The important place occupied by Protestant martyrs in early-modern English culture is well known. Historians and literary scholars have highlighted several aspects of the subject, beginning with the towering influence exerted by the writings of John Bale and John Foxe, first published in the mid-sixteenth century.Footnote ¹ These writings established powerful models for English stories about Christian martyrs and went on to inform all subsequent writings on the subject.Footnote ² Bale and Foxe also influenced the conduct of those who were persecuted for religion amid the tensions of the early-modern period as a whole. The well-known key texts – Foxe’s Actes and monuments in particular – connected successive generations of Protestants back to the heroes of the mid-sixteenth century and, beyond them, to late medieval Lollards and martyrs of the Early Church. Over time, explains John Knott, Foxe’s martyrs came to belong to ‘a legendary past’.Footnote ³ Stories from this past highlighted a range of behavioural tropes among England’s Protestant martyrs in the reigns of Henry viii and Mary i: animated verbal exchanges with villainous investigators (led by ‘bloody Bonner’, the bishop of London under Queen Mary); personal meekness combined with confrontational courage that came only from God (Christ was of course the dominant role-model, both in his calmness and in his uncompromising determination to bear witness to the truth); an irrepressible urge to express true faith through the delivery of spoken confessions; a readiness to put aside all worldly interests; and joyful willingness in the face of death. A martyr’s fate was the ‘good death’ writ very large, and Bale and Foxe magnified the personal sacrifice of their subjects by emphasising the horrors of execution, sometimes in graphic detail.Footnote ⁴

Reviewing recent work on this subject, it seems that the Protestant martyr tradition was kept alive and vibrant throughout the early modern period partly by a series of unresolved internal tensions. Those who told martyr-stories were, for example, clearly influenced by the suffering saints of the medieval Golden legend, yet it was necessary to play down or deny this influence.Footnote ⁵ Despite the mutual hostility of Protestants and Catholics in the early modern age, martyr stories from both sides drew on a shared repertoire of ideas and behaviours.Footnote ⁶ One defining feature of the martyr was a readiness to die, yet Foxe also approved of the many Protestants who, like him, had chosen to go into exile on the continent during Mary’s reign in order to save their skins. Individual martyrs had to be both local and transcendent if they were to exercise the necessary persuasive power.Footnote ⁷ Some of this transcendence was inadvertently gifted by the prosecuting authorities, who aimed to kill heretics but ran the risk of birthing heroes who would never die. Martyrs also had to be simultaneously weak and strong, and in a patriarchal culture the weakness of men and the strength of women were both potentially problematic. The most valuable martyrs were socially humble but spiritually noble, and they all had to love their families while happily leaving them behind. Martyrs were also role-models whose acceptance of a fiery death made them, for most of their contemporaries, inimitable. And as the period unfolded, two political-religious tensions also grew in significance: the Marian martyrs were heroes of Protestantism in Church and State, yet their heroism was achieved through the defiance of legitimate royal authority; and those who opposed episcopacy in the seventeenth century had to reckon with the various Protestant martyrs who had been bishops of the established Church.Footnote ⁸ The awkwardness inherent in all these contradictions seems to have enhanced rather than diminished the importance of Protestant martyrs within English culture. Tensions keep us on our toes.

The role played by broadside ballads in publicising martyr-stories is not so well understood. Historians have emphasised ‘the power that martyrs had to inspire their contemporaries’ but the importance of ballads as one of the vital channels along which this power flowed has often been neglected. Freeman and Mayer note in passing that martyrs were ‘even the subject of ballads’, registering a level of surprise that is itself surprising.Footnote ⁹ Ballads were, after all, the cheapest form of printed literature, and certainly far more affordable than copies of Foxe’s ‘Book of martyrs’.Footnote ¹⁰ Of course, the cultural influence of Foxe is unquestionable, and there were many ways in which people could encounter his stories without owning his book – copies were on display in some churches, and cheaper abridged versions were also available – but ballads may actually have been equally important in encouraging people to think about martyrs.

More broadly, ballads can also be seen and heard as important registers of commonplace preoccupations in the period, particularly if an attempt is made to identify the most successful publications. The register of the Stationers’ Company shows that several martyr-ballads were published in the later sixteenth century, though only very rarely have copies survived. Admittedly, we know of only around ten ballads about Protestant martyrs in the early modern period as a whole, and these were swamped by thousands of songs on other subjects. There were, nevertheless, ballads about the martyrs John Bradford, John Philpot and John Careless, among others.Footnote ¹¹ Most of these publications seem to have faded in popularity by the early seventeenth century, but the ‘100 ballads’ website, launched in 2024, draws our attention to three songs in particular that lasted for a century or more, beginning as ‘hits’ and maturing to become ‘classics’. Intriguingly, all three songs concentrate on women, a feature that will clearly require careful consideration. The first two songs, both anonymous, were normally issued together on a single sheet during the seventeenth century, though it seems likely that Elizabethan editions – now lost – had appeared separately: Ann Askew, intituled, I am a woman poor and blind (originally written 1546–96, with at least nine editions before 1710); and A rare example of a vertuous maid in Paris (c. 1586, with at least nine subsequent editions). The third example, composed by Thomas Deloney, is The most rare and excellent history, of the dutchess of Suffolks callamity (1590s, with at least eleven editions to 1711).Footnote ¹² The last of these dealt with an exile who did not actually die for her faith but who appears to have earned the status of an honorary martyr within early modern English culture.

The ‘100 ballads’ project assesses the success of songs according to a range of criteria: the numbers of surviving editions and copies of each ballad; evidence that publishers registered individual songs with London’s Company of Stationers (something that was required of them but often neglected, unless they were keen to assert their legal ownership of particularly promising or successful ballads); indications that the tunes to which ballads were sung acquired new names as a result of their association with particular songs (tunes were often recycled in this period, being nominated for several different songs); evidence that new woodcut illustrations were commissioned for particular songs, an additional cost that was generally considered worthwhile only if a ballad had already proved itself successful (pictures, like tunes, were more commonly recycled); and the extent to which individual ballads survived as folk songs in later centuries. The three highly successful martyr-ballads therefore earn their place in the chart, despite competition from all the songs about sexual relations, strange wonders and sensational crimes that are often assumed to have dominated the genre. Furthermore, the martyr-ballads are accompanied in the list of best-sellers by numerous songs on other religious topics. There were Bible stories, calls for repentance, descriptions of exemplary deaths, visions of heaven and hell, rhyming lists of rules for godly living, tales of divine vengeance directed at individual sinners, declarations by repentant criminals, songs criticising Catholics and/or Protestant nonconformists, and stories of doomed historical celebrities such as John Faust and the Wandering Jew. All in all, 23 per cent of the super-songs featured on the website were primarily religious in their subject matter, while a further 18 per cent included religion as one of the primary themes, alongside others. It is obvious, therefore, that the three ballads about Protestant martyrs of the mid-sixteenth century were part of a very substantial body of hit songs on religious themes. They can tell us a great deal about popular tastes in martyrology, and the three ballads will therefore form the focus of this article.Footnote ¹³

Most recent histories of early modern martyrdom pay scant attention to these songs, despite their obvious influence. If authors mention the ballads at all, they generally follow the rather negative line of interpretation pioneered by the scholars of religious balladry, Tessa Watt and Ian Green. Both have proved particularly influential here, noting the success of the songs but also criticising them for reducing the power, personality and Protestantism of their subjects to the point at which Askew, the Parisian maid and the duchess of Suffolk become merely generic. The implications seem to be that these were not really religious songs at all, despite their titles, and that they therefore cannot have appealed to early modern consumers primarily on religious grounds.Footnote ¹⁴ Clearly, this is an interpretation to which we will have cause to return.

