in June 1370--almost as soon as he took over the Cantilupe estates. The annulment case between Katherine Paynel and Nicholas Cantilupe is now kept in The Borthwick Institute of Historical Research in York, where it is designated Cause Paper E 259. It consists of 16 documents of varying length, including ten depositions by seven witnesses. The case lasted from March 1367 to April 1369 and led the court in York to annul the marriage, a decision Nicholas Cantilupe died contesting at Avignon. Their conflict took its beginnings only a few weeks after Nicholas Cantilupe married Katherine Paynel. We cannot say exactly when marriage negotiations took place, but it is clear that an agreement had been reached between the Cantilupes and the Paynels while Katherine Paynel was under-age. If we take Robert Raufchaumberlayn Paynel’s testimony to the King’s Bench to refer to the canonical age of twelve for girls, these negotiations would have been concluded around 1360, in the final few years of Joan Kymas’ life. I suggested above that Kymas may have tried to protect her lands with the help of the increasingly powerful and reckless Ralph Paynel. But it is also possible to speculate that Ralph Paynel was trying to force Kymas and her adopted grandchildren to give up lands owned by the recently deceased Nicholas, third baron Cantilupe. His widow may have tried to secure peace by negotiating a marriage between her adopted grandson, Nicholas, who--if my medical diagnosis is correct--at that time would have appeared to be a strapping healthy teenage boy, and Ralph Paynel’s daughter, Katherine who would have been around ten years of age. We will never know Kymas’ motives, but when she died in 1362, Nicholas had secured the promise of Katherine as his wife, and in 1364 at the age of 24 he celebrated marriage with the sixteen year-old Katherine Paynel, endowing her with the manors of Withcall, Kynthorp and Lavington in Lincolnshire. However, five days after the wedding Katherine left Nicholas and returned to her baffled parents. At first she refused to explain why she had come back, but gradually her socia in lecto Margaret Halton learned from Katherine that her husband was not only impotent but also that he lacked any genitals. Katherine even swore that she was willing to let herself be burnt at the stake if anyone could disprove her statement. Katherine’s story gains some extra credence through the reported taunt of one of Nicolas’ kin – possibly a sister – whom Margaret Halton identifies only as “the wife of Sampson de Strellay, knight, a kinswoman of said Nicholas in the first degree of consanguinity” who said to Katherine “Mylady, I shall give you money if you ever have joy from your husband.” Not surprisingly, Katherine’s claim that her husband had no genitals caused widespread disbelief and consternation in the Paynel family. Katherine’s father refused to believe that there could be anything wrong with Nicholas and ascribed their marital problems to the fact that she was young and inexperienced, telling Katherine that “she was stupid and she knew not what she should do”. Despite this paternal outburst, she persevered and in the end her mother arranged for Katherine first to see master Thomas Waus (who was not only the priest of one of the benefices in the gift of the Paynels, but clearly also well acquainted with canon law since he held the office of official to the Archdeacon of Stow. Thomas Waus listened to the young girl describing her attempts to consummate the marriage. Later, he arranged for her to speak on several occasions to the Bishop of Lincoln, John Buckingham, who interrogated Katherine in the comforting all-female presence of Katherine’s mother and Margaret Halton. Bishop Buckingham and Thomas Waus must have explained canon law, and in particular the requirement for cohabitation and intent to procreate, to Katherine, and as a consequence she returned to Nicholas for two another years as the law required. But as soon as the period was over she returned to her parents announcing that she had been told in confession that she could now proceed to a church court to have the marriage annulled. Her accusation was a serious challenge to the Cantilupes. As we shall see, the alleged congential defect was so incapacitating, that Nicholas defied the court, reacted with violence to the possibility of a court case and endured excommunication while at the same time trying to have the case heard in unusual jurisdictions, culminating in an appeal to the Pope in Avignon. The canon law procedure in cases of annulment for impotence. Before we add to the facts that we already know about the case we should remind ourselves of the procedure followed by medieval church courts across Europe in impotence cases. Unlike today, medieval spouses enjoyed no easy access to divorce: they faced two options: