Coventry Martyrs

The Coventry Martyrs were a disparate group of Lollard Christians executed for their beliefs in Coventry between 1512 – 1522 (seven men and two women) and in 1555 (three men). Eleven of them are commemorated by a six-metre high monument, erected in 1910 in a public garden in the city, between Little Park Street and Mile Lane; and by a mosaic constructed in 1953 inside the entrance to Broadgate House in the city centre. Some of the streets in the city’s Cheylesmore suburb are named after them. See also Cheylesmore road names.

Former Coventry vicar and historian Alan Munden has made the case for the number of martyrs to be increased to thirteen, if a woman burned in 1432 for Lollardy is included among their number. Lollards were known to be active in the city as early as 1414, and sources of the time record Lollardy-related public order incidents in 1424 and 1431. In 1432, the wife of a mayor was executed at Coventry for Lollardy, with further ecclesiastical court trials recorded for 1445 and 1486.

In 1511–12, some 74 Lollards appeared before the court of Geoffrey Blythe, the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, most of them from Coventry and the surrounding area. It is likely they were interrogated either at the bishop’s manor at Maxstoke, or at the Greyfriars monastery in the city itself. Those who confessed were forced to sign an abjuration, to be read by the accused bare-legged and bare-headed in the Cathedral. However, the bishop’s campaign appears to have been unsuccessful, and the following year nine people were burned in the city, most of them individuals who had abjured and done penance the previous year, but had since returned to their sincerely-held Lollard views. Records suggest that the possession of Protestant literature, and of the Scriptures in English (illegal at the time), were a significant part of the case against them.

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