ABSTRACT
The peak of memorialising activity in honour of the martyrs spanned the Victorian and Edwardian eras, from 1837 to 1910. Scores of monuments were erected, ranging from the simple to the extravagant — obelisks, crosses, mural tablets, stained-glass windows, busts, statues, churches, chapels, lecture halls. The growing number of martyrs’ memorials across England and Wales helped to supply the need for tangible, visible mementos. The new memorial was thus ‘no ebullition of mere Kensitism, for the Protestants have plenty to be ashamed of in the matter of religious persecution’. The intertwining of anti-Catholicism with agitation over civil liberties was repeated in the village of Heathfield in Sussex, where an obelisk was erected in September 1905 in the grounds of the Congregational Chapel to commemorate four local martyrs burned at Lewes in 1557. The Sussex Martyrs Commemoration Council was particularly active in keeping the story of its local martyrs alive, and memorial tablets multiplied throughout the county.
