Edmund Bonner was an Oxford-trained canon lawyer who served Wolsey and then Henry VIII as a diplomat, and became Bishop of London in 1539. He accepted the royal supremacy under Henry but resisted the Protestant reforms of Edward VI, and was deprived and imprisoned in 1549.

Restored by Mary in 1553, Bonner became the chief judge of heresy in the capital, where most of the Marian martyrs were tried. He examined John Philpot and many humble men and women; he formally degraded John Hooper and Rowland Taylor before they were sent to the fire; and he refused John Rogers leave to see his wife and ten children in prison. Bishop Ryle preserved his vow:

God do so to Bonner, and more also, if one of the heretics escape me.¹ Edmund Bonneras reported by J. C. Ryle

John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments made Bonner’s name a byword, “Bloody Bonner,” to generations of English readers. On Elizabeth’s accession he refused the oath of supremacy and was deprived in 1559. He spent the last ten years of his life in the Marshalsea prison, where he died on September 5, 1569.

Catholic Opponents