40 English martyrs you may not know. These saints were killed for their faith during a dark time in England's history.

Aleteia ^ | Philip Kosloski

[Cronos]

After King Henry VIII proclaimed himself supreme head of the Church in England and Wales, a violent wave of anti-Catholic persecution began -- and lasted over a century. It started with the executions of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher, but didn't end there. Hundreds were killed between 1535 and 1679; the Church recognized the heroism of 40 martyrs from England and Wales in a canonization ceremony on October 25, 1970. (Later, a separate feast on May 4 was created to recognize the 284 canonized or beatified martyrs of the English Reformation.)

The group of 40 martyrs celebrated on October 25 contains a variety of Catholics. The group is composed of "13 priests of the secular clergy, three Benedictines, three Carthusians, one Brigittine, two Franciscans, one Augustinian, 10 Jesuits and seven members of the laity, including three mothers."

The martyrs were gruesomely tortured before being hanged or killed, but remained steadfast in their faith, refusing to renounce their Catholicism.

Many of the saints were jovial at the prospect of death.

Cuthbert Mayne, a secular priest, replied to a gaoler who came to tell him he would be executed three days later: "I wish I had something valuable to give you, for the good news you bring me...". Edmund Campion, a Jesuit, was so pleased when taken to the place of execution that the people said about him and his companions: "But they're laughing! He doesn't care at all about dying...'.

One striking story of heroism under extreme torture comes from the martyrdom of a laywoman named Margaret Clitherow.

She was accused "of having sheltered the Jesuits and priests of the secular clergy, traitors to Her Majesty the Queen"; but she retorted: "I have only helped the Queen's friends" ... On Friday March 25th, 1588, at eight o'clock in the morning, Margaret, just thirty-three years old, left Ouse Bridge prison, barefooted, bound for Toll Booth ... Her arms were stretched out in the shape of a cross, and her hands tightly bound to two stakes in the ground.

The executioners put a sharp stone the size of a fist under her back and placed on her body a large slab onto which weights were gradually loaded up to over 800 pounds. Margaret whispered: "Jesus, have mercy on me." Her death agony lasted for fifteen minutes, then the moaning ceased, and all was quiet.

Their resolve in the face of certain death is inspiring. They show us that our life on earth is indeed very short and what truly matters is our faithfulness to God. As St. Thomas More famously said, "I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first."

Here is a list of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, whom we can invoke for their intercession in whatever persecution we may be enduring.

St. John Almond
St. Edmund Arrowsmith
St. Ambrose Barlow
St. John Boste
St. Alexander Briant
St. Edmund Campion
St. Margaret Clitherow
St. Philip Evans
St. Thomas Garnet
St. Edmund Gennings
St. Richard Gwyn
St. John Houghton
St. Philip Howard
St. John Jones
St. John Kemble
St. Luke Kirby
St. Robert Lawrence
St. David Lewis
St. Anne Line
St. John Lloyd
St. Cuthbert Mayne
St. Henry Morse
St. Nicholas Owen
St. John Payne
St. Polydore Plasden
St. John Plessington
St. Richard Reynolds
St. John Rigby
St. John Roberts
St. Alban Roe
St. Ralph Sherwin
St. Robert Southwell
St. John Southworth
St. John Stone
St. John Wall
St. Henry Walpole
St. Margaret Ward
St. Augustine Webster
St. Swithun Wells
St. Eustace White

Bloody Mary: Mary I is historically stigmatized for the ~300 Protestant deaths. However, Elizabeth I executed a similar (or perhaps higher) number of Catholics over a much longer reign.

[Cronos]

Henry 8 unleashed an orgy of violence that lasted for centuries.

Too many people read only one side where the number are more balanced

Monarch	Persecuted Group	Persecutor	Approximate Executions
Henry VIII	Catholics & Protestants	State/Crown	~80–100 (Heresy/Treason)
Edward VI	Catholics & Radicals	State/Crown	~2–5
Mary I	Protestants	State/Crown	~280–300
Elizabeth I	Catholics	State/Crown	~200–300
James I	Catholics/Radicals	State/Crown	Dozens
Charles I	Puritans/Catholics	State/Crown	Minimal (Religious
) Commonwealth/Cromwell	Catholics/Royalists	State/Parliament	High (War/Political)
Charles II	Non-conformists	State/Crown	Limited
James II	Protestants (Rebels)	State/Crown	~250 (Monmouth Rebellion)
William III & IV	Jacobites (Catholics)	State/Crown	Varies by conflict

if one had to be crude enough to compare how many "protestants" were killed by Catholics - it was approximately 280 to 300 Protestants VS 300 to 400 Catholics were killed by "protestants"

The numbers are more or less "equal" on both sides --> equally appalling.

Oliver Cromwell -- note that he tried to commit genocide - so i would consider it a bit more "ethnic" than religious, but that's my personal opinion

[equaviator]

“Merry old England”, eh? Where’s your “Jolly good” now?

[PGalt]

Interesting history. Thanks for posting.

[Tell It Right]

Thanks for posting.

It started with the executions of Sts. Thomas More…

Thomas More experienced FAFO. Look at all the persecution of Protestants that More had done.

[Cronos]

true, though Foxe did exaggerate — In his own 1533 publication, Apologia, More vehemently denied ever using physical violence or torture against prisoners, with the exception of minor corporal punishment for a couple of disruptive individuals.

Though one point for thought for all believers is that there is a sharp contrast between the younger More—who wrote Utopia (1516), imagining a fictional society practicing religious tolerance—and the older More.

That should make us all think

[Cronos]

What strikes me more than these historical killings is how they affect us today where it is brought up as a cudgel on “both” (or actually “all”) sides.

This pushes the point - at which stage do we forgive but not forget? And to me this also stretches into the secular realm - at which stage are “Germans” to be forgiven by “Jews” and “Poles”?

[rmichaelj]

I see your point about it being used as a cudgel and playing a game of tit for tat with other denominations/religions.

Rather the lesson of martyrs should be the willingness they had to die rather than reject Christ.

It speaks to a faithfulness rather lacking in the majority of today’s clergy and laity.

[Jan_Sobieski]

Besides Fox’s Book of Martyrs, and Martyrs Mirror, which name tens of thousands of Christians killed by the Roman Church, a great book on Roman Catholic murder of Christians is, The History of Romanism, by John Dowling.

In his book, The History of Romanism, author John Dowling estimates that "more than fifty millions" of people were slain by the Roman Catholic Church. He tracks this over a specific period of roughly 1,200 years, measured from what he designates as the "birth of Popery" in A.D. 606 up until his own time in the mid-19th century.

[Tell It Right]

There is an institution that survives by stirring up Satan’s spirit of bitterness. That institution is known as the political left.

[Cronos]

Jan, have you ever read “Martyrs Mirror, “??

you are name-dropping Martyrs Mirror without realizing it completely undermines your argument. That book was written by an Anabaptist to honor Anabaptists. The very people killed in that book were executed not just by Catholics, but by mainstream Protestants (Lutherans and Calvinists) who drowned and burned Anabaptists for rejecting infant baptism.

Van Braght did not write the book to attack Catholics; he wrote it because Dutch Mennonites in the late 1600s were becoming wealthy, comfortable, and assimilated into society. He compiled these graphic stories to shock young Anabaptists into remembering that their faith required strict separation from the world, absolute non-violence, and a willingness to die.

[Cronos]

Jan, I notice how quickly you went from "millions killed by" to "tens of thousands" --> That is a massive admission that your original claim was a historical fabrication.

But even your new number fails, because you still haven't actually read those books.

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs doesn't name 'tens of thousands' killed by Rome; it lists a few hundred English Protestants killed during a specific five-year political conflict under Mary Tudor, alongside stories of ancient Roman emperors.

As for Martyrs Mirror, it explicitly names and details the executions of about 4,000 Anabaptists—and the book openly records that Protestants (Lutherans and Calvinists) did the majority of the killing. -- You cannot use a book primarily about Protestant violence against Anabaptists to blame the Catholic Church.

[Jan_Sobieski]

Yes, Protestants persecuted Baptists Christians as well. But no one does Christian persecution like Rome and Islam.

[fruser1]

It was a grave error of the Church to take on the role of the King Maker. Also terrible that, instead of excommunication, they tortured and killed “heretics” to “save” their souls. I guess they forgot about the necessity of that “free will” thing. Where exactly is that line between temporal law and spiritual? Most seem to agree that murder need be punished harshly, but how far do you go with “lesser” offenses and what exactly are those “offenses”?

The Tudor line did not start well in my opinion so, yes, I don’t share the full monty of negative thoughts towards Richard III. The fact that the Tudors paraded his body and failed to provide a decent burial is indicative of the stain on the souls of that line. That sounds like what democrats would love to do today with any republican.

So it doesn’t surprise me that sometime later, a Tudor decides to take advantage of the ill feeling towards the Church in order to start his own religion simply to get an easy divorce and, once in charge, the vengeance towards what would be the new heretic is only natural.

[Campion]

Actually it did not start with More, More watched the first batch of London Carthusians to be martyred go to their deaths.

I think they have positively linked More to the executions of two heretics and the torture of two or three others. Nothing like the bloodbath Henry unleashed later against Catholics and non-conforming Protestants.

[JesusIsLord]

Man's inhumanity to man continues unabated from the fall.

Today, we're appalled as we should be, at the torture and execution Muslims/Islam imposes on Christians, Jews and other 'infidels'. Sadly, the Church of England's history includes torturing and executing Catholics and the Catholic church's history includes torturing and executing Protestants and heretics....

Not a good picture of Christianity past.

It should be noted that Jesus was tortured and crucified because on a similar vein, the Jewish "religious authorities" saw His claim to be the Messiah and the Son of God as a direct violation of the sanctity of the divine name and a challenge to the established religious order. I.e., they viewed Him as a heretic worthy of death.

[Cronos]

Then, Jan, you posted "John Dowling's The history of Romanism (1945) -- and do you realize how nonsensical your '50 million' figure is??

To claim that 50 million people were executed for heresy by Rome between 606 AD and the 19th century implies an average of over 41,000 executions every single year for 1,200 consecutive years.

During the early Middle Ages (600–1000 AD), the entire population of Western Europe fluctuated between 25 million and 40 million people.

did you ever stop to THINK, Jan_sobieski? if 41K people were executed ANNUALLY, then entire nations would have been completely wiped off the map

perhaps, you say "what about the Spanish inquistion?"



Yet secular historians like Henry Kamen (The Spanish inquisition: A historical revision) and extensive studies by over 30 international scholars tracking decades of trial records proved that over a 350-year period, the Spanish Inquisition executed between 3,000 and 5,000 people.

This averages out to roughly 10 to 15 people per year across the entire Spanish Empire—a far cry from "millions."

You are using wild, unverified internet mythology to substitute for real historical scholarship. The math doesn't work, the demographics don't work, and no serious historian today accepts Dowling's numbers.

[cowboyusa]

This is why the Founders wanted Separation of Church AND State, not veneration of Church FROM State.

[Cronos]

So, Jan_Sobieski (btw, do you even know who Jan III Sobieski was??), you can’t take a propaganda book from 1845 with the same level of falsehoods as “the protocols of the elders of Zion” as your bible for history.

Next you’ll be quoting Gibbons - and don’t get me started on that nut with his “Byzantine empire” and “the Roman empire fell due to Christianity” errors. Gibbon was a man of the 18th-century Enlightenment. He wrote with a specific “anti-religious” agenda, viewing the Middle Ages as a “triumph of barbarism and religion.” and he glorified his own “enlightenment” period

Gibbon’s claim that Christianity acted as a “slow poison” that weakened the military spirit and diverted wealth to the church is proven wrong - the Roman empire survived until 1453

Reading Gibbon of is like a modern doctor reading a high-end medical textbook from the 1700s.

[Cronos]

This is why the Founders wanted Separation of Church AND State, not veneration of Church FROM State.

Yes, you are correct - the founders had a front-row seat to the previous two centuries of European bloodbaths. They watched the English Crown switch from Catholic to Protestant and back again, executing citizens with every political shift.

James Madison explicitly noted in his Memorial and Remonstrance (1785) that centuries of state-established Christianity had produced only "pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

Your phrase, cowboyusea - "Separation of Church AND State, not veneration of Church FROM State"—is an accurate summary of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.