Her first instinct was to cry out with the searing pain as the cruel commissioner gripped her wrist with one hand and passed the candle she was carrying backwards and forwards, up and down the back of her hand, until he had burned a cross on it and the sinews snapped with a loud report. But this was a test. How could she cry at the flame of a candle, when she had professed herself able to bear the pain of martyrdom at the stake, for the sake of Jesus Christ her Saviour?
Rose Allen had answered the loud knocking on the door at two o'clock in the morning to find a crowd of local dignitaries come to arrest her, her mother and step-father. They charged this little household with heresy because they refused to attend the parish church now that the Queen Mary had come to the throne and once more was trying to bring England back to Roman Catholicism. Rose and her family had come to delight in reading the Bible. They had been brought to confess their sins to the Lord Jesus Christ and knew that He had pardoned them completely, They had no need of priest, confessional or penances. Jesus had forgiven them. He had died for them. He had risen from the dead and now lived to intercede for them. They no longer attended the parish church of Great Bentley in the county of Essex. They preferred to worship God quietly at home, but the local priest had reported them, and the Bishop of London had ordered their arrest.
Rose's fortitude merely angered her torturer.
'Why won't you cry?' he shouted.
'I have no cause to cry; I have only cause to rejoice thank God. If you consider the matter well, you have more cause to weep than I.'
The man, Edward Tyrrell, thrust Rose aside. 'Have you done?' she asked.
'Yes, and if you don't like it, you put it right,' he said.
'No,' answered Rose. 'May the Lord put you right and give you repentance if that is His will.'
All this time Rose held a stone pot of water in her hand she had fetched for her mother who was ill and still lay on her bed. It would have been so easy to have felled her tormentor, but Rose bore his cruelty patiently for the sake of Her Lord. Quietly she handed the water to her mother and helped her to dress.
Very soon the three of them, with another man the constables had found in the house, were bundled into a cart and driven to Colchester Castle. It was left to another prisoner to notice poor Rose's hand and try to apply some soothing cream.
'Didn't it hurt?' she asked. 'Didn't you cry?'
'It hurt terribly at first,' said Rose, 'and I felt like hitting out at Master Tyrrell for his cruelty, but I thank God He gave me patience and it seemed the pain grew less, till I hardly felt any at all.'
It would be nice to be able to tell you that Rose Allen was set free, but this was not so. All spring and most of the summer, the little family from Great Bentley waited in Colchester Castle. Then on the 2nd of August 1557, they, with another man, J Johnson of Thorpe, were burned at the stake in Colchester Castle Yard.
As the Bible says, 'tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection... and these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us, should not be made perfect.'
Rose was only twenty years old. She was just a humble cottage maid, but her God filled her with courage and kept her faithful unto death. Do you know this God? Is He your Saviour? Has He pardoned your sins? Do you know that after death you will reign with Jesus Christ your Lord? So that the fear of death and dying is taken away and you can rejoice at the prospect of being with Christ which is far better?
