GERTRUDE CROKHAY
Gertrude Crokhay lived with her second husband in St. Katherine’s parish, near the Tower of London. In 1558, a child portraying St. Nicholas made his way around the parish, but Gertrude refused to let him into her house. The next day Dr. Mallet and twenty others appeared at her door to ask why she wouldn’t let St. Nicholas in and receive his blessing.
“Sir,” she answered, “I didn’t know St. Nicholas came here.”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “Here’s the boy who played him.”
“My neighbor’s child was here, but not St. Nicholas, for St. Nicholas is in heaven. I was afraid he would steal from me, because I’d heard of men robbed by St. Nicholas’s clerks.” Dr. Mallet left Gertrude, not able to trap her into saying anything that could be construed as heresy.
In 1559, Gertrude served as godmother for a child being baptized with the Protestant service. When her enemies heard of this, they began looking for her, but she had gone across the sea to Guelderland to see some land that had been left to her children by her first husband. After three months, she started home by her first husband. After three months, she started home by way of Antwerp. She was seen there by John Johnson, a Dutchman who was fighting with her husband over a bill. He accused her of being an Anabaptist and had her imprisoned to get even with her husband.
Gertrude remained in prison for two weeks, during which she saw some prisoners secretly drowned in wine vats and cast into the river. She expected the same would eventually be done to her, and in her fear she came down with the sickness that later killed her.
Finally called to be tried as an Anabaptist, Gertrude declared her faith so boldly in Dutch that she was released from prison and allowed to return to England.
THE SPURGES, CAVILL, AMBROSE, DRAKE, AND TIMS
These six men lived in the country of Essex. Being accused of heresy, they were all arrested and sent up to Bishop Gardiner of London, who sent the first four to Marshalsea Prison and the last two to the King’s Bench. After having been confined for a year, they were all brought into the court at St. Paul’s Church to be examined by Bishop Bonner. Bonner began his examination with Tims, whom he called the ringleader, telling him he had taught the others heresies and made them as guilty as himself. After talking this way for a while, the bishop asked Tims to submit himself to the church.
In answer to this, Tims reminded the bishop that he himself had formally given up the church he had now professed such a love for during the reign of Henvry VIII. “My lord, that which you have written against the supremacy of the pope can be proved true by scripture. What you are doing now is contrary to the Word of God, as I can show.” At this, Bonner called Tims an obstinate heretic and condemned him.
Drake’s trial came next. He frankly declared that he denied the authority of the pope, and no persuasion would change his mind.. No time was wasted in condemning Drake and turning him over to the secular authorities for punishment. The four remaining prisoners, Thomas and Richard Spurge, George Ambrose, and John Cavill, were then asked if they would forsake their heresies and return to the church. They all refused to acknowledge any wrong doing and declined to change their beliefs.
On April 14, 1556, the six men were taken to Smithfield, where they were chained to the same stake and burned in one fire. They patiently submitted themselves to the flames and quietly resigned their souls to that Redeemer for whose sake they had given their bodies to be burned.
HUGH LAVEROCK AND JOHN APPRICE
Hugh Laverock was a painter by trade, living in the parish of Barking, Essex. At the time of his arrest, he was sixty-eight years old and very infirm. Being accused of heresy by some of his neighbors, he and John Apprice, a poor blind man, were taken before Bonner to be examined.
Bonner asked the prisoners the usual questions, to which they answered without making the slightest effort to conceal their opinions. One week after they had been sentenced, they were taken to Stratford-le-Bow, the place appointed for their execution. As soon as they arrived at the stake, Laverock threw away his crutch and spoke to Apprice. “Be of good comfort, brother, for the bishop of London is our good physician. He will cure us both shortly, you of your blindness and me of my lameness.” Then they both knelt down and prayed earnestly that God would enable them to pass with Christian resolution through the fiery trial. These two poor old men — one a cripple and the other blind — were then chained to one stake, and the fagots lighted. They endured their sufferings with great fortitude and cheerfully yielded up their lives for their faith.
CATHERINE HUT, JOAN HORNES, AND ELIZABETH THACKVILL
These three women were arrested on suspicion of heresy and taken before Sir John Mordaunt and Mr. Tyrrel, justices of the peace for the country of Essex. After a hearing, they were sent as prisoners to the bishop of London for refusing to attend the services of the Catholic Church.
