Fox's Book of Martyrs: Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant; Deaths of the Primitive Protestant MartyrsFoxe, John
HistoryHistory
Fox's Book of Martyrs: Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant; Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs
Foxe, John
Church history; Martyrs; Persecution
Mr. John Tudson, of Ipswich by birth, was apprenticed in London to a Mr.
Goodyear, of St. Mary Botolph. He was condemned January 15, 1556, and
consigned to the secular power, which completed the fiery tyranny of the
law, January 27, to the glory of God, and the immortal salvation of the
meek sufferer.
Subsequently, John Hunt, Isabella Forster, and Joan Warne, were
condemned and executed.
_John Lomas, Agnes Snoth, Anne Wright, Joan Sole, and Joan Catmer._
These five martyrs suffered together, January 31, 1556. John Lomas was a
young man of Tenterden. He was cited to appear at Canterbury, and was
examined January 17. His answers being adverse to the idolatrous
doctrine of the papacy, he was condemned on the following day, and
suffered January 31.
Agnes Snoth, widow, of Smarden Parish, was several times summoned before
the Catholic Pharisees, and rejecting absolution, indulgences,
transubstantiation, and auricular confession, she was adjudged worthy to
suffer death, and endured martyrdom, January 31, with Anne Wright and
Joan Sole, who were placed in similar circumstances, and perished at the
same time, with equal resignation. Joan Catmer, the last of this
heavenly company, of the parish Hithe, was the wife of the martyr George
Catmer.
Seldom in any country, for political controversy, have four women been
led to execution, whose lives were irreproachable, and whom the pity of
savages would have spared. We cannot but remark here that, when the
Protestant power first gained the ascendency over the Catholic
superstition, and some degree of force in the laws was necessary to
enforce uniformity, whence some bigoted people suffered privation in
their person or goods, we read of few burnings, savage cruelties, or
poor women brought to the stake, but it is the nature of error to resort
to force instead of argument, and to silence truth by taking away
existence, of which the Redeemer himself is an instance. The above five
persons were burnt at two stakes in one fire, singing hosannahs to the
glorified Saviour, till the breath of life was extinct. Sir John Norton,
who was present, wept bitterly at their unmerited sufferings.
_Archbishop Cranmer._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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