ABSTRACT
Executions were public spectacles and therefore the initial site of the process of martyr-making for the Elizabethan Catholics was the gallows. Here, within the exercise of the law in the name of the sovereign, recusant Catholic priests and laity, condemned for treason, were eradicated from society. The martyr became what Michel de Certeau describes as ‘the public mark of a social elimination’.1 The ritual surrounding that elimination and its exploitation by the participants is examined first.
