Execution of John Rogers

Date: February 4, 1555 • Location: London, United Kingdom

Marian Restoration: Because he opposed Catholicism, John Rogers was burned at the stake (pictured) as the first English Protestant executed for heresy under the reign of Mary I.

The English Reformation began in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away first from the authority of the pope and bishops over the King and then from some doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church. These events were part of the wider European Reformation: various religious and political movements that affected both the practice of Christianity in Western and Central Europe and relations between church and state.