¹ 26 Henry VIII, cc. 1 and 13. See the discussion in Nicholls, David, ‘The Theatre of Martyrdom in the French Reformation’, Past and Present, 121 (1988), pp. 49–73;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Van Dulmen, Richard, Theatre of Horror Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany, trans. Elizabeth Neu (Cambridge, 1990),Google Scholar passim.

² Wriothesley, i, pp. 78–81, at p. 79.

³ Henry, King VIII, King of England, Assertio septem sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum (London, 1522), VIIIr,Google Scholar Cambridge University Library, Shelf Mark, SSS.50.14; Henry, King VIII, King of England, Assertiio septem sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum: or, a defence of the seven sacraments, against Martin Luther, edited, Webster, Thomas (Dublin, 1766), pp. 42—43,Google Scholar Cambridge University Library, Shelf mark, Hib.8.766.10; Henry, King VIII, King of England, Assertiio septem sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum (London, 1521), Cambridge University Library, Shelf Mark, Rel.c. 53.6.Google Scholar

⁴ Henry, King VIII, King of England, Assertiio septem sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum (London, 1522), Xv.Google Scholar

⁵ The charges against Forest are set out in L&P., 13, i, n. 1043. The case has most recently been analysed and discussed by Marshall, Peter, ‘Papist as Heretic: The Burning of John Forest, 1538’ The Historical Journal 41, 2 (1998), pp. 351–374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ 27 Henry VIII, c. 28.

⁷ Wriothesley, i, p. 80.

