Damn His Blood: Being a True and Detailed History of the Most

In the peaceful Worcestershire village of Oddingley farmers are returning from Midsummer Day festivities, shadows are lengthening on the June grass, and the Reverend George Parker is making his daily excursion to fetch his cows from pasture. It was a day like any other, but the events of this day would resonate for years to come, and the name of the village would be blackened for centuries. The brutal murder of the Reverend George Parker in 1806, shot and beaten to death, his body left smouldering in his own glebe field, rocked the country's media from Edinburgh to London in its time and the legend is still discussed in local pubs to this day. The investigation lasted twenty-four years over numerous trials and inquests, responsibility passing from one fervent judge or coroner to the next, each more determined to solve this gruesome crime. Unravelling the story of the murder, Peter Moore takes us back to the day when George Parker first arrived in Oddingley, to the feuding over church tithes, the machinations of powerful local farmers, the hidden evidence and fevered prison confessions, so we can almost smell the stench of fear and threat in the air. With a cast of characters st