The Burning Time
Page 54
Richard Bayfield, a former Benedictine monk, was slowly roasted to death on 4 December 1531.
For the burning of Anne Askew and three others on 16 July 1546, the City of London Corporation approved the building of ‘a substantial stage … in Smithfield for the King’s Councillors, the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen to sit in’.
The fifty-nine-year-old John Cardmaker, former Vicar of St Bride’s Fleet Street, was burnt alongside a twenty-nine-year-old upholsterer, John Warne, on 30 May 1555. Cardmaker had initially recanted, but later went joyfully to the flames.
The body cast of a child victim of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius at Pompeii shows the characteristic ‘pugilistic posture’ caused by the burning and shrinking of muscles. The bodies of people burnt at the stake could assume a similar pose, often interpreted by contemporary onlookers and recorders of the scene as a raising of the hands and arms in prayer.
John Rogers, for whom the reinstatement of Edmund Bonner as Bishop of London in 1553 marked the beginning of the end, was the former Vicar of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, and the first Protestant martyr to be burnt under Mary I.
The physical appearance of Bishop Bonner seems to have easily lent itself to caricature. He also gained a reputation for violence, his irascibility perhaps exacerbated by his own imprisonment under Edward VI.
John Philpot, a former Archdeacon of Winchester, was one of the most high-profile churchmen burnt under Mary. He was also one of the most argumentative, and captured the nub of the argument when he declared to Bishop Bonner: ‘You say, you are of the true Church: and we say, we are of the true Church.’
John Bradford, another gifted orator, continued his ministry of daily preaching while imprisoned, awaiting execution. His eventual burning was attended by ‘a great multitude of people’.
Six others, bound in pairs to three stakes, were burnt alongside the idealistic and headstrong young lawyer Bartlet Green on 27 January 1556.
Thomas Cranmer, different both in appearance and conviction from his younger self, was burnt in Oxford on 21 March 1556. He and John Philpot were the last major clerical leaders to be burnt under Mary
Cranmer was succeeded as Archbishop of Canterbury by Cardinal Reginald Pole, a distant relative of the Queen. Pole hoped to bring the English into line with Rome by acting as an ‘indulgent loving father’ towards them; the policy of burning heretics did nothing to facilitate this aim.
The effigy of Richard Rich, part of the monument by Epiphanius Evesham erected to him in Felsted church, seems to gaze balefully at the viewer.
The memorial slab marking the approximate burial place in the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great of the church’s first Rector, Sir John Deane, presented in 1893 by the pupils of the school he founded at Witton, near Northwich.
The interior of St Bartholomew the Great, the surviving conventual church of the once-great Priory of St Bartholomew, witness to the suffering of so many in Smithfield.
About the Author
VIRGINIA ROUNDING is a translator and writer who lives in London. She studied Russian at the University of London. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Catherine the Great and Grandes Horizontales. You can sign up for author updates here.
ALSO BY VIRGINIA ROUNDING
Alix and Nicky: The Passion of the Last Tsar and Tsarina
Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power
Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
A Note on Language
List of Illustrations
Introduction – SETTING THE SCENE
One – BOILING, BURNING AND AMBITION
Two – FUEL FOR THE FIRE
Three – THE MAKING OF MARTYRS
Four – RECANTATIONS AND REVERSALS
Five – DISSOLUTION AND DISCIPLINE
Six – ‘LO, FAITHLESS MEN AGAINST ME RISE’
Seven – DENUNCIATIONS AND NEAR-ESCAPES
Eight – PROTESTANTISM IN THE ASCENDANT
Nine – ‘TURN, AND TURN, AND TURN AGAIN’
Ten – DOMINICANS IN SMITHFIELD
Eleven – CEREMONIES OF MARTYRDOM
Twelve – ‘I WILL PAY MY VOWS TO THEE, OH SMITHFIELD’
Thirteen – MATTERS OF CONSCIENCE
Fourteen – CONSTANCY AND CONFLAGRATION
Epilogue – ‘BY THE LIGHT OF BURNING MARTYRS’
Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
Photographs
About the Author
ALSO BY Virginia Rounding
Copyright
THE BURNING TIME. Copyright © 2017 by Virginia Rounding. All rights reserved.
www.stmartins.com
Epigraph on here © 1972 ÉDS MUSICALES 57. Texte et musique G. Brassens. Epigraph translation © 2000 Dr. Ted Neather.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rounding, Virginia, author.
Title: The burning time: Henry VIII, Bloody Mary, and the Protestant martyrs of London / Virginia Rounding.
Description: New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017023617 | eISBN 978-1-4668-3624-2
Subjects: LCSH: Christian martyrs—England—London—History—16th century. | Christian heretics—England—London—History—16th century. | Smithfield (London, England)—History—16th century. | Martyrdom—Christianity—History—16th century. | Persecution—England—History—16th century. | Great Britain—History—Henry VIII, 1509–1547. | Great Britain—History—Edward VI, 1547–1553. | Great Britain—History—Mary I, 1553–1558. | England—Church history—16th century.
Classification: LCC BR1607. R68 2017 | DDC 272/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023617
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First U.S. Edition: October 2017
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