Image of the Archbishop of Canterbury's letters to the Bishop of Winchester on the subject of Ela Fitzpayne, from the register of John de Stratford. Reproduced with permission of Hampshire Archives and Hampshire County Council. (Image Credit: Register of John de Stratford. Reproduced with permission of Hampshire Archives and Hampshire County Council.)NewsletterSign up for our email newsletter for the latest science newsEspionage, sex, public humiliation, murder — these may sound like tropes straight out of Game of Thrones, but they’re actually all elements of a nearly 700-year-old cold case in England. After analyzing Medieval letters and records, a research team from the Cambridge University Institute of Criminology’s Medieval Murder Maps project may have found the killer of a priest. However, this priest may not have been so innocent. A new paper published in Criminal Law Forum takes a deeper look at this 14th-century cold case.Tracing a Medieval MurderThe Medieval Murder Maps project uses interactive maps of three English cities, London, Oxford, and York, during the Medieval period. Throughout the cities are the locations of various deaths and murders. Each location has a story associated with it, directly from written records and coroners' reports at the time. Some of these stories are full of intriguing twists and turns.The Cambridge research team analyzed over 100 murders from texts, translated from Latin, from that period, and used a coding method to separate the deaths into different categories, including time (day, week, month), motivation, weapon used, victim, and location. From this information, one of the deaths the team found most interesting was the murder of John Forde in 1337.A Medieval Lover to Murderer From the letters and texts the team analyzed, they pieced together the events that led up to Forde’s death. Forde was a priest living in London when he was murdered on a busy street. But what possible reason would someone have to want to murder a priest? The motive, according to the research team, was likely revenge. According to Manuel Eisner, one of the study’s authors, the murder may have been an act of revenge by noblewoman Ela Fitzpayne. According to the records, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Mepham, had enacted penance on Fitzpayne after it was discovered that Forde had been her lover. A letter written by Archbishop Mepham accused Fitzpayne of adultery with Forde and possibly others. Her penance was to take a barefoot walk of shame across Salisbury Cathedral. Eisner also found a document that suggested Fitzpayne, her husband, and John Forde sent a gang to rob a church priory and took the livestock for ransom. It’s possible that during this time, Forde found himself in bed with Fitzpayne, before betraying her to the Archbishop Mepham. Commissioned Murder Possibly betrayed by her former lover and sentenced to walks of shame that were to take place once a year for seven years,  Fitzpayne would have none of it. On an early evening on a busy London street, near St. Paul’s Cathedral, three men attacked Forde. One slit his throat while the others stabbed him in the gut. Witnesses claim that the murderers were Fitzpayne’s brother and two of her former servants. “We are looking at a murder commissioned by a leading figure of the English aristocracy. It is planned and cold-blooded, with a family member and close associates carrying it out, all of which suggests a revenge motive,” said Eisner in a press release.Cold Case RevealedAccording to letters from Archbishop Mepham, Fitzpayne was led by the devil and a “spirit of pride.”“The archbishop imposed heavy, shameful public penance on Ela, which she seems not to have complied with, but may have sparked a thirst for vengeance,” said Eisner in a press release. “Not least as John Forde appears to have escaped punishment by the church.” When Archbishop Mepham died in 1333, Fitzpayne waited four years before enacting her revenge, and in 1337, Forde was killed. Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:A graduate of UW-Whitewater, Monica Cull wrote for several organizations, including one that focused on bees and the natural world, before coming to Discover Magazine. Her current work also appears on her travel blog and Common State Magazine. Her love of science came from watching PBS shows as a kid with her mom and spending too much time binging Doctor Who.1 free article leftWant More? Get unlimited access for as low as $1.99/monthSubscribeAlready a subscriber?Register or Log In1 free articleSubscribeWant more?Keep reading for as low as $1.99!SubscribeAlready a subscriber?Register or Log In

Limited-time offer: Get more than 30% off a Vox Membership. Join today to support independent journalism. Federal civil servants are supposed to enjoy robust protections against being fired or demoted for political reasons. But President Donald Trump has effectively stripped them of these protections by neutralizing the federal agencies that implement these safeguards.An agency known as the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) hears civil servants’ claims that a “government employer discriminated against them, retaliated against them for whistleblowing, violated protections for veterans, or otherwise subjected them to an unlawful adverse employment action or prohibited personnel practice,” as a federal appeals court explained in an opinion on Tuesday. But the three-member board currently lacks the quorum it needs to operate because Trump fired two of the members.Trump also fired Hampton Dellinger, who until recently served as the special counsel of the United States, a role that investigates alleged violations of federal civil service protections and brings related cases to the MSPB. Trump recently