Photo: ‘Seven godly martyrs burned in Coventry’, from the 1684 edition of Actes and Monuments – popularly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (John Foxe, first published 1563).
Poem: For Mistress Smith
For Mistress Smith (aka Lansdail, d. 1519), one of Coventry’s Lollard martyrs.
by Eleanor Nesbitt
20th March 2026
Concealed in your sleeve,
not ‘Pater noster qui es in caelis…’ but
‘Our Father who art in heaven’,
and, for those English words,
they chained you to a post,
kindled a fire and people
crowded round to watch
and hear and smell
you and your heresy
reduced to ash.
