Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T13:34:59.627Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lord Hussey's Windows – Martyrdom Through Defenestration in Lincoln?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

David Stocker
David Stocker
Affiliation:
English Heritage, 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET, UK. E-mail: .
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper is a study of a fragment of folklore that became assimilated into serious academic discussion; it investigates the story that John Lord Hussey, who was executed in Lincoln following the Lincolnshire Rising of 1536, was dragged to his execution through a window. If it were true, this would be an early example of the iconography of ‘defenestration’ which, by the seventeenth century, connoted the martyrdom of adherents of the Old Religion by Protestant extremists. On examination, however, the persistent story of Lord Hussey's defenestration would seem to be a post hoc fabrication. It is argued here that the story may have been invented in the early eighteenth century, at a period when there was, once again, strife between High and Low Church, and when accounts of previous religious controversies were being recruited by antiquarians as weapons in their contemporary disputes. It is further suggested that the power of the image was still strong in the nineteenth century and it might have played a role in the preservation of a window in Lincoln Castle, even though it had no documented association with Hussey and is too small to climb through.

Type
Shorter Contributions
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 83 , September 2003 , pp. 471 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baring, M (ed) 1931. In My End is My Beginning, LondonGoogle Scholar
Cole, REG 1897. History of Doddington, Lincoln CPR. Calendar of Patent Rolls, LondonGoogle Scholar
[Creasey, J] 1825. Sketches Illustrative of the Topography of New andOld Sleaford …, SleafordGoogle Scholar
Decloux, A P H 1857. Histoire archéologique … de la Sainte Chapelle ParisGoogle Scholar
Dodds, M H and Dodds, R 1915. The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536–1537, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Drury, J 1802. The History of Lincoln …, LincolnGoogle Scholar
Everson, P and Stocker, D forthcoming. ‘The archaeology of vice-regality. Charles Brandon's brief rule in Lincolnshire’, in The Archaeology of the Reformation (eds Gaimster, D and Gilchrist, R), OxfordGoogle Scholar
Foucault, M 1979. Discipline and Punishment: the Birth of the Prison (trans Sheridan, A), LondonGoogle Scholar
Gairdiner, J (ed) 1891. Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII …, Volume 12, LondonGoogle Scholar
Gibson, E (ed) 1722. Britannia or a Chorographical Description … written in Latin by William Camden … and translated into English … by Edmund Gibson, 2nd edn, 2 vols, LondonGoogle Scholar
Gough, R (ed) 1789. Britannia or a Chorographical Description … by William Camden … translated from the edition published by the author in 1607, enlarged by the latest discoveries by Richard Gough, 3 vols, LondonGoogle Scholar
Green, E 1898. ‘Some Lincolnshire martyrs’, Lincolnshire Notes Queries, 3, 84–5Google Scholar
Gunn, S 1988. Charles Brandon, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Hayward, J and Kahn, W 1982. Radiance and Reflection. Medieval Art from the Raymond Pitcairn Collection, New YorkGoogle Scholar
Hill, J W F 1954 ‘The western spires of Lincoln Minster’, Lincolnshire Architect Archaeol Soc Rep Pap, 5, 1–17Google Scholar
Hill, J W F 1956. Tudor and Stuart Lincoln, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Hill, J W F 1965. Medieval Lincoln, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Hill, J W F 1966. Georgian Lincoln, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Howarth, D 1997. Images of Rule. Art and Politics in the English Renaissance, 1585–1649, LondonGoogle Scholar
James, M E 1970. ‘Obedience and dissent in Henrican England. The Lincolnshire Rebellion of 1536’, Pair Present, 48, 1–78Google Scholar
Maddison, A R 1894. ‘Lincolnshire gentry during the sixteenth century’, Ass Architect Soc Rep Pap, 22/2, 174–222?Google Scholar
Mayhew, R 2000. ‘Edmund Gibson's editions of Britannia:dynastic chorography and the Particularist politics of precedent, 1695–1722’, Hist Res, 73/182, 239–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mee, A 1949. The King's England. Lincolnshire, A County of Infinite Charm, LondonGoogle Scholar
O'Day, R 1986. The Debate on the English Reformation, LondonGoogle Scholar
Pages, G 1970. The Thirty Years War 1618–1648 (trans Maland, D and Hooper, J), LondonGoogle Scholar
Partridge, R B 1998. ‘O Horrable Murder’. The Trial, Execution and Burial of King Charles I, LondonGoogle Scholar
Pawley, S 1996. The Book of Sleaford, SleafordGoogle Scholar
Piggot, S 1985. William Stukeley. An Eighteenth-century Antiquary, London and New YorkGoogle Scholar
Pugin, A C 1821. Specimens of Gothic Architecture …, 2 vols (reprinted 1895), EdinburghGoogle Scholar
Ruddock, J W 1901. Lincoln City and Cathedral …, LincolnGoogle Scholar
Ryan, W G (ed and trans) 1993. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend. Readings on the Saints, PrincetonGoogle Scholar
Smith, T P 1979. ‘Hussey Tower, Boston: a late medieval tower-house of brick’, Lincolnshire Hist Archaeol, 14, 31–7Google Scholar
Stocker, D A 1991. St Mary's Guildhall, Lincoln. The Survey and Excavation of a Medieval Building Complex. The Archaeology of Lincoln Fascicule XII/I, LondonGoogle Scholar
Stocker, D A 1999. ‘“A very Goodly House Longging to Sutton … ”. A reconstruction of ”John of Gaunt's Palace”, Lincoln’, Lincolnshire Hist Archaeol, 34, 5–15Google Scholar
Stocker, M 1998. Judith. Sexual Warrior. Women and Power in Western Culture, London and NewhavenGoogle Scholar
Stukeley, W 1724. Itinerarium Curiosum …, 1st edn, LondonGoogle Scholar
Sympson, E M 1906a. Lincoln, LondonGoogle Scholar
Sympson, E M 1906b. ‘Thomas Sympson’, Lincolnshire Notes Queries, 9/71, 65–90Google Scholar
Thompson, P 1856. The History and Antiquities of Boston …, Boston and LondonGoogle Scholar
Toulmin Smith, L (ed) 1964. The Itinerary of John Leland …, 5 vols, Carbondale, III.Google Scholar
Trollope, E 1869–1870. ‘Boston and other churches, etc., visited by the Society, on 16th and 17th of June, 1870’, Ass Architect Soc Rep Pap, 10, 175–218Google Scholar
Trollope, E 1872. Sleaford and the Wapentakes of Flaxwell and Aswardhurn, London and SleafordGoogle Scholar
Ward, A 1996. The Lincolnshire Rising, 1536, 2nd edn, LouthGoogle Scholar
Wedgwood, C V 1964. The Trial of Charles I, LondonGoogle Scholar
Williamson, J 1890. Guide through Lincoln, 3rd edn, LincolnGoogle Scholar
Willson, E 1850. ‘Lincoln Castle’, in Memoirs illustrative of the History and Antiquities of the County and City of Lincoln communicated to the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland held at Lincoln, July 1848, 280–94, LondonGoogle Scholar
Wilson, J 1995. The Archaeology of Shakespeare. The Material Legacy of Shakespeare's Theatre, StroudGoogle Scholar