Set discreetly into a wall in Smithfield, amid the bustle and bars of this rapidly gentrifying part of London, is a memorial raised by the Protestant Alliance in 1870 commemorating the men and women who died agonisingly nearby, roasted alive for refusing to abjure their new-found reformed religion.

Nimble intellectual footwork was needed across the 16th century of Tudor rule to keep the fires of Smithfield at bay.