Abstract
On a mild spring evening in late April 1537 a group of men from the Wiltshire villages of Mere and Bledney sat drinking ‘without the door’ of a neighbour, William Brownyng. It was St Mark’s Day, traditionally a holy-day on which labour was forbidden, but recently demoted by royal command. Thomas Poole had accordingly gone about his normal work that day, but was denounced by John Tutton as a heretic ‘because he wrought on St Mark’s day’. Poole defended himself by invoking the new law, tempers flared, and Tutton imprudently aired his opinion that the moving spirit behind the new reforms, Thomas Cromwell, was, like all his ‘witholders’ a ‘stark heretic’; ‘Shall I obey the King’s commandment and it be naught?’ he asked. ‘Marry I will not.’
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