Talk:Murder of William de Cantilupe/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ealdgyth (talk · contribs) 14:31, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I'll get to this in the next day or two. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:31, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Time for me to write a proper lead then! I forgot all about this. ——SN54129 14:58, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

On edit: Just realised that it already had a proper lead, but someone removed the bally thing. Standing by. ——SN54129 15:59, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   Some spots that need work.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

• Oh, whee! A 14th-century murder mystery! Was it Sir Stupid in the solar with the poker? We shall find out! (Given the length of this and your habit of going to FAC with "interesting" subjects, I've gone over this one with a fine tooth comb with an eye towards FAC. If that's not your intention, some of the following points will probably not be necessary. I'm also going to explain what needs changing so you can see it for future work rather than just doing copyedits - hopefully this will help you in the future. So if I seem REALLY nitpicky, think of this as a PR and a twofer special ... GA and PR in one!). (and forgive any misspellings or typos - still bouncing around in the semi - now in Central Illinois)

Brilliant! Mindreader, that's exactly what I was thinking. So yeah, I appreciate the twofer  :) especially as you hit, what, about 2,000 miles and how many hundred hours of driving?!

• Lead:
  • "both at a local level and in central government" reads a bit clunky to me... perhaps "both in the central government and at the local level"?

Nicked your phrasing, many thanks.

• • "Saint" should be "saint" - and maybe link to the specific saint?

Right; I assume that's lower-case "saint" on its own; I've changed it to "Saint Thomas de Cantilupe]] though.

• • "in the spring of 1375" redundant - we already say "March 1375" in the first paragraph

Removed.

• • "the chief suspects were his entire household, including his wife Maud, neighbouring magnate Sir Ralph Paynel, the Sheriff, Sir Thomas Kydale, and de Cantilupe's cook and chamberlain." - cook and chamberlain would be part of his household, no? Perhaps "the chief suspects two neighbors - the local sheriff Sir Ralph Paynel and Sir Thomas Kydale - as well as his entire household - including his wife Maud, the cook, and the chamberlain."? or something similar - I'm not wedded to my suggested wording but it's odd to put the cook and chamberlain after the two neighbors when they would be part of the household...

Dead right, I've put them together in their respective places.

• • "dispute with the de Cantilupe's for many years" - ARGH! It's the apostrophe of doom that shows up ... this isn't a possessive - what this sentence literally is meaning is "dispute with the of the Cantilupe for many years" - you want to remove the apostrophe - "dispute with the de Cantilupes for many years"

Gah! The Greengrocer's apostrophe! Cheers!

• • "and Maud may have been" - she will work fine in place of Maud here, thus removing repetition.

Done.

• Background:
  • Who is Pedersen and why does his opinion matter?

Swapped in that description you point out below :)

• • "they lords of the realm" ..needs a link or explanation for the non specialist.

Linked to Peerage of England.

• • you link "St" but per MOS, "St" should be expanded on first use...

Ah, again. Linked and recast the sentence.

• The household:
  • Per MOS:HEAD, we avoid using "the" as the start of headings.

Schoolboy error. Ta.

• • "Although the de Cantilupes' main residence was Greasley Castle, Nottinghamshire, the manor of Scotton had been brought to William through his wife, Maud Neville, daughter of Sir Philip Neville of Scotton,[12] where he was staying at the time of his death." Let's break this "sentence" down. What is ths subject? And the verb? and the object? I believe the basic sentence is "manor brought to William" ... so the dependent clauses are the ones starting with "although" and "where"... so this is somewhat screwed up. I believe you're trying to say "William was staying at Scotton at the time of his death even though the de Cantilupe's main residence was Greasley Castle". So..yeah, let's detangle this mess a bit (and fix the possessive error also). Perhaps ""Although their main residence was Greasley Castle, Nottinghamshire, William was staying at the manor of Scotton at the time of his death. Scotton had come to him through his marriage to Maud Neville, daughter of Sir Phillip Neville."

Thanks, again, for your suggested wording!

• Death:
  • "then around 30 years of age" we already were told this, redundant

Removed.

• • "It was probably Maud's maid, Agatha Lovell" - we don't need all this here since we have just had her position in the household described above - perhaps "It was probably the maid, Lovell, who..."

Done.

• • "The scholar Frederick Pedersen speculates" - oh, we finally find out who Pedersen is! Should be done on the first mention and this should just be "Pedersen".

Heh! See above :)

• • "discovered for some—or at least not reported—which may" for some what?

Time! But recast this sentence slightly, hopefully it reads more clearly now.

• • Convert template for the "seven miles" distance, for those folks not used to imperial distances

This was a real PITA! Because the template doesn't accept spelt numbers, as it is—but of course MoS calls for them! But, check out the |spell=in parameter. Bingo! For WP:ATT purposes, that was courtesy of User:Teratix at the Help Desk.

• Escape:
  • Convert template for the 90 miles as above.

Done.

• • "Maud, Agatha, Gyse and Cooke"... so, it's understandable that we use "Maud" instead of "Cantilupe" here, but why "Agatha" for the other female but last names for the two males?

