Richard Woodman (martyr)

– 22 June 1557) was a Protestant martyr, who was born in Buxted and lived in nearby Warbleton in East Sussex.

[1][2] Woodman was born around 1524 in Buxted in East Sussex; he became an ironmaster,[3] and became known whilst running an "iron-making" business that employed one hundred people.

Woodman was imprisoned and investigated at intervals by local magistrates and at quarter sessions where he refused to assure them of his intention to conform.

He spent periods in prison amounting to six months in total where he was examined by the Bishop of Chichester, George Day, and by the commissioners of Cardinal Pole.

Whilst a prisoner there he was further examined including an investigation by thirty respectable people who set him free on 18 December 1555.

In 1868 a figure dressed as the "Bishop of Lewes" warned Protestants of the Roman Catholic threat and the following year an effigy of the pope was to be blown up with gunpowder.