A monastery raid, an affair, public disgrace and a priest’s throat slit on a London street – the shocking tale of long-planned revenge
In 1337, a priest from a quiet North Dorset village was brutally assassinated in broad daylight on a London street. His throat was slit. His belly stabbed. The killers melted into the crowd. For centuries, the motive – and the mastermind – behind the attack remained a mystery. But new research by Cambridge University criminologists has finally pieced together the story. And at the centre of it all is Ela Fitzpayne: a noblewoman of Dorset. She was also a monastery raider, and a woman bent on revenge.
Okeford Fitzpaine connection
It’s hard to imagine what life was like 700 years ago in Okeford Fitzpaine, just before the Black Death swept through Britain. In 1320 it was a rural settlement with a parish priest named John Forde, and the Fitzpaynes, local landowners who wielded considerable power. Ela, the wife of Sir Robert Fitzpayne, was not just an average well-born nobleman’s wife.
In 1322, she, her husband and the priest John Forde led a raid on a Benedictine monastery in Somerset. They made off with eight oxen, 140 sheep, 60 lambs and 30 pigs, damaging property along the way. The theft was serious – both because of its scale and also its timing, coming amid heightened tension between England and France.
John Forde’s involvement in the raid demonstrated his loyalty to the nobility and not the church. That same year, the Archbishop of Canterbury accused Ela of multiple romantic affairs – including one with Forde – as well as the theft from the monastery. He decreed a deeply humiliating public penance: to walk barefoot, bearing a candle, the length of Salisbury Cathedral. She was ordered to repeat the act every autumn for seven years.
The humiliation, it seems, continued to fester.
When the Archbishop died in 1333, Ela saw her opportunity for revenge. Four years later, John Forde was in Westcheap, near where St Paul’s Cathedral now stands, when a team of assassins struck. Ela’s brother Hugh Lovell slit the priest’s throat. Two former Fitzpayne retainers, Hugh Colne and John Strong, followed up with a knife to the stomach.
Despite the murder happening in front of several horrified onlookers, the perpetrators were unable to be found. The sheriffs were ordered to arrest the fugitives, and years later, in 1342,
Hugh Colne was indicted while imprisoned at Newgate.
A 700 year old paper trail
The case came to light thanks to Dr Manuel Eisner, Wolfson Professor of Criminology, who has led a project revealing hundreds of medieval murders in London, York and Oxford. ‘My main research is about the causes and prevention of violence in the modern world, ‘ he says. ‘However, I am fascinated by history, the subject I first studied. For me, it is like a distant mirror, giving us a glimpse into strange and different worlds, but at the same time helping to better understand our present.
‘I study the Coroners’ rolls – the documents by officials who led investigations of violent deaths in the Middle Ages. These investigations were conducted shortly after a body was found, so they are quite close to the event. Some of the more detailed reports shine a dramatic spotlight on a brief moment and place many hundreds of years ago. ‘They make me curious: why did these violent outbursts occur so often? Where and when did they happen? Who were the perpetrators, the victims and the witnesses? And how was violence, and how society reacted to it, different from these days?
‘Many records were lost, of course, but 14th century England was quite bureaucratic. Documents relating to Royal matters, such as the investigations by the coroner, were sent to London, where they were archived. Often, the coroner’s investigation is the only trace we can find of the involved individuals. For others, however, we can find more information in other surviving sources: tax rolls, registers of public duties, involvement in other criminal cases, Royal pardons or lists of people on trial in assize courts.’
In Ela’s case, clues came from a number of entirely separate source documents:
‘There are two letters by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Bishop of Winchester, accusing her of adultery and also refusal to comply with the imposed religious penalties. There are also documents of the activities of Royal courts, where she is listed among a group that raided a monastery in Stogursey in Somerset. Combining these and other documents allowed me to piece together a rich story of the background to the events that led to the murder of John Forde.’
Why kill John Forde?
But why was Ela’s wrath directed at the priest? Manuel Eisner has a few thoughts on what she was like: ‘It is hugely difficult to judge a person’s character on the basis of a few documents written by others: but I imagine her to have been a proud and independent person, somebody who didn’t easily bow to authority. She appears to have broken gender roles – cattle raids by landowners against neighbours were common, but I have not found a single other instance where a woman was involved.
‘Whether she actually did have a romantic relationship with the Chaplain of Okeford Fitzpaine, John Forde, we don’t really know. The archbishop, it seems, had nothing but hearsay as evidence, and was possibly motivated by misogynistic slander against a member of the nobility.
‘However, the very public accusations and excommunication must have seriously harmed Ela Fitzpayne and her honour, even if her husband was a highly regarded supporter of Edward III.
‘If, as I suspect, John Forde was the origin of the allegations against Ela, she must have been deeply wounded, furious about the breach of loyalty, and keen to take revenge for the humiliation she had suffered.
‘She waited for five years, until the right moment to assassinate John Forde arrived.’
To see this case, along with hundreds of other historical murder mysteries, explore it on the Medieval Murder Map here.
Dr Manuel Eisner will give a talk on his work and on Ela Fitzpayne’s story in Okeford Fitzpaine in
March 2026.