Done; and wrt your similar queries below as to her first name, I've gone through and stripped her of each first name except the lead and first use.

• Indictments:
  • What relationship does the chart have to the sentences starting "Although most of the household..."?

H'mm; bugger all, I'm afraid! I've moved it to the "Background" section where it belongs (although it squares-off, slightly, with John of Gaunt now?)

• Sessions:
  • Okay, who is the sheriff? The intro seems to imply that the sheriff was Paynel, but here it seems it was Kydale? This needs clearing up between the lead and this section.

Good point. My lack of clarity stems from Paynel becoming sheriff a couple of years later; but Kyedale was the sheriff when it was actually going on, so he's now the sheriff in the lead and Paynel is the knight (I tweaked this dealing with your point #4)

• Maud accuses:
  • Double check this quote? "that Maud named them as the murderer" "them" would imply that it should be "murderers" not "murderer"

Absolutely correct. Pluralised.

• • "the summonsing of 15 members of de Cantilupe's household" - summonsing reads a bit odd here - I recognize it's the technical term, but as we're not quoting, we can probalby use a phrasing that will make more sense to the average reader

How about he accusations against 15 members of de Cantilupe's household?

• • "King's bench" or "King's Bench"? you use lowercase here, but uppercase in the preceeding section. Also - needs linking on first occurance, not the third.

Yep, capitalised and relinked.

• • "It was the first time the 1351 Treason Act had been used against members of a household in the death of their master" here but "Historians believe the subsequent trials of Maud and other members of the household to be the first trial under the Act" in the lead... why the waffle in the lead?

True; and Bellamy states it as a fact, so we can too. Hosed the lead.

• • "Maud, Agatha and Gyse and Cooke" again, why "Agatha" for the other female but last names for the two males?

Yep.

• • "the only accused to be so" ... to be so ... what?

Well the only accused to be so accused...but it is clunky isn't it; how about a simpler construction, The only accused to be found guilty before the Bench were Gyse and Cooke?

• Kydale:
  • The header is "Kydale, Paynel, and Agatha Lovel" - first is it "Kydale" or "De Kydale"? And again... why the full name for Agatha Lovel, but just last names for others?

Kydale is so anonymous that there's no real consensus as to whether he was "de K." or just plain old "K.", so I've gone with just Kydale. You'll note that this is not the case for de Cantilupe; explained below.

• • Kydale's redlink needs to be on his first occurrence and he should just be the last name here.

Done.

• • "One of Kydale's duties as sheriff was to select the juries that sat on the case, and by extension, that would decide on Maud's guilt. The longest trial was that of Paynel." Quite a jump in topics between these two sentences - probably deserves a new paragraph.

Done, although makes for quite a short para?

• • "Thomas Kydale was the sheriff who appointed the jury " plain Kydale here

Done.

• • "The sheriff who oversaw the transfer of Paynel's case to London was...Ralph Paynel" no ellipsis here. Let's not do the surprise thing here also - go with something like "As Paynel had been appointed sheriff in September 1376, he was in charge of overseeing the transfer of his own case to London."

God knows how I let that in! Removed with asperity.

• • "replaced as sheriff by Thomas de Kydale, whose" - plain Kydale again here

Done.

• Cooke:
  • "escape to Paynley's" ... do you mean "escape to Paynell's"?

Ugh. Yes!

• • when were they executed?

Annoyingly, no one says; Pedersen—to whom this is cited—only notes that "These two were subsequently apprehended and in 1377 they were convicted of the murder and ordered to be hanged and drawn under the Statute of Treason", implicitly making it 1377 but not explicitly. And a pretty thorough Google brings up no small source that mentions it, unfortunately.

• Motive:
  • why "Kydale" but "de Cantilupe"? it's an inconsitencey throughout the article that needs fixing.

(Leaving this unstruck!) Well, as I said above, Kydale is such a minor character that the sources disagee as to his nobiliary particle, whereas with de Cantilupe there's a lot more agreement. I'm also (somewhat) motivated by the fact that Randy from Boise will insist that he was a medieval so must have had a "de" (in fact, by the latter portion of the 14th C., most English noble families had dropped any conection to their Anglo-Norman ancesry, the influence of 40 years' war with France! Notable exceptions beng, of course, those of de Ros, de Vere and I guess de Cantilupe. What say ye?

I'd say go with whatever the ODNB uses... failing that... preponderance of the mentions of him on Google Scholar? Ealdgyth - Talk 14:46, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

It's extremely annoying. No-one likes em and no-one wants to talk about em. The ODNB article—which incidentally is on our Will's granfather, not himself (not enough known to warrant an article I guess)—calls cantilupe just that, with no "de". Conversely, Thomas is "de Kydale". GScholar, on the other hand, gives 44 results for "William Cantilupe", but 172 for "de Cantilupe", while Thomas Kydale gets 3 results, and "de Kydale" gets two... so "de"s for both, By a nose? I just don't really like starting sentences with an upper case "De Cantilupe", I guess. ——SN54129 15:07, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

• • "Nicholas de Cantilupe's wife was Paynel's daughter, and he was rescuing her from Greasley Castle where" ... he is unclear usage here - the last male referred to is Nicholas de Cantilupe, so it appears that he is Nicholas, which makes the sentence make no sense...

