MALDON residents might well consider that this March was unprecedented for the fear, drama and shock it brought to the town – yet one event 465 years earlier was planned to do exactly that.

The places where history happened are not always obvious and this is arguably the case with the spot where Maldon's own martyr was burned at the stake on 28 March, 1555.

On the wall of the Old Iron Works in Fullbridge, Maldon, off the roundabout and facing the new Costa Coffee on the Blackwater Retail Park, those who look carefully will see a small rectangular stone. It marks the place where Stephen Knight died for his faith.

Stephen Knight had lived and worked in the town as a barber, but it was his strong Protestant faith that saw him suffer a terrible fate. He was one of a group of men tried and condemned in London by the infamous Bishop Bonner during the reign of Queen Mary, also known as 'bloody Mary' for her persecution of Protestants.

Knight's main crime was to deny the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation – put simply, this is the notion that when a person takes Holy Communion, the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Protestants do not believe this to be the case and at the time, this was viewed by the Catholic Church as heresy. In the reign of the staunchly Catholic Queen Mary, those who denied transubstantiation were viewed as heretics and hundreds were burned at the stake as a result.

Knight's story is recorded in 'Foxe's Book of Martyrs', an historic work dedicated to telling the stories of many of the victims of this religious persecution under a Tudor queen. In it, he tells how Knight spent some time in Newgate Prison in London with other Essex martyrs, before being sent back to Maldon to be publicy burnt as a gruesome warning to others in his home town.

Foxe records that Knight said a long prayer before his execution, which asked the Holy Spirit to give him strength through the fire.

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