John Cardmaker

John Cardmaker (alias Taylor) ( 1496–1555) was an English Protestant martyr.

Franciscan and preacher

He was originally an Observant friar, who, after the dissolution of his order under the persecution which Henry VIII specially directed against it, lapsed into the world, and became a married minister. His name is found in the list of licensed preachers of Edward VI He was vicar of St. Bridget's in Fleet Street, and one of the readers or lecturers at St. Paul's, where he read three times a week. Some of his sayings against Bishops Stephen Gardiner and Edmund Bonner, and concerning the sacrament, are preserved, On Somerset's first fall, when a religious reaction was vainly expected, he spoke strongly in his lecture against the victorious faction of Warwick. 'Cardmaker said in his lecture that, though he had a fall, he was not undone, and that men should not have their purposes; and also he said that men would have set up again their popish mass'.

Reign of Mary I

When the persecution broke out under Mary, Cardmaker and his bishop, William Barlow of Bath and Walls, came to London disguised as merchants, and vainly attempted to escape over sea, November 1554. They were cast into the Fleet Prison, where they lay till January, when the chancellor Gardiner, and others in commission, began to have the accumulated prisoners for religion, who amounted to about eighty, brought before them at St. Mary's Overy. Barlow submitted and escaped. Cardmaker, who was examined on the same day (28 January) as John Hooper and Edward Crome, was understood also to have recanted, and was remanded to the Compter in Bread Street, with the prospect of speedy deliverance. But his compliances were only, as he himself said, 'by a policy'. He was reanimated, it was thought, in his new prison by the zeal of Laurence Saunders, his fellow-captive, and a second inquiry was made into his opinions. He was brought before Bonner on 26 May 1555, examined in several articles, cast for heresy, and committed to Newgate Prison, whence he was carried to Smithfield on 30 May and burnt alive in the company of one Warne, an upholsterer.