Martyrs and Mystics. Ed Glinert

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СКАЧАТЬ Jupiter and Saturn. On 7 February 1601 the Earl of Essex, at the conclusion of the sermon at Paul’s Cross, led a group of 300 rebels through the City shouting: ‘Murder, murder, God save the Queen!’ in protest at how England was supposedly about to be handed to the Spanish when Queen Elizabeth died. He was arrested and executed on Tower Hill a month later.

      The Puritans pulled down Paul’s Cross in 1643.

       ST PAUL’S CHURCHYARD

      When Pope Pius V became pontiff in February 1570 he issued a papal bull, Regnans in Excelsis, urging Catholics to overthrow Elizabeth, ‘pretended Queen of England’. The Catholics believed Elizabeth was technically illegitimate as they did not recognise her mother, Anne Boleyn, the Protestant who had replaced the Catholic Catherine of Aragon in Henry’s favours, as being legitimately married to the king.

      Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth, freeing her subjects from their allegiance to her. It was an absurd move as no Catholic European power was in a position to enforce his wishes. It also meant that from now on the queen would treat all Catholics as the enemy. A Catholic called John Felton pinned the papal bull to the gate of the Bishop of London’s palace and was duly hanged in St Paul’s Churchyard. Cut down while still alive, he supposedly shouted out the holy name of Jesus as the hangman held his heart in his hand.

      George Williams was one of a dozen men who established the Young Men’s Christian Association above a draper’s shop in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1844. Their aim was to unite and direct ‘the efforts of Christian young men for the spiritual welfare of their fellows in the various departments of commercial life’. Soon other branches were formed, first in London, and then throughout the world.

       SMITHFIELD EXECUTION SITE, West Smithfield

      Originally the Smooth Field, this was Britain’s major execution site for Protestant martyrs in medieval times, where hundreds lost their lives.

      The method of execution used at Smithfield was nearly always burning at the stake before a large crowd. Though gruesome, it was carried out in a far more humane manner than on the continent, where heretics often had their tongues cut off before the pyre was lit. In England burning occurred only after a series of rigorous trials had taken place and the condemned had been given the chance of recanting their views.

      A dramatic preamble to the grim fate was the ceremony known as ‘carrying the faggot’. The alleged heretic, carrying a faggot of wood, would be taken to the place of execution. There a fire had been lit, and the accused would throw the faggot on to the fire and watch it burn as a warning that if they remained steadfast in their views they would be next for the flames. Before the pyre was lit, the victim’s friends and family would try to bribe the executioner to place a bag of gunpowder by the body. That way, when the flames rose, the gunpowder would explode and kill the poor wretch quickly, sparing them the slow torture of burning. This could not happen of course if it had been raining.

      The first martyr to meet his death here was William Sawtrey, a priest and follower of the Bible translator John Wycliffe, who went to the stake in 1401. Sawtrey’s card was marked when he announced ‘instead of adoring the cross on which Christ suffered, I adore Christ who suffered on it’. In 1399 the Bishop of Norwich questioned Sawtrey over his beliefs, and had him arrested and imprisoned on charges of heresy. Sawtrey recanted his views and was released but felt that he had betrayed Christ. Two years later Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, had Sawtrey arrested again. After questioning Sawtrey, the Church authorities deemed ‘unacceptable’ his views on transubstantiation and the adoration of the cross and declared him indeed a heretic, which meant only one thing – he had to be put to death by burning.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