John Lomas Agnes Snoth Anne Wright Joan Sole And Joan Catmer

These five martyrs suffered together, January 31, 1556. John Lomas was a

young man of Tenterden. He was cited to appear at Canterbury, and was

examined January 17. His answers being adverse to the idolatrous

doctrine of the papacy, he was condemned on the following day, and

suffered January 31.



Agnes Snoth, widow, of Smarden Parish, was several times summoned before

the Catholic Pharisees, and rejecting a solution, indulgences,

transubstantiation, and auricular confession, she was adjudged worthy to

suffer death, and endured martyrdom, January 31, with Anne Wright and

Joan Sole, who were placed in similar circumstances, and perished at the

same time, with equal resignation. Joan Catmer, the last of this

heavenly company, of the parish Hithe, was the wife of the martyr George

Catmer.



Seldom in any country, for political controversy, have four women been

led to execution, whose lives were irreproachable, and whom the pity of

savages would have spared. We cannot but remark here that, when the

Protestant power first gained the ascendency over the Catholic

superstition, and some degree of force in the laws was necessary to

enforce uniformity, whence some bigoted people suffered privation in

their person or goods, we read of few burnings, savage cruelties, or

poor women brought to the stake, but it is the nature of error to resort

to force instead of argument, and to silence truth by taking away

existence, of which the Redeemer himself is an instance. The above five

persons were burnt at two stakes in one fire, singing hosannahs to the

glorified Saviour, till the breath of life was extinct. Sir John Norton,

who was present, wept bitterly at their unmerited sufferings.