Martyr's Monument and execution cross, Oxford

Pilgrimage to this execution site and memorial pays homage to the martyrs

Highlights

• Memorial to Oxford Martyrs

A gathering of tourists and students is usually to be found sitting on the steps beneath Oxford’s grand Martyrs’ Monument, at the end of the northern approach to the city centre. It is a comfortable place to sit, but an uncomfortable place to think too hard.

The Oxford Martyrs are three senior churchmen who were burned to death in the centre of Oxford. They had been leading figures in the Reformation under Henry VIII, but were arrested after his daughter Queen Mary I came to the throne and reintroduced Catholicism.

A second monument to the three can be found a minute’s walk away – a cross of cobblestones in the pedestrianised road outside Balliol College. This is the spot where Nicholas Ridley, bishop of London, and Hugh Latimer, a royal chaplain, were slowly burned to death on 16 October 1555. “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out,” was Latimer’s final advice to his friend.

The third Oxford Martyr, Thomas Cranmer, was forced to watch this execution. He had been archbishop of Canterbury, and for several months appeared to recant from his reforming beliefs, before dramatically declaring himself a Protestant after all on the morning of his own execution in Oxford, 21 March 1556.

It is a hard task trying to view these deaths in a Christian context. Thomas Cranmer had himself been involved in burning a Protestant reformer, during Henry VIII’s Catholic period. Hugh Latimer had preached at the burning of John Forest, a Catholic friar. Burning people to death seems an odd way for a Christian martyr or saint to behave, but there are dozens of examples on both sides in the 16th century.

The city’s imposing monument was designed to remember the divisions. It was built during the Victorian era, supposedly to counterbalance the growing Catholic sympathies of many leading Anglican priests and academics in the city, known as the Oxford Movement. 

While in Oxford centre

A famous medieval church in Oxford town centre offers a happier place to contemplate Oxford’s long history. St Mary the Virgin has something from every stage of the city’s pivotal role in English Christianity.

For a start, it was founded during Anglo-Saxon times, the era when St Frideswide first made the city holy. It was also the place where the Oxford Martyrs were tried and sentenced to death, as described above. And finally it was where Cardinal Newman served as an Anglican priest before his conversion to Catholicism in 1845.

An elegant panel in the church has been erected in memory of all the martyrs of the Reformation, both Protestant and Catholic, who suffered at Oxford. Outside the church, a 17th-century statue of the Blessed Virgin stands above the porch facing the street. She is marked by bullet holes from Cromwell’s Puritan soldiers, her wounds the most eloquent monument of all in Oxford.

Directions

Monument on A4144, junction of St Giles and Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2LN

Execution cross outside: Balliol College, BroadStreet, Oxford OX1 3AS

W3W: prom.zone.maybe

GPS: 51.7551N 1.2590W

Monument

W3W: flag.strut.grace

GPS: 51.7542N 1.2578W cross

The Martyrs’ Monument is at the end of the A4144 where it reaches the city centre and turns west. To find the execution site, walk south from the monument along Magdalen Street East for 100m, to the junction with Broad Street. Turn left and the cobblestone cross is 50m away, in the centre of this pedestrianised section of road. St Mary the Virgin Church is on the High Street a couple of minutes’ walk from the cross, in front of the prominent Radcliffe Camera circular building.