separation or annulment. In the case of separation, the parties were allowed to live apart but needed to remain celibate for the duration of their partner’s life. In the case of annulment the parties had to prove that there was an impediment to the marriage and that it was therefore never legally valid. Among impediments were impotentia coheundi, literally: “the impossibility of coming together.” This phrase and its corollary frigiditas refer equally to men and women, and in theory women could find themselves as the defendants in suits for annulment of marriage because of impotence. However, in practice these phrases referred to male impotence. Focusing on the man and his erectile function was the easiest way to demonstrate the likelihood that the marriage had not been and was not going to be consummated and focusing on the men allowed for fewer problems of interpretation: an erection is, after all, an erection. Canon law distinguished between two kinds of impotence. One was permanent impotence caused by a congenital incapacity for sex that had been concealed from the contracting party: this was always a reason for annulment. The second was temporary impotence, which was generally supposed to have been caused by malificia. Pope Alexander III (1159-81) allowed marriages to be dissolved for this reason, but the practice was discontinued by Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), possibly as a consequence of his encounter with this argument in his confrontation with Philip II of France over his Danish consort, queen Ingeborg. Three methods of proof of impotence were generally required in the decretalists' discussions of impotence: a physical examination of the parties, the sworn testimony of witnesses and the evidence of two full years of cohabitation. In his recent investigation of courts on the continent, Charles Donahue lists only two cases from Paris. Donahue found that the Parisian courts dealt most effectively with these two cases of male impotence and seem to have followed the canon law more literally than the English courts. In one case the court passed sentence based on the evidence of two doctors, the sworn testimony of the wife, and the oaths of six men who swore that they believed the testimony of the wife and that they had no knowledge of the man having intercourse with another woman. In the other case, both the man and the woman swore to the impotence and their statement was substantiated by a master of medicine, a surgeon and the oaths of five men. The practice of the English courts on the other hand seems to have involved a different group of experts. Although there are some minor variations in the surviving evidence from different dioceses, the English courts generally conducted a physical examination of the man’s erectile function with the help of varying numbers of "honest women," who attempted to stimulate the impotent man, often (but not always) by baring their breasts and by kissing and fondling him. Despite the reservations one might have about the heavy-handed approach of the English church courts, only one fifteenth-century man under investigation “passed” such an examination (and that was after a second try), a failure (or should that be “success-“) rate of one sixth. Thus, although there was some slight difference across Europe in the way the physical evidence was gathered, European church courts seem to have applied similar standards of proof. However, this statement, must be taken with the important caveat that the courts encountered the problem only rarely: the dossiers of only six pre-Reformation cases survive from the consistory court in York (making up only three per cent of the total marriage case-load), two have been identified among the diocesan archives in Canterbury and the another two are found in the episcopal court act book in Ely. In addition, the rules of canon law – which made it impossible for the impotent partner to remarry and demanded that he or she return to their spouse if the dysfunction should disappear – would create a deterrent from bringing this kind of suit without good cause. It is clear that these cases were few in number and that the accusation of impotence was rarely made frivolously. The case at the consistory court By rights, the Paynel c. Cantilupe case should have been heard by the consistory court in Canterbury. Both plaintiff and defendant lived in that jurisdiction and initial steps in the case were taken in Lincoln, which also fell under Canterbury’s jurisdiction. But the case was heard by the York consistory court. Although initially confusing, the explanation behind the unusual forum is fairly simple: the case took its legal beginning during the last eight months of the brief reign of Archbishop Simon Langham of Canterbury whose rule began 24 July 1366 and came to an end when he took