THOMAS CRANMER (1489–1556)
From the portrait in Jesus College, Cambridge. A. Rischgitz’ Collection.
It was the sight of their own people suffering a cruel death which made the name of Rome hateful and horrible for three hundred years and more. It was the sight of the constancy of the martyrs which laid the firm foundations of the Protestant Faith. For none of them flinched before the flames, none of them feared the pains which the Lord God in His mercy and wisdom had ordered them to endure for the sake of the Cause. What was to be expected when a shoemaker such as John Noyes could die triumphant and rejoicing?
“On the next-day morning he was brought to the stake, where were ready against his coming the foresaid justice, master Thurston, one master Waller, then being under-sheriff, and master Thomas Lovel, being high-constable, as is before expressed; the which commanded men to make ready all things meet for that sinful purpose. Now the fire in most places of the street was put out, saving a smoke which was espied by the said Thomas Lovel proceeding from the top of a chimney, to which house the sheriff and Grannow his man went, and brake open the door, and thereby got fire, and brought the same to the place of execution. When John Noyes came to the place where he should be burnt, he kneeled down and said the 50th Psalm, with other prayers; and then they, making haste, bound him to the stake. And being bound, the said John Noyes said, ‘Fear not them that can kill the body, but fear him that can kill both body and soul, and cast it into everlasting fire.’
When he saw his sister weeping, and making moan for him, he bade her that she should not weep for him, but weep for her sins.
Then one Nicholas Cadman, a valiant champion in the Pope’s affairs, brought a faggot and set against him; and the said John Noyes took up the faggot and kissed it, and said, ‘Blessed be the time that ever I was born to come to this.’
Then he delivered his Psalter to the under-sheriff, desiring him to be good to his wife and children, and to deliver to her that same book; and the sheriff promised him that he would, notwithstanding he never as yet performed his promise. Then the said John Noyes said to the people, ‘They say, they can make God of a piece of bread; believe them not!’
Then said he, ‘Good people, bear witness that I do believe to be saved by the merits and passion of Jesus Christ, and not by mine own deeds.’ And so the fire was kindled, and burnt about him. Then he said, ‘Lord have mercy upon me! Christ have mercy upon me! Son of David have mercy upon me!’
And so he yielded up his life. And when his body was burned, they made a pit to bury the coals and ashes, and amongst the same they found one of his feet that was unburnt, whole up to the ankle, with the hose on; and that they buried with the rest.”
Or, to take the case of Cicely Ormes. She was a very simple woman, the wife of a worsted weaver who lived in Norwich. She was present at the martyrdom of Simon Miller and Elizabeth Cooper, and there, being affected with their constancy, she declared that she would pledge them with the same cup from which they drank:—
“She was burnt the 23d day of September, between seven and eight of the clock in the morning, the said two sheriffs being there, and of people to the number of two hundred. When she came to the stake, she kneeled down, and made her prayers to God; that being done, she rose up and said:—
‘Good people! I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, three persons and one God. This do I not, nor will I recant; but I recant utterly from the bottom of my heart the doings of the Pope of Rome, and all his popish priests and shavelings. I utterly refuse and never will have to do with them again, by God’s grace. And, good people! I would you should not report of me that I believe to be saved in that I offer myself here unto the death for the Lord’s cause, but I believe to be saved by the death and passion of Christ; and this my death is and shall be a witness of my faith unto you all here present. Good people! as many of you as believe as I believe, pray for me.’
Then she came to the stake, and laid her hand on it, and said, ‘Welcome the cross of Christ.’ Which being done, she, looking on her hand, and seeing it blacked with the stake, wiped it upon her smock; for she was burnt at the same stake that Simon Miller and Elizabeth Cooper was burnt at. Then, after she had touched it with her hand, she came and kissed it, and said, ‘Welcome the sweet cross of Christ’; and so gave herself to be bound thereto. After the tormentors had kindled the fire to her, she said, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoiceth in God my Saviour.’ And in so saying, she set her hands together right against her breast, casting her eyes and head upward; and so stood, heaving up her hands by little and little, till the very sinews of her arms did brast in sonder, and then they fell. But she yielded her life unto the Lord as quietly as if she had been in a slumber, or as one feeling no pain; so wonderfully did the Lord work with her: His name therefore be praised for evermore.”
Remember that the example was not only an admonition to those who saw her death: it was related by the spectators; it was spread through the length and breadth of the land; it was written down by Foxe, in whose hands it certainly lost nothing of eloquence or of dramatic effect, and it has been read ever since by countless people. Not the martyrdom of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and the rest of the bishops, priests and scholars, so much as those of the “very simple” women, the plain craftsmen, built up the Protestant Faith, scattered the Spanish Fleets, and changed the Englishman of the sixteenth century, so that he of the seventeenth became possible.
The burning of M. Iohn Rogers, vicar of Saint Pulchers, and Reader of Paules in London.
The bare list of burnings in London alone, not nearly complete, as enumerated by Henry Machyn in his Diary (1550–1563), conveys a sense of the overwhelming horror which filled England during this reign, perhaps clearer than a laboured treatise on the Lives and Deaths of the Martyrs. In reading the list we can see the crowds flocking to Smithfield: all their sympathies are with the sufferer; they see him dragged on his hurdle, undressed to the shirt and tied to the stake; they see that he flinches not nor offers to retract; the faggots are piled about him, Heaven grant they be of dry wood; from the flames and through the smoke they hear the voice of the martyr praising God and praying till the end comes, when his tongue swells up in his mouth and he can speak no more, or is suffocated with the smoke, or with the intensity of his agony his heart stops and merciful Death seizes him. Then the crowd go home again; they dare not speak to each other; but they remember.