This week’s #MondayMartyrs are the Canterbury Martyrs of 1555.

Protestants William Coker, William Hopper, Henry Laurence, Richard Colliar (or Collier), Richard Wright, and William Stere were burnt at the stake in Canterbury on 23rd August 1555, in the reign of Queen Mary I.

Martyrologist John Foxe tells the story of these “Kentish men” who were “called forth and examined by Thornton, bishop of Dover, Nicholas Harpsfield, Richard Faucet, and Robert Collins”. Here are some facts about them, as shared in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs:

This week’s #MondayMartyr is John Denley, who was burnt at the stake in Uxbridge for his Protestant faith on 8th August 1555, in the reign of Queen Mary I.

Protestant poet Thomas Brice recorded Denley’s execution in his 1559 work “A Compendious Regester”*, writing:

“When Denly died at Uxbridge towne,
With constant care to Christe’s cause;”

Martyrologist John Foxe states that Denley was from Maidstone in Kent and that when he was travelling in Essex with his friend, John Newman, in June 1555 to visit “their godly friends” in the county, both men were apprehended by Edmund Tyrrel, a justice of the peace, who searched them and found “the confessions of their faith in writing about them”.

This week’s Monday Martyr is Lollard Thomas Harding.

Harding was in his sixties when he was sent to be burnt at the stake for heresy at Chesham, in Buckinghamshire, on 30th May 1532, in the reign of King Henry VIII. Thankfully, his suffering was cut short when he was killed by a blow to the head when a bystander threw a billet of wood at him.

This week’s Monday martyr is Protestant martyr John Hullier (Hulliarde, Huller or Hullyer), who was burnt at the stake in Cambridge for his Protestant faith on Maundy Thursday 1556, 2nd April, in the reign of Queen Mary I.

Martyrologist John Foxe tells is that Hullier was educated at Eton before becoming a scholar and then a “conduct”, a chaplain, at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1539. Some time after that, he became curate of Babraham, near Cambridge, and had “divers conflicts with the papists” after preaching at King’s Lynn. This led to him being questioned by Dr Thomas Thirlby, Bishop of Ely, who sent him to be confined in Cambridge Castle and then the Tolbooth in Cambridge, where, according to Foxe, he was imprisoned for three months.