There are good reasons for considering these songs afresh, concentrating not on their aesthetic shortcomings as apparent today but instead on the reasons for their striking popularity in the early modern period. It seems likely that the three ballads, successful across such a long period, were important in promoting and developing Protestant identities, particularly among those who lacked the resources to buy more expensive titles. A concentration on the popularity of the songs may help us to understand the important but somewhat mysterious process by which most English people came to think of themselves as Protestants, without necessarily having a clear idea of what this meant in precise theological terms. Historians, a little like early modern divines, search without much success for evidence of deep theological understanding – propositional Protestantism – among the population at large, while neglecting a commonplace conversion experience that was rooted more securely in inspirational stories, some from the Bible and some from more recent history.Footnote ¹⁵ Most editions of the successful martyr-ballads were also brought to life by woodcut pictures and association-rich tunes, and these too were clearly valuable in building success in the marketplace. If we concentrate too heavily on textual and intellectual content when assessing these songs, we run the risk of misunderstanding and underestimating their significance. With these issues in mind, this article will consider each of the three hit songs in turn, before concluding with some general reflections about their significance for historians of martyrdom, religion more broadly, balladry and gender.

Ann Askew was a Lincolnshire gentlewoman, burned for heresy – particularly her denial of the real presence – at Smithfield in 1546.Footnote ¹⁶ Numerous versions of her story circulated during the early modern period, and most of them depended heavily on the texts first published by Bale and Foxe.Footnote ¹⁷ Bale claimed to be transcribing Askew’s own manuscript account of her two examinations (with an editorial commentary), and Foxe clearly based his account on Bale’s. Both men outline Askew’s background in Lincolnshire, including her early espousal of Protestantism and the consequent break-up of her marriage, before concentrating on the detail of her two examinations and eventual execution. Askew’s account, as edited and augmented by Bale and Foxe, emphasises several key aspects of her interrogation and death: her unshakeable faith, and her capacity to respond to her interrogators with either defiance or silence, depending on the circumstances; the contrast between her feminine weakness (which she strategically highlights herself) and the strength of Christ within her; her impressive scriptural knowledge and her ability to deploy it skilfully in argument; and the unmitigated evil of her persecutors – including Bishops Bonner and Gardiner – who are all clearly inhabited by Antichrist and the devil. Many of these features are also incorporated in a forceful, faith-focused ballad, included by Bale, ‘whych Anne Askewe made and sange whan she was in Newgate’ (this bears no clear relation to the hit song under consideration here).Footnote ¹⁸ Bale and Foxe also concentrate heavily on the graphic details of Askew’s physical suffering, including her near-death on the rack and her final demise in the flames.

Perhaps surprisingly, the anonymous ballad, Ann Askew, intituled, I am a woman poor and blind, represents its hero in a different light. It portrays Askew as a humble woman of ‘little knowledge’ who pursues an urgent and anguished quest to find spiritual truth. Using an extended horticultural metaphor, Askew seeks an answer to the urgent question, ‘what Herb in my Garden were best to be’? Logically, she consults a gardener for advice, desiring him ‘for the love of the Lord,/ true seed in my Garden for to sow’ (here, we are presumably being encouraged to think of her subsequent interrogator, Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester). Askew’s chosen adviser proceeds to take advantage of her ignorance, filling her head with falsehoods and advising her to atone for her sins by investing in ‘stones and stocks’, ‘Chappel or Chauntry’, ‘Trentals of Mass, and balls of Lead’. He also warns her to steer clear of the ‘new learning’, ‘which is the thing I most abhor’. His advice is extensive, yet he says ‘not one word … of Christs passion’. Askew mistakenly follows his instructions, before realising her error, turning to the Bible and casting herself upon the mercy of Christ. In this new condition, she asks for forgiveness and for strength to endure the brutal attentions of those who have now imprisoned her. She prays that all her ‘faithful friends’ might be kept ‘from this Gardners hands’, knowing that he intends to ‘bring them soon unto their ends,/ with cruel torments of fierce fire-brands’. In the final verse, she returns again to the subject of her body, addressing God directly:

Scholars have written extensively of Askew’s defiant example but this ballad has not been well-researched, despite its status as a major hit of the period. It has, for example, been misdated repeatedly as a song of the 1620s because this was the decade in which it was first registered with the Company of Stationers.Footnote ²⁰ Interpretative weight has also been placed upon this mistaken date; Christine Peters, for example, has argued that the ballad’s content reveals the transition in Protestant priorities that occurred in the early seventeenth century as the focus shifted away from graphic evidence of martyrdom and towards more pastoral concerns.Footnote ²¹ In fact, the song was composed at a much earlier date. In 1596, Thomas Nashe accused Gabriel Harvey of stealing the expression ‘a woman poore and blinde’ from ‘the Ballet of Anne Askew’, indicating that the song was already known at this date (its opening line runs, ‘I am a woman poor and blind’).Footnote ²² It is difficult to be more precise than this, though it seems possible that by 1596 the song had already existed for several decades. The absence of a named tune is one possible indicator of an early date; after c. 1590, the overwhelming majority of published ballads nominated a melody to facilitate singing. And in one of the song’s verses, Askew notes that the wicked ‘Gardiner’ who misled her has now gone further astray, ‘and much pestilent seed abroad he hath sown’. This feels like a specific reference to a still-living individual, raising the possibility that the song was originally written before Bishop Gardiner’s death in 1555. In the very next verse, Askew notes that she has insufficient space in the song to discuss ‘the cause of my death’, but she adds, ‘I trust hereafter that by Gods holy grace,/ that all faithful men shall plainly know.’Footnote ²³ Is this perhaps a reference to the imminent or recent publication of Bale’s account, with its very different focus and level of detail?

