PROTESTANT MARTYRS

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTIONS The martyrdom of John Laurence in Colchester in Essex, one of hundreds of executions of Protestant Christians condemned to the stake by Maria I Tudor "the Catholic". According to the chronicle of John Foxe, while Laurence began to consume alive in the flames, some children, approaching the stake without any adult having induced them to do so, wept and invoked the Lord who gave strength to His servant, and that he kept his promises; the religious was burned on March 29, 1555 chained to a chair, with which he seems to have been transported to the place because the chains and the strains of imprisonment had reduced him unable to stand up. Illustration from the "Book of Martyrs", originally written by John Foxe (1516 - 8 April 1587), revised by Reverend Madan - H. Trapp. Copper engraving, London 1776