List of Protestant martyrs of the English Reformation

Although the standard penalty for those convicted of treason in England at the time was execution by being hanged, drawn and quartered, this legislation adopted the punishment of burning the condemned.

An important year in the English Reformation was 1547, when Protestantism became a new force under the child-king Edward VI, England's first Protestant ruler.

With her repeal of all religious legislation passed under Edward VI, Protestants faced a choice: exile, reconciliation/conversion, or punishment.

[5]: 79 Although the so-called "Marian Persecutions" began with four clergymen, relics of Edwardian England's Protestantism,[2]: 196  Foxe's Book of Martyrs offers an account of the executions, which extended well beyond the anticipated targets – high-level clergy.

[5]: 91 Thus it became a matter of establishing the guilt or innocence of an accused heretic in open court – a process which the lay authorities employed to reclaim "straying sheep" and to set a precedent for authentic Catholic teaching.

[5]: 87  Later, after Mary I came to power and restored England to Catholicism, John Rogers spoke quite vehemently against the new order and was himself burnt as a heretic.