BOCHER, JOAN

died May 2, 1550, Smithfield, London, Eng. Bocher also spelled Boucher, or Butcher, byname Joan of Kent, or Joan Knel English Anabaptist burned at the stake for heresy during the reign of the Protestant Edward VI. Bocher first came to notice about 1540, during the reign of Henry VIII, when she began distributing among ladies of the court William Tyndale's forbidden translation of the New Testament. Subsequently, for beliefs that contradicted both Roman Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy, she was charged with heresy in 1543, but the charges were dropped after the intercession of higher authority, perhaps Henry VIII himself. In 1548, under the new monarchy, a group of divines headed by Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer examined her, passed a sentence of excommunication, and handed her over to civil authority for punishment. More than a year later, after Cranmer and others unsuccessfully attempted to persuade her to recant, the lord chancellor condemned her to death, and she was burned at Smithfield.