John Rochester (martyr)

[1] The government was at first anxious to secure the public acquiescence of the monks of the London Charterhouse regarding royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, since for the austerity and sincerity of their mode of life they enjoyed great prestige.

Having failed in this, the only alternative was to annihilate the resistance since a refusal engaged the prestige of the monks in the opposite sense.

Little more than a month later, it was the turn of three leading monks of the London house: Humphrey Middlemore, William Exmew and Sebastian Newdigate, who were to die at Tyburn Tree on 19 June.

[2] He was the brother of Robert Rochester, Comptroller of the Household and a member of the Privy Council under Queen Mary.

That autumn, the government had just succeeded in putting down a rising in Lincolnshire, when on 13 October 1536, the far more serious Pilgrimage of Grace began, mustering an enormous multitude of adherents, perhaps as many as 40,000.