agnes prest

Religious Martyr

1503 – 1557 

Suggested by Diane Palmer

Diane says, “Agnes was a figure long believed to be in my husband’s family tree.”

From the website of the church of St Michaels & All Angels, Mount Dinham, Exeter: The story of Agnes Prest can by found in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. As a young woman, she worked in Exeter as a servant where she was moved by the martydom of protestant Thomas Benet.

When she returned to her native Cornwall she married a Roman Catholic called Prest. They settled nearby Launceston and had children, even though Agnes, as a protestant did not share her husband’s beliefs. The pressure on her to conform became so great that she left home, but when she returned because she could not bear to be parted from her children, her husband had her arrested for heresy and imprisoned in Launceston.

Agnes, then in her early 50s, was brought to Exeter for interrogation.  She was charged with the crime of “Heresy chiefly against the Sacrament of the Altar and for speaking against Idols” and ordered to give up her beliefs. Many came to trick, taunt or threaten her into recanting her beliefs, but she stood firm against all the pressure, was tried at Exeter Guildhall, sentenced to death, and burnt at the stake on Southernay, just outside the city walls, on 15 August 1557.

A monument to her, and Thomas Bennet martyred in 1531, was erected on the corner of Barnfield Road and Denmark Road in 1909 as the result of a public subscription. Two bronze panels on the sides of the obelisk show Benet banging on the door of the Cathedral and Prest at the stake in Southernhay. Another two plaques on the monument state:

“In grateful remembrance of Thomas Benet, m.a. who suffered at livery dole, a.d. 1531, for denying the supremacy of the pope, and of Agnes Prest who suffered on southernhay a.d. 1557, for refusing to accept the doctrine of transubstantiation. ‘faithful unto death.”