Marian Marytrs to Spanish policy.

The period 1555 – 1558 was essentially
one in which Spanish policy, particularly towards religion, was enforced.
Bishop Gardiner , the Lord Chancellor, had to his credit, tried to keep Spanish advisers and
nobles from filling civil appointments, but this did not prevent Cardinal
Pole from having supreme authority in ecclesiastical matters. The
Southwark Commission, which Pole appointed, consisted of bishops Gardiner,
Bonner, Tunstall, Capon, Thirlby and Aldridge who were charged with
proceeding against heretics.

A week of Martyrdoms  took place
4-9 February 1555. First to face this English Inquisition (in form if not
in title) was John Rogers, prebendary of St Paul`s  and friend of
William Tyndale. Arraigned with him were Bishop Hooper, Laurence Saunders 
Rector of All Hallows Church; John Bradford a popular preacher; Rowland
Taylor Rector of Hadleigh, and six others. Five were deemed to be
obstinate heretics to be burnt , and this to be at the places where each
had ministered. The object was to strike fear and terror on the widest
possible scale. The disposal, for that was what it became, was : Rogers 
– London; Saunders – Coventry;  Hooper – Gloucester; Taylor –
Hadleigh. The fifth, John Bradford, was deferred for some months.

Bishop Hooper`s execution.

Rogers was refused permission to see his
German wife and only did see her and their ten children while on the way
to the stake. The French ambassador reputedly wrote that “He went to be
burnt as if he had been going to a marriage”. Of his death it can be said
that the first of the Marian martyrs  was a triumph for Protestantism
, rather than a defeat desired and expected by the Catholics. In Coventry
Laurence Saunders similarly went to his death, allegedly embracing the
stake  with cries of ” Welcome, the cross of Christ”. Hooper had
already been in the Tower for eighteen months and was highly respected
such that he was taken in disguise, at night, and under armed guard to
Newgate before removal to Gloucester. He was eventually recognised in
Cirencester and crowds thronged the roads for the rest of his journey.
Before the cathedral there was an enormous crowd gathered to see that
three times the faggots had to be rekindled while Hooper was hung in
chains partly consumed by fire. On the same day Rowland Taylor had been
taken out at night to his fate at Hadleigh. He was more fortunate than
others as the sheriff escorting him did allow him a few moments with his
wife and children. At Hadleigh his sufferings were less than Hoopers, as
while singing in the flames a bystander struck him with a halberd and
mercifully ended his life. This spate of executions did not achieve what the Queen and
her advisers hoped for, certainly there was shock and horror, but they only enobled the cause for which they died.

Many of the deaths are dealt with in
Foxe`s Acts and Monuments, and need not be repeated here. The
carnage continued more or less unabated through Mary`s thankfully short
reign during which (at least) 277 persons were burnt, including – five
bishops, twenty one clergymen, eight gentlemen, eighty four tradesmen, one
hundred husband-men and servants, fifty five women, and four children. The aged Bishop Gardiner withdrew from the Commission after the
condemnation of six martyrs in Essex; thereafter the focus fell in Bonner`s diocese, which included London and much of Essex. In London
itself, Smithfield was the popular place for burnings when as many as
seven were burnt at one time. At Stratford thirteen were consumed at one
time, and a further five nearby. At the ancient Roman town of Colchester
they did there best to exceed the excesses of Nero by burning twenty three
persons, ten – five men and five women, on one day. At Canterbury, where
Cardinal Pole held court eighteen were burnt; in Chichester twenty seven,
with ten at one time in Lewes, Sussex. So the sickening persecution went
on, hastened by letters from Philip and Mary rebuking the bishops for tardiness in the
executions.

The Coventry seven executed.

Surprisingly the already
condemned Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer remained in prison at Oxford. It was
7 September 1555 before Cranmer was brought up for what was probably
intended as a show trial. It got off to a bad start with Cranmer declining
to acknowledge Cardinal Pole as he had sworn never to admit ` the
authority of the Pope of Rome in England.` The usual rigmarole ended with
him being required to appear before the Pope in Rome within eighty days,
but returned to the Bocardo as Oxford Gaol was known. Latimer and Ridley
were tried shortly after, each dissenting on authority of Rome and the
matter of transubstantiation. Their time was short as on 15 October they
were taken and burnt together at the south front of Balliol College.
Latimer died quickly having uttered the historic words

“Be of good comfort
Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle ,
by God`s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

The costs for their
executions amounted to one pounds, five shillings and two pence, such was
the cost of the transaction. But the real cost was the overthrow of the
Romish religion in England.