The three prisoners were brought before the bishop and asked the normal questions, to which they replied that they believed in the reformed faith. Refusing to recant, they were sentenced to be burned and were delivered to the sheriff of London, who put them in Newgate Prison until their execution. On the appointed day, they were carried to Smithfield, fastened to one stake, and burned together for their faith.
THE THIRTEEN
Thirteen people who lived in the county of Essex were arrested in May 1556 and sent to London to be examined by Bishop Bonner: Ralph Jackson, Henry Adlington, Lyon Cawch, William Halliwell, George Searles, John Routh, John Derifall, Henry Wye, Edmund Hurst, Lawrence Parnam, Thomas Bower, Elizabeth Pepper, and Agnes George.
On the Sunday after their condemnation, Dr. Fecknam, dean of St. Paul’s, said that the thirteen “held as many different beliefs as there were faces among them.” This being reported to them, they drew up one confession of faith that they all signed. Early on the morning of June 28, 1556, all thirteen were taken from Newgate to Stratford-le-Bow, where the sheriff separated them into two groups and told each group that the other had recanted. When he found this strategy wouldn’t work, he continued with the execution.
The eleven men were tied to three stakes, but the two women were in the middle, not tied to any stake. All burned together in one fire.
JULIUS PALMER
Julius Palmer was the son of a merchant living in the city of Coventry. He received his early education at the public school there and was sent to Oxford, where he was graduated and elected a fellow of Magdalene College.
Palmer had been brought up as a Catholic, and he refused to conform to the religious changes made during Edward VI’s time, so he was expelled from the college and served as a schoolteacher in the town of Oxford. When Queen Mary came to power, Palmer was returned to his post at the college. But while he had been away from the college, Palmer had made the acquaintance of several leaders of the reform party and began to doubt whether it was necessary to obey the pope in order to be a good Christian. When the persecution began, he began to look into cases of those arrested and how they behaved themselves through the whole process of condemnation and burning, even sending one of his pupils to report back to him on the burning of Bishop Hooper.
Before this, Palmer was inclined to think that very few men would brave the fire for the sake of their religion, but when he heard of Hooper’s heroism and attended the examination of Ridley and Latimer, he totally changed his mind. From then on, he studied the scriptures thoroughly and became a zealous reformer.
Palmer began to miss Mass and other church ceremonies, which brought enough suspicion on him that he felt he should leave the college. He accepted a post as a grammar-school teacher in Reading, Berkshire, until driven out of there by enemies who threatened to turn him in for his Protestant beliefs.
Entirely destitute, Palmer went to his mother, hoping to obtain the legacy his father had left him four years before. But his mother was a heartless, bigoted woman who hated the reformers and was afraid of being accused of harboring a heretic. As soon as she saw him standing at her door, she motioned him away: “Get thee gone, heretic! Get thee gone!” she exclaimed.
“Mother, I don’t deserve this!” Palmer replied.
“You have been banished from Oxford and Reading as a heretic.”
Nothing Palmer could say would change his mother’s mind, so he decided to travel to Reading in hopes of getting his back pay there but was arrested and thrown into prison with Thomas Askine and John Gwin. After standing firm at their trials, all three were condemned as heretics.
While in prison awaiting their execution, Palmer comforted his two fellow-suffers and urged them to hold onto the faith they professed. When the fire was kindled and began to take hold on the bodies of the three martyrs, they lifted up their hands toward heaven and cried out, “Lord, strengthen us! Lord, receive our souls!” And so they continued without any struggle, holding up their hands and calling on the Lord until they died.
This poor woman, having become a convert to the reformed faith, bought a New Testament and paid a small sum daily to an old man who came and read it to her, since she was blind. By this means and through her unusual memory, she became so familiar with the Bible that she could repeat entire chapters by heart. When she refused to attend services in the Catholic Church, Joan was brought before Dr. Ralph Bayn, bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, and Dr. Draycott, the chancellor, charged with heresy and committed to the prison of Derby.
She was examined several times by Peter Finch, the bishop’s official, and afterwards brought to public examination before the bishop, his chancellor, and several of the queen’s commissioners. The poor woman answered that she could not forsake the truth and begged them to cease troubling her. Finding that she would say nothing else, the sentence of death was finally pronounced, and she was handed over to the sheriff. On August 1, 1556, she was led to the stake. As soon as she came to it, she kneeled down and repeated a prayer, desiring the spectators to pray for her. Having finished, she arose and was fastened to the stake; and when the fagots were lighted, the flames soon took away her speech and her life.
