History

John Rogers was born in Deritend, near Birmingham,  likely between 1500 and 1505, son to John Rogers, a lorimer (maker of bits, spurs and metal mountings for horse bridles and saddles) and Margery. He had two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Clearly academically able from an early age, he went on to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, gaining his BA in 1526. He is reported to have been one of the participants in the discussions of the early Reformers at The White Hart pub, nicknamed 'Little Germany', although not yet a radical evangelical. He went on to the brand new Cardinal College, Oxford where Cardinal Wolsey was gathering the brightest and best minds of their generation. From there into ministry in 1532, as rector of Holy Trinity the Less in Knightryder Street, London. Sadly this church is no longer in existence as it burned down, with so much else of medieval London, in the Great Fire of 1666.

Rogers left London to become a chaplain to the Merchant Adventurers at their English factory in Antwerp, then part of the Spanish Netherlands. Commerce was booming for the Merchant Adventurers in Antwerp as they acted as the gateway for English finished cloth being exported into all of Europe. This European contact brought back the Reformist ideas from the Protestant heartlands, such that Antwerp was an increasingly vibrant outpost for Reform. Here Rogers met William Tyndale, who had already embarked on complementing his New Testament English translation in 1526 with a full English Bible. Dangerous and illegal work and not to be completed in Tyndale's lifetime as he was betrayed on his own doorstep and imprisoned outside Brussels until he was finally executed for heresy by strangulation and burning. 

Somehow Rogers managed to salvage the translations such that they were not discovered by the authorities and he could then complete the work, using Coverdale's translations to fill in the areas mission from Tyndale. Rogers added notation - essentially creating the first Bible Commentary - and managed to get the work published with the help of publishers Richard Grafton and William Tyndale. Grafton wrote to Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who in turn commended the work to Thomas Cromwell, who, having ghe ear of the King, was able to get royal assent, resulting in the first authorised Bible in English being mandated for use across England's churches. Rogers also met Adriana de Weyden when in Antwerp and sealed his Protestant credentials by marrying her there.

Rogers leaves Antwerp with Adriana and their three children (all boys) and make home in the heart of Reformist Europe, to the University of Wittenberg in Germany. He matriculates there on 25th November 1540. Here he certainly meets and befriends Philip Melanchthon, right hand man to Martin Luther. After four and a half years he then takes up the role os Superintendent of the Lutheran Church in Dietmarsh in northwest German; he leads the church in Meldorf, where the previous incumbent, Henry of Zutphen, had  been lynched by a drunken mob.

The death of Henry VIII and ascension to the throne of his son Edward VI paved the way for the return of Rogers, Adriana and their, by this time, nine children. He is recorded as staying at Edward Whitchurch's house in August 1548, from where he writes the Preface to teh English translation of his friend Melanchthon's work, Weighing and Considering the (Augsburg) Interim (a failed attempt by the Holy Roman Emperor to broker a compromise between his Catholic and Protestant subjects). 

After a gap in the record, Rogers is appointed in May 1550 to the livings of  St Margaret Moyses and the large, St Sepulchre's which brings with it a vicarage. The following year in June, Rogers is granted the Prebend of St Pancras at St Paul's (which included responsibility as the rector for Chigwell in Essex) and soon after that (probably), appointed Divinity Lecturer. Not long after that he resigns the rectorship at St Moyses (his new responsibilities perhaps requiring him to prioritise).

John Foxe records in his Book of Martyrs that around this time he personally implored Rogers to intervene in the case of Joan Boucher aka Joan of Kent, a Protestant with unorthodox beliefs regarding the divine versus human nature of Jesus. According to Foxe, Rogers would not be moved to intercede on behalf of Joan, neither to argue against her execution nor for an alternative to burning, apparently stating that it was sufficiently 'gentle'. Foxe supposedly retorts, perhaps prophetically, "Well, perchance ..you yourself will have your hands ful of this same gentle burning".

Everything changed dramatically for the Reformists when on 6th July 1553 Edward died unexpectedly at the young age of fifteen. After a short period of uncertainty when some sought to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, Mary, daughter of Henry's first wife Catherine of Aragon became Queen and began to restore England to Roman Catholicism. During this period of uncertainty and instability, Rogers was rostered to preach at St Paul's Cross on 16th July - a potentially highly dangerous assignment, following as it did his mentor Ridley's preaching on the same spot when he chose to speak out firmly for the Protestant Jane and against Catholic Mary. Rogers sticks to inarguable scripture on this occasion, but when required by the Privy Council to preach again, once Mary was established as Queen, three weeks later on 6th August, he throws caution to the wind an preaches vehemently against what. he sees as the inequities and lies of the Papist church. 

Summoned before the Privy Council at the Tower of London, Rogers defends himself skilfully, pointing out that nothing he preached was in contravention of the prevailing laws (those from Edward's reign not yet having been repealed). He is let free on this occasion, but is in the spotlight again when the following week Gilbert Bourne incites a riot at St Paul's Cross with his vehemently anti-Reformist sermon in front of an evangelical, Protestant congregation. In the melee, a knife is thrown at Bourne by someone from the congregation, but misses. John Bradford, another prebend at St Paul's, calms the rioting congregation and he and Rogers escort Bourne to safety. This does not stop Rogers being summoned again before the Privy Council and this time being placed under house arrest in his rooms at St Paul's, unable to leave home nor interact with anyone outside his household.  

