Article: Books: When violence and piety went hand in hand Blood Feud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England By Richard Fletcher ALLEN LANE pounds 14.99; The death of one nobleman at Canute's court led to 60 years of savagery. Fiona Hook explores the social conventions of killing

On a gusty March day in 1016, Earl Uhtred of Northumbria, the most important man in England north of the Humber, came with 40 followers to make submission to England's new ruler, King Canute. Entering the smoky hall, he stood before the king and was cut down with Canute's connivance by an old enemy, Thurbrand, thus sparking a chain reaction of violence and counterviolence covering 60 years, three generations and the conquest of England by the Normans.

Uhtred's murder laid on his kinsmen the solemn duty to kill the man who carried out the crime. This was entirely proper to his contemporaries. The prosecution of a feud to Anglo-Saxon society was governed by social conventions as rigid as ...

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