“Mortaigne, under promise of Marriage, gets Iosselina with child, and after converting his love into hatred, causeth his Lackey▪ La Verdure and La Palma to murther both her and her young sonne. The Iealousie of I [...]ella to her Husband La Palma is the cause of the Discovery hereof. They are all three taken and executed for the same.”

Featured on PDR in the collection John Reynolds’ Book of Murder Tales (1621–1635)

We don’t know the year of John Reynolds’ birth or death, but according to the Dictionary of National Biography, he “flourished” between 1620 and 1640, at which time he must have been in his thirties and forties (give or take a few years). Born in Exeter — and known to his contemporaries as “John Reynolds, merchant of Exeter”, to distinguish him from other writers of the same name — he traveled on business to France, Spain, and probably Italy, where he collected the stories that make up his six-volume Triumphs of Gods Revenge and the Crying and Execrable Sin of (Wilful and Premeditated) Murther — one of the earliest examples of “true crime” writing in English.