The Burning Time Read online

  Burnings typically took place on a wooden platform, some three feet from the ground, on which the victims were bound to the stake by chains. Bundles of brushwood, rods and sticks tied together to form ‘faggots’ – more usually used for kindling in the domestic hearth, or as the principal fuel of the city’s bakeries and brew-houses – were stacked around the victims’ legs, and the official in charge of the proceedings – sometimes the Lord Mayor of London – would cry out ‘Fire the faggots!’ and ‘Let justice be done!’ as the signal for the executioner to light the pile of wood with a flaming torch. There would always be a crowd gathered round (though not too close) – some sympathizers there to support the victims, others come to enjoy the spectacle – all waiting for the moment when the bodies, charred and melted by the flames, would topple over from their chains and into the fire. The faggots were intended to kindle quickly to produce a short hot blaze, before flesh and body-fat provided fuel for the fire. But every burning was different; if the fire ‘caught’, it could be over relatively quickly, but on damp days, or when the wind persisted in blowing the flames away from the body, it could take up to an hour for the condemned person to die, an hour of excruciating agony.

  Of the burnings which took place in England between 1529 and 1558 by far the largest number occurred in one small area of London – the area known as (West) Smithfield. Just outside the City walls though still within its bounds, not far from Newgate prison, ten minutes’ walk from both the Guildhall and St Paul’s Cathedral on Ludgate Hill (the old pre-Fire of London cathedral, over 600 feet in length and with a spire rising to some 500 feet), this was a convenient place to take people to die, with space enough to erect viewing stands from which ‘the great and the good’ could watch the spectacle. Smithfield, originally known as ‘Smoothfield’, had been a place of public execution for over 400 years; many witches and heretics had been burnt, roasted or boiled alive there. It was here that the Scottish hero and patriot, Sir William Wallace, was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1315, and where Wat Tyler, the leader of the Peasants’ Revolt, was fatally stabbed by the Lord Mayor in 1381. Many tournaments had also taken place there, royal jousts having begun in Smithfield in the reign of Edward III (1327–77). The other activity for which the area was (and is) famous was the craft of butchery, meat having been traded in Smithfield since the tenth century.

  Adjacent to the open space of Smithfield was the great Augustinian Priory of St Bartholomew, one of the City’s most important monasteries. The annual Bartholomew Fair was held on the priory’s land, attracting all manner of people – cloth merchants from all around Europe mingling with jugglers, acrobats, innkeepers and pickpockets. It was also an area which drew the poor and the sick, the monastery’s sister-foundation, St Bartholomew’s Hospital (still world-famous as ‘Barts’), offering relief for the body while the prior and canons (as the members of an Augustinian community were known) offered prayers for the soul.

  Of the 288 people estimated to have been burnt for heresy during the five-year reign of Mary Tudor, forty-eight were burnt in Smithfield. The next-highest numbers were eighteen in Lewes in Sussex, seventeen in Stratford-atte-Bow (now Bow in East London), fourteen in Canterbury and seven in Maidstone (both these latter in the county of Kent). Some seventeen people had suffered the same fate in Smithfield under Henry VIII, as had two ‘Anabaptists’ (extremists whom even Protestants regarded as heretics) during the brief reign of Edward VI.

  However interesting, and harrowing, the lives and deaths of individual ‘martyrs’ (and the meanings of that emotive word will be considered in due course), my hope is that this book will be more than a compilation of biographies. During the time I have been working on it, the questions that the stories of the Smithfield martyrs provoke have become ever more pertinent, the need for answers (if any exist) ever more urgent. What is it that makes people kill other people in the name of religion? Why are some people prepared to die – or kill – for their beliefs, while the rest of us are content to muddle along with compromise and uncertainty? What led to this ‘burning time’ in the history of England? Could it have been avoided and how was it overcome? Could it happen again? And, most importantly, is there anything we can learn from this dark period in our history to help bring an end to today’s deathly religious conflicts – or are we doomed to go on repeating the same mistakes, in different parts of the world, until we finally succeed in annihilating humankind altogether? The instances of heroism that emerge from the stories of the martyrs, the occasional glimpses of a different kind of light from that produced by flames, suggest it is worth struggling on.

