Professor Marion Turner

speaker

759 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 29 May

Professor Marion Turner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

You're Dead to Me · Geoffrey Chaucer: the medieval father of English literature · 27 Feb 2026 podcast

And what they found was that Cecily Champagne and Chaucer were on the same side of this law case.

And they were both defendants together.

And they employed the same lawyer.

And then they found the writ, which was that someone called Thomas Stondon was making a lawsuit against the two of them.

What had happened, according to Stondon, was that Cecily had been his servant and she had left before the end of her contract to go and be Chaucer's servant.

So this was a labour contract.

And the reason then that Cecily would release him from any actions relating to a raptus would be that she was saying, no, I was not forcibly removed from my former employer.

Because it would be much harder to make a case against Chaucer and Cecily if she was saying, you know, this didn't happen forcibly.

I wasn't forced away from the service.

Because then all they have to do is defend the contract.

The contract probably wasn't written down.

It was easier to say, well, I left and then was employed.

But these documents did, as I say, it demonstrated they were on the same side and that this was something that was brought under the statute of labourers.

So going back to talking earlier about the plague.

Yeah.

The statutes of labourers had brought in a lot more legislation to make it harder for people to leave their employers for higher wages.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, so many records still haven't been looked at or still there in the National Archives.

There's a lot there.

Showing 561–580 of 759 · page 29 of 38