⁸ The earliest accounts of the charges brought against Forest and his trial and execution were recorded by the chroniclers of his day. See Wriothesley, i, pp. 78–81; Halle, pp. 825–6; The Annales or a Generall Chronicle of England first by maister John Stow, and after him continued & augmented with matters forreyne & domestique, auncient & moderne unto the end of this present yeare 1614 by Edward Howes, gentleman (1615); Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, ed. Gough Nichols, John, Camden Society 53 (1582).Google Scholar John Foxe drew on the account in Halle's Chronicle in writing his own account of the case. See A&M, 5, pp. 179–80. Sander, Nicholas, De visibili monarchia Ecclesiae, 8 books (Louvain, 1571)Google Scholar ARCR 1, no. 1013, listed those Catholics, including Forest, who had suffered thus far in the Reformation. In 1586, Robert Persons re-edited Nicholas Sander, De origine ac progressu. He enlarged it and included, among much else, an account of Forest's case, see Sander, Nicholas, De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicai (Rome, 1586) ARCR 2, no. 973.Google Scholar For a translation of this Sander/Persons account of Forest's case, see Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, trans. Lewis, David (London, 1877), pp. 138–139.Google Scholar Persons used as one of his sources, a copy of a contemporary chronicle written in Spanish by one who claimed to have been living in London during 1527–1549 and to have witnessed many of the key events of this period. For a discussion of the author of this chronicle, see Morris, John, ‘A Spanish Account of Henry VIII’, The Month 66 (May-August, 1889), pp. 1–13.Google Scholar The chronicler may well have been present at Forest's execution although the classic martyrological format adopted suggests that it was written up some time after the event using as the basis for the narrative the original reports from the scene of execution. The manuscript was known and used by both Pedro de Ribadeneira and by Christopher Grene. The latter identified the writer as Garzias. Grene transcribed some parts of the manuscript and included them in his MS Collectanea, see Morris, ‘A Spanish Account of Henry VIII’, pp. 2–3. John Bale may well have made an oblique reference to the manuscript in his edited account of the case of Anne Askew, see The first examinacyon of Anne Askewe, latelye martyred in Smythfelde, with the elucydacyon of J. Bale (Marpurg in the lande of Hessen [Wesel], 1546), 4v. STC 848. The facsimile used here is that of Travitsky, Betty, Cullen, Patrick and King, John N. eds., The Early Modern Englishwomen: A Facsimile Library of Essential works. Part 1: Printed Writings, 1500–1640, vol. 1: Anne Askew (Aldershot, 1996).Google Scholar In 1889, Major Sharp Hume found a copy of this manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. He translated, edited and published it as Chronicle of King Henry VIII of England. Being a Contemporary Record of Some of the Principal Events of the Reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. Written in Spanish by an Unknown Hand, ed. and trans. Sharp Hume, Martin A. (London, 1889).Google Scholar See Hume's discussion of the history and provenance of this manuscript in his introduction, pp. xiii-xxvi. The account of Forest's case is at pp. 77–80. Persons's other source was Bourchier, Thomas, Historia ecclesiastica de martyrio fratrum ordinis divi Francisci … qui partim in Anglia sub Henrico octavo rege: partim in Belgio sub Principe Auriaco, partim & in Hybernia tempore Elizabethae… passi sunt (Paris, 1582) ARCR 1, no. 106.Google Scholar Thomas Bourchier, an English Observant, had included in this work a series of letters, which, he claimed, had been exchanged between the imprisoned John Forest and Catherine of Aragon. Nicholas Sander accepted the authenticity of these letters and included them in his text De origine ac progressu. The letters appeared again in the nineteenth century when J. M. Stone included translations of the correspondence in his account of the martyrdom of the English Franciscans during the Reformation. Stone, J. M., Faithful Unto Death. An Account of the Sufferings of the English Franciscans During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1882).Google Scholar Stone maintained that Bourchier's account contained the only correct version of the letters. However, their authenticity was refuted by Camm, Bede and Pollen, John in their essay ‘Blessed John Forest’, in Lives of the English Martyrs, ed. Camm, Bede, 2 vols (London, 1904–1905), i, pp. 274–326 Google Scholar at p. 323, and, more recently, by Keith Brown in his dissertation ‘The Franciscan Observants in England, 1482–1559’ unpublished D. Phil., Oxford, 1986. See also Brown, Keith, ‘Wolsey and Ecclesiastical Order: The Case of the Franciscan Observants’ in Cardinal Wolsey: Church, State and Art, ed. Gunn, S. J. and Lindley, P. G. (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 219–238,Google Scholar especially p. 230. The details of the case and Forest's life and career based on these sources have also been discussed in Parkinson, Anthony, Collectanea Anglo-Minoritica or A Collection of the Antiquities of the English Franciscans (London, 1726)Google Scholar and in Thaddeus, Father, Life of Blessed John Forest (London, 1888).Google Scholar The latter includes translations of the letters from Bourchier. See also Gasquet, F. A., Henry VIII and the English Monasteries (London, 1889), 2 vols, 1, pp. 46–70 Google Scholar and Borgia Steck, Francis, Franciscans and the Protestant Revolution in England (Chicago, 1920), pp. 138–168.Google Scholar The most recent commentaries, other than those of Brown and Marshall, include Knowles, D., The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1948–59), 3,Google Scholar The Tudor Age, pp. 206–11; Smith, H. M., Henry VIII and the Reformation (London, 1948), pp. 442–6.Google Scholar

⁹ Chronicle of King Henry VIII, p. 78. However, Nicholas Sander describes him as having entered the order ‘in the seventeenth year of his age’ and dying in his ‘sixtieth year’. See Sander, Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, trans. Lewis, pp. 138–139.

¹⁰ The Victoria County History of England: Kent (London, 1910–32) 3 vols, 2, p. 195.Google Scholar

¹¹ Guildhall Library, London, MS 9531/10, fol. 157v.

¹² Camm and Pollen, ‘Blessed John Forest’, p. 275, for example, follow this.

¹³ à Wood, Anthony, Athenae Oxonienses: an exact history of all the writers and bishops who have had their education in the University of Oxford: to which are added the Fasti, or Annals of the said University, ed. Bliss, Philip (London, 1813–20), p. 107.Google Scholar Camm and Pollen, ‘Blessed John Forest’, p. 275, for example, follow this. But see Little, A. G., The Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxford, 1892), pp. 290–291.Google Scholar Keith Brown argues that Forest had received his doctorate before he entered the order. See Brown, ‘Wolsey and Ecclesiastical Order’, p. 230, n. 42.

