Roberta Anderson, Bath Spa University

John Foxe’s ‘seely, poore woman’. 1

John Foxe’s Act and Monuments of the Latter and Perilous Days, commonly known as The Book of

Martyrs, contains his account of the lives and deaths of many martyrs across history, but especially

during the Marian persecutions when some 284 persons where burned for their Protestant beliefs. 2 It

was first published in Latin in 1550 and subsequently in an English translation, revised and expanded, in

1563, with subsequent versions in 1570, 1576 and 1583, and was made even more readily available

after 1589 when Timothie Bright published An abridgement of the booke of acts and monumentes of the

Church: written by that Reuerend Father, Maister Iohn Fox... . According to Thomas Mason writing in

1615, the Book of Martyrs was ‘a Club able to beate down the Popish Tower of Babell’. 3 Foxe’s decision

to publish forms part of a developing interest in martyrologies of the Marian period, when the ballad

makers wove the names of these Protestant saints into songs which glorified the martyrs and blackened

the characters of those who burned them. 4 In 1559, for example, Thomas Brice had published his

Compendious Register in Metre.

More importantly, the Acts and Monuments provides us with more information about the female

participants in the English Reformation than any other work of the period and, at the same time, poses

the question for historians of why some female martyrs of the Marian period differed so convincingly

from the Protestant norm, which saw women subsumed to man. While women's role in society was not

of great import to Protestant reformers, the changes they did advocate had considerable significance for

women. Now that the married state, not the celibate life, became the ideal, and with the closing of

convents, the numbers of marriageable age women increased, and so too did their dilemma, since not

all had the opportunity to marry. In England, nearly 30% of nuns married, leaving many former nuns,

especially the older women, to resort to domestic servitude, day labour or even prostitution.

The reformers viewed marriage as a relationship of mutual responsibility, yet sermons and conduct

books on the subject told husbands how to keep wives in their place and informed women of the

appropriate behaviour expected of them: chastity, modesty and passivity. Women were actively praised

now, especially in their biblical vocation as mothers and housewives and were no longer viewed in the

role espoused by the Catholic Church – the virgin or the temptress. However, the idea of the inferiority

of women remained and the reformers never ceased to expound on this point. Women were equal to

men in the presence of God according to the Bible, but remained naturally inferior to men on earth.

They were to be obedient to their husbands, to keep silent in public, and were chastised from the pulpit

and in texts for their vanity in dress, adornments and their immodest behaviour. The conduct literature of

the sixteenth century advised women of their responsibility to be models of chaste, passive obedience,

emphasising such qualities as modesty, humility and piety. What is significant in Foxe’s women is the

way in which he presents them, in some cases reinforcing the Protestant norm, yet in others modifying it.

First published in 1563, The Book of Martyrs was accepted in Elizabethan England as an ‘expression of

national faith second in authority only to the Bible’ and became, quite quickly an ‘unanswerable

defence of England’s ideological position.’ 5 In 1571 the upper house of convocation at Canterbury

ordered that a copy should be placed in every cathedral church, and that every member of the church

hierarchy should have a copy in his home so that anyone who wished to could read it. Parish churches

were not named in this order but many decided to followed suit. For those who could not read there

were the many woodcuts, which told the stories. Indeed, it became so influential that, over the years, it

was placed beside the Bible in many churches throughout the country.

The majority of Foxe’s accounts relate to men, with only one fifth of the histories being of women. There

is some conflict between historians as to the number of women who died in the Marian burnings;

Hickerson numbers 48 women of those Foxe records dying at the stake, Duffy suggests 56, whilst Foxe

himself lists 54 women in his Kalenders. Hickerson argues that Foxe, and his predecessor, John Bale,

presented women martyrs as they were in life, often disorderly figures, disobedient to institutional and

marital authority, acerbic and immodest, and thus easily targeted by Catholic polemicists as unchaste. 6

Foxe’s ‘seely poore women’ are covered to differing degrees; some are recorded at great length and

detail, whilst others are barely mentioned with, perhaps, just their name, age, parish and marital status

given. Brad Gregory in his Salvation at Stake has suggested that this is perhaps because Foxe wished to

gloss over those women with more ‘compromising views’. 7 Consequently, historians have tended in the

past, to concentrate on those women with longer and more dramatic entries such as Joyce Lewis and

Ann Askew. Foxe, in line with earlier martyrologists, rarely recorded much in the way of physical detail,

but even he was not immune to personal comment describing Agnes Prest, for example, as of ‘litle and

short stature, somwhat thicke’. 8

The accounts of male martyrs did not define marital status as they did for women: eleven of the women

were the widows of male martyrs and only four burned with their husbands, which confirms the view

that to assume these women blindly followed their husband’s heresy would be wrong. However, some

couples were jointly involved in Protestant heresy, but most of these appear to have been martyred at

different times, with the wives generally dying later than their husbands. This was, in all probability,

because the husband, being the head of the household, would be responsible for the behaviour of his

wife and so would be arrested and interrogated first. Letters to female supporters reveal that Protestant

fervour in marriage was both preferable and the norm at this time. Bishop Ridley wrote to a Mistress

Glover regarding her husband’s readiness to ‘cleave to his head Christ’ encouraging her to ‘suffer with

him [that] you may further his cause…’ 9

The majority of women were burnt in the south-east where Protestantism was the strongest: in

Canterbury, London and Colchester. With trading links and the movement of people between this area

and the continent, imported Protestant literature became more widely available. In the West Country,

which at this time remained predominantly Catholic, only three women died. London remained the

centre of Protestantism and its proximity to the royal court meant that trials and executions took on a

higher profile, in addition to which the judiciary were far more zealous. Bishop Bonner, the ‘cruel’

bishop of London, had a reputation for severity, whilst Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester – whom

