We all know Joan of Arc who died a horrible death for her beliefs but there are many,
many more women in history who were executed for what they believed. For what they held
be true in their hearts and the inspirational actions they took in the name of their principles
or ideology.
Some held true to their religion, some to power, some took a political stance that resulted
in their death. Either way, each woman is an inspiration to us all when it comes to
standing up for what you believe in, even in the face of death.
In this video, I tell you about 10 inspirational women in history who were executed for what
they believed in, starting with
Number one, Elizabeth Barton, The Mad Maid Of Kent.
Sister Elizabeth Barton, also known as "The Nun of Kent" was an English Catholic nun.
She was executed as a result of her prophecies against the marriage of King Henry VIII of
England to Anne Boleyn.
Elizabeth strongly opposed the English Reformation and, in around 1532, began prophesying that
if Henry VIII remarried, he would die within a few months. She said that she had even seen
the place in Hell to which he would go. but as it turns out, Henry actually lived for
a further 15 years.
Because of her popularity, Elizabeth Barton went unpunished for nearly a year but then
the King's agents began spreading rumours that she was engaged in sexual relationships
with priests and that she suffered from mental illness. Which is where she later got the
name, "The Mad Maid of Kent"
On the 20th of April 1534, Elizabeth Barton was hanged at Tyburn for treason. She was
only 28 years of age.
Second, we have Lady Jane Grey.
Lady Jane Grey, also known as the Nine Days Queen, is one of the most romanticized monarchs
of Tudor England. Her nine-day reign was an unsuccessful attempt to maintain Protestant
rule.
Lady Jane Grey was only 16 years old when she was beheaded on Friday 12 February, 1554.
Her father and her husband were executed along with her for high treason against Queen Mary
I of England.
Truthfully, she was executed not for her own beliefs so much as for the ambitions of the
males in her family. That along with becoming a pawn in the religious strife of the times.
She was proclaimed Queen after the death of her cousin, the protestant King Edward VI,
son of Henry VIII. She was actually fifth in line to the throne, but Edward willed his
crown to Lady Jane Grey to keep the country Protestant.
Edward’s half-sister Mary, who was Henry VIII’s daughter with Catherine of Aragon,
was actually next in line for the throne but since she was a devout Catholic, Edward chose
Lady Jane Grey instead.
Unfortunately for Lady Jane, her advisors were grossly incompetent, and her father was
partly responsible for her untimely execution since he was involved in an attempted rebellion
against the crown which did not end well for all involved.
At her execution, Lady Jane Grey is said to have died bravely. On the scaffold she asked
the executioner to ‘Please dispatch me quickly’.
Third is Mary, Queen of Scots, also known as the Infant Queen.
Mary Queen of Scots was very briefly queen of both Scotland and France. When only 6 days
old, she became Queen of Scotland upon the death of her father, James V of Scotland,
and hence, became known as the youngest-ever British monarch. When only 5 years old, she
was betrothed to the future King of France whom she married at age fifteen.
When the King of France died in 1560 after only one year into his reign, Mary returned
to Scotland where her Catholic views clashed with the people of Scotland, who where largely
Protestants.
Following her forced abdication by Scottish nobles, Mary fled to England where she plotted
to oust her cousin Elizabeth I of England.
Mary was imprisoned for 19 years by Queen Elizabeth I and held in various castles around
England. In 1587, it was decided that she was guilty of treason against Queen Elizabeth
I, when letters in code were found and said to be a plot.
She was taken to Fotheringhay Castle and beheaded on the 8th of February 1587 for her belief
that she was the rightful queen of England and Scotland.
Number four in our list of Inspirational Women In History Who Died For Their Beliefs is Saint
Margaret Clitherow.
Saint Margaret Clitherow known as "the Pearl of York" is an English saint and martyr of
the Roman Catholic Church. She was pressed to death for refusing to enter a plea to the
charge of harbouring Catholic priests, which was made a capital offence by the Jesuits
Act of 1584.
Her home became one of the most important hiding places for fugitive priests in the
north of England.
On March 25, 1586, she was stretched out on the ground with a sharp rock on her back and
crushed under a door over laden with unbearable weights. Her bones were broken and she died
within fifteen minutes.
Number 5 on our list is Ann Carter, also known as Captain Ann.
Ann Carter was an English activist from Maldon, Essex, who was executed for her part in leading
food protests in 1629 known as the Maldon grain riots.
In March of 1629, over 100 rioters, led by Captain Ann Carter, boarded a grain ship bound
for the distance shores of Europe. The rioters loaded up bags of grain to distribute among
the starving people of Essex.