If this speculative suggestion has merit, the song’s publication history might look something like this: it was composed soon after Askew’s execution, perhaps by somebody who knew that Bale’s published account was beginning to circulate (the posthumous content of the final verses seems to rule out Askew herself as the author, though the song as it survives today may of course have been an expanded and modified version of the original); it circulated among committed Protestants in manuscript, before being picked up and issued by a ballad publisher at some point during the reign of Elizabeth; it established itself as a success, attracting the attention of the industry-dominating ‘Ballad Partners’ who – in line with their known business practice – bought the rights in the 1620s and registered it with the Stationers’ Company (this is recorded in 1624).Footnote ²⁴ Through the remainder of the seventeenth century, the Partners and their successors published regular editions, confident that they would always sell well.

The ballad has few fans today, however. For Tessa Watt, it portrays Askew as ‘a generic victim of popery’, little resembling ‘the strong, intelligent woman’ represented in other sources. Askew, it is argued, becomes a mere victim, stripped of ‘stubbornness and strength’ and reduced to lamenting her woes ‘in a tone of feminine weakness and supplication to her oppressors’. Ian Green agrees, calling the song ‘a travesty of the original story which … reduces the central figure to a cardboard cut-out’. And Christine Peters argues that the ballad transforms Askew from a ‘confident saint’ into a ‘frail Christian needing guidance’. The garden metaphor, under this view, represents a formerly heroic woman as something far more passive, ‘a receptive vessel’.Footnote ²⁵ In short, the Ann Askew of the ballad is considered a disappointment, in comparison to the character found in better-known sources.

None of this helps to explain why ballad-consumers were apparently ready to purchase the song throughout the early modern period, and it seems possible that its modern detractors have been missing something. Arguably, the ballad was never intended to reduce Askew’s power and passion; instead, it presents a different side of her, having been written before her reputation for defiant and intelligent heroism solidified following the publication of works by Bale, Foxe and others. After these accounts appeared, we might have expected the ballad to fade from prominence, but its popularity actually appears to have increased, raising the possibility that many consumers appreciated its alternative or supplementary representation of Askew.

What, then, might people have found appealing in this representation? The ballad is effectively a conversion narrative in miniature, a sort of prequel to the tale that historians know so well, rather than a travesty of it. Despite the single-sheet format, there is more detail on Askew’s initial struggles to seek out the truth than can be found in either Bale or Foxe. In their works, Askew’s conversion experience is largely in the background; by the time she visits Lincoln to read the Bible provocatively in the cathedral, she is no longer confused, ‘because I knew my matter to be good’.Footnote ²⁶ In the ballad, however, Askew models the journey from darkness to light in a more explicit way, and it seems possible that the emphasis on her early perplexity (‘My spirit within me is vexed sore’) had the effect of humanising her for ordinary Christians. Arguably, these factors worked in tandem with the conspicuous absence of graphic detail about her torture and execution to represent Askew as a more plausible role-model, providing generations of English people with a fresh version of the woman whose willingness to die in flames perhaps rendered her somewhat remote. The softening of Askew’s image can also be detected in the absence of references to her controversial separation from her husband, and the presence of a new emphasis on management of the garden, typically a woman’s role. Fittingly, the woodcut images that were selected from the printers’ stock to illustrate all surviving editions of the song concentrated not on Askew’s martyrdom (there were other pictures of this) but instead on individual women who either sought advice from priests or knelt in prayer or held vases of flowers, referencing the ballad’s gardening theme.Footnote ²⁷ Overall, the ballad was obviously a lesson in godly integrity, but it concentrated on personal reflection and relatability rather than on family break-up, torture and execution. Perhaps this was indeed a more conventionally feminine representation of Askew – references to the ‘masculinity’ of her faith, found in other sources, have no place here – but it was one that clearly chimed with the ballad-buying public, even if it seems less satisfying today.Footnote ²⁸

Having said this, Askew’s celebrated defiance is certainly not omitted completely. She terms her interrogators ‘bloody Butchers’ and accuses them of doing ‘the Devils work’. They purvey ‘stinking meat’ in order to keep people ‘in blindness still’. And Askew declares her allegiance to the Bible, ‘Which I will not deny whilst I have breath,/ for prison, fire, fagot or fierce sword’. In the light of such statements, it is difficult to understand how Askew’s statements can be understood as ‘supplication to her oppressors’.Footnote ²⁹ The suggestion that the gardening metaphor represented the Protestant heroine as a mere receptacle is also undermined by the fact that Askew, as portrayed in the ballad, ultimately turns her back bravely and decisively on all the priestly advice she has been offered. Admittedly, Askew’s heroic resistance to authority is not highlighted in the ballad but it seems misguided to argue that she becomes a passive nonentity as a result. Moreover, familiarity with Foxe’s account in the 150 years after its first publication in 1563 meant that, in the minds of many ballad consumers, unspoken knowledge was also in play when they read or heard the song. After Foxe, almost everybody presumably knew that Askew was utterly resolute in her faith and that she was burned alive bearing witness to it. The ballad reminded them of this but also directed attention to other aspects of her story.

Additional features of the ballad may also have served to set it apart in ways that appealed to early modern consumers. The twist that was provided by the role of the ‘gardiner’ was, for example, novel and apparently satisfying, and his appearances in the ballad are also more subtle than they might seem. He shape-shifts, seeming to represent not only Bishop Gardiner but also a local Lincolnshire priest and the Catholic Church as a whole. Among ballad-consumers, it seems likely that such instabilities were intended to provoke discussion, thus intensifying engagement with the song. And there was also matter for debate in the ballad’s telescoping of time. To us, this might seem a little perplexing but in the minds of early modern consumers, it evidently hit the mark. In the ballad, Askew uses the present tense to bring a sense of immediacy to each phase of her life: the confusion she experienced before her conversion (though here she also switches into the past tense); her imprisonment by the ‘bloody Butchers’; and her condition after her execution, as she bequeaths her soul to God and leaves her bodily ashes behind on earth (until the general resurrection). The singer or reader effectively becomes Askew in each phase of her life – encouraged by the extensive use of the first person – and the significance of her ‘gardiner’ alters with each new stage. In this manner, the ballad actually comes closer than other accounts to presenting a full autobiography, albeit an episodic one. On a single sheet, this was quite an achievement.