  There are several parallels between Tudor England and our own world today. One of the most obvious concerns technological developments, the revolution in information technology having an arguably even greater impact than the invention of printing had on the authoritative delivery of information. Now anyone really can find out anything for themselves, and intermediaries are no longer required. This in turn means that questions of interpretation and discrimination – how does one determine which information is reliable? – are ever more insistent. The proliferation and dissemination of ‘authority’ in Islam that has occurred with the growth of the Internet is addressed by Vit Šisler of Charles University in Prague in an article entitled ‘The Internet and the Construction of Islamic Knowledge in Europe’, in which he argues that ‘a new paradigm has emerged in the construction of Islamic knowledge and interpretative authority. Within this new paradigm established “traditional” authorities operate in coexistence with Internet-based muftis, online fatwa databases and individual Islamic blogs.’ Of particular resonance is Šisler’s observation that: ‘The Internet highlights the myriad concepts, movements and sects of Islam, but it also highlights the differences between them. In particular, the younger Muslims living in Europe pay close attention to these differences. They search for an original or “true” Islam, which they can distinguish from the Islam of their parents.’ This is very reminiscent of the sixteenth-century Protestants’ adherence to what they perceived as the beliefs and practices of the early Church, reconstructed from their reading of the New Testament and which they characterized as original or ‘true’ Christianity. It is a form of ‘primitivism’, characteristic of reformatory movements.

  To return to Smithfield, if we open our story in the year 1530 or thereabouts, we find little to suggest the turmoil to come – apart from the King’s increasing impatience with Rome, and the rise of Lutheranism in parts of Europe. (Soon after Luther’s teachings had been condemned by the Pope in 1521, his works had been publicly burnt in Oxford, Cambridge and at Paul’s Cross – the site of the open-air pulpit outside St Paul’s Cathedral – in London.) Henry was still married to Katherine of Aragon, though becoming increasingly desperate to cast her off and marry Anne Boleyn. He had been insinuating to Pope Clement VII that, if the Pope would not hurry up and make it possible for him to divorce Katherine, a way of dispensing with papal authority might be sought. In 1529 Henry had dismissed Cardinal Thomas Wolsey from the post of Lord Chancellor, under pressure from Anne, and replaced him with Thomas More. The disgraced Wolsey died in November 1530. Earlier that year, in July, John Stokesley, who was supportive of the King’s campaign for a divorce and involved in the making of the case for an annulment under canon law, was appointed Bishop of London in succession to Cuthbert Tunstall, who had become Bishop of Durham.

  At the helm of the small community of Augustinian canons living in St Bartholomew’s Priory was William Bolton, who had been the prior since 1505. Now nearing the end of his life, Bolton had in his heyday been not only a cleric but also a builder of some eminence, having been employed as ‘master [or clerk] of the works’ by both Henry VII and Henry VIII. (The word ‘builder’ in this context implies something more akin to architect or project manager in modern terms, rather than someone involved in the physical work of construction.) Bolton’s main work for Henry VIII had involved the rebuilding of New Hall in Essex, which the King had procured from
Thomas Boleyn, the Earl of Wiltshire, and grandfather of Anne. The prior had also undertaken large building operations at St Bartholomew’s itself and at Canonbury Tower in Islington, which formed part of the monastery’s possessions (and from where its water supply was derived). Another notable commission entrusted to Bolton had been the ordering of the chimney pots for Cardinal Wolsey’s palace at Hampton Court. But by 1530 Bolton’s active life was over; in addition to his post at St Bartholomew’s, he had for the last eight years been Rector of Harrow on the Hill, in Middlesex, but he was by now about eighty years old and virtually immobile. He died in April 1532.

