Gertrude Crokhay
GERTRUDE CROKHAY
Gertrude Crokhay lived with her second husband in St. Katherine’s parish, near the Tower of London. In 1558, a child portraying St. Nicholas made his way around the parish, but Gertrude refused to let him into her house. The next day Dr. Mallet and twenty others appeared at her door to ask why she wouldn’t let St. Nicholas in and receive his blessing.
“Sir,” she answered, “I didn’t know St. Nicholas came here.”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “Here’s the boy who played him.”
“My neighbor’s child was here, but not St. Nicholas, for St. Nicholas is in heaven. I was afraid he would steal from me, because I’d heard of men robbed by St. Nicholas’s clerks.” Dr. Mallet left Gertrude, not able to trap her into saying anything that could be construed as heresy.
In 1559, Gertrude served as godmother for a child being baptized with the Protestant service. When her enemies heard of this, they began looking for her, but she had gone across the sea to Guelderland to see some land that had been left to her children by her first husband. After three months, she started home by way of Antwerp. She was seen there by John Johnson, a Dutchman who was fighting with her husband over a bill. He accused her of being an Anabaptist and had her imprisoned to get even with her husband.
Gertrude remained in prison for two weeks, during which she saw some prisoners secretly drowned in wine vats and cast into the river. She expected the same would eventually be done to her, and in her fear she came down with the sickness that later killed her.
Finally called to be tried as an Anabaptist, Gertrude declared her faith so boldly in Dutch that she was released from prison and allowed to return to England.