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John Tewkesbury (died 20 December 1531) was a Paternoster Row leather merchant in London and Protestant reformer, convicted of heresy and burned at the stake in West Smithfield, London, on 20 December 1531.
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John Tewkesbury (died 20 December 1531) was a Paternoster Row leather merchant in London and Protestant reformer, convicted of heresy and burned at the stake in West Smithfield, London, on 20 December 1531.
In 1512, Tewkesbury came into the possession of a manuscript copy of the Bible. He later bought an English language translation of the New Testament (1526) by William Tyndale. "He was a clever and eloquent man and a man of influence in London. He was one of the most knowledgeable of the Scriptures of all the evangelicals. [1] " He was converted by reading Tyndale's New Testament and The Parable of the Wicked Mammon (1528). [2]
On Wednesday 21 April 1529 Tewkesbury was arrested and brought before Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, and his assistants, Henry Standish, bishop of St. Asaph, and John Islip, abbot of Westminster. Tewkesbury's eloquence stunned the bishops. Realizing that he could effectively argue through Scripture, they decided further inquiry was in order.
Later that month, Tewkesbury was examined before the bishops Cuthbert Tunstall of London, Nicholas West of Ely, John Longland of Lincoln, and John Clerk of Bath and Wells regarding The Wicked Mammon, which he had sold. He was questioned regarding nineteen articles from the book. His final reply was, "I pray you reform yourself, and if there be any error in the book, let it be reformed. I think it is good enough." [3]
He was ordered to appear the following day, before John Cox, vicar-general to the archbishop of Canterbury, Galfride Warton, Rowland Philips, William Philow, and Robert Ridley, professors of divinity. Tewkesbury appeared again and was examined on five articles from The Wicked Mammon. The consensus among the inquisitors was that knowledge and independent thinking by the laity was even more dangerous than the heresy of some priests.
On 8 May, he was ordered to carry a bundle of sticks at St. Paul's Church on the following Sunday. He was to carry a bundle of sticks other places on the following week and wear sticks embroidered on both sleeves. He was also ordered to enter the monastery of St. Bartholomew's on Whitsunday eve (30 May) and remain there until released by the Bishop. Following his incarceration at the monastery, he renounced his prior beliefs and was released.
In close co-operation with Cuthbert Tunstall's successor, John Stokesley, Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, arrested George Constantine, a Protestant book dealer, for heresy in 1531. Before escaping in early December, Constantine revealed the names of several fellow reformers. [4]
Following his betrayal by Constantine, Tewkesbury was immediately arrested and held in the porter's lodge at More's Chelsea house. [4]
The popular anti-Catholic polemicist John Foxe claims More had Tewkesbury pinioned "hand, foot, and head in the stocks" [1] for six days before having him whipped at "Jesu's tree" [1] in his garden, "and also twisted his brows with small ropes, so that the blood started out of his eyes". [1]
More himself, however, denied such claims in his "Apology" (1533), [5] which were circulating in continental Protestant at the time:
Tewkesbury was subsequently moved to the Tower of London and confessed to Stokesley that he had read The Obedience of a Christian Man and The Wicked Mammon since recanting his beliefs two years earlier. He also confessed to removing the embroidered twigs from his sleeves and other alleged heresies.
The sentence against John Tewkesbury was read and pronounced by John Stokesley, Bishop of London on 16 December 1531 in the house of Sir Thomas More. After this sentence, without a king's writ for their warrant, the sheriffs of London, Richard Gresham and Edward Altam, took Tewkesbury into custody. On St. Thomas' eve, Sunday 20 December 1531, the sheriffs burned him at the stake opposite the Priory Church of St. Bartholomew's the Great, in West Smithfield, London. [7]
In 2013, Patrick Gabridge's Fire on Earth, a full-length historical drama in two acts, premiered in Boston. [8] John Tewksbury's character in the play is a composite of Tewkesbury and fellow martyrs, including Richard Bayfield and Thomas Hitton.[ citation needed ]
Sir Thomas More PC, venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to May 1532. He wrote Utopia, published in 1516, which describes the political system of an imaginary island state.
William Tyndale was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He is well known as a translator of the Bible into English, and was influenced by the works of prominent Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther.
Robert Barnes was an English reformer and martyr.
Cuthbert Tunstall was an English humanist, bishop, diplomat, administrator and royal adviser. He served as Bishop of Durham during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.
John Stokesley was an English clergyman who was Bishop of London during the reign of Henry VIII.
Early Modern English Bible translations are those translations of the Bible which were made between about 1500 and 1800, the period of Early Modern English. This was the first major period of Bible translation into the English language including the King James Version and Douai Bibles. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation led to the need for Bibles in the vernacular with competing groups each producing their own versions.
John Frith was an English Protestant priest, writer, and martyr.
Rowland Taylor was an English Protestant martyr during the Marian Persecutions.
Anne Askew, married name Anne Kyme, was an English writer, poet, and Protestant preacher who was condemned as a heretic during the reign of Henry VIII of England. She and Margaret Cheyne are the only women on record known to have been both tortured in the Tower of London and burnt at the stake.
Richard Hunne was an English merchant tailor in the City of London during the early years of the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547). After a dispute with his priest over his infant son's funeral, Hunne sought to use the English common law courts to challenge the church's authority. In response, church officials arrested him for trial in an ecclesiastical court on the capital charge of heresy.
The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe: written not longe after the yere of our Lorde. M. and three hundred is a short, anonymous English Christian text, probably written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century and first printed in about 1531. It consists of a prose tract, in the form of a polemical prayer, expressing Lollard sentiments and arguing for religious reform. In it, the simple ploughman/narrator speaks on behalf of "the repressed common man imbued with the simple truths of the Bible and a knowledge of the commandments against the mighty and monolithic conservative church". The pastoral-ecclesiastical metaphor of shepherds and sheep is used extensively as a number of criticisms are made about such things as confession, indulgences, purgatory, tithing and celibacy. The Prayer became important in the sixteenth century, when its themes were taken up by proponents of the Protestant Reformation.
Thomas Harding was a sixteenth-century English religious dissident who, while waiting to be burnt at the stake as a Lollard in 1532, was struck on the head by a spectator with one of the pieces of firewood, which killed him instantly.
George Joye was a 16th-century Bible translator who produced the first printed translation of several books of the Old Testament into English (1530–1534), as well as the first English Primer (1529).
Thomas Hitton is generally considered to be the first English Protestant martyr of the Reformation, although the followers of Wycliffe - the Lollards - had been burned at the stake as late as 1519.
Richard Bayfield was an English Protestant martyr.
The English Reformation took place in 16th-century England when the Church of England was forced by its monarchs and elites to break away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church. These events were part of the wider European Reformation, a religious and political movement that affected the practice of Christianity in Western and Central Europe.
Henry Cole was a senior English Roman Catholic churchman and academic.
James Bainham was an English lawyer and Protestant reformer who was burned as a heretic in 1532.
Thomas Gerard (1500?–1540) was an English Protestant reformer. In 1540, he was burnt to death for heresy, along with William Jerome and Robert Barnes.