During the reign of Bloody Mary I, she burned over 200 Protestants at the stake for their
religious beliefs.
Mary had a very hard life, and she suffered with her health throughout and she also had
a false pregnancy.
She greatly wanted a son or daughter so she could continue her branch of the Tudor dynasty,
and she hoped that this child would continue the Catholic restoration which was occurring
during her time on the throne.
But this child never came, and because of this she believed that God was punishing her
for not being harsh with heretics and Protestants in her land, and from this the burnings occurred
and ramped up.
But there was one group of women who were all burned together on the channel island
of Guernsey, and their execution was one of the most shocking and barbaric of the whole
Tudor period.
Join us today as we look at the BRUTAL burning alive of the Guernsey Martyrs, and remember
to support our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
The burnings of people during Mary I’s reign occurred all over the country.
In cities and towns such as Lewes and Canterbury, there were many people burned for their religious
beliefs.
The persecutions were wide reaching across the nation, and some of the most high profile
executed were Thomas Cranmer the former Archbishop of Canterbury and also Bishops Latimer and
Ridley.
The execution method of burning was linked to heresy and religious crimes, and it was
the standard way of dealing with heretics who had been condemned to death.
Crowds would flock to see these killings despite how savage they were, and places such as Smithfield
became infamous as a site of execution.
Many executions were carried out on market days where more people would be around to
see the proceedings, and the point of these burnings was also to put people off being
Protestant, and to get them to assimilate to Mary I’s Catholic beliefs.
But on Guernsey, there was a family which was destroyed by the Marian persecutions.
Guillotine Gilbert and Perotine Massey were sisters, and on the island they lived with
their mother named Catherine Cauches.
Perotine was married to a Norman Calvinist Minister who left the island to live in London
it’s believed to avoid persecution and punishment for not being a catholic priest.
However during some accusations, the three women were accused and charged with having
been given a stolen goblet.
Handing stolen property was seen as a serious crime at the time, and Perotine Massey, Guillotine
Gilbert and Katherine Cawches were sent to trial.
At their trial it was decided that a man named Vincent Gosset who was the main witness had
lied about this, and the women were found not guilty, and Gosset was actually punished
with his ears being nailed to the pillory.
During the trial it was also discovered though that the women had not been attending church.
This was a very serious thing during the Tudor times, and many people known as recusants
who refused to go to church were punished through fines and then execution.
This even occurred during Mary I’s reign, and the court report stated that, ‘ "Master
Dean and justices in your court and jurisdiction, after all amiable recommendations, pleaseth
you to know that we are informed by the depositions of certain honest men, passed before us in
manner of an inquiry; in the which inquiry Katharine Cawches and her two daughters have
submitted themselves in a certain matter criminal: wherein we be informed that they have been
disobedient to the commandments and ordinances of the church, in contemning and forsaking
the mass and the ordinances of the same, against the will and commandment of our sovereign
lord the king and the queen."
Because of this, all of the women were then tried for heresy on the 4th July 1556.
Perotine Massey, Guillotine Gilbert and Katherine Cawches claimed that they had been acting
in the religious policies of the previous King Edward VI.
Their neighbours stated that they were not willing to accept Mary I’s ideas on religion
and her church services, as in Catholic mass.
Because of this, the three women were then found guilty of heresy, and were then sentenced
to death to be burned at the stake in a horrific ordeal.
At the time, Perotine Massey was pregnant, and even back to the pagan times, it was said
that pregnant women could not be executed or killed by the state.
However Catholics during the Tudor period believed that it was an acceptable thing to
kill the child as well as the mother, if they had not been born.
Helier Gosselin was the man placed in charge of the execution that occurred in Guernsey
on the 18th July 1556.
The three women, two sisters and mother were all brought to the stake and their execution
site.
They were all to be burned on the same fire, and a court official read out their death
sentence.
John Foxe said of the executions of the three women, ‘"The time then being come, when
these three good servants and holy saints of God, the innocent mother with her two daughters,
should suffer, in the place where they should consummate their martyrdom were three stakes
set up.
At the middle post was the mother, the eldest daughter on the right hand, the youngest on
the other.
They were first strangled, but the rope brake before they were dead, and so the poor women
fell in the fire.
Perotine, who was then great with child, did fall on her side, where happened a rueful
sight, not only to the eyes of all that there stood, but also to the ears of all true-hearted
Christians that shall read this history.
For as the belly of the woman burst asunder by the vehemence of the flame".
With this Foxe outlined that the three were all burned together at the stake, and that
they were supposed to be strangled first so they were dead before the fire killed them,
but this did not happen and they burned alive on the fire.
Foxe accused that Perotine’s stomach burst open with the fire.
Another witness commented on this brutal part of the execution.
One witness stated that the baby was taken from the fire and was then laid on the grass
become the executioner ordered that ‘it should be carried back to the fire and burned
alongside its mother.’
Foxe stated that, ‘"And so the infant, baptized in his own blood, to fill up the number of
God's innocent saints, was both born and died a martyr, leaving behind to the world, which
it never saw, a spectacle wherein the whole world may see the Herodin cruelty of.... catholic
tormentors."
As the dead mother's uncle later complained in one of the surviving records of the incident
"the baby born of one of them being taken up and cast into the fire again, four being
executed, though only three had been condemned."
It’s believed that if Perotine Massey had declared in court that she was pregnant her
execution would have been postponed until after she had given birth.
But today a memorial plaque to the martyrs marks the site near their execution.
But during the reign of Mary I, executions like this occurred all over the land.
By the time she had died, she had burned over 280 people at the stake in shocking scenes
which haunted many people across England.
When Queen Elizabeth I took the crown following Mary I’s death on the 17th November 1558,
there were protestants who had been condemned as heretics and were waiting to be burned
alive.
Elizabeth refused to sign their death warrants and then had these Protestants released.
The executioner who burned the women was subject to much debate and Protestants tried to get
him executed for the way he executed the three women and the fact Perotine was pregnant.
But the executions of the Guernsey martyrs were some of the most shocking of Mary I’s
reign, and it shows the brutal side of Mary’s reign.
Mary I was certainly a Queen and monarch you did not want to oppose or get on the bad side
of, as it could have incredibly deadly consequences.
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