Great Expectations No.12 Storytime round the Fire: 

For the Burning of Thomas Hytten (1530 Maidstone)  

2024 

Carbon, Quartz, Epoxy Putty, Foxes Book of Martyrs

Thomas Hitton (died February 1530) is generally considered to be the first English Protestant martyr of the Reformation, although the followers of Wycliffe - the Lollards - had been burned at the stake as late as 1519.

Thomas Hitton may only feature as a footnote (if that) in modern histories of the English Reformation. In his day it was different. As an early martyr of a new credal generation he sparked new admiration. Stemming from Norfolk (Foxe tells us), which had been a home of Lollards a hundred years earlier, he was sentenced by Archbishop Warham and burned at Maidstone (where he had been preaching) in February 1530. By 1531 Hitton was already being referred to as a Saint.

Foxe's Book of Martyrs, also known as The Actes and Monuments (of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church), is a work of history, martyrology and propaganda by Protestant English historian John Foxe, first published in 1563. A "gigantic folio volume" of about 1800 pages filled with "sensational episodes of torture and death"

This text, over many dozens of textual alterations (four different editions were published by 1583, each much expanded: the 2nd edition was 2300 very large pages), and their scholarly interpretations, helped to frame English consciousness (national, religious and historical), for over four hundred years.

Between 1555 -1558 forty one Kentish Martyrs were executed for heresy in Canterbury, they included the last Protestants burnt during the reign of Mary I.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, four Catholic Martyrs were executed by hanging, drawing and quartering at Oaten Hill, Canterbury, on 1 October 1588