ALICE BENDON
Alice Bendon was the wife of Edward Bendon, of the parish of Stablehurst, Kent. Being brought before a magistrate and charged with heresy, she was asked why she did not go to church. “Because there was so much idolatry practiced there,” she replied. For this answer she was sent to Canterbury Castle. When her husband begged the bishop of Dover to release her, he did, on the condition that she return to the church. Despite her husband’s appeals that she attend church with him, Alice continued to stay away from services and was rearrested and imprisoned. She remained there for nine weeks without any visitors, lying in her clothes on straw and having only a little bread and water every day. She soon became so weak and sick that she could barely walk but was given slightly better treatment after her first visit with the bishop.
Alice and six others were brought before the commissioners at the end of the following April. Since they all held to their faith, they were sentenced and handed over to the sheriff for punishment. Alice Bendon bore herself with remarkable courage before the stake, yielding up her life with scarcely a struggle.
RICHARD WOODMAN
Woodman’s parish priest, a man named Fairbank, had tried without success to convince Woodman to attend church services. Annoyed by his failure, Fairbank preferred charges of heresy against Woodman and had him brought before the justices of the peace for the county of Sussex, who committed him to the King’s Bench prison for a considerable amount of time.
At length Woodman and four others were brought to be examined by Bishop Bonner of London, who advised them that they should become members of the true church. They answered that they considered themselves members of the church, and Bonner, satisfied with their replies, set all five men free.
Not long after Woodman returned home, the rumor was spread that he had joined the Catholic Church. He denied this so often and so publicly that a warrant was issued for his arrest. Three men approached Woodman one day as he worked in his father’s warehouse, telling him he had to go with them before the lord chamberlain. Surprised and alarmed at this sudden attack, Woodman begged to be allowed to go home to tell his wife of the arrest and dress properly for court. The officers agreed to this and accompanied Woodman to his home. Once there, Woodman asked to see their warrant.
“It’s not here,” one of them replied. “It’s at my house. The most you can do is make me go get it.”
“If you have a warrant, fetch it,” Woodman demanded. “Until you do have it, leave my house.” He then shut the door in their faces. Knowing they would soon return, Woodman ran to a window in the rear of the house and escaped to a nearby forest, where he hid himself. The officers soon came back with the warrant and search the house from top to bottom, but Woodman was safe in the woods.
Woodman knew they would search the whole country for him, including the seacoast, and it would be impossible for him to leave the country, so he decided the best thing to do would be to stay close to home, which no one would even think of. Bringing out his Bible, pen, ink, and other necessities, Woodman hid under a tree in the nearby woods for six or seven weeks. His wife brought him food every day. At last there was a report that he had been seen in Flanders, and the local search was given up. Woodman took the opportunity to escape to Flanders and France, but he missed his home and family too much to stay and sneaked back into the country. Within three weeks, another warrant was issued for his arrest, and his house was searched as often as twice a week for the next two months.
In the end, Woodman was betrayed by his own brother, who told the authorities that he left his hiding place in the evening to sleep at home. When the authorities came to his house, Woodman hid in a secret loft that had never been discovered in all of the previous searches. Although they knew he had to be somewhere in the house, the officers couldn’t find him anywhere. Woodman’s brother knew the loft existed, but he didn’t know exactly where it was, so the search was renewed until one of them finally spotted the loft, forcing Woodman to make a run for it.
“As soon as I found myself on the ground, I started and ran down a land that was full of sharp cinders, and the men came running after me,” Woodman said. “I turned about hastily to go on, when i stepped on a sharp stone with one foot, and in trying to save it, I slipped into a great miry hole and fell down, and before I could arise and get away, they were upon me. Then they bound me and took me away.”
Woodman was taken to London and examined by several church officials but refused to yield to anything that was not founded on the Bible’s authority. About two weeks after being sentenced, Woodman was taken to the town of Lewes, in Sussex, with nine other prisoners. On July 22, 1557, the ten men were led to the place of execution. There they were chained to several stakes and consumed in one great fire. It is recorded that they all went to their deaths with wonderful courage and resignation, with their last words committing their souls to that blessed Redeemer who was to be their final judge.
(To be continued …)
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