On 27th Jan 1554 the Lord Chancellor Gardiner, likely encouraged by Rogers' enemy the Bishop of London Edmund Bonner, has Rogers moved to the infamous Newgate prison. There Rogers stays, famously sharing one of his two meals a day with the even less fortunate prisoners and seeking various means of redress and having his case heard, along with the other leading Reformists imprisoned across England. All to no avail.

Rogers was examined on three occasions by the Privy Council, reflecting the requirement to provide the 'heretic' with three opportunities to recant.

The first Examination was only two days after the medieval law 'De heretico comburendo'  was re-enacted, enabling persecution of heretics by burning - demonstrating that Rogers, like the other reformists, had been held captive awaiting this. On 22nd Jan 1554 Rogers was called before the Privy Council in Gardiner's official Bishop of Winchester residence near the church of St Mary Overie (nw Southwark Cathedral). In front of a large crowd, Gardiner led the Examination, seeking to get Rogers to return to the Roman Catholic Church, accepting the Pope as Supreme Head and breaking the law by living as a married priest. Rogers valiantly sought to defend himself, seeking the opportunity to make his case based on Scripture in written form, but proceedings were one sided and Rogers' own secretly written account shouts the sense of injustice and frustration he felt. His frame of mind is clear in the Prayer he wrote when back in his cell, imploring his congregation and loved ones to pray for him in this, his time of trial; a prayer they were not to see until after his death.

The Second Examination was six days later, in the Lady's Chapel of St Mary Overie, with Gardiner again presiding, with a crowd of onlookers. Rogers is more assertive on this occasion, vehemently refusing to join the Papist Catholic Church, refuting the mass with its insistence of the 'real and substantial' presence of the blood and body of Christ - and lambasting Gardiner personally for his mistreatment. Rogers is accused of preaching against the Queen, which he again,  truthfully, denies. He is dismissed and sent to the nearby Compter in Southwark - on the way meeting and exchanging encouragements with John Hooper, ex Bishop of Worcester and another leading Reformer. 

The next day sees the final Examination, in private this time, Rogers again seeks to defend himself and his right to make his case based on precedent, even against Parliament, but to no avail. Gardiner bullies and dominates him and proceeds to the condemnation of Rogers to be excommunicated and handed over to the civil authorities, which all knew meant to be executed by burning. Rogers sought in vain to be able to see his wife one last time to help her arrange their affairs, but Gardiner bluntly and cruelly refused. 

Later that evening, Hooper and Rogers were escorted under armed guard back to Newgate. Gardiner has sought to accomplish this quietly nd secretly, having all street lights on the route extinguished. But he did not account for Rogers and Hooper's loyaly and faithful supporters, who lined the route with candles to light their way and give blessing and encouragement to them.

Such was Rogers' sense of assurance under God that he was able to sleep so soundly that when, o the morning of Monday 4th February, the Newgate prison keeper's wife came to wake him and advise him that his fateful day had arrived, she could not wake him. When finally she succeeded and urged him to hurry as his hour had come, he declared drily "If it be so, I.need not tie my points!". He was taken for the ritual of formal excommunication by Bishop Bonner - after which he attempted one more time to be granted a final meeting with his wife, whom. he had not seen since being moved to Newgate just over a year prior. Like Gardiner and perhaps not unexpectedly, Bonner refuses him point blank.

He is handed over to one of the Sheriff's, who takes it upon himself at this point to seek to get Rogers to recant; of course, Rogers refuses. "You are a heretic" states Woodruff. "That shall be known at the day of judgement" replied Rogers. Woodruff retorts, cruelly, "Well, I will never pray for you", to which Rogers replies kindly - remarkably - "But I will pray for you".

Rogers is led away now to be processed the short distance between Newgate prison and Smithfield. The streets are lined with his supporters, some weeping, but most exhorting him to keep the faith and be strong in the trial that he is about to face. Count Noailles, French Ambassador to London and no friend to the Protestants, claimed that such was the upbeat mood of the supportive crowd that it felt more like a wedding than an execution.

He passes his own church, St Sepulchre's where the bell would toll for those about to meet their maker and now tolled for him. There too were his dear wife, Adriana and eleven children - the last of which he was seeing for the first and last time, Adriana having borne their daughter Hester whilst he was in captivity. But he was not permitted to tarry and was pushed on to his final end. How the tears must have flown.

Reciting the Psalm Misere, Psalm 51, he came into Smithfield, in front of St Bartholemew's Church; the faggots were already prepared and the stake awaited him. He was permitted a few final words, in which he exhorted the vast crowd to stay true to what he had preached and reassured them that he gladly now gave up his life to the fire in the name of Christ. He was offered one final opportunity to recant, which, naturally, he would not.

And so the fire was lit and Rogers bore the flames with extraordinary valour - being seen first to wash his hands in the flames as they rose around his waist in a kind of final, cleansing ritual; and then raising his hands aloft in prayer until his final breath. (Some historians have mooted that this apparent act of prayer was in fact the impact of the fire on the muscles in the arms, generating the classic 'pugilistic' pose seen, for example, in the poor victims of Pompeii; but my reading is that, in Rogers' case at least, the arms were held aloft in a more prayerful stance that would not be mistaken for a pugilistic stance. Certainly, this would seem typical of the man).

John Rogers was the first Protestant Martyr to be burned at the stake under Queen Mary. In the remainder of her reign, over the next three and a half years, there were to be 287 more.