Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

One of the most influential retellings of Cranmer’s execution is found in an Elizabethan book which went on to become an all-time Protestant bestseller: the Acts and Monuments of Matters most Special and Memorable, Happening in the Church, known popularly as the Book of Martyrs. This vast and vividly illustrated history of religious persecution from the early Church up to the later sixteenth century was written by John Foxe (1516-1587), a Protestant cleric who fled abroad during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I, who was denounced by her enemies as ‘Bloody Mary’. First published in 1563, the Book of Martyrs was expanded, reprinted several times, and abridged; by the end of the century a copy could be found next to the Bible in almost every English church. This illustration depicts the Protestant Anne Askew being burnt at the stake together with John Lascelles, Nicholas Belenian and John Adams in 1546 during the reign of Henry VIII who, having broken with Rome and become the Supreme Head of the Church, brooked no dissent from either Catholics or radical reformers. 

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