nominated Paul Ingrassia, a far-right podcaster and recent law school graduate to replace Dellinger.The upshot of these firings is that no one in the government is able to enforce laws and regulations protecting civil servants. As Dellinger noted in an interview, the morning before a federal appeals court determined that Trump could fire him, he’d “been able to get 6,000 newly hired federal employees back on the job,” and was working to get “all probationary employees put back on the job [after] their unlawful firing” by the Department of Government Efficiency and other Trump administration efforts to cull the federal workforce. These and other efforts to reinstate illegally fired federal workers are on hold, and may not resume until Trump leaves office.Which brings us to the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s decision in National Association of Immigration Judges v. Owen, which proposes an innovative solution to this problem.As the Owen opinion notes, the Supreme Court has held that the MSPB process is the only process a federal worker can use if they believe they’ve been fired in violation of federal civil service laws. So if that process is shut down, the worker is out of luck.But the Fourth Circuit’s Owen opinion argues that this “conclusion can only be true…when the statute functions as Congress intended.” That is, if the MSPB and the special counsel are unable to “fulfill their roles prescribed by” federal law, then the courts should pick up the slack and start hearing cases brought by illegally fired civil servants.For procedural reasons, the Fourth Circuit’s decision will not take effect right away — the court sent the case back down to a trial judge to “conduct a factual inquiry” into whether the MSPB continues to function. And, even after that inquiry is complete, the Trump administration is likely to appeal the Fourth Circuit’s decision to the Supreme Court if it wants to keep civil service protections on ice.If the justices agree with the circuit court, however, that will close a legal loophole that has left federal civil servants unprotected by laws that are still very much on the books. And it will cure a problem that the Supreme Court bears much of the blame for creating.The “unitary executive,” or why the Supreme Court is to blame for the loss of civil service protectionsFederal law provides that Dellinger could “be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” and members of the MSPB enjoy similar protections against being fired. Trump’s decision to fire these officials was illegal under these laws.But a federal appeals court nonetheless permitted Trump to fire Dellinger, and the Supreme Court recently backed Trump’s decision to fire the MSPB members as well. The reason is a legal theory known as the “unitary executive,” which is popular among Republican legal scholars, and especially among the six Republicans that control the Supreme Court.If you want to know all the details of this theory, I can point you to three different explainers I’ve written on the unitary executive. The short explanation is that the unitary executive theory claims that the president must have the power to fire top political appointees charged with executing federal laws – including officials who execute laws protecting civil servants from illegal firings.But the Supreme Court has never claimed that the unitary executive permits the president to fire any federal worker regardless of whether Congress has protected them or not. In a seminal opinion laying out the unitary executive theory, for example, Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the president must have the power to remove “principal officers” — high-ranking officials like Dellinger who must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Under Scalia’s approach, lower-ranking government workers may still be given some protection.The Fourth Circuit cannot override the Supreme Court’s decision to embrace the unitary executive theory. But the Owen opinion essentially tries to police the line drawn by Scalia. The Supreme Court has given Trump the power to fire some high-ranking officials, but he shouldn’t be able to use that power as a back door to eliminate job protections for all civil servants.The Fourth Circuit suggests that the federal law which simultaneously gave the MSPB exclusive authority over civil service disputes, while also protecting MSPB members from being fired for political reasons, must be read as a package. Congress, this argument goes, would not have agreed to shunt all civil service disputes to the MSPB if it had known that the Supreme Court would strip the MSPB of its independence. And so, if the MSPB loses its independence, it must also lose its exclusive authority over civil service disputes — and federal courts must regain the power to hear those cases.It remains to be seen whether this argument persuades a Republican Supreme Court — all three of the Fourth Circuit judges who decided the Owen case are Democrats, and two are Biden appointees. But the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning closely resembles the kind of inquiry that courts frequently engage in when a federal law is struck down.When a court declares a provision of federal law unconstitutional, it often needs to ask whether other parts of the law should fall along with the unconstitutional provision, an inquiry known as “severability.” Often, this severability analysis asks which hypothetical law Congress would have enacted if it had known that the one provision is invalid.The Fourth Circuit’s decision in Owen is essentially a severability opinion. It takes as a given the Supreme Court’s conclusion that laws protecting Dellinger and the MSPB members from being fired are unconstitutional, then