The Search for Peace: Strongbow’s Wife extract

Excerpt from Frank Parker’s Strongbow’s Wife.

Frank Parker's author site

Following Strongbow’s death, Aoife was given the dowerage of Striguil Castle and estate. Her children were in the custody of King Henry at the Tower of London. On arrival at Striguil she would have discovered a great deal of hostility from native Welsh towards her husband’s fellow Normans. The immediate cause of Welsh anger was the massacre that took place at Abergavenny Castle the previous Christmas.

In my fictional version she is horrified by accounts of the event and decides to travel to Hereford in order to remonstrate with the wife and mother-in-law of the man responsible. En-route she seeks the help of her husband’s cousin, Gilbert, at Monmouth. She is disappointed to find a man who believes his support for religious foundations in the area is all the protection he needs. At Hereford her encounter with the women goes no better. Read the account of the massacre at the…

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