¹⁴ Moorman notes the ordination of a John Forest at Winchester in March 1484. See Winchester Registers: Waynflete, 2, f.193v. If this is our subject and we presume him to be at least 21 years old at ordination, then he would have been born circa 1463 and about 75 years old at his death. If this is Forest then it is possible that, since the Observants did not arrive in England until 1482, he joined the Conventual Franciscans first and then the Observants later. This would also explain study at Oxford. For an account of the Conventual's house of study in Oxford, see Little, A. G., ‘Franciscans in Oxford’ in Franciscan Essays ed. Sabatier, Paul (Aberdeen, 1912), pp. 71–87.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Archaeological Journal 23 (1866), p. 55.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Little, A. G., ‘Introduction of the Observant Friars into England’, Proceedings of the British Academy 10 (1921–3), pp. 455–71;Google Scholar Little, A. G., ‘Introduction of the Observant Friars into England: A Bull of Alexander VI’, Proceedings of the British Academy 27 (1941), pp. 155–166.Google Scholar

¹⁷ L&P., 6, no. 1111.

¹⁸ Knowles, The Religious Orders in England 3, pp. 206–11, 369–70; Brown, ‘The Franciscan Observants’, pp. 153–67, 211–14, 258–9, Brown, ‘Wolsey and Ecclesiastical Order’, pp. 219 and 230.

¹⁹ Verstegan, Richard, Theatrum crudelitatum, p. 29.Google Scholar ARCR 2, no. 1297.

²⁰ Tyndale, William, The Practice of Prelates, ed. Walter, H., Parker Society (Cambridge, 1849), p. 203;Google Scholar Original Letters Illustrative of English History, ed. Ellis, H., 4 vols (London, 1824–46), ii, pp. 249, 253, 257.Google Scholar Thomas Bourchier described Forest as the Queen's confessor in his martyrology where he referred to him as ‘Reverendes Pater Joannes Forest qui Reginae pridem fuerat a confessionibus…’ Bourchier, Historia, p. 28.

²¹ L&P., 5, no. 941; Harpsfield, Nicholas, A Treatise on the Pretended Divorce between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, Camden Society, n.s. 21 (London, 1878), pp. 203–204;Google Scholar Stow(1615), pp. 559–561.

²² L&P., 5, no. 941.

²³ L&P., 6, nos. 705, 726.

²⁴ L&P., 5, nos. 1312, 1313.

²⁵ Lyst, previously an apothecary in Wolsey's household, had a taste for blackmail and when a lay brother named Ravenscroft had died in prison, he had suggested to his master that charging his fellow friars with murder would be an effective way of controlling them. L&P., 6, no. 168.

²⁶ L&P., 5, no. 1525.

²⁷ Bourchier asserts in his Historia that Forest's prison letters were written at this time. However, it is not known with certainty why he might have been imprisoned at this point. One suggestion is that he had refused the Oath; another, that he had been implicated in the case of Elizabeth Barton, the Maid of Kent, in 1533.

²⁸ Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries, ed. Wright, Thomas, Camden Society, ns 26 (London, 1843), pp.41–44,Google Scholar at p. 42.

²⁹ L&P., 7, no. 1057; Stow (1615), 570; Holinshed, Raphael [Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande. 1586] The first and second volumes of Chronicles, comprising 1. The description and historie of England, 2. The description and historie of Ireland, 3. The description and historie of Scotland/first collected and published by Raphael Holinshed, William Harrison, and others; now newlie augmented and continued (with manifold matters of Singular note and worthie memorie) to the yeare 1586, by John Hooker alias Vowell Gent. and others (London, 1587), 3, p. 789.Google Scholar The King gave their houses to the Augustinians.

