On this date in 1578, John Nelson was martyred at Tyburn.

A Catholic who had popped across to Flanders to train as a priest, Nelson was captured after about a year’s ministry in December 1577.

Matters with this minor martyr proceeded according to the usual script from that point. Interrogators put it to him whether Queen Elizabeth was the proper head of the Church of England — that old chestnut. The wrong answer would be treason.

[Nelson] was brought forth to be examined before the high commissioners. Here they tendered him the oath of the queen’s supremacy, which he refused to take; and being asked, why he would not swear, he answered, because he had never heard, or read, that any lay prince could have that pre-eminence. And being farther demanded, who then was the head of the church, he answered, sincerely and boldly, that the pope’s holiness was, to whom that supreme authority in earth was due, as being Christ’s vicar, and the lawful successor of St. Peter.

Secondly, [t]hey asked him his opinion of the religion now practised in England; to which he answered, without any hesitation, that it was both schismatical and heretical. Whereupon they bid him define what schism was; he told them, it was a voluntary departure from the unity of the catholic Roman faith. Then (seeking to ensnare him) they farther urged, what is the queen then, a schismatic or no? … he answered, conditionally, if she be the setter forth [of Anglicanism], said he, and defender of this religion, now practised in England, then she is a schismatic and a heretic.

After he was cut down alive from his hanging so that he could be disemboweled and quartered, Nelson’s last words were reportedly “I forgive the queen and all the authors of my death.”

On this day..

• 1860: James Stephens
• 1685: James Algie and John Park, Paisley Covenanters
• 1977: Marta Taboada and Gladys Porcel, Argentina revolutionaries
• 1903: Amelia Sach and Annie Walters, the Finchley baby farmers
• 2016: Brandon Astor Jones
• 1891: Michel Eyraud, bailiff-strangler
• 1814: Mariano Matamoros, Mexican revolutionary
• 1537: "Silken Thomas" FitzGerald, Earl of Kildare
• 1945: Not Fabian von Schlabrendorff, saved by a bomb
• 1967: Ronald Ryan, the last hanged in Australia
• 1915: Veljko Cubrilovic, Danilo Ilic and Misko Jovanovic, Archduke Ferdinand's assassins
• 1998: Karla Faye Tucker, for an axe murder and a Republican presidency