asks which law Congress would have enacted if it had known that it could not protect MSPB members from political reprisal. The Fourth Circuit’s conclusion is that, if Congress had known that MSPB members cannot be politically independent, then it would not have given them exclusive authority over civil service disputes.If the Supreme Court permits Trump to neutralize the MSPB, that would fundamentally change how the government functionsThe idea that civil servants should be hired based on merit and insulated from political pressure is hardly new. The first law protecting civil servants, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which President Chester A. Arthur signed into law in 1883.Laws like the Pendleton Act do more than protect civil servants who, say, resist pressure to deny government services to the president’s enemies. They also make it possible for top government officials to actually do their jobs.Before the Pendleton Act, federal jobs were typically awarded as patronage — so when a Democratic administration took office, the Republicans who occupied most federal jobs would be fired and replaced by Democrats. This was obviously quite disruptive, and it made it difficult for the government to hire highly specialized workers. Why would someone go to the trouble of earning an economics degree and becoming an expert on federal monetary policy, if they knew that their job in the Treasury Department would disappear the minute their party lost an election?Meanwhile, the task of filling all of these patronage jobs overwhelmed new presidents. As Candice Millard wrote in a 2011 biography of President James A. Garfield, the last president elected before the Pendleton Act, when Garfield took office, a line of job seekers began to form outside the White House “before he even sat down to breakfast.” By the time Garfield had eaten, this line “snaked down the front walk, out the gate, and onto Pennsylvania Avenue.” Garfield was assassinated by a disgruntled job seeker, a fact that likely helped build political support for the Pendleton Act.By neutralizing the MSPB, Trump is effectively undoing nearly 150 years worth of civil service reforms, and returning the federal government to a much more primitive state. At the very least, the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Owen is likely to force the Supreme Court to ask if it really wants a century and a half of work to unravel.See More:

June 5: World Environment Day; Day of Arafah (Shia Islam) Antonio Luna 1897 – The Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law was passed, instituting the protection of structures and artifacts in Japan designated National Treasures. 1899 – Antonio Luna (pictured), Commanding General of the Philippine Army, was assassinated in the midst of the Philippine–American War. 1997 – Anticipating a coup attempt, President Pascal Lissouba of the Republic of the Congo ordered the detention of his rival Denis Sassou Nguesso, initiating a second civil war. 2004 – Noël Mamère, the mayor of Bègles, conducted a marriage ceremony for two men, even though same-sex marriage in France had not yet been legalised. 2009 – After almost two months of civil disobedience, at least 31 people were killed in clashes between the National Police and indigenous people in Bagua province, Peru. Ivy Compton-Burnett (b. 1884)Theippan Maung Wa (b. 1899)Elizabeth Gloster (b. 1949)Megumi Nakajima (b. 1989) More anniversaries: June 4 June 5 June 6 Archive By email List of days of the year About

Tom Cruise is taking on one last daring adventure in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning," which pits Ethan Hunt against an evil AI that threatens to destroy the world.The actor has been the face of the franchise since the first movie in 1996, and has starred in eight films in total.The Impossible Mission Force (yes, really) first debuted in the "Mission: Impossible" TV series in 1966, which starred Steven Hill and Peter Graves and ran for six seasons until 1973, before it was revived for another two seasons on ABC in 1988.With the franchise set to end with "The Final Reckoning," here are all the "Mission: Impossible" movies, ranked. 8. "Mission: Impossible 2" (2000) Tom Cruise riding a motorbike in "Mission: Impossible 2." Paramount Pictures "Mission: Impossible 2" should be given way more love than it gets, mainly because the Hong Kong cinema legend John Woo helmed it. Yes, the "Hard Boiled" and "Bullet in the Head" director brought his signature bullet ballet style to the "Mission: Impossible" sequel, with all the slow-motion flair you could ask for.Is it cheesy? Sure. Does the script need some work? Definitely. Is there any smart subtext or meaning underneath all the action? Absolutely not. This is a peak 2000s action movie, and it knows it. "Mission: Impossible 2" is so over the top that once you've made peace with it, it's best to just go along for the ride. Come on, Tom Cruise and Dougray Scott play motorbike chicken with each other before a midair tackle sends them both crashing to the ground. What's not to love? It's the type of vehicular chaos that the "Fast & Furious" franchise's Dominic Toretto would be proud of.Even so, "Mission: Impossible 2" ranks at the bottom of the bunch. 