The argument that the ballad about Ann Askew was an attempt to reduce her to mere passivity is further undermined by its appearance, in later editions at least, on the same sheet as A rare example of a vertuous maid in Paris. This song, first registered with the Stationers in 1586, features a young Protestant woman who cannot possibly be accused of lacking spirit. Her case does not appear in Foxe’s Actes and monuments, and all attempts to connect her with an actual individual have so far failed.Footnote ³⁰ The story seems unlikely to have been fictional, however, for making up martyrs was not common practice. Askew and the Parisian maid may have shared a sheet but they were represented rather differently. Ann Askew, as we have seen, moved the focus away from her martyrdom, but A rare example of a vertuous maid highlights its hero’s execution. Written in the third person but with regular reported speech, the song opens with an attempt by the maid’s mother to insist that she attend mass. This provokes a response that combines deference and defiance, thus making the point that the young woman is not a social revolutionary but instead a defender of truth:

This sets the tone for all the young woman’s subsequent interactions. The mother, after consulting her kinsfolk, turns her daughter over to the authorities, hoping hereby to frighten her into submission. The maiden remains defiant and is soon sentenced to death. In approaching her final moments, she displays many of the classic characteristics of the sixteenth-century martyr. Despite her ‘tender’ years and her status as a ‘silly Damosel’, she is remarkably resilient and her faith in Christ is unwavering. She willingly leaves the things of the world behind and asks God to help her face her execution ‘with patience’. She accepts death joyfully, delivering a speech at ‘the place of Torment’ in which she urges her mother and all the other watching ‘Ladies’ to ‘Imbrace Gods true religion.’ When she sees that her weeping mother is holding ‘a book covered with gold’, she responds forcefully:

She commends her soul ‘To Christ her only saviour’ and bids farewell to all present. By this stage, attentive listeners can almost smell the smoke, though it is noticeable that the ballad-makers nevertheless refrain from describing the maid’s consumption by fire. Once again, graphic detail is implied but avoided.Footnote ³¹

The multiple editions of this song are one signal of its popularity but there are others too. In Francis Beaumont’s The knight of the burning pestle, published in 1613, a young man who is asked to provide music says ‘I can sing none forsooth but a ladies daughter of Paris properly’ (he remembers it by its opening lines, rather than by the title).Footnote ³² In William D’Avenant’s Love and honor (1649), a young woman reportedly ‘sings at her work … the holy caroll/ O’ th Ladies daughter converted in Paris; She was of Paris properly &c’. In this case, the woman’s taste for this song seems to be humorously presented as a sign that she is ill-bred, perhaps because ballads were, by the mid-seventeenth century, regarded as a coarse and unworthy literary form.Footnote ³³ In the seventeenth century, the song was sufficiently well known that ‘The ladies daughter of Paris’ became a new title for the existing tune – usually called ‘O man in desperation’ – to which it was sung. Taken together, the evidence reinforces the suggestion that this was an early modern hit.

A further signal of success can be found in the song’s intriguing afterlife in America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With a new, distinctively American tune and a new title – usually ‘The Romish lady’ – it was published in numerous hymn books from 1835 onwards, and it seems to have been associated particularly with southern Baptist communities and churches.Footnote ³⁴ In versions of various lengths, it was also recorded regularly as a folk song in southern, eastern and mid-western states. In South Carolina, for example, ‘a group of ditch-diggers’ sang it at work in 1937.Footnote ³⁵ Most strikingly, it is said to have been one of Abraham Lincoln’s favourite songs, and he regularly had it performed by a musical companion for the benefit of his elderly father.Footnote ³⁶ In all surviving American versions, the lyrics of the original sixteenth-century song have been revised to suit a different time and place, but the connections are obvious none the less. In the main hymn book version, the French setting is removed, and the old opening lines – ‘It was a Ladies Daughter,/ of Paris properly’ – become ‘There was a Romish lady brought up in popery’. In another notable alteration, the young woman is condemned to death by the pope himself, rather than by a local court. Beyond these changes, however, the story remains essentially the same and there are many obvious textual echoes. For example, ‘Unto that false idol/ I never can obey’ becomes ‘unto these false idols I can no longer bow’, and ‘bring me hither my bible,/ wherein I take delight’ appears as ‘Restore to me my bible, in which I take delight’.Footnote ³⁷ It seems clear that the song’s most important role in America was to express vehemently anti-Catholic sentiments through a compelling story, and the posting of recent recordings on YouTube suggests that, in some circles, it still performs this role (one of those currently available includes the words ‘Catholics MUST LISTEN’ in its online title).Footnote ³⁸ It is usually unclear whether those who sang the song in America from 1835 onwards were aware of its origins as an Elizabethan broadside ballad.

Despite this long record of popularity, historians of martyrdom generally overlook the song, while scholars of balladry find it underwhelming. Tessa Watt notes the Parisian maid’s commitment to her cause but considers her a ‘generic type’ who is stripped of personal characteristics. Ian Green is similarly unimpressed, and he even seems to doubt the French maid’s zeal: ‘The extent of the commitment of the unnamed “virtuous maid of Paris” who is burnt for refusing to become a Catholic is to reject the mass as a “filthy idol”, request her copy of the Bible “wherein I most delight”, urge her parents to embrace “God’s true religion”, and hope “through Christ her saviour/ To have immortal fame”.’Footnote ³⁹ The objection is presumably that she does not elaborate on her theological opinions but perhaps this is to expect too much of a teenager in such terrible trouble.

Once again, scholarly dissatisfaction leaves us with the challenge of understanding the song’s obvious success in early-modern England. The first point to make is that the ballad is not actually quite as generic and featureless as has been claimed. Admittedly, there are no names and no dates but we do have a French location and plenty of detail about the maiden’s circumstances, behaviour and speech. In one verse, she addresses her aged father, ‘wherever thou doest lye’. He clearly has no role in her life, and the maid imagines that he is unaware that she is about to be executed: ‘Therefore my loving father,/ I bid you now farewell.’ This is precise and specific information that cannot really be considered ‘generic’. Regular references to the maid’s worldly wealth also serve to situate her socially. In prison, her ‘golden bracelets’ are replaced with ‘cords’ that ‘bound her fast’. Furthermore, ‘They stript this silly damosel,/ out of her rich array’ and removed ‘Her chain of gold so costly’. Each of these challenges presents her with the opportunity to react in godly fashion by praying for patience and ‘joyfully’ forsaking the world. These are details that not only help the reader and listener to understand who the young woman is but also encourage personal reflection.

Other features of the ballad may also have contributed to its success. Strikingly, it is situated in a world of women. Only in passing does the song mention the maid’s father, the ecclesiastical judge and the ‘man of death’ (executioner). Instead, the young woman’s main interactions are with her cruel mother and the ‘ladies’ who attend her execution. The attention paid to her fine clothing and golden decorations may also have contributed to the impression of a predominantly feminine context. For some consumers, the female focus of the song may have had the effect of deflecting attention away from the maid’s defiance of male authority, but it might equally well be understood as an attempt to appeal particularly to women by reflecting their concerns and relationships while representing them as shapers of their own narratives. Relatability was an important factor in the popularity of ballads and, although the maiden makes a sacrifice that must have seemed beyond the capacities of most consumers, there are also some more realistic hints of the psychological struggle that was playing out behind the brave face she wore in public (reminding us of Ann Askew, on the other side of the sheet in surviving editions). Praying for patience immediately after losing her golden bracelets is one indication of this. At the place of execution, she addresses her weeping mother in a speech that seems to mix gratitude with a hint of bitterness:

Despite her readiness to die, she prays that her mother and friends ‘may never feel such woe’ at the hands of others. And, a little surprisingly, she hopes to achieve ‘immortal fame’ through her sacrifice. This seems jarringly egotistical but perhaps such thoughts were a coping mechanism for somebody who was on the verge of being incinerated. So, despite the dominant tone of resolution and resignation, there are also signals of anguish. It seems possible that these may have helped to render the Paris maid a little more approachable than she might otherwise have been.