up the office of cardinal of St Sixtus on 28 November 1368. The uncertainty of the situation in Canterbury in the spring of 1368 when Langham had incurred the displeasure of king Edward III meant that any sensible person would wish to conduct their case in York. The earliest surviving procedural document in the case is a commission dated 23 March 1368 which established Master John Stanton as the proctor of Katherine Paynel , daughter of Ralph Paynel, knight. Stanton applied to the court for protection for his client on 22 April 1368 and within a week she was not only given the court's permission to live separately from Nicholas while the case lasted, but from 1 May 1368 she stayed in the care of Lady Margaret, wife of Sir Edmund Hastings, in the fortified Roxby castle, near Pickering in Yorkshire. In her (undated) libel Katherine told the court that she had married twenty-two year old Nicholas Cantilupe four years earlier and that he had not yet had intercourse with her. Seven witnesses were heard for Katherine 7-27 June 1368. Three of them were recalled by the court, and, on 15 July they gave slightly different version of events. Though they tell the same basic story, they present “newly-remembered” facts that confirm the evidence that other witnesses gave to the King’s Bench . The two sets of accounts agree on the basic facts: the couple married four years before and had initially lived with Katherine's parents in Lincolnshire and subsequently at Nicholas' manor/castle in Greasley in Nottinghamshire. At the end of this period of cohabitation, Katherine returned to her parents. Master Thomas Waus, who was both the official of the Archdeacon of Stow and the rector of the church at Burton, two miles out of Lincoln but a part of the Paynel estate, was present when she explained that the marriage had not been consummated because Nicholas could not know her carnally as it was proper for a husband to know his wife and that he did not have genitals nor could he emit semen." Thomas advised that Katherine would have to return to Nicholas to see if "the said Nicholas could improve in the necessary manly deeds." This second cohabitation lasted for about two years. When the two years had passed Katherine returned to her parents and announced that "in the forum of conscience" it had been announced to her that her case should proceed to an annulment at court. Medical aspects of the case Katherine produced seven witnesses in the York consistory court who all swore to having heard about the impotence, either directly from Katherine or from neighbourhood rumour. Master Thomas Waus related to the court that Katherine had sworn: that she often tried to find the place of said Nicholas' genitals with her hands when she lay in bed with said Nicholas and he was asleep, and that she could not stroke nor find anything there and that the place in which Nicholas’ genitals ought be is as flat as the hand of a man. Margaret Halton, Katherine's socia in lecto since childhood, explained that Katherine had told her about Nicholas' impotence three days after the marriage was celebrated. The other five witnesses confirmed the existence of neighbourhood rumour but could not confirm Katherine’s report. Although Katherine’s accusation may sound surprising, the physical deformity that she alleged indicates that Nicholas suffered from a real physical defect, a congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which is well-known in the medical literature, if somewhat rare in real life. CAH can affect both boys and girls. People with CAH lack an enzyme needed by the adrenal gland to make two hormones, cortisol and aldosterone. Without these hormones, the body produces more androgen, a type of male sex hormone and this causes male characteristics to appear early or inappropriately. Although at least one modern commentary on this case expected Nicholas to display feminine characteristics, such as high voice, the opposite would almost certainly have been the case, indeed when Nicholas and Katherine were engaged it is likely that Nicholas when clothed would have long since have shown most of the traits of a boy well past his puberty with a high muscle mass, clear beginnings of a beard and a normal male voice. Of course, had he been un-clothed his lack of penis would have been obvious at once. But he was also later to show some evidence of other traits that are characteristic of CAH. In addition to his virtually non-existent public career, there is a surprising, but small, additional detail that may indicate that he was not healthy: when Katherine was abducted from her father’s estate in Caythorpe Nicholas met his raiding party at the gate of Greasley castle. In other words, he did not join the riding party when it rode the 36 miles to Kaythorpe and back. Although there may be other reasons for his absence