The first officially approved Bible in English was the Coverdale Bible, published in 1537. The following year King Henry Vlll ordered a copy of the great Bible (in English) to be placed in every parish church.
After Henry died, his young son Edward Vl became king in 1547 and the pace quickened. The first English language prayer book, The Book of Common Prayer, was introduced in 1549. England became a markedly Protestant country under the governance of Edward and his advisors.
However in 1553 Edward died at the age of 15 and was succeeded (after the brief 7 day reign of Lady Jane Grey) by his elder sister, Mary. Mary was daughter of Katherine of Aragon and a committed Catholic. She tried to re-establish the Catholic church in England by recognising papal authority, reinstating Catholic forms of worship. This was to prove fatal for 288 English men and women before the end of Mary’s reign, and the arrival of Queen Elizabeth l, when the country reverted to Protestantism.
“In Grinstead in Sussex suffered two men and one woman, the names of whom were Thomas Dungate, John Forman and Mother Tree, who for righteousness sake gave themselves to death and torments of the fire, patiently abiding what the furious rage of man could say or work against them; at the said town of Grinstead ending their lives the 18 July 1556”
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, John Foxe, 1563.
During the reign of Mary Tudor (aka Bloody Mary) those Protestants who refused to return to the Catholic Faith were persecuted. On 18th July 1556 three people, Thomas Dungate, John Forman and Ann Tree, were accused of heresy and burnt to death in the middle of East Grinstead. Ann Tree, an older woman, is believed to have lived near Plawhatch and it’s likely that her only offence was to refuse to attend a church service in Latin as she would not have been able to understand what was being said.
These three victims represent just over 1% of the 288 people who were martyred for their faith during Mary’s five year reign. East Grin-stead was not the only town locally to witness such horror. 17 people were martyred in Lewes and are remembered both in the town’s annual Bonfire tradition and in a memorial standing on the hill over the town. In all 36 peo-ple were burnt to death in Sussex for refusing to return to Catholicism in Mary’s short reign.
David Ansell
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