Foxe criticised for his involvement in the earlier burnings – later distanced himself from the policy and

‘from that day meddled no more…’ 10 Robert Parsons defended the bishops saying that they were ‘forced

to punish so great a number of such a base quality for such opinions’ to stop their flocks being ‘infected’

and, keen to stress the legality of the judgements, he called them ‘lawfull Prelates’ and commended their

‘extraordinary gentleness’ in allowing women to speak.11

The relationship between the women and their examiners is an interesting one. The obstinacy of the

women posed a difficult problem for the clergy charged with prosecuting them. As Eamon Duffy has

noted, ‘whether from prudence or from pity, [they were], anxious to find ways of avoiding their

condemnation’. 12 Many officials found it difficult to implement the court’s sentence against women,

especially the young, ill-educated and poor. This is clearly demonstrated in the cases of Cicelie Ormes,

and Elizabeth Folkes which will be discussed below.

Foxe, naturally, depicted the examiners as vile clerical villains, but one wonders how uncomfortable he

was with the women’s robust doctrinal retorts to their interrogators and whether he wished to divert the

attention of the reader away from these responses on to the cruelty of the judges. He praises other

attributes in the women, such as their strength, constancy, bravery and godliness but never their

doctrinal knowledge. Such displays of doctrinal knowledge in these women was awkward for

Protestants, many feeling as Peter Martyr did in recognising that although women might be ‘sometimes

wise and enlightened…their counsels should be heard privately.’ 13

It is worth noting that few elite women were implicated in heresy – Joyce Lewes being the only

‘gentlewoman borne’ recorded by Foxe. 14 The women martyrs were, for the most part, recorded as

being of lowly status, yet they still had access to Protestant books and ideas. However, this may just be a

misinterpretation of Foxe’s terminology. Although he often referred to the women as ‘poore’, this related

not so much to their financial status but to their social status and education. His impatience with the

lower classes is demonstrated when he wrote, ‘what heart would not lament the murdering mischief of

these men, who for want of worke, do so wreke their time on seely poore women, whose weak

imbecilities the more strength it lacketh by natural imperfection, the more it ought to be helped…’ 15

Again, the use of the word ‘seely’ has often been misinterpreted. In the main it is used to describe

women, but relates more to their vulnerability than to any lack of intelligence.

Margery Polley, Foxe’s original ‘seely poore’ woman, was the first woman to be burned in Mary’s

reign. 16 Two women had been burned for heresy under Henry VIII and Edward VI, but they were

proselytising champions for their cause. Anne Askew had come from Lincolnshire to London to

distribute Protestant pamphlets to the ladies of the court,

whilst Joan Bocher had come from Kent to preach

Anabaptism in the city. Margery Polley, a widow, on the

other hand, rarely left Pembury in Kent other than to visit the

market in Tonbridge. Polley told her neighbours that she

would not go to Mass as it was in Latin and she did not

understand it, that she believed only what she read in the

English bible. When examined by bishop Griffin she declared

that ‘shee neither allowed the deitie of theyr Sacrament, nor

the absurdity of their masse.’ Polley, along with two men,

Nicholas Hall and Christopher Wade, was burned on 18th July 1555. Such were the crowds of spectators

come to see the burning, that the local farmers came with cartloads of cherries, to sell off what remained

of their crops. 17

Like the virgin martyrs of the early church, Foxe’s martyrs rejected the vanities of this world in their

fidelity to Christ, referring to their deaths as marriage in that they were wedded to Christ. Wade’s wife

had given him a white wedding shirt to wear when he was burned and when Margery Polley saw him in

this she offered him encouragement saying, ‘you maye rejoice, Waide, to see suche a companie

gathered to celebrate youre marriage this day’. 18 Joan Trunchfield, the wife of a shoemaker and Agnes

Potten, a brewers wife, who died at Ipswich were ‘both together now espoused to a new husband,

CHRIST’, and their ‘constancie worthily was to be wondered at’. They were described as ‘simple

woman’ who ‘so manfully stoode’ whilst being interrogated.19 Joan died on 19th February, 1556, at the

same time as Agnes Potten. When given a warning that the local JP, Master Foster, was hot on their

heels and that she should go into hiding, Trunchfield replied that although she saw the advantages of

flight, she herself would not leave her home as she had young children and could not expect her

husband to care for them. 20

As noted above, Foxe extols both women for their constancy, recommending them that ‘their opinion or

perswasion was this, that in the sacrament was the memoriall onley of Christes death and passion: for

sayd they, Jesus Christ is ascended up into heaven…and not in the sacrament, as he was borne of the

Virgin Mary.’ 21 Both Foxe and the writer Thomas Mason described how they spoke to the crowd before

dying, which was surprising when we consider that Protestantism preferred that women did not speak in

public. Mason wrote that ‘their constancy in burning was wonderful, they earnestly exhorted the people

to credit and lay hold upon the word of God’. 22 Foxe evades the question of their speaking in public by

suggesting that God is speaking through them. He writes ‘God geveth strength many times, where most

weakness is’. 23 Parsons described them as ‘silly’ and ‘simple’, and suspected that they were ‘rather

possessed than inspired’. Then, in a direct attack on Foxe wondered who was ‘more madde or foolish’,

Foxe or the women! 24

An anonymous ‘certaine poore woman, and a seely creature’ is extolled by Foxe for her ‘spirited

speech’ and describes her as a ‘rare example of constancy to all professors of Christ’s holy Gospel’. 25 He

goes on that she is a woman of whom ‘men of stronger and stouter nature, have also to take example’.