from this raid, his avoidance of physical exertion which is demonstrated by him not joining his raiding party in 1367, by his lustreless military career and by the fact that unlike his brother, he did not become a royal retainer is consistent with the medical diagnosis proposed. This may be related to CAH: Today, about 1 in 18,000 children are born with CAH. There are two variations of this syndrome: sixty-seven percent of babies with CAH have the salt-losing variant of the syndrome and will die within a year if untreated. A person with CAH is not able to produce several vital hormones, mainly cortico-steroids. If untreated, sufferers from the salt-losing form of CAH will die in infancy, because they cannot produce enough salt-retaining hormones to maintain a sustainable electrolytic balance in their bodily fluids. The result would be vomiting and dehydration. The final stages of the condition would eventually result in death since electrical impulses can no longer pass between synapses which eventually would result in a heart seizure. Among the remaining babies born with CAH, non-salt-losing girls usually appear healthy. Today CAH is treated with hormone replacement, replacing one or both of the hormones missing. Of course, medieval medicine was very different to modern medicine and the condition may ultimately have caused Nicholas’ premature death in Avignon in February 1370. The fact that Nicholas survived to take inheritance from his father makes clear that s/he was one of the third of children with less severe CAH, non-salt losing CAH, in which their salt balance is normal. However, when exposed to stress, whether it be physical or psychological, sufferers with non-salt losing CAH may become salt losers. Therefore current advice on living with CAH recommends extra attention being paid to common illnesses and stress-inducing situations, such as injury and exercise. Today CAH is treatable, but the salt- losing CAH would have been lethal before modern medicine and under all circumstances the life-expectancy of medieval sufferers would have been very short. The case against Nicholas Cantilupe, his reaction, and his death There can be little doubt that the court case in York would be stressful to Nicholas, and his behaviour shows several indicators of strain. Nicholas had much to defend, not least his male honour, and though he was being economical with the truth when he made his plea to the King’s Bench. He claimed that Ralph Paynel had broken into his castle in Greasley, ravished Nicholas’ wife and carried her away together with goods and chattels belonging to him. As a consequence of this plea a commission of oyer et terminer was granted to the King’s judges Thomas de Ingelby, Richard Grey of Landford, William de Wakebugge and Roger de Hopwell on 10 March 1367. But this commission did not interrogate witnesses until Trinity term 1369. i.e. after the York consistory court pronounced against the marriage on 21 April 1369. By this time the dispute had lasted for at least three years: Katherine Paynel had first sought the help of the church in 1366 when she was advised that she needed to cohabit with Nicholas for two years. When this reconciliation was not successful she moved back to her parents and initiated proceedings to have the marriage dissolved first before the Bishop of Lincoln, John Buckingham (1363-1398) and later at the Curia Eboracensis in 1368. In any case it is significant that Katherine's witnesses did not mention the attack and the preceding threats that Nicholas Cantilupe had made to Katherine in order prevent his condition becoming known when they were interrogated by the York consistory court on 25 June 1367. Instead they told the court that Katherine’s return to Nicholas’ castle in Greasley was the result of the mediation of Thomas Waus, the rector of Burton who was then the official of the Archdeacon of Stow: and then this witness heard said Katherine’s complaint several times. And afterwards, through the mediation of this witness, with the consent of the father and mother of said Katherine, she was led back in the company of this witness to Grisley to said Nicholas. And there this witness made the two agree. And thus the same Katherine by the advice of her parents and of this witness in order to prove if said Nicholas could recover in the manly deeds necessary in this case cohabited with him in bed and board for almost two years following . The situation was clearly more complex than Thomas Waus admitted: soon after 27 June Nicholas entered replications to Katherine’s witnesses in which he argued that Katherine had sworn that Nicholas had known her carnally. As a consequence of Nicholas’ replications, Thomas Waus, Margaret Halton and Robert Bekeby, Ralph Paynel’s chaplain--were re-examined on 15 July 1368. From these accounts Ralph Paynel’s