Thomas Hitton

Last updated

Thomas Hitton (died February 1530) 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. [1]

Hitton was a priest who had joined William Tyndale and the English exiles in the Low Countries. He returned to England on a brief visit in 1529 to contact the supporters of Tyndale and to arrange for the distribution of smuggled books such as the upcoming first English Psalter translated by George Joye.

Hitton believed in the supremacy of the Scriptures and denied the authority of bishops; only Scripture in good conscience was the basis for spiritual law (i.e. what is sinful), and all breaches of this law were mortal sins. [2] :1150 He also argued that baptism "would be much better if it were spoken in English".

He was seized near Gravesend on his way to the coast to take a ship, and found to be in possession of letters from the English exiles. He was then arrested on the grounds of suspected heresy by a bailiff of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was put through a formal series of five interviews by Archbishop William Warham at various intervals of a month or a week, forthrightly confirmed his belief in various heresies, given opportunities to amend the trial record to ensure it was accurate, admitted to previously importing two banned Tyndale New Testaments and Joye's Primer, would not say whom he had given them to, called the Pope the Anti-Christ, and refused to accept promises of mercy if he abjured or to be convinced otherwise. He was passed to Rochester Bishop John Fisher who confirmed with him again all the evidence and records, in English, and the consequences and ways to escape them, but Hitton refused to abjure. He was therefore determined to be a persistent heretic, outside the protection of the Church, and passed to the secular authority for punishment according to English law. [2] :1149–1151

He was burned at the stake at Maidstone on 23 February 1530.

When Joye's second Primer (entitled Hortulus animae) appeared a year later, he included the feast of "Sainte Thomas mar." (referring to Hitton) in the calendar. New Lord Chancellor Thomas More saw this as an insult against his hero and name-saint St Thomas Becket [3] and described Hitton as "the devil's stinking martyr": he had followed the case. He criticized George Joye for canonizing Hitton:

In theyr calendar before theyr deuout prayers, they haue sette vs a new saynt/ syr Thomas Hitton the heretyke that was burned in Kent, [...] they haue as I sayde sette his name in the calendar byfore a boke of theyr englyshe prayours, yn the name of saynt Thomas the martyr, in the vigyle of the blessed apostle saynte Mathye, the xxiii. daye of February. [4]

Tyndale also referred briefly to Hitton's execution:

And More amonge his other blasphemies in his Dialoge sayth that none of vs dare abyde by our fayth vnto deeth: but shortlye therafter/ god to proue More/ that he hath euer bene/ euen a false lyare/ gaue strength vnto his servaunte syr Thomas Hitton/ to confesse and that vnto the deeth the fayth of his holie sonne Iesus/ whiche Tomas the bishopes of Caunterburye & Rochester/ after they had dieted and tormented him secretlye murthered at Maydstone most cruellye. [5]

John Foxe [2] :1151 does not allege torture [6] or the involvement of More.

See also

Notes

  1. Michael Farris, "From Tyndale to Madison, 2007"
  2. 1 2 3 Foxe, John (1851). Fox's Book of Martyrs: The Acts and Monuments of the Church. G. Virtue.
  3. Pilgrimage, the English Experience from Beckett to Bunyan, Colin Roberts and Peter Morris, 2002
  4. More, The confutacyon of Tyndales answere, sigs. Bb2r, Bb3r
  5. Tyndale, The practyse of Prelates, sig. R6r.
  6. Note: there were strict rules on Inquisitional torture, limiting it to a single, short session attended by a doctor, with no blood or threat to life or limb, if the defendant was suspected but not known to be guilty of a serious crime, but known to be lying; this would presumably not match Hitton's forthrightness.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas More</span> English politician, author and philosopher (1478–1535)

Sir Thomas More, venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, amateur theologian, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Tyndale</span> English biblical scholar, translator, and reformer (1494–1536)

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 much of the Bible into English, and was influenced by the works of prominent Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Badby</span> Englishman executed for Eucharist views

John Badby (1380–1410), one of the early Lollard martyrs, was a tailor in the west Midlands, and was condemned by the Worcester diocesan court for his denial of transubstantiation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Fisher</span> 16th-century Bishop of Rochester

John Fisher was an English Catholic bishop, and theologian. Fisher was also an academic and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He is honoured as a martyr and saint by the Catholic Church.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Barnes (martyr)</span> 16th century martyr in the English Reformation

Robert Barnes was an English reformer and martyr.