The ballad was never published with a picture but its original melody was clearly part of its appeal.Footnote ⁴⁰ Its title, ‘O man in desperation’, may not sound particularly enticing to modern ears but, throughout the early modern period, this was music that meant something. It is a compelling tune, sober and urgent in mood, and in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries many different ballads were set to it. In the manuscript collection of songs known as the Shirburn Ballads (compiled between 1585 and 1616), it is one of the most frequently nominated tunes, recommended for the singing of three different numbers. And almost all of the songs that were brought to life by ‘O man in desperation’ were religious in content, focusing particularly on judgement, visions of heaven, preparation for death and divine intervention. It was therefore a distinctively godly tune, and through the steady accumulation of associations it must have contributed to the meaning of the ballads that used it. After about 1620, the tune was not often named for newly-written ballads, though it was still heard regularly in its association with long-running hits that included the ballad about the Parisian maid and the equally serious England new bell-man: ringing into all peoples ears Gods dreadful judgements against this land and kingdom. Melodies are often neglected by modern scholars but this one clearly packed a punch.Footnote ⁴¹

Perhaps the jointly-issued songs about Ann Askew and the Parisian maid provide less individual detail than we would like but it should be remembered that the single-sheet format imposed severe constraints on the ballad-makers. It is hardly surprising that martyr-songs were more concise than accounts published in prose. Moreover, the reduction in specificity may actually have been a positive factor in the perennial appeal of these songs. Perhaps it allowed readers and singers to stand more comfortably in the shoes of the martyrs than they might otherwise have done, and perhaps it helped to ensure that the songs could move with the times, flexibly acquiring renewed significance in each phase of the early modern period. Unfortunately, we are so short of evidence about the responses of actual listeners and readers to individual ballads that these possibilities can only be imagined. The Askew ballad, for example, may have appealed differently as the period unfolded. In the 1580s, Protestant memories of the martyrs remained painfully fresh, and Askew was presumably understood as a very recent casualty of religious conflict. In the 1630s, however, readings and renditions of the song may have articulated discomfort with the ecclesiastical policies of Charles i and Archbishop Laud by calling to mind a woman who had no truck with ‘papistry’. In the 1660s and 1670s, it may for some Protestants have served to counter royalist efforts to commemorate Charles i – sometimes through ballads – as a martyr in his own right.Footnote ⁴² And at the time of the ‘popish plot’ in 1679, any song that reminded people of the historic dangers of Catholicism may have been useful to Protestants. This point was made by the compiler of a single-sheet list of all England’s Marian martyrs, published in the year of the plot: ‘I am sorry we now have the sad occasion to refresh our Memories with the inhumane instances of the cruelty of those popish times.’Footnote ⁴³

A rare example of a vertuous maid in Paris probably met similar needs but it may also have helped English people to think about their relations with the French. At one level, it simultaneously reinforced negative stereotypes of French people and presented evidence of their capacity for heroism. In an age noted for ‘a fundamental ambivalence’ in cross-Channel relations, this may have struck a chord.Footnote ⁴⁴ More specifically, the song perhaps assisted the English in processing the waves of Huguenot immigration that marked the period, particularly in the wake of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572 and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. At times, it may also have allowed those who hoped for more robust English intervention in support of continental Protestantism to consolidate their position and persuade others. Of course, the fact that, for people of the seventeenth century, the ballad was set in a relatively distant past may have enabled them to articulate controversial views in a comparatively safe manner (for example, when Charles i married the French Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, in 1625). And in its negative representation of French Catholics, it might have been of use to those who had misgivings about Charles ii’s taste for all things from across the Channel during the Restoration period, or for supporters of William iii’s war with Louis xiv after 1688. In all these situations, a flexible and relatively imprecise song was arguably more valuable than one that pinned everything down precisely. This surely helps to explain why the song was registered in the 1580s, and then issued again in the 1620s, 1670s, 1680s and 1690s. Furthermore, the combination of the Parisian maid and Anne Askew as martyr-partners on the same ballad sheet must have generated all sorts of interactive possibilities in the minds of readers and listeners as they contemplated the songs together. ‘Generic’ is not really a suitable description of these ballads but they were certainly malleable.

Ann Askew was personally acquainted with the hero of our final ballad and, according to Bale, bravely refused to divulge information about her while under interrogation.Footnote ⁴⁵ The most rare and excellent history, of the dutchess of Suffolks callamity, written by Thomas Deloney in the 1590s, recounts the story of Catherine Bertie (née Willoughby), the devout Protestant who, with her husband and young child, fled England for the continent early in 1555, travelling in disguise and only returning home following the accession of Elizabeth i three years later.Footnote ⁴⁶ She may not have died for her faith but she was clearly considered one of the English Reformation’s most heroic runaways. Clearly, the sacrifice she made in escaping from England disguised as a commoner was sufficient to carry her song up the chart. She was indeed socially eminent; in the ballad, she is described as ‘A princesse of most high degree’, a title that presumably references the former marriage of her first husband – Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk – to Henry viii’s sister. By the time Deloney picked up his pen, the duchess’s example was already well known from the pages of Foxe’s Actes and monuments, having appeared first in the revised edition of 1570 (Foxe’s report was also reproduced in Holinshed’s Chronicles).Footnote ⁴⁷

In Foxe’s account, Bishop Gardiner – keen to persecute the duchess for her religious beliefs and alleged insolence – first summons her current husband, Richard Bertie, to London on the pretext of talking about other matters that are in dispute (Bertie had been the duchess’s gentleman usher before she married him in 1552). The bishop then works his way round to the duchess’s religion, and urges Bertie to persuade her to return to the Roman Catholic Church. Bertie, having refused, is sent away, and he immediately begins planning a departure from the country for himself, his wife and their daughter. To avoid suspicion, he travels first, with a legitimate passport, having persuaded the authorities of his need to visit the continent in pursuit of a debt. His wife then follows, travelling with a not altogether inconspicuous entourage made up of her infant daughter, a trusted family friend, and servants who include a horse-rider, a joiner, a brewer, a fool, a cook, a gentlewoman and a laundress (Foxe says there are four servants but he appears to list seven, unless some of them were multi-tasking). The duchess disguises herself as a ‘mean Merchantes wife’ while in England, then dresses again in native Dutch clothes upon arrival in Brabant (costume changes are a recurring feature of the narrative). Reunited with Bertie, the family travels on in considerable peril, braving foul weather, hostile locals and constant rumours about agents of the crown who are searching for them. They stay first in ‘Santon’, then in Wesel on the Rhine, where at first they can find no lodging. Bertie therefore leads them into a church porch, where he manages to acquire some coal for a fire. They soon locate more suitable accommodation but then have to flee to Weinheim when they hear that they are about to be discovered by hostile parties. Eventually, the king of Poland offers them protection and they undertake a further journey. En route, Bertie gets into a fight with a local captain and has to leave his family, pursued by the man’s local allies until he climbs a ladder in order to hide in a house. Eventually, the trouble settles and he and the duchess are reunited once again. They are entertained by the king of Poland and provided with a house and land, seeing them through to the death of Queen Mary in 1558 and their triumphant return to England the following year. Throughout the account, Foxe emphasises the hardships they faced, their bravery and the rank injustice of a situation in which people of such prestige must suffer such deprivation (though they do also experience some top-notch accommodation).

