Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cardmaker, John
CARDMAKER (alias Taylor), JOHN (d. 1555), martyr, was originally an Observant friar, who, after the dissolution of his order under the persecution which Henry VIII specially directed against it, lapsed into the world, and became a married minister. His name is found in the list of licensed preachers of Edward VI (Dixon, Ch. of Engl. n. 486), He was vicar of St. Bridget's in Fleet Street, and one of the readers or lecturers at St. Paul's, where he read three timea a week. Some of his sayings against Gardiner and Bonner, and concerning the sacrament, are preserved (Grey Friars' Chron. 50, 67, 63), On Somerset's first fall, when a religious re- action was vainly expected, he spoke strongly in his lecture against the victorious faction of Warwick. ‘Cardmaker said in his lecture that, though he had a fall, he was not undone, and that men should not have their purposes; and also he said that men would have set up again their popish mass' (ib. 64). Soon after this he was made prebendary and chancellor of Wells, where he ejected a schoolmaster, preached and lectured often, and shared the troubles of the new appointed dean, Turner (Tytler, Edw. VI and Mary, i. 373). When the persecution broke out under Mary, Cardmaker and his bishop, William Barlow [q. v.] of Bath and Walls, came to London disguised as merchants, and vainly attempted to escape over sea, November 1554 (Machyn, Diary, 75). The were cast into the Fleet, where they lay till January, when the chancellor Gardiner, and others in commission, began to have the accumulated prisoners for religion, who amounted to about eighty, brought before them at St. Mary's Overy. Barlow submitted and escaped. Cardmaker, who was examined on the same day (28 Jan.) as Hooper and Crome, was understood also to have recanted (Machyn; Sampson's Letter to Calvin, 23 Feb., Orig. Lett. p. 171), and was remanded to the Counter in Bread Street, with the prospect of speedy deliverance. But his compliances were only, as he himself said, ‘by a policy' (Strype, Ann. v. 432). He was reanimated, it was thought, in his new prison by the zeal of Saunders, his fellow-captive, and a second inquiry was made into his opinions. He was brought before Bonner on 26 May 1556, examined in several articles, cast for heresy, and committed to Newgate, whence he was carried to Smithfield on 30 May and burnt alive in the company of one Warne, an upholsterer. Of the proceedings against Cardmaker, Foxe gives a full account, and Strype (ut supra) added some important particulars from the ‘Foxii MSS.'
[Foxe's Martyrs and authorities cited above.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.53
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 40 | i | 8 | Cardmaker, John: for Soon after this he was made read In 1547 he had been made |
| 16 f.e. | add to authorities Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. 126–7 |