³⁰ L&P., 12(1), no. 666.

³¹ L&P., 7, no. 1095. Others escaped to Scotland or to the Continent: L&P., 7, no. 1607; while some obtained permission to go to Ireland: L&P., 7, nos. 49, 108.

³² L&P., 7, no. 1607.

³³ Bourchier, Historia ecclesiastica, p. 26; L&P., 7, no. 1607.

³⁴ L&P., 13(1), no. 1043.

³⁵ L&P., 13(1), no. 880.

³⁶ L&P., 13(1), no. 981.

³⁷ L&P., 13(1), no. 1043. The record of the Tribunal forms the basis of the account in Halle, pp. 825–6.

³⁸ The theological case against Forest has been analysed by Peter Marshall in ‘Papist as Heretic’ and what follows relies upon Marshall's discussion.

³⁹ See Marshall's discussion in ‘Papist as Heretic’, pp. 358–9.

⁴⁰ Marshall, ‘Papist as Heretic’, p. 358.

⁴¹ Lloyd, p. 61.

⁴² Wriothesley, 1, p. 79; L&P., 13, 1, no. 1043.

⁴³ L&P., 12(1), no. 1312.

⁴⁴ Bray, p. 167.

⁴⁵ Lloyd, p. 375; Bray, p. 173.

⁴⁶ Lloyd, pp. 376–377; Bray, p. 173.

⁴⁷ Lloyd, p. 137; Bray, p. 171.

⁴⁸ Lloyd, p. 376; Bray, pp. 171–174. See Aston's, Margaret discussion in ‘Iconoclasm in England: Official and Clandestine’ in The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640, ed. Marshall, Peter (London and New York, 1997), pp. 167–192.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Hugh Latimer, 1485–1555, a leading reformer, was created Bishop of Worcester in 1535.

⁵⁰ 18 May 1538.

⁵¹ Latimer's letter to Cromwell dated 18 May 1538. L&P., 13(1), no. 1024.

⁵² Chronicle of King Henry VIII, p. 78.

⁵³ L&P., 13(1), no. 1024.

⁵⁴ Wriothesley, 1, p. 80.

⁵⁵ Wriothesley, 1, p. 80.

⁵⁶ Wriothesley, 1, pp. 79–80.

⁵⁷ Wriothesley, 1, p. 80.

⁵⁸ Aston, ‘Iconoclasm in England’, pp. 167–192; Scribner, R. W., ‘Ritual and Reformation’ in Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987), pp. 103–22.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ L&P., 13(1), no. 348; Wriothesley, 1, pp. 75–76.

⁶⁰ L&P., 13(1), no. 347; Wriothesley, 1, pp. 75. It was also reported to be ‘honie clarified, and coloured with saffron’, Wright, p. 273; Baddeley, S. C., ‘The Holy Blood of Hayles’, Transactions of the Bristoland Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 23 (1900), pp. 276–85;Google Scholar See Marshall, Peter, ‘The Rood of Boxley, the Blood of Hailes and the Defence of the Henrician Church’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995), pp. 689–696 Google Scholar for a recent discussion of these two cases.

⁶¹ L&P., 13(1), no.634; Wright, pp.183–7 at pp.183–4.

⁶² There are more than 40 references to the warrior Derfel in medieval Welsh poetry. See Henken, Elissa R., Traditions of the Welsh Saints (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 206–209.Google Scholar

⁶³ Bartrum, Peter, A Welsh Classical Dictionary: People in History and Legend up to About A.D. 1000 (Aberystwyth, 1993), pp. 97–99;Google Scholar Henken, pp. 207–208.

⁶⁴ Ynys Enlli, off the tip of the Lleyn peninsula in Gwynedd has long been regarded as a holy island with religious associations that pre-date the Christian era. It is said to be the legendary Isle of Avalon where King Arthur was taken after the battle of Camlann and the place where Merlin the magician sleeps in a glass castle. The Christians took over the site, and in AD 546 St. Cadfan and his followers founded a monastery there. It became a traditional burial place for both royalty and religious. Eventually it became a popular site of pilgrimage.