Foxe’s account remains well-known but the ballad, like the others under consideration here, has generally failed to earn scholarly plaudits. Watt notes its ‘polemical stance’ but emphasises its appeal as ‘an adventure story’ rather than a religious work. Deloney, she argues, simplified the known story in order to ‘focus on the theme of disguise and revelation’. Furthermore, ‘The interest of the story is in the temporary inversion of hierarchy’ and the ballad has little to say about the duchess’ personality. Green goes further, arguing that the song, after a brief reference to the Marian persecution at the outset, is ‘shorn of virtually all of its Protestant content and motivation’.Footnote ⁴⁸

These verdicts seem somewhat questionable. There are actually six verses at the start that establish very clearly the duchess’s status and motivation as a godly Protestant in a time of extreme persecution (though ‘bloody Bonner’ replaces Gardiner as the villain of the piece). This amounts to over a fifth of the song, and the political and religious context is set out in concise detail: Deloney sketches the persecution of ‘All those that did Gods word profess’, and the execution by fire of ‘Cranmer, Ridley and the rest’ (these fires are also depicted in the ballad’s first woodcut). In this challenging situation, the duchess seeks comfort ‘within Gods word’ and flees the country ‘for the love of God alone’. Later in the song, the ship on which she travels is propelled across the channel by a ‘prosperous gale of wind’, and listeners – perhaps remembering the Spanish Armada of 1588 – did not need to be told that God lay behind this burst of natural energy. And, in the final verse, the family returns home to England when Queen Mary dies and Elizabeth, known for her ‘godly life and piety’, commences her ‘happy Reign’. Few contemporary consumers can possibly have heard it as devoid of ‘Protestant content and motivation’. Moreover, most people probably knew the story already and did not need to be reminded even more regularly of the duchess’s Protestant credentials. There can be little doubt that the song’s primary appeal was as a religious story set to music, even if it also connected cleverly with other tried and trusted ballad-themes. Rather than explaining its popularity in primarily secular terms, we should perhaps admire Deloney’s initiative and skill in creating an eminently appealing Protestant ballad-hero.Footnote ⁴⁹

Deloney’s account was clearly based on Foxe’s but he did rather more than merely trim the detail and versify the prose. Foxe mentioned repeatedly the presence of the couple’s young daughter, for example, but Deloney places much more emphasis on the challenge of coping with childcare during the journey into exile. Foxe reports that the duchess’s husband, Bertie, was on one occasion ‘forced’ to carry the child but Deloney turns this into a touching verse about shared parenting in extremis:

This focus on the family can also be related to another change. Foxe’s account, though set up as a tale about the duchess, actually tells us rather more about Bertie than it does about his wife. In the ballad, however, her prominence is unquestionable. Deloney drops Foxe’s long preamble, in which Bertie’s interrogation by Gardiner creates the impression that the woman’s story is under male control. In the ballad, the duchess is clearly the resourceful decision-maker, right from the outset. She resolves to flee England and she leads the subsequent adventure. Bertie receives no mention until verse six, and even then he seems to appear as one of a trio of needy dependants: ‘She with her nurse, husband, and child,/ In poor array their sighs beguil’d’ (Foxe preferred to list the individuals in a different order: ‘M[aster] Bertie with his wife and childe’). It is also noticeable that Deloney removes references to the various ‘fair houses’ in which the family stayed while in exile, thus magnifying their hardship.

Furthermore, some of the detail provided by Deloney is without precedent in Foxe’s account. Deloney, having downgraded Master Bertie, generously allows him to re-assert his masculinity by fighting with an officious German sexton who attempts to evict the family from the church porch in which they are seeking shelter. The porch, as we have seen, appears in Foxe’s account but the fight – in which Bertie strikes his adversary with his own church keys until ‘all the blood,/ his head ran down’ – was added by Deloney. Similar interventions included the decision of the family’s nurse to run away at a crucial moment, and the revelation that Peregrine Bertie, the duchess’s second child, was born while they were in continental exile (incidentally this baby eventually became Lord Willoughby, the hero of another popular ballad).Footnote ⁵⁰

Deloney clearly knew what he was doing. He was an immensely successful ballad-writer during the decade before his death in about 1600, and no fewer than seven of his songs are featured on the ‘100 ballads’ website.Footnote ⁵¹ The success of The most rare and excellent history was sustained throughout the early modern period, only waning after c. 1750.Footnote ⁵² Arguably, Deloney’s genius was to recognise the potential appeal of this particular story, chosen from hundreds that appear in Foxe’s work. Perhaps he had already observed the success of the ballads about Askew and the French maid, drawing a lesson about the particular marketability of female martyrs. Presumably, female consumers were an important consideration here too. Although the duchess’s story clearly did not appeal only to women, an awareness of female tastes can probably be detected in the virtuous agency of the ballad’s protagonist and the fantasy of a husband who is not only violently protective when the need arises but also willing to help with the childcare in quieter moments. The high rank of the duchess and other ballad-martyrs presumably had the attractive effect of enhancing the sacrifice they made and the social drop that they experienced (though it is also the case more generally that lovers of ballads were drawn to tales of the aristocracy). And although Catherine Bertie is fierce and forceful, her image is softened by the author’s occasional acknowledgement of the emotional upset that she experiences: ‘Then did the Dutches make great moan,/ With her good husband all alone.’ Deloney was, it seems, particularly good at composing songs about wealthy women, and most of his seven hits featured female characters very prominently.

