William Hunter was a Marian martyr burnt to death in Brentwood, England at the age of 19 on 26 March 1555, [1] on Ingrave Road. He had lost his job in London as a silk-weaver because he refused to attend the Catholic mass, despite an order that everyone in the City of London had to attend, [1] and had come to live with his parents in Brentwood, but got into a dispute when discovered reading the Bible for himself in Brentwood Chapel. He refused to accept the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation according to which the bread and wine of the communion become the body and blood of Jesus. [2]
He was taken before Antony Browne, then the local Justice, but later Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, but refused to retract his position. Hunter was then sent to Bishop Bonner in London. He resisted both threats and bribes—Bonner offered to make him a Freeman of the City of London and give him £40—and was eventually returned to Brentwood to be burnt. He was the first Essex martyr of the reign of Mary Tudor. [3]
The site is now Brentwood School, which was founded by Antony Browne in 1558, under a grant from Queen Mary (not, as some believe, as a penance when Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne). The Martyr's Elm was grown on the spot of Hunter's incineration.
The site is marked by a plaque with the inscription
WILLIAM HUNTER. MARTYR. Committed to the Flames March 26th MDLV.
Christian Reader, learn from his example to value the privilege of an open Bible. And be careful to maintain it. [4]
William Hunter Way, a road in Brentwood, was named after him.
Edmund Bonner was Bishop of London from 1539 to 1549 and again from 1553 to 1559.
John Rogers was an English clergyman, Bible translator and commentator. He guided the development of the Matthew Bible in vernacular English during the reign of Henry VIII and was the first English Protestant executed as a heretic under Mary I of England, who was determined to restore Roman Catholicism.
Hugh Latimer was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and Bishop of Worcester during the Reformation, and later Church of England chaplain to King Edward VI. In 1555 under the Catholic Queen Mary I he was burned at the stake, becoming one of the three Oxford Martyrs of Anglicanism.
John Foxe, an English historian and martyrologist, was the author of Actes and Monuments, telling of Christian martyrs throughout Western history, but particularly the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the 14th century and in the reign of Mary I. The book was widely owned and read by English Puritans and helped to mould British opinion on the Catholic Church for several centuries.
John Roy Hooper was an English churchman, Anglican Bishop of Gloucester, later of Worcester and Gloucester, a Protestant reformer and a Protestant martyr. A proponent of the English Reformation, he was executed for heresy by burning during the reign of Queen Mary I.
Rowland Taylor was an English Protestant martyr during the Marian Persecutions.
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.
Edmund Cosyn (Cosin) was an English Catholic academic and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University of the middle sixteenth century.
Sir Anthony Browne QS (1509–1567), sometimes referred to as Antony Browne, was a British justice.
Joan Waste or Wast was a blind woman who was burned in Derby for refusing to renounce her Protestant faith.
Agnes Prest was a Cornish Protestant martyr from the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary. She was burned at the stake at Southernhay in Exeter in 1557.
William Chedsey (1510?–1574?) was an English Roman Catholic priest and academic, who became archdeacon of Middlesex in 1556 and President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1558.
Richard Woodman was a Protestant martyr, who was born in Buxted and lived in nearby Warbleton in East Sussex. He was burnt during the Marian Persecutions in 1557 in Lewes. The cult of the Sussex Martyrs is said to have been started using an etching by James Henry Hurdis of Woodman burning as a Protestant martyr.
Thomas Hawkes was an English protestant martyr who burned to death in 1555 during the Marian Persecutions rather than allow his son to be baptised into the Roman Catholic Church.
The Canterbury Martyrs were 16th-century English Protestant martyrs. They were executed for heresy in Canterbury, Kent, and were the last Protestants burnt during the reign of Mary I. Their story is recorded in Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
William Flower was a 16th-century English Protestant martyr. His story is recorded in Foxe's Book of Martyrs. He was burnt to death on 24 April 1555 at St. Margaret's churchyard, Westminster, London.
William Pygot was a sixteenth-century English butcher and Protestant martyr. His story was recorded in Foxe's Book of Martyrs. For denying transubstantiation, he was burned to death at Braintree, Essex, on 28 March 1555.
Bartholomew or Bartlet Green, was an English Protestant.
The Actes and Monuments, popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, is a work of Protestant history and martyrology by Protestant English historian John Foxe, first published in 1563 by John Day. It includes a polemical account of the sufferings of Protestants under the Catholic Church, with particular emphasis on England and Scotland. The book was highly influential in those countries and helped shape lasting popular notions of Catholicism there. The book went through four editions in Foxe's lifetime and a number of later editions and abridgements, including some that specifically reduced the text to a Book of Martyrs.