⁶⁵ Near the church and associated with the cult was a holy well called Ffynnon Derfel whose water was believed to have spiritual powers.

⁶⁶ Derfel's horse, staff and stag remained at Llandderfel. A custom grew up in which, on Easter Tuesday, the horse was carried to a hill called ‘Bryn Sant’ (Saint's hill), above the church. Here it was pivoted on poles which allowed the horse to be rocked. The local people would then gather to ride it. Henken, p. 209.

⁶⁷ Wright, pp. 190–191; L&P., 13(1), no. 694; Breese, E., ‘Dervel Gardan’, Archaeologia Cambrensis set 4, vol. 5 (1874), pp. 152–6.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ L&P., 13(1), no. 863; Breese, p. 153.

⁶⁹ L&P., 13(1), no. 864.

⁷⁰ Halle, p. 826, see Wright, pp. 189–190; Wriothesley, 1, p. 80; Brigden, Susan, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1992), p. 290;Google Scholar Aston, Margaret, Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion, 1350–1600 (London, 1993), p. 303.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Weinstein, D. and Bell, R. M., Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago, 1982),Google Scholar passim; Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven and London, 1992), pp. 155–205, 325.Google Scholar

⁷² Wriothesley, 1, p. 79.

⁷³ The wording of the charge attempts to distort this in order to link the Friar directly with the claims made for St. Derfel.

⁷⁴ Lloyd, pp. 376–7; Bray, p. 174.

⁷⁵ Thaddeus, pp. 57–8.

⁷⁶ The Spanish chronicler describes it as being ‘so big indeed that it looked like a giant’. Chronicle of King Henry VIII, p. 79; Wriothesley, 1, p. 80.

⁷⁷ Wright, p. 190; Halle, p. 826; Foxe, A&M, 5, p. 180.

⁷⁸ Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan, Sheridan, (Harmondsworth, 1979), p. 48.Google Scholar See also Michel de Certeau's discussion on martyrdom as ‘the public mark of a social elimination’ in de Certeau, Michel, The Writing of History, trans. Conley, Tom (New York, 1988), p. 168.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Elizabeth cleverly sidestepped this potential pitfall and famously instructed Nicholas Bacon, her Lord Keeper, to make a statement in the Star Chamber that she would not have any of her subjects ‘molested by any inquisition or examination of their consciences in causes of religion’. (S. P. Dom. Eliz. 7 1/16). She would not interrogate the inner man. All she apparently asked was that the outer man conforms. But the Catholic belief of the inner man was expressed through the very rituals that were proscribed by law. The Act of Supremacy (1 Elizabeth I, c. 1) and the Act of Uniformity (1 Elizabeth I, c. 2) of 1559, defined the Church in England politically, legally and theologically, and effectively transformed religious belief into a political statement. A Catholic could not, therefore, in good conscience conform to State demands: the inner and the outer man had to be at one. Because of this skilful piece of legislation, those who refused were penalized not for conscience but for political non-conformity, for treason. Those Elizabethan Catholics, mainly missionary priests, who were tried and found guilty of subscribing to the supremacy of the Pope in ecclesiastical matters during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, were judged not as heretics but as traitors.

⁸⁰ Letter of Latimer to Cromwell: L&P., 13(1), no. 1024.

