The Ballad of Jacob Peck
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The Ballad of Jacob Peck
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Narrated by:
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Matthew Josdal
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By:
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Debra Komar
About this listen
On a frigid February evening in 1805, Amos Babcock brutally murdered Mercy Hall. Believing that he was being instructed by God, Babcock stabbed and disemboweled his own sister before dumping her lifeless body in a rural New Brunswick snowbank. The Ballad of Jacob Peck is the tragic and fascinating story of how isolation, duplicity, and religious mania turned impoverished, hardworking people violent, leading to a murder and an execution. Babcock was hanged for the murder of his sister, but in her meticulously researched book, Debra Komar shows that itinerant preacher Jacob Peck should have swung right beside him.
The mystery lies not in the whodunit but rather in a lingering question: Should Jacob Peck, whose incendiary sermons directly contributed to the killing, have been charged with the murder of Mercy Hall? In this epic saga, media accounts of what happened in the aftermath of the murder have taken on a life all their own, one built of half truths, conjecture, and narrative devices designed to titillate, if not inform. A forensic investigation of a crime from the Canadian frontier, the tale of Jacob Peck, Amos Babcock, and Mercy Hall remains as controversial and riveting today as it was more than 200 years ago.
Cover design by Chris Tompkins and Julie Scriver. Cover image by Thomas Tolkien (thomastolkien.wordpress.com). Reproduced by permission of Goose Lane Editions.
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- Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Beth McDonald
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 82
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
Over a few weeks in 1741, 10 fires blazed across Manhattan. With each new fire, panicked whites saw more evidence of a slave uprising. Tried and convicted before the colony's Supreme Court, 13 black men were burned at the stake and 17 were hanged. Four whites, the alleged ringleaders of the plot, were also hanged, and seven more were pardoned on condition that they never set foot in New York again.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting
- By Phillip Goodson on 05-15-09
By: Jill Lepore
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Six Women of Salem
- The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials
- By: Marilynne K. Roach
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 181
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 159
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Story4 out of 5 stars 159
Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the 20 who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted", 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn't include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Robotic Reader
- By DangerousBlossom on 12-15-18
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A Delusion of Satan
- The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials
- By: Frances Hill
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Story4 out of 5 stars 132
During the bleak winter of 1692 in the rigid Puritan community of Salem Village, Massachusetts, a group of young girls began experiencing violent fits, allegedly tormented by Satan and the witches who worshipped him. From the girls' initial denouncing of an Indian slave, the accusations soon multiplied. In less than two years, 19 men and women were hanged, one was pressed to death, and over a hundred others were imprisoned and impoverished. This evenhanded and now-classic history illuminates the horrifying episode with visceral clarity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A new take on the Witch Trials
- By Jolene Correll on 02-17-15
By: Frances Hill
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Duel with the Devil
- The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery
- By: Paul Collins
- Narrated by: Mark Peckham
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 190
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 168
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 169
In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic, its uncertain future contested by the two major political parties of the day: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached - with Manhattan likely to be the swing district on which the presidency would hinge - their animosity reached a fever pitch.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Trial of the Century
- By Jean on 09-06-15
By: Paul Collins
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American Crucifixion
- The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church
- By: Alex Beam
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 153
On June 27, 1844, a mob stormed the jail in the dusty frontier town of Carthage, Illinois. Clamorous and angry, they were hunting down a man they saw as a grave threat to their otherwise quiet lives: The founding prophet of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. They wanted blood. At thirty-nine years old, Smith had already lived an outsized life. In addition to starting the Church of Latter-Day Saints and creating his own "Golden Bible" - the Book of Mormon - he had worked as a water-dowser and treasure hunter.
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5 out of 5 stars
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All religious histories are not created equal
- By Kendra on 07-01-14
By: Alex Beam
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The Assassin's Accomplice
- Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln
- By: Kate Clifford Larson
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
In The Assassin’s Accomplice, historian Kate Clifford Larson tells the gripping story of Mary Surratt, a little-known conspirator in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, and the first woman ever to be executed by the federal government. A Confederate sympathizer, Surratt ran the boarding house where the conspirators met to plan Lincoln’s assassination. Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, The Assassin’s Accomplice tells the intricate story of the Lincoln conspiracy through the eyes of its only female participant, offering a fresh perspective on America’s most famous murder.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Did She or Didn't She
- By c a cornelius on 06-04-21
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A Storm of Witchcraft
- The Salem Trials and the American Experience
- By: Emerson W. Baker
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 257
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 225
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 224
Beginning in January 1692, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts witnessed the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in early America. Villagers - mainly young women - suffered from unseen torments that caused them to writhe, shriek, and contort their bodies, complaining of pins stuck into their flesh and of being haunted by specters. Believing that they suffered from assaults by an invisible spirit, the community began a hunt to track down those responsible for the demonic work.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow....riveting and tragic
- By TeamDowager on 10-23-15
By: Emerson W. Baker
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Fiend
- The Shocking True Story of America's Youngest Serial Killer
- By: Harold Schechter
- Narrated by: Kyle Tait
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 241
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 211
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 211
When 14-year-old Jesse Pomeroy was arrested in 1874, a nightmarish reign of terror over an unsuspecting city came to an end. "The Boston Boy Fiend" was imprisoned at last. But the complex questions sparked by his ghastly crime spree - the hows and whys of vicious juvenile crime - were as relevant in the so-called Age of Innocence as they are today.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Graphic descriptions of child torture
- By mobius_spider on 11-13-20
By: Harold Schechter
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Man-Eater
- The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal
- By: Harold Schechter
- Narrated by: Eric G. Dove
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 288
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 253
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Story4 out of 5 stars 253
In the winter of 1873, a small band of prospectors lost their way in the frozen wilderness of the Colorado Rockies. Months later, when the snow finally melted, only one of them emerged. His name was Alfred G. Packer, though he would soon become infamous throughout the country under a different name: "the Man-Eater."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Made me hungry. Just kidding.