7. "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" (2011) Tom Cruise on the side of the Burj Khalifa in "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol." Paramount Pictures The 2011 film "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" takes the franchise into the modern era. It follows Hunt and his team as they're forced to go on the run when they're framed for bombing the Kremlin.It quickly becomes a race to stop the villainous Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), who wants to start a nuclear war so that only the strongest members of humanity will survive. It's this plot that keeps "Ghost Protocol" from ascending the ranking, because, as spy thrillers go, stopping a nuclear war feels predictable, and the film fails to do anything unique with the premise. Plus, there's nothing particularly extraordinary about Hendricks as a baddie.But generic plot devices aside, the film features some brilliant fights and gripping set pieces. The stand-out moment is when Cruise's hero climbs the Burj Khalifa in Dubai with nothing but sticky gloves and rope.One of the most surprising elements of the film is Jeremy Renner's William Brandt, a disgraced former agent who's grappling with the guilt of failing Ethan on a former mission. That sub-plot works very well among the rest of the action, and it's a clever way of injecting a bit of heart into the mission. 6. "Mission: Impossible 3" (2006) Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt and Keri Russell as Lindsey Farris in "Mission: Impossible 3." Paramount Pictures Two words: JJ Abrams. The "Lost" and "Fringe" creator made his big screen debut in 2006 with "Mission: Impossible 3," which takes a mid-noughties approach to the Impossible Mission Force and gives it a brutal edge.The sequel pits Ethan, Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), Zhen Lei (Maggie Q), and Declan Gormley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) against a nefarious arms dealer played by the incomparable Phillip Seymour Hoffman.Part of what elevates "Mission: Impossible 3" from previous films is that it never actually explains what Ethan and the gang are chasing. It's known only by its mysterious codename, the Rabbit's Foot. It could be an infectious disease, a computer virus, a hard drive teeming with currency, or nuclear codes — and that's what makes it so compelling. It's also refreshing to see Ethan settled and in love with Michelle Monahan's Julia Meade. What does married life look like for a superspy? How does that complicate his responsibility to save the world? The sequel feels very busy, as Abrams packs a lot into a tight two-hour run time. And some parts don't quite work, like Ethan's dynamic with his young mentee Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell). But there are some stellar sequences throughout, like the ballistic shoot-out on the bridge, which is an eye-popping piece of action choreography. 5. "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" (2025) Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning." Skydance/Paramount Pictures "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" is the sequel to 2023's "Dead Reckoning," and sees Hunt race to stop an assassin known as Gabriel (Esai Morales) from controlling a sentient AI called the Entity. Just to raise the stakes, the Entity has already taken control of the world's nuclear weapons and plans to wipe out humanity.While the 2025 movie is billed as the final entry in the franchise, its story doesn't quite live up to the high expectations set by "Dead Reckoning." The first hour is bogged down by lengthy exposition and generic action movie silliness.That being said, as soon as the action picks up and Cruise embraces his adrenaline junkie persona once more, "The Final Reckoning" provides a breathtaking cinematic experience.Whether it's the suspenseful scuba dive into a wrecked submarine or how Hunt climbs between two biplanes in the sky to fight Gabriel, the film's ambitious sequences deserve to be seen on the big screen. 4. "Mission: Impossible" (1996) Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in "Mission: Impossible." Paramount Pictures Taken from the 1966 TV series of the same name, 1996's "Mission: Impossible" introduces Cruise's Ethan Hunt, a field agent working for Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), the main character from the show. It has audiences instantly on their toes when Ethan's entire team, including Phelps, are assassinated by a double agent in the opening — forcing our hero to go on the run after being framed for their deaths."Mission: Impossible" earned itself a place in cinema history thanks to the brilliantly intense break-in scene, in which Cruise's Hunt hacks into a CIA mainframe computer while suspended on cables.And of course, the high-octane ending on top of a Channel Tunnel train is a pulse-pounding affair set to the iconic theme music. Cruise effortlessly brings Hunt to life alongside top-notch performances from Voight, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Ving Rhames, which really help sell the paranoid atmosphere of the film 3. "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" (2015) Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust in "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation." Paramount Pictures "Rogue Nation" is where frequent Tom Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie properly put his stamp on the franchise. McQuarrie expands the world in a fascinating way with the introduction of the Syndicate, a vast organization made up of rogue agents from every intelligence agency on the planet.Their mission (should they choose to accept it) is to create disorder and chaos to destabilize the global intelligence community, although their true goals don't become apparent until 2018's "Mission: Impossible - Fallout." Hunt is determined to root out the Syndicate, and its sinister leader, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris)."Rogue Nation" also introduces Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), an enigmatic British agent who has a delicious will-they-won't-they dynamic with Cruise's hero.A brawl in the rigging above an opera stage in Vienna is a stunning highlight, as is Cruise's underwater dive to retrieve a computer chip from a submerged safe. Cruise broke the world record for holding his breath for six minutes while completing that stunt in 2014. 