Again, in this example, Foxe suggests that God is speaking through her as ‘the very servant and

handmaid of Christ’. The bishop of Exeter, James Turberville however, did not find her such an exemplar

– to him she was an ‘unlearned person and a woman’ and condemning her for the fact that she had, by

her conversion to Protestantism, abandoned her husband and children, asked ‘are you not a man’s wife?’

Her actions were symbolic of social disorder but she justified leaving her earthly husband, saying ‘I must

either forsake Christ or my husband’ and was ‘content to stick only to Christ my spiritual husband and

forsake the other’. 26 Foxe, by extolling the virtues of a woman who appeared to be breaking all the

social rules of obedience, silence and faithfulness to her husband, was inviting criticism from both

Catholic and Protestant polemicists, but surprisingly no-one, including Parsons, took him to task over the

case of Agnes Prest.

Parsons’ most effective weapon against Foxe's female martyrs was not their impudence in itself, but the

ease with which they could be accused of promiscuity. In Parsons' view a woman proved insolent or

studious was a woman proved immodest and thus sexually disorderly. More damaging still was the fact

that Foxe exacerbated the potential for such accusations by failing to hide - and even celebrating - the

disastrous tendency some of his women martyrs to disobey or even, like Agnes Prest, to abandon their

husbands.

Female learning was again called into question in the case of Cicelie Ormes, the wife of a weaver of

Norwich. Foxe described her as a ‘very simple woman, but yet zelous in the Lordes cause…’ 27 Cicelie’s

case demonstrates the intense pressure brought to bear on Protestant women to recant. A year before

she was arrested, Cicely had recanted and returned to the bosom of Mother Church, but, according to

Foxe, ‘neuer after was she quiet in conscience, vntill she was vtterly driuen from all their Popery.

Betwene the tyme she recanted, and that she was taken, she had gotten a letter made, to geue to the

Chauncellour, to let hym know that she repented her recantation from the bottome of her hart, and

would neuer do the like againe while she liued.’ 28 But, before she could get the letter delivered she was

taken and sent to prison.

When she came before the bishop’s Chancellor, he asked her what she said to the sacrament of Christ’s

body. She replied that she did think that it was the sacrament of the body of Christ, but, when

questioned about the consecrated bread ‘that the priest holdeth ouer hys head?’ she answered ‘it is

bread: and if ye make it any better, it is worse.’ 29 At her second interview the Chancellor promised her

that ‘if she would go to the church and keepe her toung, she should be at libertie, and beleue as she

would. But she tolde him she would not consent to his wicked desire therin, do with her what he would:

for if she should, she sayd God would surely plague her.’ The Chauncellor responded that he had

showed more favour to her, then ever he did to any other, and that he was loath to condemn her,

considering that she was an ‘ignorant, vnlearned, and foolish woman’. She declined the Chancellor’s

offer and was imprisoned until her execution on 23rd September, 1557. 30

Around this same time, in April, 1556, Joan Beach, a widow, of Tonbridge was examined by the Bishop

of Rochester, Dr Griffiths, and condemned because she did ‘verely beleeue, hold and affirme’, that in

the ‘Sacrament of the Aultare under fourmes of bread and wyne’ there is not the ‘very body and bloud of

Our Sauiour in substance, but onely a token and rememberence of hys death’. She further ‘beleeueth not

the holy Catholike church to be her mother, but beleeueth only the father of heaven to be her father’. It

was because Joan Beach believed that Christ’s ‘body and substance is onely in heaven, and not in the

Sacrament’, that she and John Harpole were ready to die. 31 Both were condemned to death, in one

sentence at the Bishop's Palace, by Bishop Griffiths. Early in the morning of 1st April, 1556, Harpole and

Joan Beach were chained to the stake, and again and again they were urged to recant, but every time

they refused.

During this period both Catholic and Protestant writers confirmed the inferior position of women in

society and this presented Foxe with the problem of how to present females who spoke out in court and

who argued against authority. To get around this Foxe relied on the Protestant theological argument that

because women were weaker they could act as a channel for God’s words.

Agnes Bongeor gave up her ‘little suckling babe’ when

she went to the stake, and her awful dilemma is

illustrated by her conversations with a friend who cited

the Old Testament story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac

as justification for abandoning the child. In linking his

Marian martyr with the Old Testament Foxe avoids any

contradiction with contemporary thinking about familial

and parental responsibility by linking Protestantism with

the ancient church. Of Agnes, Foxe writes ‘God chooseth

the weake things of the world, to confound the might

things’, but Parsons had other ideas, describing her as a

‘most wilful woman’, who made ‘continual endeavours

to corrupt others’.

One of Foxe’s youngest martyrs was Rose Allins, a young woman arrested whilst caring for her ailing

mother. The notorious heresy hunter Edmund Tyrell tried to make her encourage her parents to recant.

Her response was such that Tyrell resorted to sexual insult and innuendo, calling her ‘strong whore, thou

shameless beast’. Frustrated in the face of female strength and defiance her persecutor rationalises her

behaviour by re-categorising her as sexually deviant. This in itself demonstrates the early modern

association between female disorderliness – disobedience, assertiveness, eloquence, erudition and

independence – and sexual lasciviousness. However, rather than show her as disobedient to authority,

Foxe depicts a young woman showing forgiveness when she ‘revengeth not evil for evil’ and resists the

temptation to hit Tyrell with a pot! Foxe might admire her for her self control, but Parsons expresses

disbelief in the face of such a ‘full heretical spirit’ in one of such tender years and criticises Foxe for

delighting ‘everywhere in the malepart aunswers of his yonge maydens’. 32

During her interrogation Rose answered ‘stoutly’ and, in a humourous retort insulted her judges, saying

that the See of Rome was for, ‘crows, kites, owls and ravens to swim in, such as you be…’. The Allins,

father, mother and daughter, were burned at Colchester on 2nd August 1557 – the only family recorded

by Foxe as dying together.