- By daniel on 05-01-17
By: Harold Schechter
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The Faithful Executioner
- Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century
- By: Joel F. Harrington
- Narrated by: James Gillies
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 705
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 645
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 639
Based on the rare and until now overlooked journal of a Renaissance-era executioner, the noted historian Joel F. Harrington's The Faithful Executioner takes us deep inside the alien world and thinking of Meister Frantz Schmidt of Nuremberg, who, during 45 years as a professional executioner, personally put to death 394 individuals and tortured, flogged, or disfigured many hundreds more. But the picture that emerges of Schmidt from his personal papers is not that of a monster. Could a man who routinely practiced such cruelty also be insightful?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By James on 03-30-18
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The Return of Martin Guerre
- By: Natalie Zemon Davis
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 88
The Inventive Peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse, when on a summer's day in 1560 a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the Continent. Natalie Zemon Davis reconstructs the lives of ordinary people, in a sparkling way that reveals the hidden attachments and sensibilities of nonliterate 16th-century villagers.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Intriguing court documents
- By metAlApollo on 12-04-24
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The Girl on the Velvet Swing
- Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
- By: Simon Baatz
- Narrated by: Christine Lakin
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 182
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 167
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Story4 out of 5 stars 166
In 1901 Evelyn Nesbit, a chorus girl, dined alone with the architect Stanford White in his townhouse on 24th Street in New York. Nesbit, just 16 years old, had recently moved to the city. White was 47. As the foremost architect of his day, he was a celebrity. She told no one that White raped her that night until, several years later, she confided in Harry Thaw, the millionaire playboy who would later become her husband. Thaw, thirsting for revenge, shot and killed White in 1906 before hundreds of theatergoers during a performance in Madison Square Garden.
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1 out of 5 stars
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"The Girl" is barely in this book
- By Polly L. Mccall on 07-12-18
By: Simon Baatz
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The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
- By: David I. Kertzer
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
Bologna, 1858: A police posse, acting on the orders of a Catholic inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara, wrenches his crying six-year-old son from his arms, and rushes him off in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she collapses and has to be taken to a neighbor's house, but her weeping can be heard across the city. With this terrifying scene - one that would haunt this family forever - David I. Kertzer begins his fascinating investigation of the dramatic kidnapping.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Too much detail
- By L. WILLIAM on 03-03-24
By: David I. Kertzer
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Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency
- By: Dan Abrams, David Fisher
- Narrated by: Adam Verner, Dan Abrams
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,285
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,133
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,127
At the end of the summer of 1859, 22-year-old Peachy Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, who had been involved in more than 3,000 cases - including more than 25 murder trials - during his two-decades-long career, was hired to defend him.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Courtroom Drama
- By Jean on 04-26-19
By: Dan Abrams, and others
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The Friar of Carcassonne
- Revolt Against the Inquisition in the Last Days of the Cathars
- By: Stephen O'Shea
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
In 1300, the French region of Languedoc had been cowed under the authority of both Rome and France since Pope Innocent III 's Albigensian Crusade nearly a century earlier. That crusade almost wiped out the Cathars, a group of heretical Christians whose beliefs threatened the authority of the Catholic Church. But decades of harrowing repression - enforced by the ruthless Pope Boniface VIII; the Machiavellian French King Philip the Fair, of France; and the pitiless grand inquisitor of Toulouse; Bernard Gui (the villain in The Name of the Rose) - had bred resentment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating
- By P on 08-04-15
By: Stephen O'Shea
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Emmett Till
- The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement
- By: Devery S. Anderson
- Narrated by: Brandon Church
- Length: 21 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Story5 out of 5 stars 93
Emmett Till offers the first truly comprehensive account of the 1955 murder and its aftermath. It tells the story of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago brutally lynched for a harmless flirtation at a country store in the Mississippi Delta. His death and the acquittal of his killers by an all-white jury set off a firestorm of protests that reverberated all over the world and spurred on the civil rights movement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An important story narrated with power and warmth
- By R. Nance on 10-04-16
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God's Traitors
- Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England
- By: Jessie Childs
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
For many Catholics, the Elizabethan "Golden Age" was an alien concept. Following the criminalization of their religion by Elizabeth I, nearly 200 Catholics were executed, and many more wasted away in prison during her reign. Torture was used more than at any other time in England's history. While some bowed to the pressure of the government and new church, publicly conforming to acts of Protestant worship, others did not - and quickly found themselves living in a state of siege.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Well-researched, well-written
- By Charles on 03-23-15
By: Jessie Childs