She also took up the cause of out-of-work weavers in the English cloth trade and led
a second riot in protest.
A special commission was established and Captain Ann was found guilty of disrupting the social
order. She was hanged on the 30th of May 1629.
We can set Ann's hanging as a vivid examples of what happened to those who posed a serious
threat to the harmony of the status quo.
6th we have Dame Alice Lisle, the Martyr of Monmouth's Rebellion.
Dame Alice Lisle, was a landed lady of the English county of Hampshire, who was beheaded
for harbouring fugitives after the defeat of the Monmouth Rebellion at the Battle of
Sedgemoor which was an attempt to unseat James II from the crown of England.
Lady Lisle was brought before the notoriously harsh Judge Jeffries, and after an unjust
trial, was sentenced to be burned at the stake for treason.
The episode provoked outrage due to Lady Lisle's age and saintly reputation as well as she
having claimed no sympathy with the rebellion whatsoever.
Final sentencing was up to King James the second, and he refused to extend mercy to
Lady Lisle, though he allowed beheading as befitted her social rank to be substituted
for burning at the stake.
Dame Alice Lisle was executed on the 25th of September 1685.
Number 7 is the Scottish martyr Margaret Wilson.
Margaret Wilson, along with her sister, was executed by drowning for refusing to swear
an oath declaring King James II of England as head of the Presbyterian church of England.
Both Margaret Wilson, her younger sister Agnes and another woman of her village, Margaret
McLachlan, were seized during the killing times of the Scottish covenannters.
They were charged with attending conventicles which are essentially outdoor sermons that
were private and considered secret gatherings for worship.
The Wilson sisters were thrown into the ‘thieves hole,’ a dungeon in Wigtown, before being
taken to the local prison, where Margaret McLachlan was already incarcerated.
All three women were drowned in a river just outside Wigtown Scotland, in sixteen 85 where
they were tied up in the water and forced to wait for the tide to rise.
Eighth is Marie-Josèphe Angélique
Marie-Josèphe Angélique was the name given by her last owners to a Portuguese-born black
slave in New France (later the province of Quebec in Canada).
She was tried and convicted of setting fire to her owner's home, burning much of what
is now referred to as Old Montreal.
It had been generally accepted that Angélique was guilty, but it has recently been argued
that she was innocent of the crime and was convicted more on the basis of her reputation
as a rebellious runaway slave than on the basis of factual evidence.
A competing theory is that she was acting in rebellion against slavery. Either way,
we can say that she was inspiring as an exceptional, outspoken, independent-minded woman, who fought
for her freedom and her life with courage and wit, against formidable odds, and in spite
of a society that expected submission from women, especially if they were also black
and slaves.
Number nine on our list is Charlotte Corday, known as the angel of assassination.
Charlotte Corday was a figure of the French Revolution.
She is largely remembered as the assassin of French Revolutionary leader, Jean-Paul
Marat while he rested in his bath at home.
On July 9th, 1793, Charlotte left her cousin's estate and went to Paris, where she was she
was allowed to Marat's home while he was bathing. She plunged a knife directly into his heart
causing his instant death and was arrested immediately.
As a woman, she had no political power to change the violent direction the French Revolutioon
was taking in the eighteenth century. So at the risk of her losing her own life,and with
the conviction that this was the only thing she could do, she killed the one man she thought
would save France from an inevitable civil war, The leader of the "Paris mob", Jean-Paul
Marat.
At her trial, Charlotte said that she "killed one man to save a hundred thousand."
Four days later, She was executed by the guillotine.
Charlotte Corday changed the way women were viewed during the Revolution in terms of personal
agency and having the courage of one's convictions.
Last on our list of Inspirational Women In History Who Died For Their Beliefs is Mata
Hari.
Mata Hari, aka. Margaretha Zelle Macleod, was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who
was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I. She was executed by firing squad
in France just before dawn on 15 October 1917.
Mata Hari was arrested and put on trial on 24 July, 1917, accused of spying for Germany,
and consequently causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers.
Although the French and British intelligence suspected her of spying for Germany, neither
could produce definite evidence against her. She did admit that she had accepted money
from a German diplomat in the Netherlands to spy on France, but insisted she only passed
on trivial information to the German as her loyalty was entirely to her adopted nation
of France.
Mata Hari was only forty one when she was executed by the firing squad of 12 French
soldiers. According to an eyewitness account by British reporter Henry Wales, she was not
bound and refused a blindfold as she defiantly blew a kiss to the firing squad.