Joane Lashford [nee Warne], daughter of Elizabeth and John Warne of Bow, followed her parents to the

stake in Smithfield on 27th January, 1556. Joan told Bishop Bonner that, ‘the Masse, with all other [of]

theyr suplerfluous sacraments, ceremonies and divine services as used in thys Realme of Englande, were

moste vile and contrary…’. To Foxe she was ‘thys godly damosell, feeble and tender of age, yet strong

by grace in this her Confession and faith,

stoode so firme, that neyther the flattering

promises, nor the divient cheates of the

Byshops could tirne her’. To all the

arguments and entreaties of the Bishop for

her to return to the Catholic Church, she

replied, ‘If yee wil leaue off your

abhomination, so I wil returne and

otherwise I will not’. 33 A godly ‘damosell’

Foxe may have believed her to be, but Parsons could find her no more than ‘impudent’. 34

Twenty year old Elizabeth Folkes is one of Foxe’s unmarried martyrs, whom Parsons described as being

‘so forward in the new gospelling spirit’. The youngest and most verbose of a group of six martyrs is

criticised for flinging her petticoat into the crowd on the way to her execution, crying ‘farewell, all the

world, farewell faith, farewell hope …welcome Love’. Parsons comments: ‘and this is proper also to

heresie, that the yongest and weakest will presume most, especially in womenkynd…thus relateth Foxe

of his modest maid’. 35 Foxe appears to have left himself wide open to criticism in his recording of

Elizabeth Folkes, who Parsons called a ‘maid that defied the whole world and her lawful judges. Cotton

however admiringly noted ‘her answere, pretily retorted.’ 36 Elizabeth called confession ‘trumpery’ and

expressed abhorrence towards priests whilst brazenly reprimanding Maynard, one of the bailiffs, for

sleeping. When asked, by the judge, William Chedsey, if she believed there was a ‘Holy Catholic

Church’ she replied that she did, and he released her into the custody of her uncle, so that she might flee

Colchester. However, she did not leave and anxious that this should not be understood as a recantation,

she later went into a public house and loudly proclaimed her Protestant belief. She was again arrested

and this time Chedsey was unable to help her – condemning her to death. Taking her ‘papstricall

reward’ she begged God’s forgiveness for her judges and died at Colchester in August 1557. Foxe

reporting this, noted that Chedsey, ‘wept, that the tears trickled down his face’. 37

Three ‘innocent and godly women’, Joan Horne, Katherine Hut and

Elizabeth Thackwell were burned at Smithfield in May 1556 – Foxe

wrote that the ‘simple ignorance of these women had more need to be

instructed than they be burned’. Hickerson argues that Foxe used the

term ‘simple’ to denote rather a lack of education the any feebleness of

mind and, although Joan had ‘began to learne the faith set forth in K.

Edward’s days’ it is likely that her education was limited.38 She

illustrates the difficulties experienced by many churchgoers in adapting

to the doctrinal changes of Edward VI only to find them changed under

Mary. These three women were both ready and willing to suffer: Elizabeth answered the questions put to

her ‘willingly and mildly’, Katherine showed ‘great constancies sustained by the grace and strength of

the Lord’ saying that the Mass ‘was an idol’. 39 Parsons, as usual believed they showed ‘willful obstinacy’

and ridiculed Foxe’s ‘praising and approving’ the women and deriding their knowledge and ‘desperate

answers’ which required readers to ‘take pity on these peevish and maddening women put out of their

wits and true senses by the spirit and pride of heresy’. 40

Joane Wast was a ‘poore honest godly’, blind woman who was executed at Derby in August, 1556. Fox,

after detailing her early life notes upon her parent’s death she went to liv with her brother, Roger. Here,

in the time of Edward VI she ‘gave her self dayly to go to the church to heare Divine service read in the

vulgar tongue.’ Such was her interest in the ‘religion then taught’ in the ‘homilies and sermons’ she

purchased her own copy of the ‘newe testament’. Foxe notes that although, ‘she was herself unlearned

and by reason of her blindness unable to read, yet for the great desire shee had to understand and have

printed in her memory the sayinges of holy scriptures conteined in the new Testament’, she made the

acquaintance of one John Hurt, a prisoner in the ‘common Hall’. With much time on his hands Hurt

agreed to read her Bible to Joane and would ‘dayly read unto her some one chapter of the new

Testament’. 41 For Parsons, Joane must have been particularly obstinate in her adherence to heresy

because otherwise he could not see ‘how so principall learned men, would have agreed to the burninge

of so miserable and ignorant a woman’. 42

Amongst Foxe’s ‘seely poore’ women were two pregnant women. 43 Their condition should have

allowed them to escape the fire until after the birth of their children, but it was not to be. Foxe used the

case of Elizabeth Peppar to emphasise the extreme cruelty of the prosecutors saying ‘no occasion can

stay them from their mischievous murthering of saintes of the Lord’. 44 When accused of not attending

Mass, Elizabeth was asked by a friend why she had not told the court of her condition – her reply was

simply, ‘why…they know it well enough’. 45 As she was only a few weeks pregnant, eleven according to

Foxe, it would not have been obvious to the court, but Foxe appealed to the reader’s sympathy by

suggesting vulnerability and resignation.

