Review 'Margaret Clitherow-an Elizabethan Saint' by Tony Morgan
Power Treason and Plot in Tudor England The first non-fiction book from Tony Morgan who lives just outside York. Mr Morgan has already had three novels published. Two concern alternative history outcomes to the Gunpowder Treason, another 'Pearl of York', is a fictionalised life of Margaret Clitherow, which also features a youthful Guy Fawkes. Margaret Clitherow is most known for her refusal to plead either guilty or not guilty to a charge of harbouring Jesuit priests in York in 1586. Her sentence was to undergo a punishment known as Peine forte et dure . This entailed being stripped naked, a stone placed behind her back, a door laid across her, then weights were added to it. Was all carried out on 25th March 1586 at Toll Booth, Ouse Bridge, in York. Margaret Clitherow was declared a saint in 1970. It must be said that this was an exceptional punishment...