Thomas Freeman opens this volume by stating that writings about martyrs have emerged in recent years out of an “ocean of neglect”—a claim based more on proprietary historiography than truth. In fact, historians have long been fascinated by martyrs in their biographical, psychoanalytical, or in the case of martyrological writings, literary aspects (with John Knott—overlooked here—being an excellent example of the latter). Nevertheless, Martyrs and Martyrdom in England represents the present state of affairs in writing about early modern martyrs; as such it provides a good overview, even if it does not break new ground in directing scholars toward fresher and more original directions on the subject.

Long dormant after the Roman persecutions of Christians, martyrdom was revived in the sixteenth century, when the reformation and official policies of religious uniformity resulted in the deaths of thousands or, in England's case, hundreds of individuals who perished willingly for their faith. But as Diana Piroyansky writes in one chapter, the Middle Ages witnessed a proliferation of the language of martyrdom, with “Christian suffering” and “Christ's passion” (71) constituting the primary themes. Although she might have given deeper readings of the material she covers, Piroyansky proceeds to survey devotional and liturgical texts that centered upon Mary's agonies, legends of virgin martyrs, or boy martyrs who were alleged to have suffered at the hands of murderous Jews. Texts that centered around medieval England's most famous martyr are only mentioned in passing by Piroyansky, although Thomas Mayer does explore the afterlife of Thomas Becket in a later chapter, describing how, upon the exhumation of the saint by Henry VIII, Reginald Pole injected new life into Becket by asserting that his bones were, simply, burned; by claiming such desecration had taken place, Pole advanced his own notion of martyrdom “and its power as a political tool” (133) in order to demonize Henry, attack the cause of Protestantism, and uphold the truth of the Catholic Church. Mayer proceeds to trace the influence of Pole and his claim of Becket's burned bones, through such clients or propagandists as Richard Hilliard or (more problematically) Crisostomo Enriquez; as a result, “the existence of a uniform ‘Roman’ view of Becket's fate … [was] disseminated, if not originated, almost certainly through Pole's agency” (139).

In the most interesting essay in the volume, Richard Rex presents a convincing thesis that the Lollard Richard Wyche—whose execution “was more widely reported than any other execution with the possible exception of [John] Oldcastle” (92)—was not in fact a Lollard at the time of his trial and execution but a man who had renounced his previous heresy. His continued reformist, anticlericalist stance, however, alienated “a clerical interest group which had taken offense at his vigorous critique of pluralism—and, no doubt, of other ecclesiastical abuses” (99). He was duly condemned as a heretic, but “this was not how people saw him” (100); instead, motivated by popular piety and “fellow feeling for an innocent man wrongly convicted,” those who venerated him were actually Catholics (97). Indeed, Lollards refuted not only miracles but any kind of martyrological tradition; “Lollards,” writes Rex, “produced testimony, not martyrology” (105).

The most notorious martyrs were made in the reign of Mary, with William Wizeman reflecting recent historiographical trends in asserting the positive, proto-Tridentine aspects of the queen's reign. Dependent upon a vibrant print culture, writers such as Miles Hogarde produced polemical texts that upheld the “true martyrs of Christ's Catholic church” while demonizing the heresy of their opponents. “Accompanied by such intellectual and emotive underpinnings from Marian Catholic texts,” Wizeman writes, “the Marian persecution took place” (176). In the next reign, Robert Persons would continue the effort, although from his own distinct perspective; in a particularly probing essay, Victor Houliston describes how Persons, with John Foxe in mind, “decided to write a history of the English church that would identify Englishness with Roman Catholicism” (185). Concerned above all with the “unity and character of the English Catholic community,” which was experiencing inner divisions and controversy, Persons placed controversy and polemic as secondary, although of course he was not above attacking Foxe's own work (which he viewed as “a dispraise of Rome rather than a monument to Canterbury”; 192). In directing his book to the recusant community—in “desir[ing] to make [them] alive to their glorious inheritance”—Persons assured them that they were “at home,” while it was the Protestants who were “wandering in the wilderness, in exile in the far country” (195).

With the exception of articles by Rex and Houliston, this essentially conservative volume covers well-trodden ground: much of what Brad Gregory writes about Tyndale and More, contrasting their stance toward saints and sanctity, their view of “true” and “false” martyrs, and their own experience of martyrdom, can be found at different points in his Salvation at Stake; Alec Ryrie—otherwise one of the best reformation historians today—retreads some of what he has previously written on the villainization of Stephen Gardiner in his otherwise excellent discussion of the Henrician martyr Robert Barnes. Andrew Lacey's exploration of Charles I is also a condensation of his other work, while Freeman, in a lengthy early chapter, retreads the old secularization (or politicization) thesis of early modern religion and martyrdom without acknowledging the challenges that have been made to it by scholars such as Bob Scribner.

Freeman excepted, perhaps this is the purpose of a volume such as this, to highlight or provide a sample of scholars’ best work; yet, familiarity, unfortunately, can come at the expense of laying down new paths for scholars to pursue. Too many chapters focus on individual martyrs at the expense of deeper structural or theological understandings (“snapshots” [34], Freeman calls the essays); interesting recent works by literary scholars such as Ryan Netzley are never cited. Also not mentioned are relatively overlooked seventeenth-century instances of martyrdom such as the protestant “martyrs” of the 1641 Irish uprising, the martyrology-soaked sermons to New Model Army soldiers, or the martyrologies that emerged after Oliver Cromwell's massacre at Drogheda and Wexford (although Freeman, who tends to be shaky when he leaves the subject of John Foxe, ludicrously denies religious motive to Cromwell's Irish adventure, dependent as he is on one problematic secondary source and entirely neglecting the work of Micheal O Siochru and others on the subject of the atrocities. This staid volume is therefore an effective overview, reiterating ten years of excellent scholarship—but scholarship that calls for new critical approaches toward a subject that need not be as reverent as martyrs, and martyrologists, took themselves to be.