  Within the Priory Church, as was common in monastic churches, a chapel was set aside for the use of parishioners – the lay people who lived and worked in the monastic close. The parish also had its own priest, who would celebrate Mass in the chapel and look after the general spiritual welfare of the parishioners. It is not known who was fulfilling this role around the time of Prior Bolton’s death, but by the end of the decade the post was held by a man who remained a constant presence at St Bartholomew’s throughout all the turmoil of the burning time. This was Sir John Deane, the last parish priest of the chapel and subsequently the first rector of the parish church. In the early 1530s, Deane was already connected to the monastery, being Rector of Little Stanmore in Middlesex, one of the possessions of St Bartholomew’s.

  Meanwhile, steadily making his way up a different professional ladder, negotiating the twists and turns of Tudor politics, was a lawyer of the Middle Temple called Richard Rich, in 1530 aged thirty-four and recently returned as Member of Parliament for the borough of Colchester in Essex. His is a name that is already well-known, if in fictionalized form, to readers of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and of C. J. Sansom’s Shardlake series – where he appears as the principal villain – as well as to viewers of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. Rich’s life would intersect with that of John Deane at many points over the following years, and both men would be witnesses at close quarters to all the horror of the burning time.

  Nothing they had known before 1530, in their respective careers, could quite have prepared them for the sights, sounds and smells they would encounter over the next thirty years, as many of their closest acquaintances were consumed in the fires of Smithfield.

  *From an address preached at ‘Waterloo 200: A National Service of Celebration’ at St Paul’s Cathedral on 18 June 2015.

  Chapter One

  BOILING, BURNING AND AMBITION

  And whereas in the translation of the New Testament [Tyndale] covered and dissimulated himself as much as he could, yet, when he perceived his cloaked heresies espied and destroyed, then shewed he shortly himself in his own likeness, sending forth first his wicked Book of Mammon, and after his malicious Book of Obedience. In which books he sheweth himself so puffed up with the poison of pride, malice and envy, that it is more than marvel that the skin can hold together.

  Thomas More,

  from A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, 1529

  ON 5 APRIL 1531 a cook, known both as Richard Roose and Richard Coke, and employed in the household of Bishop Fisher of Rochester, was boiled to death in Smithfield. He was convicted of having attempted to poison the bishop, and indeed several people of the household had become ill after eating the pottage or gruel which he had prepared. Two people – a member of the bishop’s staff and a widow who had been among the poor people to whom leftovers from the kitchen were distributed – had actually died. The bishop himself had not eaten any of the pottage and so, in the unlikely event of this having been an assassination attempt, it failed.

  For this case of food poisoning, the poor cook was boiled in a cauldron. According to Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, reporting the incident in a despatch to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the cook had confessed to having thrown a powder into the pottage, which he had been told was some kind of a joke – probably involving a laxative – that wouldn’t cause anyone real harm. There was no joke about the method of execution; he was immersed several times in boiling water – ‘locked in a chain and pulled up and down with a gibbet at divers times till he was dead’.

  Not only was it believed that the poisoning was deliberate (and so the alleged crime was given the name of ‘high treason’ and made the subject of a new statute entitled ‘An Acte for Poysoning’), there was even a suspicion of involvement of people very close to the King, Chapuys specifically mentioning the possible involvement of ‘the lady and her father’ (that is, of Anne Boleyn and her father Thomas). Chapuys’s speculation, while based on unreliable or nonexistent evidence, nevertheless gives an indication of the atmosphere surrounding the King and those closest to him at this time, an aura of fear in which such conspiracy theories could arise and flourish. Bishop Fisher, an ascetic ecclesiastic of great personal integrity, thin-faced and clear-eyed, was known to be one of the chief supporters of Katherine of Aragon – and hence one of the greatest opponents of Anne Boleyn. His support for Katherine was based more on his belief in the indissolubility of marriage than on personal grounds, and no threat of poison would be likely to make him change his mind.

