Above, four martyrs are chained to a post and burnt at the stake in Canterbury; below, a procession of twenty-two prisoners tied together and brought from Colchester to London, presumably for trial. Etching with engraving by G. Terry.

John Fox's (1527-1597) Book of Martyrs was originally published in the 16th century, it being the classic history of the lives, sufferings, and deaths of the Early Christian martyrs. After the bible itself, no book so profoundly influenced early Protestant sentiment as the Book of Martyrs