Martyrs

Summary. Several dissidents were burned for their faith in the market square in 1550s. Bishop Baine had a mission to eradicate heretics. The last burning was Edward Wightman, April 1612. George Fox preached in the market square on despair in 1651.

 

There has been a market square in Lichfield since the 12th-century.

Plaque stating in 1153 King Stephen granted to Bishop Durdent the right to hold a market on Sunday.

In 1530, a market cross shaped as a shelter was constructed in the square, replacing an open area with a high cross atop some steps. Eight pillars held up a vaulted roof with sculptures of apostles atop each pillar. A central turret contained a market bell. Within the canopy were stocks. It was destroyed in the first siege of the Civil War.

AI rendition of the market cross set up by Dean James Denton, 1522-33.  

AI rendition of market square from John Jackson, History of the City and cathedral of Lichfield, (London:1805)

During the reign of Queen Mary, in the1550s, it is thought around 300 people were executed for their beliefs in a five-year period, and are known as the Marian Martyrs. Several dissidents[1]  were burned in Lichfield’s market square. John Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’[2] gives little information on the first two executions. Thomas Hayward and John Goreway were executed sometime in mid-September 1555 for, in Foxe’s words being condemned as heretics for the confession of a good faith. They were said to have sung praises in the flames.

More is known on the next martyr, Robert Gover, a Lollard, who was tried for heresy in the cathedral Consistory Court and burned at Coventry in September 1555. Robert was born in the village of Mancetter, Warwickshire, c. 1515, the second son of John Glover of Baxterley, Warwickshire. He was educated at Eton College and then King’s College, Cambridge, aged 18. He gained two degrees by the age of 26. He married Mary, niece of Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, and had three sons and one daughter. Latimer was burned at the stake in 1555, alongside Nicholas Ridley.[3] Latimer argued at his trial the doctrines of having the real presence of Christ in the mass, or transubstantiation, and the assuaging of feelings of the mass were unbiblical.

The burning of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. From Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

The three Glover brothers, Robert’s wife Mary and previous ancestors like Hugh Latimer were known to be Protestants, with a tendency to Lutheranism, at a time in Mary Tudor’s reign, 1553–8, and her insistence of Roman Catholicism being the sole doctrine.  

AI rendition of the home of Robert Glover. The Manor House, south-west of Mancetter church, is a timber-framed building dating from about 1330 and preserves a great deal of the original building. The family had extensive property in the area and Robert was therefore a ‘Gentleman’. His brother, John Glover, built a handsome house called Baxterley Hall.

          In September 1555, Bishop Ralph Baine, a Catholic bishop[4] appointed in 1554, examined Robert Glover at Coventry who had been imprisoned for heresy. [5]  He ordered Glover and other heretics to be taken to Lichfield.[6] A letter written to Mary, described how Robert travelled on horseback and on arrival in Lichfield at 4pm was given supper at the Swan and then placed in the ‘church prison’. His jailor was Anthony Draycot, chancellor to the bishop, and both a lawyer and fervent Roman Catholic.[7] The ‘church prison’ could have been the current duckit, or possibly the chamber under the Consistory Court or under the chambers on the south side of the Lady Chapel. Robert wrote he was “placed next to the dungeon, narrow in room, strong of building, and very cold, with small light and here allowed to have a bundle of straw instead of my bed, without a chair, form, or anything else to raise myself withal”. The next night he was given a bed, but denied a request for pen, ink and paper.

 

AI gen. A ‘heretic’ being inquisitioned.

Robert was then interrogated by Draycott and a prebendary. When Bishop Baine returned to Lichfield, he was called into the Consistory Court below St Chad’s Head Chapel and questioned Robert concerning his faith. The bishop commanded Robert to be silent, endeavoured to intimidate him, and upbraided him with the name of ‘proud, arrogant heretick’. It is said Glover answered the interrogations of the bishop with undaunted resolution and confidence, but was condemned by the Consistory Court, and sentenced to death in the flames.

