This chapter examines the memory of those who conformed and compromised – so-called ‘Nicodemites’ – in the English Reformation. It takes as its starting point and central case study Matthew Parker (1504-75), the first Elizabethan archbishop of Canterbury, and his self-memorialisation in his memorial roll, a curious document which has often been described as autobiographical. The chapter considers the format, content and purpose of this unique manuscript, focusing particularly on the section dealing with Parker’s life during the reign of Mary I (1553-8) and the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England; a period in which Parker, unlike many other celebrated Protestants, was neither a martyr nor an exile, choosing instead the partial compromise of remaining in his newly hostile homeland. Both Parker himself and then his subsequent presented these years as either a period of inner spiritual constancy or as a time of suffering, a quasi-martyrdom. This, the chapter argues, reflects and illuminates a much larger process in which individual compromise was rewritten or forgotten in the creation of a larger, collective cultural memory of Protestant resistance and triumph.

This chapter investigates how the Reformation has been remembered through English monuments. It outlines the development of early modern tombs to individuals and families which both reflected and shaped Protestant theories of death and memories of the Reformation. It describes the emergence of memorials to the Reformation as a specific event in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focused on the commemoration of Protestant and Catholic martyrs. The chapter concludes that the commemoration of the Reformation in memorials has almost always been contentious and sectarian, notwithstanding some recent ecumenical examples, and proposes that future monuments acknowledge a shared history of suffering to enact reconciliation.