Tamsin

I just finished Peter S. Beagle's YA fantasy book Tamsin. It came out in the late 1990s, which is well past my youth. I've never read his best-known book, The Last Unicorn, and I can't remember how I heard about Tamsin, but it was recommended by someone I admire (maybe Jo Walton?), so I put it on a list of books to find, and it turned up in the used books at Uncle Hugo's recently.

It's a present-day ghost story that takes place on a farm in Dorset, England, with a teen-aged girl protagonist who can see and talk to a 300-year-old ghost named Tamsin. Tamsin lived on the farm just before England's Glorious Revolution. 

I recommend the book, which fits into what I think of as the "mysterious England" genre, which I was a fan of when it was more age-appropriate for me.

The thing I learned from Tamsin is the history of the Monmouth Rebellion. I've come across a lot of bits of English history (both in histories and through the lens of historical fiction) but I've never heard that particular bit. As usual, an off-brand royal was trying to overthrow the one on the throne, and in this case the pretender lost. 

Of particular note, the supporters of the traitor were tried and treated with particular cruelty by a bloody-minded judge, who figures prominently in Tamsin. He sounds like a terrible person, even for the time. The trials were called the Bloody Assizes (which is such a British name!), if that gives you an idea of what they were like. 

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The setting of Tamsin is close to Tolpuddle, another location in English history.