Published on Reviews in History (https://reviews.history.ac.uk ) Tyburn's Martyrs: Execution in England 1675-1775 Review Number: 677 Publish date: Tuesday, 1 July, 2008 Author: Andrea McKenzie ISBN: 9781847251718 Date of Publication: 2007 Price: £30.00 Pages: 336pp. Publisher: Hambledon Continuum Place of Publication: London Reviewer: James Sharpe Andrea McKenzie begins her preface to Tyburn's Martyrs by attempting to locate the 18th-century Tyburn execution in the broader modern cultural context. It is, she contends, the most familiar and evocative image from that century, synonymous with the brutality of a past age and viewed as a grotesque spectator sport to which horror and disgust seem to be the sole appropriate responses for modern sensibilities. In one sense, that of the general reading public, she is correct. Yet, as she is fully aware, a number of historians have turned their attention to the phenomenon of the early modern English public execution and have developed a number of interpretations of its significance. Setting aside a piece of juvenilia by the present reviewer, we have Peter Linebaugh's massive book, which covers roughly the same period as does McKenzie's, but tells a very different story; an essay by T. W. Laqueur, which again adopts a different emphasis, stressing the 'carnivalesque' elements in the public execution; a number of incisive articles by Randall McGowen, which offer a set of emphases more in line with McKenzie's; and another massive and thoughtful book by V. A. C. Gatrell which in effect picks up the story where Tyburn's Martyrs ends. (1) What is obvious, not least on account of the very diversity of approaches and emphases offered by these and other historians, is that we are still a fair distance from really getting a grip on the cultural significance (or more accurately, significances) of the early modern English public execution. McKenzie's book, happily, is an important new work which develops a fresh approach to the topic, and moves us forward significantly towards a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. Perhaps the first step towards understanding her approach is to ponder on her title. 'Tyburn's Martyrs', one suspects, appealed to the publisher, but it does place a certain onus on the author to explain in what ways the ordinary criminals - the murderers, rapists, thieves, burglars, robbers and forgers - executed at Tyburn can be classed as martyrs, especially as (unlike Linebaugh) she does not privilege the notion that these people were victims of the advance of capitalism, or conversely, of an unjust legal code. Rather she hopes to justify her book's title by demonstrating that: the degree to which the language of martyrology, legitimation and resistance were intertwined in this period, and that traitors, martyrs, murderers and robbers alike drew from a common eschatology in which the 'good death' was not only an ultimate goal, but a powerful political and metaphysical statement (p. xvi). McKenzie thus takes as her focus the religious rhetoric which has previously been noted by a number of