South London

by Walter Besant

REMAINS OF THE OLD PRIORY, ST. MARY OVERIES

On Monday, January 28, 1555, was seen the first of many melancholy sights. On that day Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, presided at a Court held in St. Mary Overies Church for the trial of heretics. The court was actually held in the Ladye Chapel. Hither were brought Bishop Hooper and John Rogers: they were heard: they argued their case: they were found obstinate: they were committed to the Clink Prison hard by: on the next day, with Bradford, Dr. Crome, Dr. Saunders, Dr. Ferrar, Dr. Taylor, and several others, they were sentenced to be burned. Bradford wrote to Cranmer after the trial: 'This day, I think, or to-morrow at the uttermost, hearty Hooper, sincere Saunders, and trusty Taylor, end their course and receive their crowne. The next am I, which hourly looke for the Porter to open me the gates after them, to enter into the desired rest.'

So began those fires from which the cause of Roman Catholicism long suffered, and is even now still suffering. For the popular judgment does not discern and separate. The burnings under Henry and Edward are lumped together in the mind of the people, and all set down to Mary. The names, places, and times of the martyrs and their martyrdoms as given by Machyn, not by Fox, show that if the Queen's advisers had deliberately done their best to make their form of Faith odious and hateful, they could not have devised a better plan than the burning of the people for religion's sake. It is generally thought and believed that the indignation of the people was aroused by seeing the Bishops and preachers burned. That I do not believe. The executions of great men do not affect the populace; they witness the passage of a Thomas More on his way to the block: or of a Cromwell: with equal indifference: these statesmen do not belong to the life of the people. In the Marian persecution they heard that Archbishop Cranmer had been burned at Oxford, but they offered little outward show of emotion: they heard that Ridley and Latimer had been burned: their constancy, no doubt, touched the crowd: but still, these martyrs were not of themselves. When, however, they found that not only Bishops and great people, but also their own brothers, cousins, fathers, were taken out from their workshops and tied three or four together to the stake, where they suffered the agonies of the fire and still continued to pray aloud with firmness: then the lesson went straight home to them; and for many a generation to come the people learned to loathe the very name of the religion which could thus burn innocent people by the hundred for believing, as they were told, what the Bible taught.

It is a mistake, again, to suppose that the lessons of persecution were taught at Smithfield alone. They were industriously taught from many centres. There were burnings at Stratford-le-Bow: at Stepney: at Westminster: beyond St. George's, Southwark, at Newington; while the vast crowds which attended a burning and imbibed these lessons of fear and hatred are shown by two entries alone in Machyn's Diary, 1556. 'The xxvij day of June rod from Newgate unto Stratford-a-bow, in iii cares xiij, xj men and ij women, and there bornyd (burned) to iiij postes, and there where a xx M pepull.'

TOMB OF BISHOP ANDREWS, ST. MARY OVERIES

And again, 1556. 'The xxij day of January whent in to Smythfield to berne between vii and viij in the morning v men and ij women: on of the men was a gentyllman of the endor tempull, ys nam Master Grén; and they were all bornyd by ix at iij postes. And ther wher a commonment throughe London over nyght that no young folke shuld come ther, for ther the grettest number was as has byne sene at swyche a tyme.'

Therefore it is evident, first, that enormous crowds gathered together to witness the sufferings of the victims, and to note their constancy in the hour of agony; secondly, that the authorities were becoming alarmed at the effect which these examples might have upon the young. No young people were permitted to be present. We may be sure that the prohibition was openly defied.

As for Gardiner, he died soon after the martyr fires began, stricken, said his enemies, by the hand of God in punishment for his cruelties. His physicians, I believe, called it gout in the stomach, a reading which one prefers, because Gardiner was no worse than the rest of them, and after his death there was no abatement, but rather an increase, in the burnings. He had, however, a very fine funeral, which began at the church of St. Mary Overies, and was continued all the way to Winchester, where the place of his burial and his Chantry Chapel may still be seen.