This helps to explain why Deloney, aware of the appeal of heroic Protestant women, enhanced the duchess’s role when he composed his ballad, and there are hints that, in the seventeenth century, not everyone was entirely happy with this approach. The woodcut pictures that were specially commissioned to illustrate the song – probably during the early part of the century – are arresting in their own right, but it is noticeable that they foreground male leadership, perhaps a reaction to the duchess’s dominance of the text. As we have seen, the lyrics portray the duchess as the main decision-maker in the early part of the story, but the first picture clearly shows a man leading his family away from a fire in which other godly Protestants are presumably burning. The picture on the right concentrates on Bertie’s fight with the sexton, hereby highlighting the only episode in the song that represents him as robust and proactive. The duchess, meanwhile, sits in the church porch, dandling her infant daughter on her knee. It is as if the anonymous artist is seeking to put her in her place.Footnote ⁵³ A nineteenth-century edition of the ballad suggests that this was a long-running tension. The title becomes The most rare and excellent history of the Dutchess of Suffolk and her husbands Richard Berties calamities (emphasis added), suggesting that the earlier heading, with its exclusive focus on the female experience, may have been somewhat unsettling.Footnote ⁵⁴

Intriguingly, the ballad’s tune may also have played its part in this tension over gender.Footnote ⁵⁵ It was a well-known melody of the period, used for the singing of a variety of ballads, but it had particularly strong associations with the tragic tale of Dido and Aeneas, the subject of an enormously successful ballad.Footnote ⁵⁶ On The most rare and excellent history, of the dutchess of Suffolks callamity, the tune is called ‘Queen Dido’, a title found on other songs too. By title and association, it therefore had the effect of connecting the duchess with another much-loved female hero from history, albeit one whose life ended tragically in suicide.

For individual Protestants, this best-selling religious song modelled devotion to truth and survival against the odds. The lesson, moreover, was based in godly actions, rather than in theological tenets and eloquent confessions of faith (indeed, the hero of the ballad hardly says anything, preferring to let her deeds do the talking). It is clear, moreover, that her decision to flee her persecutors was no obstacle to the success of the ballad. In fact, it seems possible that English ballad-consumers may have taken to her precisely because she kept herself alive and decided not to abandon her family for a fiery death. Despite the high esteem in which the Marian martyrs were held during the seventeenth century, one woman remarked, ‘they were as wise that keept themselves out of the fire and kept there conscience to themselves’.Footnote ⁵⁷ The choice made by the duchess of Suffolk was surely easier to imagine than martyrdom, and it also allowed Deloney to supply a welcome happy ending. Over the decades, the song may also have become bound up with the recent history of England itself. The nation, like the duchess, survived the ordeals of the sixteenth century and adhered to the truth, as understood by Protestants. Of course, the struggles associated with the Reformation continued throughout the early modern period and Protestants rarely felt fully secure, but the ballad implied the possibility, one day, of a positive outcome. The duchess, after all, lived out her days in London and Lincolnshire, working as a leading patron of the ‘Puritan’ clergy until her death in 1580.Footnote ⁵⁸

We have already noted how such songs may have taken on enhanced relevance in relation to particular political and religious circumstances during the seventeenth century, and in this case we can be a little more precise about how this may have worked. In 1624, Thomas Drue’s play, The life of the dutchess of Suffolke, was performed, probably in the Fortune theatre, by the Palsgrave’s Company. Drue recounts the duchess’s story, drawing extensively on Foxe but also introducing plenty of fresh material. Bonner’s agents, for example, now include a loyal servant named ‘Fox’, surely a nod towards the celebrated martyrologist (Erasmus also has a walk-on part, despite having died some time before the events that were described).Footnote ⁵⁹

It is equally clear, however, that Drue also knew the ballad intimately. He lifts from it the cowardly flight of the nurse, Bertie’s battle with the sexton, and the birth of Peregrine. Deloney’s focus on childcare is retained and enhanced, and the same is true of the duchess’s centrality to the narrative. She bosses men around and, on more than one occasion, actually fights physically in defence of her husband. Indeed, at one point she declares, ‘Then farewell woman weakness, welcome sword/ For once I’ll play the man, to save my Lord.’ In another scene, she even sends Bertie up a ladder for his own safety, while she stands at its base, guarding him with her sword.Footnote ⁶⁰ This scene had appeared in Foxe, though the martyrologist allowed Bertie to defend himself rather than hiding behind (or above) his wife. Drue therefore leant upon the ballad in several ways, and his borrowing would surely have been noticed by members of the socially-varied audience in the Fortune amphitheatre, some of whom may have been as familiar with the song as they were with Foxe’s much longer account.Footnote ⁶¹ Drue’s play was thus in lively conversation with both of the older sources, and is said to have been ‘divers and sundry times acted, with good applause’.Footnote ⁶²

Editions of the ballad were certainly issued in the 1620s but, as usual, we know very little about how consumers interpreted them. In the case of the play, however, we can glimpse the controversy that surrounded stories about the duchess of Suffolk in this difficult decade. The Master of the Revels licensed it on 2 January 1624, but he noted that the text submitted to him had been ‘full of dangerous matter’. He had therefore ‘reformed’ it, presumably by excising the most controversial content. The tension was clearly connected to James i’s foreign policy, particularly his reluctance to support his daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Frederick v, Elector Palatine. Frederick was a leader of European Protestantism who had claimed the throne of Bohemia in 1619, before suffering defeat at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. Following this defeat, he and his wife fled into exile and, in the eyes of many English Protestants, deserved support. James i, however, resisted the pressure to intervene and also opened negotiations to marry Prince Charles to a Spanish Catholic princess. The parties who urged intervention in support of Frederick v were naturally pleased when the marriage negotiations collapsed in 1623–4.Footnote ⁶³

It seems clear, therefore, that Drue’s play about the duchess of Suffolk must have encouraged comparison between her status as an elite Protestant in exile and the comparable position of the king’s daughter, Elizabeth. The playwright’s apparent wish to draw particular attention to Elizabeth also helps us to understand why the play magnifies the duchess’s bravery and resourcefulness (though there was also a risk that audiences might understand her satirically in relation to the controversy about mannish women and womanish men that was also raging in this decade).Footnote ⁶⁴ Frederick v, known in England as the Palsgrave, also happened to be patron of the company that staged the play, and his mid-sixteenth century counterpart even appeared in the production as a friend of the duchess. The contemporary resonances were surely obvious to audiences, and it is hard to resist the conclusion that the Master of the Revels’ interventions had failed to eradicate the potential for controversy (presumably the scenes he cut out were even more obvious in their references). Of course, the situation also implies that editions of the ballad issued in these years may have been similarly understood as a commentary on English foreign policy. The text remained as it had been in the 1590s but the context had shifted. It also seems likely that those who saw Drue’s play during the 1620s may subsequently have come to understand the ballad in a slightly different light. Arguably, one of the characteristics that kept these songs alive for so many decades was their capacity to move with the times.

Hit songs about Protestant heroes of the mid-sixteenth century deserve fuller consideration in work on martyrology than they have so far received. Ballads were much cheaper than copies of Foxe’s Actes and monuments, and any song that was issued repeatedly for more than a century deserves to be heard. This article has looked particularly at three martyr-songs that enjoyed enormous success, and it is noticeable that they are all much more than mere summaries of the relevant sections in earlier and grander works. The differences in content and emphasis that distinguish ballads about martyrs from Foxe’s ‘Book of martyrs’ may therefore tell us much about majority tastes and preferences (the ballad industry was highly commercial and the songs that succeeded were the songs that sold). The ballad about Anne Askew, for example, presents new and different aspects of her story, little considered by Bale and Foxe. Deloney’s ballad about the duchess of Suffolk is more clearly related to Foxe’s account but the author nevertheless adds new materials and brings particular aspects of the story into close focus. And the ballad about the Parisian maiden appears to tell a fresh story, unknown to Foxe. Each ballad provided material for thought about martyrs, simultaneously reflecting and shaping commonplace attitudes, and if we are interested in the martyrology of the majority, then we should examine these songs carefully. They may have played an important role in encouraging English people to identify as Protestants during the ‘long’ Reformation.

