03/25/2023: In the days of easy poison

When people dropped dead for any variety of reasons, it was much easier to poison your enemies,and have your murder written off as just another one of those episodes where a person was dropping dead because people dropped dead all the time. This seems to have been what happened. In the case of. William Longespee the First Earl of Salisbury.

Hubert De Burgh and Billy Long, as no one called him, got crosswise with each other. They were both loyal subjects to the kings during the 13th century. But De Burgh didn’t think Longespee was sufficiently loyal. They had a set-to and ultimately De Burgh backed down. To make it up to Longespee, De Burgh invited him over to his house for a feast. Several days after the repast, Longespee turned up dead.

Oh well, people die all the time in the Middle Ages. It is, after all, the 13th century and the lines at the pharmacy for leaches were notoriously long, even for nobles.

Fine. Then, in 1791, during the refurbishment of the Salisbury Cathedral, William Longespee’s tomb was opened and the mummified corps of a rat was found in his skull. The rat displayed serious arsenic poisoning.

The mummified rat is still on display at the cathedral because it was assumed that the rat died from the arsenic that was placed in Billy Long’s dinner by Hubert De Burgh.

More from the Salisbury Journal.

This entire episode was kicked off by a notation I found in one of my notebooks from June, 1990 when I was traveling through England as a junior in college: