The five ordinary Londoners pictured above had been snitched out by neighbors for shirking the Catholic Mass under Queen Mary — the offense that Protestants would call recusancy when the mitre was on the other bishop. They had the sturdiness one would attribute to men and women of the common clay, and also the theological unsophistication; our martyrology caveats of their interrogation that “some of them attributed the title and honour of a sacrament to the holy estate of matrimony” — the standard Anglican and also Lutheran position was that there were only two sacraments, baptism and eucharist — but...