 South side rooms were built mid-13th century, probably in phases. The Duckit might have been the treasury and the Consistory Court originally the Prebendaries Vestry. Above was built later St Chad’s Head Chapel. The vault is entered by a stair in the south-east turret of the Duckit. The rooms were occupied by squatters during the Commonwealth Period.[8] Were these the rooms used for imprisonment?

According to Foxe he prayed all night before his execution and said to a priest friend in the morning “he is come, he is come”. Robert Glover was one of twelve Lollard Martyrs burnt at the stake in Coventry on 19[9] September 1555. He was burned alongside Cornelius Bungey, a hatmaker from Coventry, who had been interrogated with Glover.

Marginalia in Foxes’ Book of Martyrs showing Robert Glover and Cornelius Bungey.

An inscription on a monument in Mancetter Church has: TO THE SACRED MEMORY OF ROBERT GLOVER. Martyr.

Laurence Saunders, a prominent cleric, was also martyred in 1555 at Coventry. All three martyrs were educated gentry and steadfast in their beliefs. Glover, Bungey, Saunders and the nine other Coventry Martyrs are remembered by a granite monument, 6m high, in the form of a Celtic wheel-head cross which stands on the island above the Coventry Ring Road, at the junction of New Union Street and Quinton Road.

 Joyce Bowes was burned in August 1557 at ‘Litchfield’ and Joyce or Jocasta Lewis in the following December. Joyce of Mancetter was part of a privileged Catholic family. Her uncle, Hugh Latimer, was burnt at Oxford in 1555. Her irreverent behaviour was reported to the Bishop of Lichfield who sent a citation which it is said, Lewis forced the official to eat! The bishop then bound her husband to a sum of £100 to bring his wife to trial within a month, which he did in spite of pleading from her friends. Joyce was sentenced to a year in jail and with no subsequent recanting was burned. Eleven of her supporters were summoned to account for their actions and all recanted.

AI enhanced rendition of illustration of Joyce Lewis shown in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs first published in 1563. Joyce appears to being comforted,

Plaque naming martyrs burnt in the market place

The last burning in Lichfield was Edward Wightman on 11 April 1612, who had preached an extreme form of heresy in the time of James I.[10] Throughout his trial in the cathedral Consistory Court, Wightman made no attempt to defend himself. With the first attempt of burning in the market square, 20 March 1612, local people pulled away the wood and saved him, claiming he recanted. He was jailed for three weeks, but refused to recant, so was put to a fire on Easter Saturday at an unknown public space in the town. Wightman was the last heretic in England to perish.

AI gen of the martyrdom of Edward Wightman at Lichfield.

 His chaplain was William Laud, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, an autocratic High Church priest who was later executed, 1645, for his beliefs.[11]

Edmund Gennings, 1567–91, was born in Lichfield and ordained priest at the age of 23 in 1590. He was caught saying Mass in the house of Saint Swithun Wells at Gray’s Inn in London on 7 November 1591. For this he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Gray’s Inn Fields. He was canonised as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970.
          Eleanor Davies, 1590–1652, wrote around 70 pamphlets describing prophesies based on confused biblical references. After her release from prison, she was arrested again and sent to Bedlam, London.  She then poured tar over the altar in Lichfield Cathedral, sat on the bishop’s throne and called herself an archbishop in 1637. She was placed in the Tower, 1638, and released in 1640.

 

In 1651, George Fox, 1624–91, the founding Quaker, entered the market place shouting Cry, Woe unto the bloody city of Lichfield.  He envisaged with prophetic judgement that through the town ran a channel of blood and he likened the market square to a pool of blood. He harkened to the massacre fable of a thousand Christians (as well as the recent Civil War slaughter) and wrote, so the sense of this blood was upon me. There is a plaque in the market place which states shortly after his release from prison in Derby, at the beginning of the winter of 1651, (Fox) stood without shoes on a market day in the market place and denounced the City of Lichfield.

Painting by Robert Spence, 1897, of George Fox ranting in the market Square. The painting is in the Heritage Centre (Hub) in the market square. In the background is the cathedral with its damaged middle spire and a castle wall partly demolished.

AI rendition of George Fox reputedly from a painting by Peter Lely. 

