Content note: Shows the burning of two Protestant bishops at the stake at Oxford in 1555, in a woodcut printed in 1563 by an English Protestant author; it is shown as printed, with the historical context on the regime page. This object is shown as it was published. Why
Woodcut 'A table describing the burning of Bishop Ridley and Father Latimer at Oxford', in John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1563)
A full-page woodcut from the 1563 first edition of Foxe's Actes and Monuments showing Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley chained at the stake on 16 October 1555 in Oxford, with speech scrolls, a preacher in a pulpit, a crowd, and Thomas Cranmer watching from the Bocardo prison tower on the right. It depicts an execution under Mary I and was printed under Elizabeth I.
- Date
- 1563
- Period
- Pre-1914
- Made by
- John Foxe, author; John Day, printer, London (first English edition of Actes and Monuments)
- Country
- England
- Medium
- Issuer type
- Individual
- Regime
- Tudor England
- Leader
- Elizabeth I
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Commemorate
- Theme
- Religion
- Techniques
- TransferCard stacking
- Regime
- Tudor England
- Leader
- Henry VIII
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (scan from the Foxe Variorum site, johnfoxe.org), retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (PD-old, printed 1563; Commons file page)
Woodcut in John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: John Day, 1563), via Wikimedia Commons
Text on the object
A table describing the burning of Bishop Ridley and Father Latimer at Oxford, D. Smith there preaching at the time of their martirdome. Scroll from the pulpit (Smith): Si corpꝰ meū tradam igni caritatem autē non habeā nihil vtilitatis &c. Scroll above the right-hand tower (Cranmar): O Loid strengthen them, Latimer: Father of heauē receiue my soule. Ridley: In manꝰ tuas domine. Scroll from the seated spectators: M. Ridley I will remember your suite. Labels: Smith. Latimer. Ridley. Cranmar. L. Willias.
The English is early modern and is given as printed. Latin scroll from the pulpit: If I give my body to the fire but have not charity, there is no profit in it, etc. Ridley's scroll: Into your hands, Lord.
Read from the 1280 px image; the abbreviation marks (the macron over e and the curl after u) are shown as in the print where legible, and 'O Loid' is as printed ('Lord'). 'L. Willias' is read as printed; it is probably an abbreviated name. Some Latin letters are uncertain.