The whole portion was completely mangled. I've recast it completely, should be tighter now.

• • "She had launched an anulment suit against him" too many "he/hims" here - suggest "She had launched an anulment suit against her husband"

The above reworking necessitated a reworking of this sentence, but it's mre or less as you suggest. (I hope!)

• • "originally been Katherine's dower" but we're never told in the article text that Katherine was Nicholas' wife...

Well spotted! Now introduced at the beginning of the section.

• Later events:
  • "for example Maud, Thomas Kydale and Ralph Paynel" - again should just be "Kydale/de Kydale" and "Paynel/de Paynel" - but it needs to make sure we're consistent throughout the article - pick either "de" before the rest of the surname or not use "de" and use it for ALL such surnames consistently at all times after the first mention. Same for Agatha Lovel - just use the last name consistently. Because of the same last name - the use of Maud/Nicholas is fine when those are used.

Check. Should be OK now. (although see above for the exception!)

• Historiography:
  • "was by Rosumund Sillem in 1936" ... no need to link and use first name ... we've been referring to her as "Sillem" for a while now.

Done.

• • "At least one reviewer described Sillem as possessing "an ingenuity creditable to the best detectives"." - doesn't really belong HERE. It would fit in an article about Sillem or about her book, but it's trivia here.

Shame, I really liked that  :)

• Note 15:" "when a servant slayeth his master or a wife her husband, or when a man secular or religious slayeth his prelate to whom he oweth faith and obedience" is just plain fluff and can go away.

Getting rid of all the good bits! :p

• Note 24 "Nicholas Cantilupe" but earlier its been "Nicholas de Cantilupe"?

Done.

• Note 25 "Cantilupe's" but usually it's been "de Cantilupe's"?

Done.

• Note 25 "comprise 16 records, and include ten depositions" per MOS should be "comprise 16 records, and include 10 depositions"

Done.

• Note 30 "The legal concept of dower had existed since the late twelfth century" Well, strictly speaking dower had existed for millenia. Perhaps "the English legal concept of dower"? or "This particular legal concept"?

Good point—went for The English concept...

• Note 31: "and Henry Bolingbroke's accession as Henry IV: he " the last male referred to is Bolingbroke - so the "he" here is ambiguous... suggest rewording

Clarified Bussy.

• Note 32 "previous historians, such as who wrote the entries" should be "such as those who"

Done.

• References:
  • Footnote 24 references a "PRO 1909" but there is no such entry (there is a PRO 1910...)

Eagle eye!

• Bibliography:
  • We really reserve "bibliography" as a section title for a list of works by the article subject...

Changed to "Sources".

• • Mackman entry: "Dphil thesis" ... ugh. Better abbreviation please.

Should it be DPhil.?

• • National Archives PRO entry: "Series: PRO, p. Type of seal" ... can we remove the stray "p." here?

Yeah, that was me confusing parameters...

• • National Archives SC entry: "Series: SC8, p. " same as above.

Ditto.

• • the Partington ref is to a printed work - the online version is just a courtesy - cite it as an encyclopedia, not a web page. See Richard Barre for an example.

Done (I think).

• • is there an online link for the Pedersen 2016b ref?

Yep, Academia.edu's OK isn't it?

• • Wolffe entry - why "Athens, GA" here but no other location gives a state or county?

Found Lawler (Wasgington D.C) and Ormrod (New Haven, CT) as well.

• I randomly googled three phrases and only turned up Wikipedia mirrors. Earwig's tool shows no sign of copyright violation - the highlighted pages are all either quotations or wikipedia mirrors.

I've put the article on hold for seven days to allow folks to address the issues I've brought up. Feel free to contact me on my talk page, or here with any concerns, and let me know one of those places when the issues have been addressed. If I may suggest that you strike out, check mark, or otherwise mark the items I've detailed, that will make it possible for me to see what's been addressed, and you can keep track of what's been done and what still needs to be worked on. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:29, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks very much for this, Ealdgyth, that was a blinding review, much appreciated. I hope I've done it justice—addressed all your suggestions with perhaps a couple for further discussion. I've given up on those dumbass icons from the other review and stuck to the more plain-and-simple method of striking through. Let me know what you thin of course  :) safe trip! ——SN54129 18:36, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

By the way—look what I found, due out Fall this year  :) ——SN54129 18:39, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay - got home Tuesday from being out on the road with hubby and promptly got sick. Am feeling better today should be able to pick this back up tomorrow. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:17, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Just the one thing... Ealdgyth - Talk 14:46, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Colombo, "Just one more thing—"  :) well, I've noted my findings butb everytings so bloody vague and unsatisfactory. Welcome back!

I think that we're just going to have to deal with the inconsistencies... ugh. And yeah, it annoys me no end on my part of the Middle Ages too! Processing paperwork now. Ealdgyth (talk) 14:34, 10 February 2020 (UTC)