John Stone, Blessed

John Stone, BLESSED, English martyr, executed at the Dane-John, Canterbury, probably in December, 1539, for denying the royal supremacy. He was an Austin Friar of Canterbury, and a doctor of divinity. He is probably the Austin Friar of whom Bishop Ingworth complained on December 14, 1538, that “at all times he still held and still desired to die for it, that the king may not be head of the Church of England“. When in prison before his martyrdom “after an uninterrupted fast of three days, he heard a voice, but without seeing the presence of anyone, calling him by name and exhorting him to be of good courage and not to hesitate to suffer with constancy for the truth of the opinion which he had professed”.