reasons for attacking Greasley Castle become clear. Margaret Halton repeated her story that she had been Katherine's socia in lecto since childhood and that Katherine had told her about Nicholas' impotence only three days after the marriage was celebrated. Thomas Waus added that discord had arisen within a month of the marriage, and that on a second occasion, far from being the result of successful mediation, the reunion of Katherine and Nicholas had been brought about by force. Nicholas had his men abduct her “weeping and wailing” to Nicholas’ castle stronghold on the Wednesday after the Assumption of the Virgin (i.e. 19 August) 1367. Thomas Waus told the court that Nicholas did not ride with his men, but instead he met Katherine and her companions at the castle gate, where: . . . with a grim face [he said]: "Woman, you are cursed among all women." And he led her and this witness and the other aforementioned fellow witnesses into a certain chapel situated within that castle, and there said Katherine was spoken to in these words: "You know well that I am sufficiently potent to copulate with you having genitals that are good enough." And she answered: "yes." Said Nicholas added: "I wish that you swear that I am able to have intercourse, having sufficient natural instruments, as has been said, and that you henceforth do not leave my company without my special permission and that you do not reveal this counsel in any way." To which Katherine answered: "I will swear to whatever was said by you." Although he does not say so, Thomas Waus gives the impression of having been abducted with Katherine and his two fellow witnesses and he emphasises that the oath was produced under severe duress: Nicholas had put further pressure on Katherine by showing her a room he had made as a prison for her where he intended to keep her if she did not comply with his wishes and by having ankle-irons and hand-cuffs readied for Katherine in case she refused to swear his oath. This story is in sharp contrast to the complaint mentioned above that sir Ralph Paynel and others had broken into Nicholas’ castle at Greasley, ravished his wife, Katherine, and carried her away, together with goods and chattels of his. The abduction story was contained in the second set of depositions produced on 25 July 1368, and the York court moved to speed up the case. It sent Paynel’s chaplain, Robert Bekeby, a mandate to cite and compel Nicholas to appear for a physical examination on the Monday before the feast of St. Michael (26 September 1368). The summons was read out to Nicholas when he attended mass on Sunday 6 August, but he clearly strenuously resisted a physical examination. Indeed, when the consistory court passed sentence against the marriage on 21 April 1369, presumably after the necessary three absences by Nicholas. The sentence specified that the court’s decision was reached through allegata, proposita, confessata et alia probationum generalia, in other words through circumstantial evidence. But owing to procedural deficiencies, i.e. that Nicholas had not undergone a physical examination, the court granted Nicholas permission to appeal to the Apostolic See. Having taken out letters of attorney to ensure the smooth running of his estates on 7 July 1369, Nicholas travelled to Avignon where he died in mid-January or mid-February. Initially, Nicholas’ death seemed to the English authorities to be highly suspicious. Nicholas’ brother William, was in Aquitaine as a soldier and he was naturally suspected of having murdered his brother. John Vendour of Newark was said to have brought William Cantilupe to the Tower of London “for the death of Nicholas Cantilupe, his brother, slain”. Though payment was only made six years after Nicolas’s death, Vendour provided an armed guard in 1370 to ensure that William answered for his alleged crime in London, and with his armed men he travelled with William from Avignon to London. For this he was paid 100 shillings to cover expenses for himself and his retinue on 20 November 1376. From the same source we learn that Vendour had been instructed to keep Cantilupe in the Tower until the King and Council had decided what to do in his case. Subsequent inquisitions post-mortem into Nicholas’ possessions most likely took place after William had been released from the tower. William’s subsequent plea in the court of Chancery from December 1370 claiming the rights to the three castles which the inquisitions had identified as being in Katherine’s possession indicate that he was most likely released before May or June 1370, but at any rate certainly before December of that year. Thus, the English authorities appear to have quickly accepted the fact that despite his young age Nicholas had died from natural causes. The Inquisition post mortem and William’s fatal mistake At the time of his