Foxe’s female martyrs were a dubious asset. An exception here was the contested story of the Guernsey

martyr. This tale was too valuable as propaganda to be left out, and received considerable coverage by

both Foxe and the Catholic polemicists. It was the only case in which Foxe directly defended the sexual

reputation of a female victim. The case of Perotine Massey was unusual in that the case arose out of a

charge of theft made against ‘a noughty woman named Vincent Gosset’. 46 It was also a case which had

repercussions even after Mary’s death. In revenge for reporting her to the authorities, Gosset denounced

Perotine, her mother, Katherine Cawches, and sister, Guillemine Gilbert, as heretics. The three women

were accused of not attending Mass, but they pleaded ignorance and promised to attend regularly.

However, this was not good enough

for the court and the three women

were convicted and sentenced to burn.

They were first hanged which

suggested to Parsons that ‘their faults

were not only heresie’. 47 Perotine was

‘great with childe’ at the time of her

death and the heat of the fire burst her

stomach and a son survived, falling to

the ground; he was picked up and

passed around until the Bailiff ordered that he be ‘caryed backe agayne and cast into the fire’ and there

‘with the seely mother most cruelly burnt’. 48

This was a difficult case for Foxe – it might be useful as a straight forward narrative of papist cruelty –

but, after the first publication of his work there arose the question of the three women’s willingness to

recant and, furthermore there were questions of Perotine’s child’s legitimacy. Parsons called her a ‘very

strumpet’, for not confessing herself with child and by extension he too believed she made herself

culpable for her babies death. In his pamphlet Rejoinder to Jewel, Thomas Harding, the Catholic

polemicist, writing in 1567, picks up on the subject of the ‘prattling … Perotine’ and her child, laying

the ‘whole blame onley upon the women that suffered, but principally upon poore Perotine’ whom he

specially charged with two ‘capitall crimes: to wit, whoredome, and murther’, and suggesting that if she

were not ashamed of her pregnancy she would have used her situation to escape execution. Since she

did not, Harding concludes that Massey was herself responsible for the death of her child. 49

Harding attributes to her ‘three heinous crimes…heresy, lecherie and murder’. 50 Foxe became

embroiled in a bitter argument over Perotine’s moral behaviour with Harding. These arguments

concerned the whereabouts of the child’s father, with Harding insinuating that the baby was illegitimate.

In later editions of the Book of Martyrs there are attempts to disprove Harding’s accusations by naming

Perotine’s husband. Harding’s viewpoint is expanded further by Cardinal Allen in his A True, Sincere

and Modest Defence of the English Catholiques (1584) who noted that, ‘Almighty God discovered her

filth and shame, where she looked for the glory of a saint and of a virgin martyr.’ 51

Perotine does not fall into the same mould as Foxe’s other female martyrs – she is neither erudite nor

verbose and was not steadfast in her religion. Unlike other women recorded she was not accused by the

polemicists of abandoning, disobeying or cheating on her husband, but of lacking one. In their attack on

Perotine, Foxe’s detractors attempted to discredit his story through character assassination and claims of

sexual incontinence, but the cunning Foxe gets around this by stating that he did not think it necessary

to defend the sexual or marital status of a woman murdered for godly religion - a woman who suffered

for ‘king Edwardes Religion’. 52

The role of women in the Protestant community was an important one – they participated in the illicit

congregations and were supportive and active workers, visiting prisons and making and collecting

donations. Although these congregations were sustained by the efforts of women Foxe rarely

acknowledged this fact except when he included letters from prisoners to some of the women. The

activities of the women were severely criticised by Catholic polemicists such as the bishop of

Chichester, John Christopherson, who warned of the danger to the household if women were allowed

such freedoms:

And many of them were offended with Saynte Paule, that hadde commaunded them, that they shuld holde their peace in the churches. For gladly would they haue preached, if they might haue bene suffred, as some of them neuertheles did in corners. 53

Protestant women then were able to be active in their congregations and, as Ellen Macek notes ‘gained

admittance to a life of prayer and learning on a more equal basis with men’. 54 This was a new freedom

for these women who were no longer confined to the home.

Margaret Mearing, who according to Parsons was a ‘poore busy pratling woman of London’, was an

active member of the Protestant community there. 55 Her story gives us an interesting insight into the

conditions imposed on persecuted groups and how they felt. Margaret would ‘often times bring in

strangers’ to her group. This and her indiscreet talk led to her expulsion and excommunication from her

group by her pastor, John Rough, though she protested her innocence. Two days after her expulsion the

authorities swooped on Rough’s congregation and took them before bishop Bonner. The case was

treated as high treason. As soon as Margaret heard that Rough and his congregation had been arrested

and despite feeling she had been badly treated, she visited him in prison and promised to do all she

could for them. She took clean linen to him and sought out their betrayer, Roger Serjeant. A few days

later, on 17th December, she too was arrested and taken to join Rough in Newgate prison. She was

examined the following day and her recorded answers show that she believed the Mass to be a ‘playne

Cup of fornication and the whore of Babylon’; she refused to attend church – not having done so for

over a year, and in a direct attack on the bishops said that the ’very angels of heaven do laugh you to

scorn’. She and Rough were burned together at Smithfield on 22nd December, 1557. 56

Margery Austoo’s replies to her accusers were in marked contrast to those of her husband James and this

fact is highlighted by Foxe. Although both James and his wife refused to recant, Margery did much better

in her arguments with bishop Bonner, who examined them in his palace at Lambeth and condemned

them as heretics. Both, according to Foxe, ‘answered as truly…as ever did any’ but he continues

‘especially the woman, to whom the Lord have geven the greater knowledge and more ferventness of

spirit’. 57 This acknowledgement of a wife’s superior learning gave Parsons’ a field day - his response was

bitter:

Margery Austow, who was called before the Bishop together with her husband, as she had byn his teacher and preacher at home; so would she also needs be his speaker in that place, which Fox in like manner signifieth ... yow may perceave how the world went, and that the gray mare was the better horse, which doth well appeare also by her answers, they being most arrogant and insolent, as other such franticke weomen had used before, and so not worth the repeatinge. 58

Margery’s ‘most arrogant and insolent’ answers included her retort that most people only attended

church not because of faith but because it was the law, and, when asked where she presently was said ‘I

am in an idols temple’. 59 Margery died, with her husband, at Islington in September 1557.

