Edmund Bonner was Bishop of London during the reign of Mary Tudor, and his name has always been linked with hers in the history of the persecution. More than one-third of all the victims of the Marian reaction were indeed burnt within his diocese, but Bonner's prominent place in the record rests primarily on Foxe's identification of him as one of the arch-villains of Mary's reign. Foxe's Acts and Monuments launched ‘Bloody Bonner’ into history as the epitome of evil and injustice. He included in his book not only many documents but also episodes which had been passed to him by word of mouth. Such was the story of Tomkins, a weaver from Shoreditch ‘endued with God's mighty spirit’. When Bonner summoned him for examination, Tomkins remained steadfast in his faith, which so enraged Bonner that he seized Tomkins's hand and held it directly over the flame of a candle until the flesh blistered. Foxe did not invent this story. The Spanish ambassador had heard of Tomkins's ordeal before the end of March 1554/5, but his version emphasised Tomkins's bravado in voluntarily testing how much pain he could bear. Foxe did not probe as to who had initiated the candle episode. He was concerned to tell the history of the age-long conflict between the true and the apostate Church and so would not blur the picture he had drawn of the main protagonists. Tomkins was the holy martyr, Bonner the ‘persecutor of the light and a child of darkness’. The Elizabethans accepted Foxe's picture unhesitatingly and later historians have accepted it or modified it usually according to their own religious persuasion.