Fox had recently been released after spending a miserable year in Derby Gaol, the first of eight imprisonments and it is thought he was suffering from some kind of mania. Perhaps, he saw this as an exorcising of the past misdeeds of the city.[12]

An act was passed in 1677 forbidding the burning of heretics.

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[1] The mid-16th century meaning of Dissident is merely differing in opinion or character.

[2] Originally published 1563 and titled Actes and Monuments of these latter and perillous days. Touching matters of the church. Later editions had the title A history of the lives, sufferings and triumphant deaths of the primitive Protestant Martyrs.

[3] Robert Glover's life was written by John Foxe, The acts and monuments of these latter and perilous days, touching matters of the church. (1563), online at http://www.exclassics.com/foxe/foxe314.htm 

[4] See the post, ‘Bishops, Reformation to Commonwealth’.

[5] T. Harwood, The history and antiquities of the church and city of Lichfield. (London:1806), 285–6.

[6] The account is summarised from J. Foxe (1563), 1555–6.

[7] He came from Draycott in the Moors, between Stoke and Uttoxeter. At Elizabeth I’s accession he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy and was stripped of all his preferments, except the rectory in Draycot. In 1560 he was in Fleet Prison and then taken home to die.

[8] N. J. Tringham, ‘An early eighteenth-century description of Lichfield Cathedral’, South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society Transactions 1986–87. (1988), 28, 62.

[9] Some accounts state the next day. Martyrologist John Foxe gives the date of Robert’s burnings as "about the 20th day" in his 1563 Acts and Monuments, but fellow martyrologist the Reverend Thomas Brice gives the date as the 19th in his A Compendious Regester of 1559.

[10] James I believed witches existed and wrote a book on how to find them.

[11] For a greater account of Edward Wightman see Patrick Comerford’s Blog for 2012 entitled ‘Remembering the last heretic burned at the stake 400 years ago’.

[12] Detractors have said the whole performance was contrived.

Plague

Summary.  Several plague epidemics have killed residents of Lichfield; including St Chad. Two-thirds of the population probably died from the Black Death, 1349. It returned in 1553, 1564 and 1593–4. On the last occasion upwards of eleven hundred inhabitants died.

 Facts on plague.

·        Caused by the bacterium          Yersinia pestis which circulates in rodents such as rats, mice, marmots, gerbils, ground-squirrels and even cats. It was passed by rodent fleas and itch mites. These were easily transmitted with hand-me-down clothes and sleeping on a bed with others. Multiple occupancy of dwellings often meant several generations died together.

·        It enters lymph nodes in the groin, armpit and neck causing painful swellings called buboes, which can blacken. If the buboes suppurate, the stench of pus is great.

·        After two days there is a fever, chills, headaches, body-aches, fatigue, vomiting. 70% of victims survive this stage.

·        If it enters the blood, it causes septicaemia and this can darken the skin. If it enters the lungs, it causes pneumonia. Few survive this stage. These victims can pass on the disease in respiratory droplets.

·        Antibiotics can cure if given within 24 hours of symptoms appearing. It is a re-emerging disease with variants resistant to antibiotics and most of the outbreaks are the lethal pneumonic form.[1]

 

Before the sixth century there must have been major Bubonic pandemics, but they have not been attested. Since then, there have been three major pandemics and many smaller ones.

Old Testament Plague of boils, probably smallpox, in the Toggenburg, Switzerland, Bible, 1411. Public Domain, Wikimedia.

 

First Pandemic was first recorded in Britain c. 549.[2] It came from Egypt via the Middle East and Europe, lasted for more than 200 years, and came to an end c. 750. This pandemic was also called the Justinian plague after the emperor who ascended the papal throne when the plague started. It killed seven known leaders in Ireland, some kings in Wales, Wigheard archbishop-elect of Canterbury, several bishops including St Cedd bishop of the East Saxons, and St Chad of Mercia. Various settlements ceased to exist in a comparatively short time and the plague has been implicated. One notable example is the Roman town of Viroconium (Wroxeter) which was thought to have had several thousand inhabitants spread over 195 acres before the plague and within two decades had shrunk to around 25 acres. A population reduction of sixty percent in south-west Britain has been estimated. Bede described the pandemic in 664,[3] “In the same year a sudden pestilence first depopulated the southern parts of Britain and afterwards attacked the kingdom of Northumbria, raging far and wide with cruel devastation and laying low a vast number of people. The plague did equal destruction in Ireland”.  

