The list of Smithfield martyrs includes:
• John Badby, 1410
Badby, a Worcester tailor, got into trouble in 1410 after telling the local diocesan court that when Christ sat at the Last Supper with his disciples he did not have his body in his hand to distribute and that ‘if every host consecrated at the altar were the Lord’s body, then there be 20,000 Gods in England’. A court at St Paul’s sentenced him to be burnt to death. Just before Badby met his fate the watching Prince of Wales (the future Henry V) offered him his life and a pension if he would recant, but Badby would not do so. As the flames began to rise he cried out: ‘It is consecrated bread and not the body of God.’
• John Frith, 1533
A colleague of the Bible translator William Tyndale, Frith fled to the continent when the persecution of Protestants began in the 1520s. He later returned to England, travelling from congregation to congregation where Catholicism had been ousted following the Reformation. Frith was arrested in 1532 and sent to the Tower of London, where he was chained to a post. Things improved, though, and for a while Frith was allowed to have friends visit his cell. But the authorities soon decided to bring Frith before the bishops to repent his ‘heresies’, such as denying that the bread and wine at consecration actually turn into Jesus’ flesh and blood. When he refused to do so, he was taken to a dungeon under Newgate Prison and, according to Andersen, his biographer, ‘laden with irons, as many as he could bear, neither stand upright, nor stoop down’.
At least Frith had only one night of these horrors, for the next day he and a fellow sufferer, Hewett, were taken to Smithfield and bound to the stake to be burnt. ‘The wind made his death somewhat longer, as it bore away the flame from him to his fellow,’ Andersen explained, ‘but Frith’s mind was established with such patience, that, as though he had felt no pain, he seemed rather to rejoice for his fellow than to be careful for himself.’
• John Lambert, 1537
Lambert was summoned before a religious court on suspicion of having converted to Protestantism. He remained silent, like Jesus before his accusers, and in doing so was instrumental in bringing about a change in the law whereby it was decreed no man can accuse himself – nemo tenetur edere contra se. It didn’t save his life, and he was burnt at Smithfield in 1537. When Lambert’s legs had been charred to stumps, he was taken from the fire, but he cried out, ‘None but Christ, none but Christ,’ and was dropped into the flames again.
• John Forest, 1538
Forest, a preacher who opposed Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, was the only Catholic to be burnt at the stake at Smithfield for heresy. With Forest on a bed of chains suspended over the pyre, the executioner added a huge wooden holy relic as the martyr slowly roasted. When the flames reached his feet he lifted them up before lowering them again into the fire.
Another who lost his life that year was a man, recorded only as ‘Collins’, who was executed for mocking the Mass in church by lifting a dog above his head.
• Edward Powell and others, 1540
30 July 1540 was a busy day for the Smithfield executioners: that day three Catholics, Edward Powell, Thomas Abel and Richard Featherstone, went to their doom alongside three Protestants, Robert Barnes, Thomas Gerard and William Jerome.
Powell was that rarity, a Welsh Catholic. He was a rector in Somerset and a preacher favoured by Henry VIII. He was one of four clerics selected to defend the legality of the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the validity of which was questioned as she had been married to Henry’s late brother, Arthur. Powell later criticised Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn (Catherine’s replacement) and this resulted in his arraignment for high treason.
Abel had been a chaplain to Catherine of Aragon and continued to support the queen when Henry began divorce proceedings. The king had Abel thrown into the Beauchamp Tower, where he spent six years before being taken to Smithfield and executed for denying royal supremacy over the Church.
Featherstone was also a chaplain to Catherine of Aragon and a tutor to Mary Tudor, her daughter. In 1534 he was asked to take the Oath of Supremacy but refused to do so and was imprisoned in the Tower. After Powell, Abel and Featherstone’s execution their limbs were fixed to the gates of the city and their heads displayed on poles on London Bridge.
Barnes, Gerard and Jerome, the Protestants, were prosecuted for supporting the doctrines of the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli. Of the three, Barnes was the most interesting character. Henry VIII sent him to Germany in 1535 to encourage disciples of Martin Luther to give their approval to the king’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. By the year of Barnes’s execution Henry had decided to oppose Luther’s reforms vehemently. Barnes had made a speech at Paul’s Cross attacking a rival cleric, which caused turmoil within the different factions of the king’s council. Barnes was forced to apologise but it wasn’t enough to save him.
• John Rogers, 1555
A Bible translator, Rogers became the first Protestant martyr to be executed during the reign of the Catholic queen, Mary Tudor, when he was burnt at Smithfield on 4 February 1555. Rogers had produced only the second complete English Bible (published 1537), the first to be translated into English from the original Hebrew and Greek. He printed it under the pseudonym Thomas Matthew, but much of it was the work of William Tyndale, whose pioneering English translation had caused the Church such distress.
Prior to his execution, Rogers was asked by Woodroofe, the Newgate Prison sheriff, if he would revoke his ‘evil opinion of the Sacrament of the altar’. Rogers replied: ‘That which I have preached I will seal with my blood.’ When Woodroofe responded, ‘Thou art an heretic,’ Rogers retorted, ‘That shall be known at the Day of Judgment’.
On the way to Smithfield Rogers saw his wife and eleven children in the crowd, but was not allowed to talk to them. He died quickly for the flames soon raged. Nevertheless he was courageous enough to pretend to be washing his hands in the fire as if it had been cold water. He then lifted them in the air and prayed. As he died a flock of doves flew above, leading one supporter to claim that one of the birds was the Holy Ghost himself.
• Roger Holland, 1556
Holland was one of forty men and women convicted for staging prayers and Bible study in a walled garden in Islington. With the Catholic Mary Tudor on the throne, such practices were no longer considered acceptable, for the ruling Catholic ideology wanted only priests to read the Bible and even then only in Latin (not its original language). Holland and others believed they were safe from hostile prying eyes, but they were spotted and arrested by the Constable of Islington, who demanded they hand over their books. The Bible readers were taken to Newgate Prison where they were informed they would be released as long as they agreed to hear Mass. Most of them refused to do so.
When Holland was taken to the stake he embraced the bundles of reeds placed there to fuel the fire and announced: ‘Lord, I most humbly thank Thy Majesty that Thou hast called me from the state of death, unto the Light of Thy Heavenly Word, and now unto the fellowship of Thy saints that I may sing and say, “Holy holy holy, Lord God of hosts!” Lord, into Thy hands I commit my spirit. Lord bless these Thy people, and save them from idolatry.’
• Edward Arden, 1583
A Catholic from the same Warwickshire family as Shakespeare’s mother, Arden was probably the innocent victim of a Catholic plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth. He died protesting his innocence, claiming that his only crime was to be a Catholic. His son-in-law John Somerville, who was implicated alongside him, was tortured on the rack, after which he implicated others. Somerville was found strangled in his cell before he could be executed.
• Edward Wightman, 1612
Wightman was the last man burnt alive in England for his religious views – he was a Baptist. At the time, James I, not a particularly bloodthirsty zealot in the Mary manner, was on the throne and the