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Saint or Schemer? The 1527 Heresy Trial of Thomas Bilney Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Greg Walker
Greg Walker
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Southampton, Southampton S09 5NH
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Extract

On 8 December 1527 two scholars, Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur, carried penitential faggots at St Paul's Cross as a token of abjuration of heresy. With this act both men formally cleansed their souls and brought about their reconciliation with the Church. Far from being the end of a story, however, this ceremony proved to be the beginning of a controversy which has survived until the present day. For Thomas Bilney subsequently renounced his abjuration and became a significant figure in the early Reformation in England, eventually dying at the stake as a relapsed heretic in 1531. And yet, despite the importance attributed to him as a reformer, Bilney is now, as he was then, an ambiguous figure whose relationship with the Catholic Church and precise beliefs have never been conclusively determined. Many writers have claimed Bilney as a champion of their particular causes or have sought to identify his place in the wider movements of the Reformation. For the Protestant John Foxe he was a martyr, albeit a flawed one, for the reformed faith, who refused to the last to be intimidated into a second abjuration. For Sir Thomas More, in somewhat mischievous mood, he was a Catholic saint brought to realise the error of his ways at the stake and reconciled to the Church with almost his last breath.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , April 1989 , pp. 219 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, iv (hereinafter cited as A&M), G. Townsend (ed. 8 vols, London 1843–9, 619–56.

2 Thomas More, The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, in Schuster, L. A., et al. (eds), The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, viii, New Haven 1973. 23–4Google Scholar.

3 For these interrogatories, see A&M, 624–6. They are summarised and analysed in Davis, J. F., ‘The trials of Thomas Bylney and the English Reformation’, Historical Journal xxiv (1981), 775–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 A&M, 627.

5 Ibid. 63. Bilney's intention to defy the judges and call their bluff is made clear by his answers to their questions. As the trial records show, he was even more stubborn than Foxe's transcripts suggest, returning a bold ‘Fiat justicia et judicium’ to many more of their questions, Guildhall Library, Register Tunstal, 9531/10 fos 131–2. Th e allusion would seem to be to Psalm cxix. 121, ‘I have done judgement and justice: leave me not to mine oppressors.’ I owe this suggestion to Professor C. Morris.

6 A&M, 631.

7 Ibid. 631.

8 Ibid. 631–2.

9 Ibid. 632.

10 Ibid.

11 More, Thomas, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Campbell, W. S. (ed.), London 1929 169, 200–2Google Scholar.

12 Ibid. 200.

13 Ibid. 196.

14 Ibid. 202.

15 A&M, 632, author's italics.

16 See, for example, Davis, ‘Trials’, 782.

17 Register Tunstal, fo. 135.

18 Ibid. fo. 136.

19 Clebsch, W. A., England's Earliest Protestants, 1520–35, London 1964, 26, 43–9Google Scholar.

20 A&M, 4–5, 421–8.

21 For a definition of the term ‘evangelical’ in the sense used here, see Davis, ‘Trials’, 778; also below, p. 229.

22 Wilkins, D. (ed.), Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hibernia, A.D. 446–1717, iii, London 1737. 314–19Google Scholar.

23 A&M, 620.

24 Davis, op. cit. 780.

25 See, for example, More, Dialogue, 6–7.

26 For an account of Bilney's piety, see A&M, 620–1. More's inability to dispute this reputation is implicit in the Dialogue, 6–7, 207.

27 Significantly, when William Tyndale sought a patron for his Biblical translation, his first thought was to look to Tunstal, Brewer, J. S. et al. (eds), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, iv(2) (hereinafter cited as LP) London 1862–1923, 4282Google Scholar.

28 For Skelton's ‘Replication Against Certain Young Scholars Abjured of late’, see Scattergood, V. J. (ed.), The Complete English Poems, London 1982, 372–86Google Scholar.

29 Davis, ‘Trials’, 787–8.

30 A&M, 622.

31 More, Dialogue, 8. Robert Barnes claimed that his name had been falsely linked with Luther's in order to vilify him. He was made to abjure at St Paul's while Fisher prearhed against Luther's works, in Barnes, Whole Works, A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave (eds), A Shorl-litle Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland, 14.75–1641, London 1926, 24436.

32 A&M, 649, 648.

33 Register Tunstal, fo. 134.

34 A&M, 635, author's italics.

35 Ibid. 636.

36 Davis ‘Trials’, 777–82.

37 LP, 4029 (2).

38 A&M, 624.

39 Ibid. 625.

40 Ibid. 626.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid. 642.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid. 641.

45 Duffield, G. E. (ed.), The World of William Tyndale, Philadelphia 1965Google Scholar, appendix (LP, 458, 9 May 1533). I owe this reference to Dr G. W. Bernard.

46 A&M, 632.

47 More, Dialogue, 184, author's italics.

48 A&M, 622. Wolsey had summoned Bilney before him in spring 1527.

49 Davis, J. F., Heresy and Reformation in the South East of England, 1520–59, London 1983Google Scholar,

50 Thomson, J. A. F., The Later Lollards, 1414–1520, Oxford 1965, 230Google Scholar.

51 A&M, 631, ‘bonae vitae testes’. Bilney's meaning is unclear. Were they of good life/character, or would they testify to Bilney's good character? Either way the implication is not that they will refute the earlier accounts with detailed testimonies but that they will provide credible testimonials to his beliefs and teachings - they would act as compurgators. This is confirmed by More's jibe that Bilney intended to produce as witnesses men who were not present at his sermons. More misleadingly declared that this made their evidence useless, comparing Bilney to a man ‘arraigned for a felony done at Salisbury on Shrove Tuesday [who had] brought in good witnesses … that would depose … that he did no such felony at Shrewsbury on Shere Thursday, for they were with him there all that day themselves’, Dialogue, 193. If compurgation was the aim, a general statement of orthodoxy was all that was required, as More well knew.

52 A&M, 634.

53 Ibid. 635.

54 Sturge, C., Cuthbert Tunstal: churchman, scholar, statesman, administrator, London 1938, 51–7Google Scholar.

55 A&M, 638.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid. 642.

58 Ibid. 639.

59 Ibid. 642.

60 Note More's itemised defence of the courts against the popular allegations voiced by his fictional stooge, the Messenger, Dialogue, 8, 188–93.

61 A&M, 634.

62 Ibid. 642.