As has become clear, Foxe rejected any agenda of forcing his heroines into the mould of obedient wives.

Sometimes the stories of wifely disobedience had a happy ending for both husband and wife as in the

case of the Foxe family of Stoke in Suffolk. 60 Here the entire congregation refused to attend Mass during

Mary’s reign with just two exceptions – both male. Whilst one of the communicants – John Steyr –

allowed his wife to make her own decision the other, John Foxe, tried with the threat of divorce to

‘encourage’ his wife to communicate. Elizabeth Foxe fled her home, taking refuge with her fellow

parishioners, when her husband conspired with the curate to force her into taking the Sacrament. Her

continued defiance was eventually rewarded when John finally reformed his beliefs and joined the rest

of the congregation in their boycott. According to John Foxe, his wife’s disobedience made of him ‘a far

other man than he was before.’ Fortunately for them, John and Elizabeth escaped arrest and martyrdom

by fleeing the town, but more importantly John escaped final damnation through his wife’s

disobedience.

The story of Elizabeth Foxe’s disobedience towards her husband is not unique and the case of Alice

Benden gave the Catholic polemicists a field day. Alice, a mother of two small children, was placed

under immense pressure by her husband who ‘willed her to goe to the Churche’ which she ‘both then

and else when refused to do’. 61 Foxe described how, in league with others in the parish, he had her

arrested and sent before Sir John Guildford. To John Christopherson, she was one of the ‘sisters of the

new fraternitie [who] order their husbands. For whereas the husbands did not favour their sect, then

would the wife no longer to school with him in silence.’ 62 Foxe depicted Alice as a virtuous and loyal

wife to her husband despite his ‘cruel and unchristian handling’. 63 Alice was imprisoned for nine weeks

before she was executed: her suffering and deprivation are described at length by Foxe. She was also

admired by Clement Cotton, who commended her for her ‘constancy, being much in the profession of

the truth’. 64 To Parsons, on the other hand, she was one of the ‘obstinate sisters’ and called into question

her morality when, at the stake she threw her handkerchief to ‘one John Banks’, bidding him keep it as a

remembrance of her. This had serious implications for Parsons – he thought it more fitting that she

should have given the memento to her husband, but added that ‘perhaps her husband was not desirous

to keep a relic of her’. He goes on to lament ‘this was the spirit of the gospelling sisters in those days’,

corrupted by the ‘liberty of the new gospel’. Alice’s husband did not betray her – she in the spirit of

‘gospelling sisters’ betrayed him. 65 For Parsons the new gospel created disorderly whores and Foxe’s

memorials helped him prove his point. Alice went to the stake, along with three other women and three

men in June 1557. Bishop Thornton came to see the heretics burn and was asked by ‘Bradbrigde’s wife’

if he would take care of her two children, Patience and Charitie – the wily old bishop too cautious to do

anything which might connect him with heresy replied, ‘Nay…by the faith of my bodye I will meddle

with neither of them...’ 66

Alice Benden is portrayed by Foxe as a true example of a virtuous and godly woman. She, as a reformed

soul, found herself in a difficult position married as she was to an unbeliever. If she obeyed him and

went to Mass she was in danger of losing her immortal soul, if she did not she would face the stake.

Bishop John Hooper, a martyr himself, wrote specifically about what to do if ‘the husband will not

reform himself’, for, ‘if the husband love the wife or if the wife love the husband more than Christ, he

nor she be meet for Christ’. As God’s law ‘is more to be obeyed than [that of] men’, the wife should try

to win the husband over and if that failed, involve ‘some godly and grave men or women’ to help

persuade him. As a last resort, ‘rather than break company or marriage between God and her’, Hooper

believed she should leave him and go to a place where idolatry [popery] could be avoided. 67

Parsons roundly condemned for their ‘intollerable pryde, prefumtion and obsfinacy’ the vocal,

argumentative women who Foxe admired for their spirited behaviour. 68 Protestantism allowed that

women might be educated at home but they should not or could not become skilled theologians. As

Peter Martyr suggests ‘since the law was given to Adam before woman was created, it shows that

women should be instructed by men…’ Women were, to some extent, permitted to be teachers but only

in the home and to further ‘godliness in her family’. 69 One of the problems associated with the study of

the doctrinal beliefs of Foxe’s women is that they left little or no writings behind. Foxe’s evidence comes

from the interrogation records of the ecclesiastical courts and for most of the women he appears to be

deliberately vague about their doctrinal knowledge. Although Foxe revels in the rebel stance of these

women, he rarely acknowledged the women’s spiritual experiences nor that they gained a ‘manly

stomach’, through these experiences, which both enabled them to refute their persecutors and face

death with equimanity. In fact, Foxe delighted in the cut and thrust of argument between the ‘pitiless

persecutors’ and their victims – so much for women not speaking out in public! 70

One of Parson’s ‘ignorant presumptuous women’ was Anne Albright, already mentioned, who told the

court that they were ‘subverters of Christ’s truth’ and argued that ‘priests are the children of perdition

and can do no good by your confession’. She was one of the ‘greatest disputers of this rank’, one of the

‘artificers wives that were punished by their lawful Prelates for their intolerable pride, presumption and

obstinacy in heresy’. For Foxe, however, she ‘suffered quietly with persistence and perseverance’. 71

One female martyr who is widely documented both by Foxe and other writers, was Joyce Lewis.