death Nicholas must have been between twenty-seven and twenty- eight years of age. Inquisitions post mortem were taken in May and July 1370. They showed him to be seized of Little Claydon and Eselbergh (Buckingham), Ilkeston (Derby), Greasley Castle and Kynmerley & Helmsill (of the honour of Peverel). Greasley was the family’s largest manorial holding at over 5,500 acres, incorporating towns, villages and hamlets from Selston to Nuthall and Eastwood. The adjoining manor of Ilkeston in Derbyshire increased that holding to cover a huge swathe of land straddling the River Erewash. Nicholas also died in possession of Wythcall, Kynthorp and Lavyngton, three manors in Lincolnshire. Nicholas held the manor of Lavyngton by knight’s service from the archbishop of York. Though some of the inquisitions after Nicholas say that he held these manors jointly with Katherine, his wife which indicates that the secular juries correctly regarded the annulment case as pending by the time William died, these castles were in his possession. Katherine wasted no time in getting married again. As we know, on 3 December 1371 she contested the rights to the manors of Wythcall, Kynthorp and Lavyngton with her new husband, John Auncell, knight. John Aunfell (sic) had already met Katherine and her brother, John, when Aunfell and John Paynel appeared as witnesses to the citation to appear for a physical examination which was read out to Nicholas on 6 August 1368. Auncell was indicted in 1375 for having attacked a royal judge in connection with a long running dispute in Kesteven but the accusation was not severe enough to prevent him from representing Lincolnshire in Parliaments in 1377, 1378 and 1379. On 26 September 1371 letters were sent to Robert de Twyford, the King’s escheator in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to deliver the manor of Ilkeston and the castle of Greasley and their proceeds since the death of Nicholas, and to John de Olneye, the king’s escheator in Buckinghamshire to hand over the manors of Little Clayton and Hesselbergh to William. Although William’s claims to Wythcall, Kynthorp and Lavyngton were initially less clear-cut--we learn from the Patent Rolls that the king on 3 December 1371 the King issued an order to deliver these manors of to two caretakers, Thomas Boys of Bedfordshire and John Aghton from Nottinghamshire, to be held by them until William’s claim to these castles had been heard by the Kings Court--by the time of his death, William had clearly won the case, for the Royal Inquisitions Post Mortem list them among his possessions. Conclusions The murder of William Cantilupe was the end of the Cantilupe family as major baronial family in England. The murder has been known in the academic literature for more than seventy years and the romantic involvement of Maud Cantilupe and Thomas Kydale has been accepted by many as the main motive for the crime. The role and motivations of Ralph Cantilupe have been more obscure. The literature has accepted that he played a crucial role in the murder, and that he was pivotal in securing that most of the persons involved in the crime avoided the censure of the law. But his reasons for becoming involved in the first place and his role in planning how most of the people involved in the crime could walk free have been unclear. This paper has added new evidence from the consistory court in York to what was already known. By combining this evidence with current medical knowledge it has become possible to combine a medical diagnosis of Nicholas Cantilupe’s unusual physical condition with his dispute with his wife over his inability to consummate their marriage to show how ultimately the motivation of Ralph Paynel was caused by Nicholas’ condition. We outlined the case and saw how Katherine Paynel’s claim that her husband had no genitals was initially rejected even by her own family, but that her perseverance meant that the case progressed by the required steps from the archdeacon of Stow, to the bishop of Lincoln, to the archbishop of York in 1367-69. As a consequence, Ralph Paynel was forced to contend with the unusual and embarrassing nature of his daughter’s reasons for pleading for an annulment of her marriage, which would not have endeared the Cantilupe family to him. Not only did his daughter claim that Nicholas was impotent, but he did not have any external genitals. His condition may be one of the earliest recorded – but not recognised – examples of a rare congential disorder that today affects one in 18,000 children. But it is unlikely that the Paynels would ever have understood the condition or sympathised with Nicholas, whose life as a person in what is now called an intersex state must have been very difficult. Though the case followed the proper steps, Nicholas tried to stop the case becoming public