  Around the same time as the alleged poisoning in the bishop’s kitchens, in February 1531, an agreement had been made that a large fine be paid by the Church, all the clergy contributing, to the King in exchange for a pardon for offences committed under praemunire. (Chapuys had implied in his despatch to the Emperor that this decision – along with the clergy being forced to acknowledge Henry as the supreme head of the Church of England ‘as far as the law of Christ allows’, this latter phrase being added as a result of Fisher’s efforts – is what had made the bishop ill, rather than any poison.) The so-called praemunire charge is what had been levelled at Cardinal Wolsey to bring about his downfall. Briefly, praemunire referred to the criminal offence of having introduced into England a foreign or papal authority that might limit the royal authority and, Wolsey having been convicted of it, all the clergy – especially the bishops – were deemed to have committed it as well by the mere fact of their having previously given obedience to the cardinal. It was therefore a word to inspire fear, particularly among the higher clergy, who did not wish to go the same way as the late disgraced Wolsey. And it was the higher clergy who had agreed to the fine, on behalf of their subordinates as well as of themselves. Some of those subordinates did not take this decision well, particularly in London. Meeting some resistance from the London clergy to contribute to the fine, the new Bishop of London, John Stokesley, summoned all the priests of his diocese to St Paul’s Cathedral in late August, intending to see them in groups of six or eight and persuade them to have their benefices assessed (so that it could be determined how much they could each afford to pay). But the six hundred or so priests who assembled at St Paul’s, encouraged by lay supporters, refused to submit to this effort to manipulate them and, rather than waiting to be invited in small groups, a larger group of them forced their way into the chapter house to confront the bishop. In response to his attempts to convince them that they had inadvertently offended the King through their ‘frailty and lack of wisdom’ and that the King was being ‘merciful’ in accepting a fine of only £100,000 to be paid over five years, the priests insisted they had never had anything to do with the cardinal so could not be implicated in praemunire and they neither could nor would pay up. The argument soon got out of hand, several of the bishop’s servants were ‘buffeted’, and eighteen of the priests and a smaller number of the laymen present were arrested and imprisoned. They were eventually charged not only with riotous assembly, but with conspiring to murder Bishop Stokesley. The records of any ensuing trials have been lost – but, whatever else may have happened, the London clergy, like all the others, had to contribute to the fine.

  Fears of being implicated in praemunire offences, or of difficulty in raising money to pay the fine, were minor in comparison to the ordeal facing another priest that same year of 1531. On 20 November, a Monday, Bishop Stokesley pronounced these words against on
e Richard Bayfield, a former Benedictine monk, before a number of high-ranking officials and clerics gathered in St Paul’s:

  We John by the permission of God, Bishop of London, rightly and lawfully proceeding in this behalf, do dismiss thee Richard Bayfield, alias Somersam, being pronounced by us a relapsed heretic, and degraded by us from all ecclesiastical privilege, out of the Ecclesiastical Court, pronouncing that the secular power here present should receive thee under their jurisdiction, earnestly requiring and desiring in the bowels of Jesus Christ, that the execution of this worthy punishment, to be done upon thee, and against thee in this behalf, may be so moderated, that there be neither overmuch cruelty, neither too much favourable gentleness, but that it may be to the health and salvation of thy soul, and to the extirpation, fear, terror, and conversion of all other heretics unto the unity of the Catholic faith. This our final decree by this our sentence definitive, we have caused to be published in form aforesaid.

  Prior to being handed over to the City authorities (‘the secular power here present’), Bayfield had to be ‘degraded’ – that is, stripped of his orders as a priest – the ceremony of degradation not only consisting of words but also including a powerful dramatic element. In a symbolic reversal of the process of ordination, the bishop struck Bayfield on the chest with his crosier as he knelt before the altar, and then pushed him backwards down the altar steps, so forcefully that he hit his head on the floor. He was then handed over to the sheriffs and burnt in Smithfield on 4 December. His was a particularly excruciating death, as the flames were reluctant to take hold, and he stood chained to the stake for half an hour, slowly roasting. According to John Foxe in his Acts and Monuments, ‘when the left arm was on fire and burned, he rubbed it with his right hand, and it fell from his body, and he continued in prayer to the end, without moving’.