Overview

Between 1535 and 1681, almost one thousand men and women from all strata of society were executed or died in vermin-infested prisons, enduring torture, disembowelling or burning rather than abandoning their faith. Among them were terrorists, sadists, fanatics, traitors and insurgents but the vast majority were devout and loyal subjects, wanting nothing more than to practise their religion unimpeded. As the political pendulum swung to and fro and the persecuted became the persecutors, the extremes of human behaviour became ever more apparent, from the unutterable cruelty of the sadistic priest-hunter Richard Topcliffe, who took such delight in suffering that he installed a torture chamber in his own home; and the vindictiveness of Edmund Bonner, whose vicious treatment of Protestants disgusted his fellow-Catholics, to the quiet fortitude of the frail Anne Askew; and the unassuming piety of the London Carthusians. Perhaps the martyrs of the English Reformation demonstrate the dangers of combining politics and religion, or the pointlessness of attempting to impose one set of beliefs on everyone; or perhaps they simply illustrate the unassailable power of faith in a bloodier age and the enduring courage and strength of the human spirit.

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