⁸¹ Halle, p. 826. The chronicles were infinitely flexible and regularly revised to bring them into line with the demands of the religious affiliations of the current ruling élite. See Lee Metzger, Marcia, ‘Controversy and “Correctness”: English Chronicles and the Chroniclers, 1553–1568’, Sixteenth Century Journal 27, 2 (1996), pp. 437–451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸² Chronicle of King Henry VIII, p. 81. The writer created speeches for Forest and added embellishments of the kind that had been traditional in early Christian martyr accounts. For example, he reported that at noon, when the body had finished burning, a white dove appeared ‘as white as snow, over the head of the sainted dead, and remained there for a long time seen by many people’. All this suggests that, although the chronicler might well have witnessed the execution, the account was written up some time after the event with the intention of countering the reformers’ pseudomartyr propaganda. Compare Miles Huggarde's disparaging comments about early Protestant martyr claims in Huggarde, Miles, The displaying of the protestantes, with a description of divers their abuses (Caly, R., July, 1556),Google Scholar 54v. STC 13558.

⁸³ Cray, Madeline, ‘Penrhys: the Archaeology of a Pilgrimage’, Morgannwg: The Journal of Glamorgan History 40 (1966), pp. 10–32.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Askew, Anne, The first examinacyon of Anne Askewe, latelye martyred in Smythfelde, with the elucydacyon of J. Bale (Marpurg, 1546),Google Scholar in Travitsky, Betty, Cullen, Patrick and King, John N. eds., The Early Modern Englishwomen: Facsimile Library of Essential works. Part 1: Printed Writings, 1500–1640, vol. 1: Anne Askew (Aldershot, 1996), 4v.Google Scholar Although the reference to the ‘fryres of Spayne’ may be an oblique allusion to the account written by the Spanish chronicler.

⁸⁵ Foxe reminded his readers that he saw no reason why he should not ‘be restrained from the free walke of a story writer, more than any other than have gone before me’. Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments of the Christian Martyrs and Matters Ecclesiastical (London, 1596), p. 645.Google Scholar STC, 11226a. Nicholas Harpsfield attacked Foxe's rewriting of the history of the Henrician Reformation in his Dialogi sex, contra summi pontificatus, monasticae vitae, Sanctorum, sacarum imaginum oppugnatores, et pseudomartyres (Alan Cope, Antwerp, 1566) ARCR 1, no. 636. So too did Thomas Stapleton in the preface to his translation of Bede's History of the English Church, see Stapleton, Thomas, The History of the Church of Englande. Compiled by Venerable Bede, Englishman. Translated out of Latin into English by Thomas Stapleton, Student in Divinity (Antwerpe: John Laet, 1565).Google Scholar ARCR II, no. 733. STC 1778. ERL 162. Robert Persons built on these two works when he effectively rewrote Foxe's Actes and Monuments from a Catholic perspective in his Treatise of Three Conversions, 3 vols (St. Omer, 1603–04) ARCR 2, no 638. STC 19416. ERL 304, 305, 306. 1603–04.

⁸⁶ Foxe, A&M, 5, p. 180.

⁸⁷ Foxe, A&M, 5, pp. 403–4.

⁸⁸ Foxe, A&M, 5, pp. 404–9; Wright, p. 190.

⁸⁹ Foxe, A&M, 5, pp. 179–181.

⁹⁰ Sander, Nicholas, The Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, ed. and trans. Lewis, David (London, 1877), pp. 138–139.Google Scholar Lewis also notes that the Anglican historian Jeremy Collier, writing in the early eighteenth century, refers to Forest as having been ‘condemned for heresy and high treason, though by what law they could stretch his crime to heresy is hard to discover, for he was tried only for dissuading his penitents in confession from owning the King's supremacy’. Collier, Jeremy An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain to the End of the Reign of Charles II 2 vols (London, 1708–14), 2, p. 149.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Verstegan, Theatrum crudelitatum, p. 29. Both the compilers of the English College murals and Richard Verstegan, who incorporated many aspects of the murals into the Theatrum, appear to follow Foxe's written description of the execution rather than Sander's. Both these images depict Forest hanged by a noose around the neck while suspended in the flames. The Catholic martyrologists were perhaps more concerned with replying to Foxe within the context of the pseudomartyr debate than with strict accuracy. For images see Dillon, Anne, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community 1535–1603 (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 222, 250.Google Scholar

⁹² Lloyd, p. 377.