John Lambert was an English Protestant martyr burnt to death on 22 November 1538 at Smithfield, London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Frith (martyr)</span> English Protestant priest, writer, and martyr

John Frith was an English Protestant priest, writer, and martyr.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rowland Taylor</span> English Protestant martyr (c.1510–1555)

Rowland Taylor was an English Protestant martyr during the Marian Persecutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Askew</span> English Protestant martyr (1521–1546)

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.

Robert Crowley, was a stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman among Marian exiles at Frankfurt. He seems to have been a Henrician Evangelical in favour of a more reformed Protestantism than the king and the Church of England sanctioned. Under Edward VI, he joined a London network of evangelical stationers to argue for reforms, sharing a vision of his contemporaries Hugh Latimer, Thomas Lever, Thomas Beccon and others of England as a reformed Christian commonwealth. He attacked as inhibiting reform what he saw as corruption and uncharitable self-interest among the clergy and wealthy. Meanwhile, Crowley took part in making the first printed editions of Piers Plowman, the first translation of the Gospels into Welsh, and the first complete metrical psalter in English, which was also the first to include harmonised music. Towards the end of Edward's reign and later, Crowley criticised the Edwardian Reformation as compromised and saw the dissolution of the monasteries as replacing one form of corruption by another. On his return to England after the reign of Mary I, Crowley revised his chronicle to represent the Edwardian Reformation as a failure, due to figures like Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset and John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland. Crowley's account of the Marian martyrs represented them as a cost mostly paid by commoners. The work became a source for John Foxe's account of the period in his Actes and Monuments. Crowley held church positions in the early to mid-1560s and sought change from the pulpit and within the church hierarchy. Against the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, Crowley was a leader in the renewed vestments controversy, which eventually lost him his clerical posts. During the dispute he and other London clergy produced a "first Puritan manifesto". Late in life Crowley was restored to several church posts and appears to have charted a more moderate course in defending it from Roman Catholicism and from nonconformist factions that espoused a Presbyterian church polity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">White Horse Tavern, Cambridge</span> Former tavern in Cambridge, England

The White Horse Tavern or White Horse Inn was allegedly the meeting place in Cambridge for English Protestant reformers to discuss Lutheran ideas, from 1521 onwards. According to the historian Geoffrey Elton the group of university dons who met there were nicknamed "Little Germany" in reference to their discussions of Luther. Whilst the pub undoubtedly existed, several scholars have questioned the existence of the White Horse meetings – they are described by John Foxe in his Book of Martyrs, but no other evidence for them exists. Gergely M Juhász writes that "Foxe’s romantic image of these students and scholars convening secretly on a regular basis in the White Horse Inn… is unsubstantiated", and Alec Ryrie refers to it as "the stubborn legend of the White Horse Inn".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Harding</span> English religious dissident

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.

John Capon, was a Benedictine monk who became bishop of Bangor, then bishop of Salisbury under Henry VIII. He is often referred to as John Salcot alias Capon.

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).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Marsh (martyr)</span> English Protestant martyr (1515–1555)

George Marsh was an English Protestant martyr who died in Boughton, Chester, on 24 April 1555 as a result of the Marian Persecutions carried out against Protestant Reformers and other dissenters during the reign of Mary I of England. His death is recorded in Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

James Bainham was an English lawyer and Protestant reformer who was burned as a heretic in 1532.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Benet (martyr)</span> English Protestant martyr

Thomas Benet from Cambridge, was an English Protestant martyr during the reign of King Henry VIII. In 1524, he moved to Torrington, North Devon, with his wife and family so that he could exercise his religious conscience more freely in a county where no one knew him. He was executed by burning on 15 January 1531, for heresy, at Livery Dole outside Exeter in Devon, under the supervision of Sir Thomas Dennis of Holcombe Burnell, near Exeter, then Sheriff of Devon.

John Tewkesbury 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.