How many Protestant martyrs does Lewes Bonfire commemorate?

Lewes Bonfire commemorates seventeen Protestant martyrs. These men and women were burned at the stake in Lewes, Sussex, between 1555 and 1557 during the Marian persecutions under Queen Mary I.

The martyrs were Protestants who refused to conform to the religious settlement restored by Mary, a Catholic monarch determined to reverse the Reformation in England. Their executions formed part of a wider campaign in which hundreds of Protestants were burned for heresy across the country.

Among those killed in Lewes were four people burned in June 1556 and Richard Woodman with nine others on 22 June 1557. The latter was the largest single execution by burning recorded in England. The victims are commemorated alongside the failed Gunpowder Plot during Lewes’s large 5 November celebrations.

The number seventeen refers specifically to Lewes’s Protestant martyrs, not to the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. Lewes Bonfire therefore combines two different historical memories: the 1605 attempt against James I and the earlier Marian executions.