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Thomas Becket and The Tale of the Travels of Reginald Fitzurse

 

Lovely place Barham. If you have the opportunity to stroll up to the church you can note the various walled properties next to the graveyard. This was land owned by the dastardly Reginald Fitzurse.

You can obviously stroll through Canterbury Cathedral itself and look at where Thomas Becket was killed. Although sadly since Henry VIII’s time there is no longer an elaborate shrine.

If these occasionally outlandish tales have piqued your interest then you may wish to look at these works.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on Reginald Fitzurse

Anne Duggan writing in History Extra magazine website from 2013

Website on the History of Barham

The Murderers of St. Thomas Becket in Popular Tradition by Tancred Borenius in Folklore Vol. 43, No. 2 1932 

The Murderers of Thomas Becket by Thomas K. Compton from The Historian Vol. 35, No. 2 1973