Image 5: The Martyrdome of Doctor Taylour, burned at Hadley, for the testimony of the Gospell

Commentary on image by Margaret Aston

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Size: 130 x 178 mm

Location in editions: 1563, p. 1080; 1570, p. 1703; 1576, p. 1454; 1583, p. 1527.

The parish of Hadleigh in Suffolk, with its history of reforming support, lauded by Foxe as this 'universitie of the learned', was severely affected by the death of its rector, Rowland Taylor.

The image is concentrated on this forceful martyr with his 'reverend and ancient face, with a long white beard' and shock of perhaps also white hair, which had been lopped when Bonner clipped it to give him a fool's head. The cutters of the woodblock doing justice to this head, framed by the readied faggots, have given it an almost haloed appearance. Although the fire is shown unlit Taylor is represented at the moment he uttered his last words, holding up both hands.

John Nowell, who succeeded Taylor as rector of Hadleigh, preached there the day after Taylor's burning and tried to minimise the impact of his death, saying that 'to persevere is a develishe thynge ffor it moveth many mindes to see an heretyke constante and to dye'. While, as Foxe himself admitted in his first edition, the faithful in Hadleigh were cowed and many left after this event, Nowell's words seem to indicate that Taylor's stand in the fire, watched here by an impassive crowd, was itself brave and unflinching.

The blank banderole below Taylor's, empty in all four editions, appears from its placing as if it was intended to contain words of the mounted sheriff, though the last official address to Taylor reported in the text came from Sir John Shelton 'there standing by.'

Taylor's last words went from gothic type 1563, to italic 1570, to Roman 1576, and (with minor spelling difference) 1583.

References

John Craig, 'Reformers, conflict, and revisionism: the Reformation in sixteenth-century Hadleigh', Historical Journal, 42 (1999), pp. 1-23, at pp. 16-17, 20-21;

Mark Byford, 'The Birth of a Protestant Town: the Process of Reformation in Tudor Colchester', in Patrick Collinson and John Craig (eds.), The Reformation in English Towns 1500-1640 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, 1998), p. 32;

Mark Byford, 'The Price of Protestantism: Assessing the Impact of Religious Change in Elizabethan Essex: The Cases of Heydon and Colchester', (D Phil Dissertation, Oxford, 1988), p. 116.

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