The Reformation

In the Reformation Pembroke bred martyrs as well as bishops. John Rogers (first of the martyrs to be burned by Mary Tudor) and John Bradford both suffered at Smithfield: Nicholas Ridley, elected Master in 1540, sent his last message to the College from Oxford as he awaited death:

'Farewell, Pembroke Hall, of late mine own College, my cure, and my charge... In thy Orchard (the walls, buts, and trees, if they could speak, would bear me witness) I learned without book almost all Paul's Epistles... of which study, although in time a great part did depart from me, yet the sweet smell thereof I trust I shall carry with me into Heaven, for the profit thereof I think I have felt in all my life time ever after; and I ween of late (whether they abide there now or no I cannot tell) there were who did the like.'

On the north side of the Bowling Green is a path still known as 'Ridley's Walk'.

In the reign of Elizabeth I a long line of Pembroke poets began with the admission to the College of Edmund Spenser in 1569. Gabriel Harvey was also a junior Fellow at the time and one of Spenser's fellow-scholars was Lancelot Andrewes, afterwards Master of the College and one of the translators of the Authorised Version of the Bible.

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