Why Perotine

The site is named for a woman who was killed for what she believed, on Guernsey, in 1556.

What happened

In July 1556, three women were burned at the stake in St Peter Port, Guernsey: Perotine Massey, her sister Guillemine Gilbert, and their mother Catherine Cawches. They had been convicted of heresy under Mary I, caught up in the Marian persecutions, the burnings of Protestants that ran through the last years of Mary's reign.

Perotine was heavily pregnant. She gave birth in the fire. A bystander reached in and pulled the infant from the flames. On the order of the presiding magistrate, the child was put back.

The account comes from John Foxe's Actes and Monuments, the book usually called Foxe's Book of Martyrs, first printed in 1563. It is one of the most harrowing things recorded from those years, and it is recorded plainly. There is nothing to add to it.

Why the name

Perotine Massey didn't get to leave anything behind. No work, no record in her own words, nothing she chose to make public. What survives is an account of how she died, written by someone else.

This site takes her name not as a memorial, not a candle or a plaque, but as a continuation: the platform she never had. A place to speak, create, and be heard, on her own terms.