In comparison to the more famous sources, the most striking feature of the three hit martyr-songs is that they are all about women. During the reign of Elizabeth, ballads about male martyrs were certainly issued but, for some reason, they did not achieve the same level of long-term commercial success. The most popular of these was a song about John Careless that was still being printed in the 1630s but it faded from view thereafter (no broadside copy has survived but Miles Coverdale included the text in a book published in 1564).Footnote ⁶⁵ Foxe told the stories of 448 martyrs and exiles for the years between 1533 and 1558, of whom 91 (or 20 per cent) were women.Footnote ⁶⁶ The fact that all of the martyrs who earn a place in the ‘100 ballads’ chart were female is therefore compelling but difficult to explain. It may reflect a particular fascination in the period with the extreme tensions that defined the female martyr or exile. All three of the women discussed in this article transcended the supposed weakness of their sex to find super-human strength through Christ as they resisted the persuasive power and aggressive attention of wicked ‘popish’ priests and magistrates. Male martyrs needed divine help too but, according to the cultural assumptions of the period, they were assumed to possess deeper resources of their own. The same set of cultural assumptions meant that a suffering woman might generate particular sympathy and admiration, while also magnifying the wickedness of her persecutors.

The prominence of women in the hit songs might also reflect the importance of the female market for ballads. It has been observed elsewhere that women were notable consumers of balladry and that authors and publishers therefore devoted considerable energy to reflecting their tastes and interests.Footnote ⁶⁷ It can be assumed that women may have been drawn particularly to songs about female martyrs, represented in an interesting variety of guises: Askew reflects and prays; the Parisian woman defies her mother and bravely faces the flame; and the duchess of Suffolk plays the lead in her own story of godly escape. There was something here to suit all moods and tastes, and we might speculate that female consumers – a regular presence in the marketplaces where ballads were often sold – were disproportionately responsible for driving these three songs up the chart.

It is obvious that publishers and authors must also have sought to manipulate the audience, even while indulging its preoccupations. Indeed, the content of the songs suggests a process of negotiation between mainly male producers and frequently female consumers. The three ballad-heroes are certainly strong and resourceful but it is also noticeable that the implications of their defiance are sometimes downplayed or complemented by other, more conventional features. Thus, the song about Askew presents her in a mood of personal reflection rather than in open conflict with her male accusers. The Parisian maid defies her mother and other ‘ladies’ more conspicuously than she defies the authority of men. And although the duchess of Suffolk dominates her story, the woodcut pictures present her in subsidiary roles and her devotion to childcare counters the impression of an almost masculine zeal.

Of course, references to supposedly female preoccupations with gardens, gold necklaces and family welfare may also have had the effect of rendering the three heroes more relatable for ordinary women. For many, it must have been difficult to imagine walking in the shoes of individuals who died in flames or crossed the seas to escape prosecution. Perhaps the attention that was paid in the songs to more familiar matters helped to humanise the heroes. The same might be said of sections in all three songs that represented with a measure of realism the upset and confusion that the women experienced, allowing the mask of godly resolution to slip, just for a moment. The relatability of the songs may also have been enhanced by an avoidance of graphic detail on the pains of execution and by the absence of detailed material on theology. Such matters were, of course, close to Foxe’s heart, but they are granted little space on the packed ballad page. And if we look beyond the three hit songs, it is also notable that other martyr-ballads of the period, where they have survived, display a similar style of content. In A godly and vertuous songe or ballade, made by the constant member of Christe, John Carlesse, for example, the martyr addresses us in the first person, expressing steadfast faith in Christ and praying for the strength to ‘boldly die’ in the truth but sparing us the details of his death.Footnote ⁶⁸ Hit ballads on different subjects – crime, murder and war, for example – demonstrate conclusively that consumers were not squeamish about violent death, and yet graphic material is generally avoided in the martyr-ballads. These were more likely to present their heroes in private prayer or fleeing danger than standing in the flames. At some point in the process of negotiation between ballad-makers and ballad-purchasers, it was agreed that this approach satisfied both parties. Perhaps people were reluctant to confront the gruesome reality of good English Protestants being burned alive by their compatriots, and so the songs they chose to sell and buy avoided the gory detail. Furthermore, several of the ballads about martyrs that were registered with the Stationers’ Company in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries actually told the stories of English Protestants executed elsewhere, rather than on home soil. Perhaps such killings were easier to comprehend if perpetrated by Turks, French priests or ‘blody Spaniardes’.Footnote ⁶⁹ Fiendish foreigners enhanced the nationalistic potential of the material but did they also protect English people from the reality of their own recent history? Foxe was nothing like so sensitive.

In one respect, however, the ballads about Askew, the French maiden and the duchess of Suffolk were not particularly relatable; all three songs dealt with individuals of considerable wealth. The first was a gentlewoman and the last an aristocrat, while the young woman from Paris was the daughter of a ‘lady’ and the possessor of gold bracelets and chains. There is no place in the ‘100 ballads’ chart for all the humble folk featured by Foxe, and we have already noted that the ballad about John Careless – a weaver – failed to make the grade in the long term. The conspicuous wealth of the martyrs who appeared in the most successful ballads might be explained in a number of ways. Just as their femininity magnified their suffering, so their wealth highlighted the extent of the social sacrifices that they were making in prioritising faith over fortune. The image of the Parisian maiden swapping her ‘golden Bracelets’ for the ‘cords’ with which her accusers ‘bound her fast’ was clearly powerful, as was the description of the duchess of Suffolk fleeing England with her entourage, ‘Like people poor in Gravesend-barge’. Looking at the issue another way, the high status of the ballad-martyrs may also suggest the influence of social conservatism in the inaudible negotiation between providers and recipients. Amidst the tensions of early-modern England, the leading ballad-publishers perhaps felt safer promoting aristocratic martyrs than their poorer and therefore more problematic coreligionists. And the consumers of balladry appear – perhaps surprisingly – to have been content with this arrangement. Indeed, the implication of the ‘100 ballads’ chart is that they actively preferred the duchess to the weaver. It is difficult to say whether this reflects a commonplace readiness to accept aristocrats as the ‘natural’ leaders of society or a mild pleasure to be found in tales of the mighty laid low. Taking everything into account, it seems clear that ballad-consumers liked their martyrs to be rich but relatable, heroic but human, and forceful but female.