Agnes Potten and Joan Trunchfield were two married townswomen of Ipswich of the artisan class, the husband of one being a shoemaker and the other a brewer.
At the time of the death of Queen Mary I in November 1558 no fewer than seventy-seven people in Ipswich and the neighbourhood lay under condemnation.
After the mandate against the married clergy, Robert Samuel, the displaced minister of East Bergholt, sent his wife to live in Ipswich.
The Ipswich jailer John Bird had been sympathetic, and it was probably there, when Samuel was in company with other prisoners who belonged to the reformed faith, that Agnes and Joan ministered to him.
Robert Samuel was burned at Ipswich on 31 August 1555, and on the following day, 1 September 1555, the women were arrested and imprisoned in the town jail.