Unusually, she is recorded as a gentlewoman. Having begun to ‘wax weary’ with frivolous living Joyce

became close to the evangelical John Glover who taught her about the evils of Catholicism and

completely undermined the authority of her husband, Thomas. Her actions which followed helped to

confirm the Catholic accusation that Protestantism encouraged disobedient wives. Foxe notes that she

‘did often times resort’ to Glover’s house, which in itself was scandalous

behaviour. 72 After being obliged by her husband to attend church, she openly denounced holy water

and for her pains was summoned before the bishop. Thomas Lewis was obliged to pay a surety of £100

for his wife’s release on the understanding that she would return to church within the month. Poor

Thomas was to lose his surety money for his wife refused to return to the church and continued to visit

Glover. Such was his exasperation that Thomas ‘so like a murderer of his own wife carried her to the

bloody bishop’ who examined, imprisoned and condemned her as a heretic. Before her execution she

took a drink of water, saying, ‘I drynke to all them that unfaynebly love the Gospell’. This symbolic

gesture caused several women in the crowd to take a drink from the same cup – an action which later

led to their having to do penance. 73

Another women who attracted the wrath and sexual innuendo of Parsons was Alice Driver, a woman ‘so

malepart and contumelious before [the] judges’. She was another martyr who brought into question the

morality of Protestant women. Driver is described by Parsons as so ‘light a ghospellinge sister’, referring

to the fact that she was taken in charge in the company of a man (Alexander Gouch) who was not her

husband. 74 In order to avoid capture she and Gouch ‘were compelled to step into a haystack to hide

themselves’. Parsons pointed out that Foxe had ignored the fact that a haystack was ‘no fitt place for

such a couple to be conversant together’ and instead admired her learning. 75 Despite having her ears

cut off for calling the queen a Jezebel, Alice Driver is described engaging in long and complex debate

with her male interrogators, silencing and humiliating them. Her contempt for them is obvious – she

repeatedly called them fools and viewed them ‘austerely’. ‘Thus’, wrote Foxe, ‘she put them all to

silence, that one looked on another, and had not a word to speak’. Parsons, having no faith at all in

female capacity comments on Alice’s debating, writing that her answers were,

framed out of Fox his owne braine. For no man of wifsdome will imagine…that Alice Driuer, though fhe were neuer fo pratchant & forward in herefie, and bold through the pride therof, could make fuch a conference of her felf… 76

Alice was sent to the stake at Ipswich on 4th November, 1558.

The last women to be executed in Mary’s reign were, Anne Albright, Joan Catmer, Joan Sole and Agnes

Snoth [Smith] burned in Canterbury, along with John Lomas, on 31st January, 1558. Parsons, alluding to

their ignorance, as ‘willfull poor woeman’, said they held ‘certaine fancyes at randome, and without

ground’, whilst Foxe commended their constancy in denying transubstantiation ‘a noughty and

abbominable idoll’ and refusing to take confession. 77 Foxe, as in all other portrayals, faced the dilemma

of how to portray the virtues of these godly women without appearing to condone disobedience to

authority.

Through the reading of the Marion burnings in the Book of Martyrs it has become apparent that Foxe

would gladly excuse his female martyrs almost anything. As a fervent Anglican he was writing a history

of what he saw as the true Church and, through a process of judicious editing, ignoring facts and

weaknesses, he managed to gloss over minor problems like argumentative women, runaway wives and

deserted children. All Foxe’s female martyrs were considered by the Catholic polemicists as rebellious,

seditious, lascivious, ‘malepart’ and out of control, but more importantly they had the impudence to

argue with the lawful prelates over doctrinal matters. Foxe, by contrast, praised them for their constancy,

their learning and valour in the face of extreme persecution and cruelty.

Foxe’s portrayal of the weakness of his ‘seely poore women’ allowed him to both demonstrate God’s

power and to emphasise the cruelty of the Roman Church, but, at the same time he laid them open to

attack by his critics, for, by failing to keep them silent, chaste and obedient women, he presented instead

women who neither he nor his godly contemporaries would have wanted as wives. Engaging in long,

complex debates, resisting and mocking male authority, developing intimate, though presumably

spiritual, extra-marital relationships, dominating, disobeying and even leaving their husbands, these

women, as Protestant icons, defied expectations when it came to early modern ideas about virtuous

female behaviour.

Before concluding this paper, a little needs to be said about the abridgements to the Acts and

Monuments, which, over the years, effectively changed Foxe’s models of righteous disobedience into

models of virtuous female behaviour. The Acts and Monuments came out in five new editions during the

century following Foxe's death, but the text making up the body of the work in these editions remained

substantially what it was in Foxe's own final 1583 edition. This is not the case, however, in the many

abridgements of the Acts and Monuments appearing beginning in the late sixteenth century, books more

accessible to the ordinary consumer than the enormous multi-volume, large-folio editions of the

complete work. In these abridgements by Timothie Bright (1589); Clement Cotton (1613); Thomas

Mason (1615); Thomas Mall (1665); Anon (1677); Samuel Clarke (1677); Ellis Hooke (1682) the role of

the female martyrs changes considerably and we begin to see a much more submissive woman

appearing.

While much modern scholarship has tended to dismiss the subversive potential of Foxe's women

martyrs, Catholic polemicists attacking Foxe homed in on their disorderly behaviour to discredit them.

