Joan Bocher
Joan Bocher (died 2 May 1550) was an English Anabaptist who was burned at the stake for heresy during the English Reformation under King Edward VI. She is also known as Joan Boucher, Butcher, or as Joan Knell or Joan of Kent.
Her origins are unclear, but families named Bocher and Knell lived around Romney Marsh in Kent. She was linked with Anabaptists in Kent, including some refugees from the Low Countries. In the 1530s and 1540s she was well known in reform-minded circles in Canterbury.
Her first clash with the authorities came after she spoke against the practice of the Lord’s Supper. A church official released her from prison, a decision arranged by a deputy of Thomas Cranmer and Christopher Nevinson. This leniency later hurt Nevinson when he was implicated in the Prebendaries’ Plot in 1543.
Bocher grew more interested in Anabaptist ideas and argued that Christ’s flesh was celestial and not born of the Virgin Mary. She was arrested as a heretic in 1548 and convicted in April 1549. She spent about a year in prison while various religious leaders urged her to recant, but she would not.
Cranmer helped bring her to the stake on 2 May 1550, though reports that Edward VI was forced to approve the execution may be inaccurate. John Foxe asked royal chaplain John Rogers to intervene to save Bocher, but Rogers refused, saying that burning was a fitting punishment for heresy. Rogers himself was later burned during the Marian persecutions.
Some well-known stories about Bocher came from Robert Parsons in 1599, such as her friendship with Anne Askew and her supposed role in smuggling Tyndale’s New Testament into England and even into the royal court under her skirts. Parsons said he learned these things from someone who had witnessed her trial.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 09:05 (CET).