The Word as an Artifact of Remembrance

Taking a cue from William Sherman’s Used Books, Marking Readers in Renaissance England (2008), this article examines the ‘uses’ of a particular book – a copy of a 1548 edition of a Tyndale New Testament which passed through the hands of John Bradford, evangelical preacher and Marian martyr, as well as those of his friend Joyce Hales. In particular, the article makes the case that Hales fashioned the volume into a memorial to Bradford after he was burnt at the stake. It also suggests that some of the writings within the volume, long attributed to Bradford by nineteenth-century editors, were by Hales instead. In so doing, it sheds additional light on the relationships between the Marian martyrs and their female followers, or ‘sustainers’ as Thomas Freeman has called them, further redressing the gender imbalance in the historical treatment of religious dissent during the reign of Mary Tudor.