knowledge, and, though he should have known better, he eventually snapped and had his wife abducted with her retinue to his ancestral seat in Greasley. Such a blatant challenge to Ralph Paynel could not remain unanswered and in response he attacked Greasley from whence he liberated his daughter, her maid, and her two priests. Paynel’s action made it possible for his daughter to pursue her case at the consistory court in York where she was granted the protection of the court and provided with shelter in Roxby Castle. Changing tack, Nicholas Cantilupe subsequently tried to delay and obstruct the case. Ultimately because of his non-cooperation with the court, he was able to appeal the case to the Papacy where he would have good reason to believe that he would gain a sympathetic hearing. He might even have hoped that he would be able to avoid the physical examination that would have shown his inability to consummate his marriage, but before the case could be heard, he died and left his brother William to continue the blood-line. William was not minded to let his ancestral lands pass on to the Paynels through his brother’s unsuccessful marriage and therefore he challenged Katherine for possession of three Cantilupe castles that had been left in her possession by the death of his brother. Thus in this earlier case and its aftermath we find several possible motives for Ralph Paynel’s involvement in the murder of William Cantilupe: though Ralph Paynel probably never realised that William’s older brother, Nicholas, was in fact genetically a woman and spent his entire life outwardly as a man, but secretly in a woman’s body, he was no doubt acutely aware of the multitude of insults he had suffered in the hands of the Cantilupes: leaving aside what he may have thought about Nicholas’ condition (which he most likely did not understand), by dishonouring his daughter through his abduction of her to Greasley Castle, by subsequently claiming that Paynel had attacked Greasley castle without just cause, by his delaying and obstructing tactics, and by his appeal to the papacy, Nicholas had challenged the honour of the Paynels. He had subjected Ralph Paynel’s daughter to degrading treatment and threatened to hold her prisoner until she complied with his demands, demanding that she reveal his threats to no-one and that she stay in his castle unless expressly permitted to leave by him. Nicholas’ actions in themselves may have turned Ralph Paynel against the Cantilupes. But in addition, when he had been denied the satisfaction he must have expected from the papacy’s decision in the case, when Nicholas died prematurely. His brother William added insult to injury by reclaiming three castles from the Paynels by arguing that the castles with which Nicholas had endowed Katherine would only have come into her possession if she had borne Nicholas an heir, an event that Nicholas must have known could not happen when he married Katherine in 1366. Ultimately, none of the parties in these two cases come out particularly well: William Cantilupe paid a heavy price for his brother’s (and his own) challenge to Ralph Paynel who took advantage of his power and a burgeoning romance between Maud Cantilupe and Thomas Kydale, whose subsequent promotion to be sheriff of Lincoln provided much of the opportunity for avoiding the law. William Cantilupe did not expect that he would ever pay for his challenge to Paynel and he would have been secure in his knowledge that he and his family were magnates of the realm and that, in addition to their powerful patrons, they were under the special protection of William’s great-great uncle, the recently sainted Thomas of Hereford. Ralph Paynel had good reason to detest the Cantilupes and though it took him time to prepare his revenge he did so with dedication and skill. Nicholas Cantilupe is perhaps the person who is most intriguing in these cases. When he was born there would have been little reason for his mother or the midwife to doubt that he was the son and heir of William Cantilupe, son of Nicholas third baron Cantilupe. His condition would not become noticeable until in his early teens, and by then social convention meant that it was impossible to change his gender since outwardly he would have been a short but masculine boy, who, his family could testify, had entered puberty early. Though he must have been increasingly aware that he was not like other men, he was promised in marriage to Katherine Paynel and when they celebrated their marriage it became impossible for him to hide his condition. His wife’s horrified reaction to his physical appearance which made her flee his company within days and her reluctant cohabitation with him for the canonically required period ultimately led her to pursue her case in the court in York. 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