2. "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" (2023) Esai Morales as Gabriel and Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One." Paramount Pictures "Dead Reckoning Part One" sees Hunt's IMF team chasing a key that will lead them to an unstoppable AI that could wreak havoc on the world.And, of course, every government agency in the world wants to get their hands on it, so Hunt and his team are effectively on the run from everyone. "Dead Reckoning's" focus on AI gives it a grounding in the real world, but the film also continues to elevate the sheer scale of action that audiences have come to expect from the "Mission: Impossible" franchise. That jaw-dropping mountain jump at the movie's climax has to be seen to be believed, and it only gets more bonkers after that.It's a testament to Cruise and McQuarrie that the film feels fresh and new — even if the script does drag on at points. Then again, audiences are coming to see Cruise throw himself off a mountain, not to hear Oscar-winning dialogue. 1. "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" (2018) Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible - Fallout." Paramount There's no question that McQuarrie's "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" is the best movie in the franchise, which is impressive considering it's the sixth outing for Hunt and the gang. It continues the Syndicate storyline from "Rogue Nation" and dives further into Solomon Lane's scheme. He wants to destabilize the world by irradiating the Siachen Glacier, which supplies water to India, Pakistan, and China. This would kill off a third of the world's population and drastically change society in the process.  But most of the story revolves around a CIA and IMF mole who goes by the codename 'John Lark.'The hunt to find this rogue agent crosses the world, introducing the likes of Henry Cavill's CIA agent August Walker and Vanessa Kirby's underworld matriarch, Alanna Mitsopolis. The scope of McQuarrie's movie is massive, and its huge stunts mirror that size. A gobsmacking scene sees Hunt dive with Walker from a plane and parachute into Paris. Cruise shot the stunt alongside a cameraman to properly capture the chaotic dive. Then, of course, there's the film's exhilarating helicopter chase through a New Zealand mountain range — just another example of McQuarrie and Cruise's commitment to filming these stunts in the most jaw-dropping way possible."Fallout" is a thrilling chapter of the "Mission: Impossible" franchise that deepens the audience's understanding of Cruise's hero while delivering a stunning cinematic experience.

Campfire Cabal – the studio behind history-based tactical RPGs like Expeditions: Rome – has suddenly broken its silence to announce that it has been working on a new project. In a post on its official website, the studio mentioned the last major update it had released for Expeditions: Rome back in November 2024, and how things have otherwise been quiet. Through its post, Campfire Cabal has confirmed that it “was never shut down.” While the studio did suffer some lay-offs since its last game release, it has still kept work on its project going since it started back in 2022. The studio has also confirmed that full production on the new title has been kicked off as of March 2025. “If you follow the insider news, you are aware that it’s been a rough couple of years in the game industry. Investment dried up, studios shut down, countless developers lost their jobs, and games were cancelled left and right,” wrote the studio. “We are extremely grateful that there were people within the group who fought to keep us alive through the turmoil, and that we can now emerge on the other side with renewed vigour.” Further in its post, Campfire Cabal has confirmed that its new project is also part of the Expeditions franchise, which means that the studio will once again tackle real-world historic settings while also featuring in-depth, tactical RPG elements in progression, storytelling as well as its turn-based combat. However, the studio wrote that it wasn’t yet ready to reveal more details about the game. It did say that the new Expeditions title will take place in a new time period, in a different part of the world from other games in the series. “We’re not yet ready to reveal more details of this next instalment, but we can confirm that just like every Expeditions game, it’s set in a new period of our history and in a new part of the world for the series,” wrote the studio. “And just like every Expeditions game, this one will be another step up in quality from its predecessor.” The last major game in the franchise, Expeditions: Rome, takes place in ancient Rome. Players take on the role of a young Legatus whose father, because of unknown machinations by a political opponent, is assassinated. Throughout the game, players can meet new allies, take on different enemies, and make some meaningful choices not just through conversation with other characters, but also through the decisions made in the title’s brutal turn-based combat system. Expeditions: Rome takes players to quite a few different players all over the world, from Rome to Gaul, Greece, and even North Africa. All of this is paired up with in-depth RPG systems that allow for players to experiment with different kinds of builds depending on their play style. The game also features a loot and crafting system that allows the player to get ever stronger. Other games in the historic franchise include Expeditions: Viking and Expeditions: Conquistador, the settings for which would be self-explanatory.