Edmund Bonner - Bonner in Historical Memory

Bonner in Historical Memory

Contemporary Catholic writers attributed to Bonner and the other bishops who died in prison the honour of martyrdom: in vinculis obierunt martyres. On the walls of the English College, Rome, an inscription recording the death of the eleven bishops, but without naming them, found a place among the paintings of the martyrs. Bonner was attacked during life with a rare hatred which has followed him into the grave, so that in English history few names have been so execrated and vilified as his.

A more charitable assessment of Bonner's character was made by an Anglican historian, S. R. Maitland, who considers him,

"a man, straightforward and hearty, familiar and humorous, sometimes rough, perhaps coarse, naturally hot tempered, but obviously (by the testimony of his enemies) placable and easily intreated, capable of bearing most patiently much intemperate and insolent language, much reviling and low abuse directed against himself personally, against his order, and against those peculiar doctrines and practices of his church for maintaining which he had himself suffered the loss of all things, and borne long imprisonment. In short, we can scarcely read with attention any one of the cases detailed by those who were no friends of Bonner, without seeing in him a judge who (even if we grant that he was dispensing bad laws badly) was obviously desirous to save the prisoner's life."

This verdict was generally followed by later historians. Lord Acton in the Cambridge Modern History (1904) argued: "The number of those put to death in his diocese of London was undoubtedly disproportionately large, but this would seem to have been more the result of the strength of the reforming element in the capital and in Essex than of the employment of exceptional rigour; while the evidence also shows that he himself patiently dealt with many of the Protestants, and did his best to induce them to renounce what he conscientiously believed to be their errors."

Twelve of Bonner's Homelies to be read within his diocese of London of all Parsons, vycars and curates (1555; nine of these were by John Harpsfield) were translated into Cornish by John Tregear, and are now the largest single work of traditional Cornish prose.

2 primary schools, bridge, and gate in Victoria Park and two streets are named after him in the East End of London.

His name lives on in folk memory in Norfolk where ladybirds are named bishibarnabees (Bishop Bonner's bee) perhaps after their ecclesiastical colouring, or, more likely, the association of red and black with blood and death. Just so, Bonner will be forever remembered as "Bloody Bonner".

Bonner also appeared in one of C.J. Sansom's 'shardlake' books frequently mentioned to be persecuting Protestants in the streets of London.