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.