Cranmer meanwhile was held
in the Bocardo gaol to be the subject of humiliating public degradations,
and some six phases of recanting until he was left a shattered old man. He
learnt only the night before that he was to be executed on 21 March 1556.
The intention to show case the burning with a final public recantation was
overturned by  Cranmer himself making a statement and rejecting the
Pope as ” Christ`s enemy, and antichrist , with all his false doctrine.”

Mary now began to be
neurotic about her own safety. Philip had departed to Spain in the August
of 1555, fed up with the English people and virtually signalling that his
marriage to Mary was at an end; and her principal adviser Cardinal Pole
was out of favour with the Pope and himself threatened with a charge of
heresy. The people at large were suffering from starvation following bad
harvests and resentment easily surfaced while many ( eight hundred or
more) persons of rank,   learning and piety retreated to the
relative safety of the Continent. Worse was to follow for Mary, at least
her conscience was sorely troubled, when Philip of Spain went to war
against the Pope and sought English help. Meanwhile Calais, in English
possession for two hundred years, was lost after an eight day siege. The
lame excuse was given that England could not afford a fleet to seek its
recovery. And still the burnings went on.

A lapse in burnings whilst
Parliament met in early 1558 was followed by a significant capture of 
twenty (of a total of forty) people at a conventicle in Islington. They
were kept in Newgate prison for seven weeks during which time two died of
fever, and thirteen were condemned for burning at the stake. Such was the
fear of trouble that a Proclamation was issued that the executions should
be in silence – not even a God help them` was` permitted. At Smithfield an
enormous crowd assembled  to hear minister Thomas Brantham who said a few
words to the crowd before crying out in determined voice  “Almighty
God, for Christ`s sake , strengthen them”. No soldiers intervened despite
the Proclamation against such remarks, and the crowd responded with a solemn
`Amen`, `Amen`. The last 
burnings took place in Canterbury on 10 November 1558, just a week before
Mary herself died, followed immediately after by Cardinal Pole, the last
Romanist Archbishop of Canterbury.

No accurate figures exist
for the martyrdoms, the three hundred or so that burnt were probably only
the tip of the iceberg given that hundreds of people were arrested,
condemned yet left to fester and rot in the foul infested prisons where
cruelty, starvation and fever ruled. A rough count shows that 112 died in
Bonner`s London diocese; 32 in Hopton`s Norwich diocese; 52 in Pole`s
Canterbury dioces; and 27 in Daye/Christopherson`s Chichester diocese. The
other diocese were single figures. Notably none were burnt in Winchester
diocese while Gardiner was bishop.

The Marian Martyrs , per Diocese.

Extract from The English
Reformation,  W H Beckett (1890).
Not shown Diocese of Chester..2 executions at Chester; 2 at Bedale,

It is of note that
burning at the stake  in Scotland

was
very largely contained to the offence of
witchcraft; a mere handful were burnt for religious nonconformity. The
executions were also. in most cases. more humane, in that the offender was
first strangled or in some cases had bags of gunpowder hung about their
waist to kill them, before the body was burnt. The other gruesome
execution was hanging, drawing (disembowelling) and quartering. In this
the Scots also differed until the late 17 century, in that the quartering
was usually contained to removal of the limbs leaving a torso ( and heart
intact) for burial – unlike the English quartering that sundered apart the
torso. A few special cases, however, had their hearts removed by the
executioner to be publicly burnt on the scaffold. We tend to think of
these events as evil past practices of  a less civilised age; but we
might reflect if modern terrorism cloaked  with religious fanaticism, 
immolation by napalm bombs or death by poisons, virus or radio active
substances is in fact more indiscriminate and worthy of a far greater
condemnation.

18/07/2011