This is a case of the Victor writing the History. So much so, that many Catholics on this thread have followed the pattern by saying Catholics killed more protestants than Protestants did Catholics! NOT TRUE. Unfortunately there isn’t one book that lists everything. You have to research.
Foxe is an extremely biased propagandist. He totally ignores all protestant killing and torture of Catholics, even when his “martyrs” were responsible.
William Cobbett in his HISTORY OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, has some description.
The work of blood was now begun, and proceded with steady pace… As a specimen of the works of burnett’s “necessary reformer”, and to spare readers repetition, let us take the treatment of John Houghton, prior of the Charterhouse of London, a convent of the Carthusian Monks.
This prior, for having refused to take the oath, was dragged to Tyburn. He was scarcely suspended when the rope was cut, and he fell alive on the ground. His clothes were then stripped off; his bowels were ripped up; his heart and entrails torn from his body and flung into a fire; his head was cut fron his body; the body was divided up into quarters and parboiled; the quarters were then subdivided, and hung up in different parts of the city; and one arm was nailed to the wall over the entrance to the monastery!
Such were the means Burnet said were necessary to introduce the Protestant Religion into England! How different, alas! from the means by which the Catholic Religion had been introduced by Pope Gregory and Saint Austin! These horrid butcheries, mind, were perpetrated under the primacy of Foxe’s great martyr, Cranmer,
Letter of Richard Pollard to Thomas Cromwell, November 16, 1539
Pleaseth it your Lordship to be advertised that…[On November 15] the late abbot of Glastonbury went from Wells to Glastonbury, and there was drawn through the town upon a hurdle to the hill called the Torre, where he was put to execution; …Afore his execution [he] was examined upon divers articles and interrogatories to him ministered by me, but he could accuse no man of himself of any offence against the king’s highness, nor would he confess no more gold nor silver nor any other thing more than he did before your Lordship in the Tower…I suppose it will be near Christmas before I shall have surveyed the lands at Glastonbury, and take the audit there….
On 8 April, 1538, Friar Forrest was taken to Lambeth, where, before Cranmer, he was required to state that King Henry was Head of the Church. This, however, he refused to do. Forrest was sentenced to death, and was taken to Smithfield and burned. To add to the humour of this spectacle, the friar was burnt over a bonfire of religious statuary. Others disembowelled or burnt within months included:1534: Elizabeth Barton, (The Holy Maid of Kent), with five companions;John Dering, O.S.B., Edward Bocking, O.S.B., Hugh Rich, O.S.F., Richard Masters p., Henry Gold p
After Catholics rose at the closing of the Monasteries in 1536, King Henry wrote: Our pleasure is that . . . you shall cause such dreadful execution to be done upon a good number of the inhabitants of every town, village, and hamlet that have offended, as they may be a fearful spectacle to all others hereafter that would practice any like matter.
Several hundred, were executed, of whom no record remains. The following names, which do survive, are grouped under their respective abbeys or priories. - Barling: Matthew Mackerel, abbot and Bishop of Chalcedon. Bardney: John Tenent, William Cole, John Francis, William Cowper, Richard Laynton, Hugh Londale, monks. Bridlington: William Wood, Prior. Fountains: William Thyrsk. Guisborough: James Cockerel, Prior.Jervaulx: Adam Sedbar, Abbot; George Asleby. Kirkstead: Richard Harrison, Abbott, Richard Wade, William Swale, Henry Jenkinson, monks. Lenten: Nicholas Heath, Prior; William Gylham, monk. Sawlet: William Trafford, Abbott; Richard Eastgate, monk. Whalley: John Paslew, Abbott; John Eastgate, William Haydock, monks. Woburn: Robert Hobbes, Abbott; Ralph Barnes, sub-prior; Laurence Blonham, monk. York: John Pickering, Priests: William Burraby, Thomas Kendale, John Henmarsh, James Mallet, John Pickering, Thomas Redforth. Lords: Darcy and Hussey. Knights: Francis Bigod, Stephen Hammerton, Thomas Percy. Laymen: Robert Aske, Robert Constable, Bernard Fletcher, George Hudswell, Robert Lecche, Roger Neeve, George Lomley, Thomas Moyne, Robert Sotheby, Nicholas Tempest, Philip Trotter. Henry Courtney, Marquess of Exeter; Henry Pole, Lord Montague; Sir Edward Nevell Sir Nicholas Carew; George Croft p. John Collins p.; Hugh Holland. Their cause was “adhering to the Pope, and his Legate, Cardinal Pole”. Lawrence Cook, Prior of Doncaster; Thomas Empson; Robert Bird p.; William Peterson p.; William Richardson p.; Giles Heron l. Martin de Courdres, O.S.A., and Paul of St. William;
) you hear about particular Scottish Covenantors, and Puritans, and people like that, who were persecuted by the mostly Anglican civil governments of their time. And Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) gets a hard wrap too, because supposedly she wasn’t Anglican, but was fully Roman Catholic.
This was a gallows that hung many a Christian clergy by protestants. You will also find some of the names of the Christian martyrs and some of the wonderfull things they said before being slain by the reformed church.