These stories of aggressive female martyrs achieved a prominence at the time and the most obvious

explanation for this is as Karen Winstead suggests, that those ‘who produced and popularised so many of

these texts saw the saints as embodiments of clerical rather than of feminine authority.’ 78 There is clearly

a difficulty in the message Foxe is giving his women readers about appropriate women's roles, and the

traditionally submissive and sexually chaste role prescribed for women is certainly not the one

demonstrated by Foxe’s women.

However, during the century following his death, most of Foxe's abridgers made a point of toning down

their erudition and arrogance, and of either glossing over or omitting from their narratives the aspects of

their stories most likely to raise eyebrows. Finally, what does come across clearly in the accounts is that

Foxe’s ‘seely poore women’ displayed as much fortitude as men in the face of adversity.

Notes

1 This paper derives from one presented at Downside Abbey in December, 2010. Title from John Foxe,

Acts and Monuments [16th century, frontispiece missing] Downside Abbey Archive, 78593, F75F, p. 1679 2 All texts used will be taken from the above version. 3 T. Mason, Christs victorie ouer Sathans tyrannie (1615) p. 1 cited on EEBO, 16th September, 2012 4 Carroley Erickson, Bloody Mary (New York, 1978) p. 435 5 W. Haller, The Elect Nation, (New York, 1963) p. 14 6 M. L. Hickerson, Making Women Martyrs in Tudor England (2005) 7 B. Gregory, Salvation at Stake (1999) p. 185 8 ‘Thicke’ probably refers to her being rather stout. 9 Letter XXVII: Bishop Ridley to Mistress Glover, in H. Christmas, The Works of Nicholas Ridley, DD: sometime Lord

Bishop of London, martyr, 1555 (Cambridge, 1843) p. 384 10 Will Saunders, ‘Wily Winchester: Stephen Gardiner’, History Review, 57, Mar 2007 p. 43 11 Robert Parsons, A treatise of three conversions of England from paganisme to Christian religion: Divided in 3

partes (1604) pt. 3, chp. 17, p. 391; pt. 3, chp. 5, p. 239. 12 Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor (New Haven and London, 2009) p.164 13 Peter Martyr, J. McLelland (ed.), Early writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli (Missouri, 1994) p. 115 14 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2012 15 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1981 16 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1679 17 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1679 18 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1679 19 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1893 20 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1704 21 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1893 22 T. Mason, Christs victorie ouer Sathans tyrannie (1615) p. 1 23 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p.1981 24 Parsons, Treatise, pt, 3, chp. 6, pp. 337 - 339 25 It would appear that this is Agnes Prest. 26 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2050 - 2052 27 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2023 28 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2023 29 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2023 30 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2023 31 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1905 32 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 12, p. 129 33 Joan died alongside Thomas Whittell, Bartlett Green, Thomas Browne, John Went, and Elizabeth

Foster. Foxe Acts and Monuments, p. 1857 - 1858 34 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 5, p. 223 35 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 12, p. 125 36 Clement Cotton, The mirror of martyrs in a short vieuu lively expressing the force of their faith, the feruency of their loue,

the wisedome of their sayings, the patience of their suffrings, etc.: with their prayers and preparation for their last farevvell : whereunto is added two godly letters written by M. Bradford, full of sweet consolation for such as are afflicted in conscience (1613) cited on EEBO, accessed 29th October, 2012

37 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2008 38 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1910 39 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1910 - 1911 40 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 9, p. 473; 475 41 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1952 42 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 12, p, 123 43 Foxe notes another women, Bradbridge’s widow, who was thought to be pregnant and who died at Canterbury on 19th

June, 1557, Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1980 44 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1916 45 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1916 46 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1943 47 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 11, p. 93 48 Parsons writes that the child was born dead. Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 11, p. 93 49 Thomas Harding, Rejoinder to Jewel (1567); Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1946 50 Thomas Harding, Rejoinder to Jewel (1567) 51 William Allen, A True, Sincere and Modest Defence of the English Catholics (1587) 52 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1946 53 John Christopherson, An exhortation to all menne to take hede and beware of rebellion... (1554)

cited on EEBO, 16th September, 2012 54 Ellen Macek, ‘The Emergence of a Feminine Spirituality in the Book of Martyrs’, Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (1988) p.

69; 63-80. 55 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 16, p. 297 56 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2031 57 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2019

58 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 13, pp. 161 – 162 59 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2019 60 No relation. 61 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1981 62 John Christopherson, An exhortation to all menne to take hede and beware of rebellion... (1554) 63 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1981 64 Clement Cotton, The mirror of martyrs in a short vieuu lively expressing the force of their faith, the feruency of their loue, the wisedome of their sayings, the patience of their suffrings, etc.: with their prayers and

preparation for their last farevvell : whereunto is added two godly letters written by M. Bradford, full of sweet consolation for such as are afflicted in conscience (1613) cited on EEBO, accessed 29th October, 2012

65 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 10, p. 510 66 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, pp. 1981 -1982 67 The Letters of the Martyrs collected and published in 1564, with a preface by Miles Coverdale and an introduction

by the Rev. Edward Bickersteth (1837) p. 110 68 Parsons, Treatise, pt 3, chp. 5, p. 239 69 Peter Martyr Vermigli, J. McLelland (ed.), Early writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli (Missouri, 1994) p. 96 70 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p, 1981 71 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1859 72 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2012 73 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 2013 74 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 15, p. 254 75 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 15, p. 254 76 Parsons, Treatise, pt. 3, chp. 15, p. 255 77 Anne Albright in Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1859; R. Parsons, Treatise, pt.3, chp. 5, p. 228 78 Karen Winstead, Virgin Martyrs: Legends of the Sainthood in Late Medieval England (New York, 1997) p. 101

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