A plague outbreak in 686 killed all the monks in the monastery at Jarrow except Ceolfrith and a young lad in his care that may have been Bede. 

          In 672, it was probably plague that killed Chad in Lichfield (Licitfelda). Bede described his dying in the following way,[4] Chad urged Owine and seven brothers to meet him in the church. He urged them all to live in love and peace with each other and then announced the day of his death was close at hand. “For the beloved guest who has been in the habit of visiting our brothers has deigned to come today to me also.” Owine later heard angels singing and Chad explained they were angel spirits coming for him. For seven days his body became weaker before he died on March 2. He was buried in the cemetery field near St Mary’s church and archaeology, 2003, showed a site now under the nave platform.

 

Second Pandemic, known as The Black Death, was a variant of bubonic plague, and appeared to have started in the late 1330s at two cemeteries near Lake Issyk-Kul in the north of modern-day Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia. It passed with the Mongols giving siege to a Crimean trading post and then quickly passed through Europe between 1346 and 1353. A recent suggestion has been a volcanic eruption in 1345 caused extreme drops in temperature and led to poor harvests. To avert famine, populous Italian city states were forced to import grain from areas around the Black Sea bringing plague-carrying fleas that carried the disease. It caused a great loss of population; 50 million has been mentioned. Proportionally it was more destructive than the First World War with a third of the population killed and in some places as much as two-thirds. It struck England c.1348-50, and is thought to have entered through the Dorset seaport of Melcombe Regis, now Weymouth, during May or June of 1348; the ports of Bristol and Southampton[5] have also been cited. Possibly half the population was killed in the two years. The population around 1300 could have been 4 million and by the Poll Tax in 1377 there were 2.5 to 3 million people. Recurring bouts in 1361-2, 1369 and 1375 probably killed another 10-15%. That means 60% of the population died within 30 years.[6] 

AI rendition of a Black Death in London drawing.  

A plague mortality figure of 40% of priests within the Lichfield diocese has been calculated, though strangely, there is no record of any death of cathedral clergy.[7] Clergy probably unwittingly helped to spread the disease. Thirteen of the 17 dioceses kept registers of their mortality and Lichfield’s stands out as the most complete. Bishop Roger Northburgh, 1322–58, recorded 459 livings in the diocese and 188 suddenly became vacant and is assumed to be the result of plague-deaths, but this assumption has been challenged.[8] It is likely some parishes were wiped out and the priest was forced to move away. It has also been stated the plague started in Lichfield in April 1349 and was virtually over by the end of October; this seems unusual. The same writer described how the bishop continued his work during the worst time of July without panic or confusion. To ordinary people the disease was baffling, its origin was said to come from supernatural causes and death was to be expected. It was seen as a pestilence of biblical proportions.

 

AI gen. Black Death Lichfield

The disease was a threat to life over a long period of time.[9] England endured thirty-one plague outbreaks between 1348 and 1485, a pattern mirrored on the continent, where Perugia was struck nineteen times and Hamburg, Cologne, and Nuremburg at least ten times each in the fifteenth century. Venice endured twenty-one outbreaks to 1630. In 1553, Lichfield with an estimated population of around 2000, was again gripped by the plague; and again in 1564 and 1593–4.  On this last occasion it has been written that upwards of eleven hundred inhabitants died.[10] During the Civil War, 1645–6, the city was again afflicted and 821 deaths were reported in one year.[11] Then the Great Plague, 1665-6, struck in London, killing 75,000 and later affecting other parts of England. It is known the plague occurred in Lichfield in September 1665 and was blamed on a family giving lodging to travellers from London.[12] There is no evidence it became endemic in Lichfield, which is surprising because this was at a time of the great rebuilding of the cathedral. The last outbreak was in Malta in 1813.

 

The Mortality Paradox. Mortality numbers for the 14th-century are 19th-century estimations. Pollen records in England do not show a slow-up of agriculture, yet 90% of the population was rural. Archaeology has not revealed increased mass burials. There was no disruption of issue of coins. It is now considered the high levels of death have yet to be substantiated.

 

          The Third Pandemic started in the Yunnan province of China in 1772, reached Hong Kong in 1894 and then killed an estimated 20 million people in the world. Its rate of spread was slow and mortality was around 1%, compared with fast infection and up to 50% mortality in the second pandemic. It petered out in the 1940s, but sporadic outbreaks of plague have occurred since, such as in California and Madagascar.

 

Consequences 

·       The Black Death must have interfered with building of the cathedral. The protracted period of poor weather and poor harvests before the epidemic would also have affected work and labour supply. 

·       It is known the plague increased bigotry. God’s anger was interpreted as being caused by sinful people and blame fell on Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars and even pilgrims. Folklore took over and infused with prejudice. 

·       The change of name from Licetfelda to Lychfield was reinforced with preoccupation of death in a field.[13] There was a widespread construction of shrines for the survivors to express gratitude and perhaps guilt.[14] There was a resurgence in appealing to the Virgin Mary for salvation. 

·       New men of a younger generation filled the shoes of those who died. They would have had a different outlook, worked in different ways and were less beholden to feudal lords. Patrons were often new men and the epidemic must have had a huge effect on the way they organised themselves in work. 

·       Recruitment was needed for the church and often laymen joined the clergy. Pluralism in which members of the church held many offices and gained much remuneration became common. Inevitably it reduced standards.

·       The population of Lichfield returned to its pre-epidemic levels within twenty years; by 1664 it was estimated to be 2,500.[15] This was unusual, England did not recover to its pre-plague population level until 1600.

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[1] Covid-19 killed just 1% before vaccination was given. Plague still kills 10%. A Plague variant could be the next epidemic. See G. Lawton, ‘Return of the Plague’, New Scientist. 28 May 2022, 48–51.

[2] D. Keys, Catastrophe. An investigation into the origins of the Modern World. (London: 1999). 114.

[3] HE Book 3, Chapter 27. J. McClure and R. Collins, Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. (Oxford: 2008), 161.

[4] Ibid. Book 4, Chapter 3, McClure and Collins (2008), 176.

[5] Henry Knighton, c. 1337-96, an Augustinian Canon suggested it entered England through Southampton and reached London via trade routes through Winchester.

[6] S. Thurley, ‘How the Middle Ages were built: exuberance to crisis, 1300–1408’. Gresham Lecture 2011.

[7] J. Lunn, The Black Death in the Bishop’s Registers. Unpub. thesis University of Cambridge (1930) now lost.

[8] J. F. D. Shrewsbury, A history of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles. (Cambridge: 1970).

[9] A plague cemetery in East Smithfield, London, revealed skeletons with a peak age of death of between 26 and 45, with a preponderance being male.

[10] T. Harwood, The history and antiquities of the church and city of Lichfield. (London: 1806), 304. The incumbent of Alrewas wrote, “This yeare in the Summertime,1593, there was a great plague in England in Divers Cities and Townes . . . and in Lichfield their died to the number of ten hundred and odde and as at this time of wryting not cleane ceassed being the 28 of November. This number is anecdotally supported by the St. Michael's parish register which recorded an increase in burials in May and June with very high figures in July and August.

[11] Ibid, 306. Elias Ashmole wrote a note listing deaths by streets for the year 1645 and recorded 821. Plague continued until 1647 and is thought to have killed one third of the population of Lichfield.

[12] S. Porter, The Great Plague, (Stroud: 2009), 63.

[13] See the post ‘Lichfield changed its name’.

[14] D. MacCulloch, A history of Christianity. (London: 2010), 553.

[15] C. J. Harrison, ‘Lichfield from the Reformation to the Civil War’, Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society Transactions, (1980), 22, 122.