Our martyrs, not Zwinglian gospellers: Heylyn's Laudian account of the Marian martyrs

Sunday, 16th October, is the commemoration of the martyrdom of Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. The commemoration challenges contemporary Anglicans in a number of ways.  

Many Anglo-catholics, of course, will willingly celebrate Reformation-era martyrs of the Roman allegiance.  As an example of this, we might note that an Anglo-catholic society for priests, the Society of the Holy Cross, has chapters named after Edmund Campion, John Fisher, and the Forty Martyrs.   One can imagine how confused Campion and Fisher would be at this use of their names by clergy of the established Church, under the Royal Supremacy, and not in communion with the See of Rome. When it comes to Latimer and Ridley, however, Anglo-catholics - echoing Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars - tend to lament their role in the English Reformation rather than commemorate their martyrdom.

For evangelical Anglicans, by contrast, the Marian martyrs are straightforwardly to be celebrated as heroes of a generic evangelicalism.  Ignoring the fact that Latimer and Ridley were bishops of a church defined by the Royal Supremacy, too many evangelical Anglicans view them as little more than predecessors of Billy Graham.

Then there is the awkwardness amongst contemporary Anglicans in the central tradition when it comes to recognising that Anglican churches are actually churches of the Reformation and that Anglicanism is therefore an expression of magisterial Protestantism.  This can lead to considerable social embarrassment on the part of such central Anglicans when the Protestant martyrs Latimer and Ridley are mentioned: 'they are not really ours, are they?'.

The Laudian Peter Heylyn provides a robust answer to this question in his Ecclesia Restaurata (1661).  The answer he provides is 'definitively yes'.  These are our martyrs.  And 'our' - in contrast to both Anglo-catholics and many evangelical Anglicans - means those whom he describes as "the orthodox and sober Protestants": in other words, those who conformed to the rites, ceremonies, and orders of the Church of England.  These martyrs are not to be claimed by those Protestants who, Heylyn says, are "Zuinglian gospellers", promoting excesses and "transported by a furious zeal". No, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, and the other clergy martyred under Mary, exemplified - to use words from of another work by Heylyn, The way and manner of the Reformation of the Church of England (1657) - "her Forms of Worship, her Government and establisht Patrimony".

Below is an extract from Ecclesia Restaurata, in which Heylyn notes the martyrdoms of clergy faithful to the formularies of the reformed Church of England, names which would have been recognised from Foxe's martyrology:

The first that led the way was Mr John Rogers, a right learned man, and a great companion of that Tyndale by whom the Bible was translated into English in the time of King Henry: after whose martyrdom, not daring to return into his own country, he retired to Wittemberg in the Dukedom of Saxony, where he remained till King Edward's coming to the Crown, and was by Bishop Ridley preferred to the Lecture of St Paul's, and made one of the Prebendaries ...

I shall say nothing in this place of the death and martyrdom of Dr Rowland Taylor, rector of Hadley in the county of Hartford, and there also burned, February 9. Or of John Cardmaker, Chancellor of the Church of Wells, who suffered the like death in London on the last of May. Or of Laurence Sanders, an excellent preacher, martyred at Coventry, where he had spent the greatest part of his ministry; who suffered in the same month also, but three weeks sooner than the other. Or of John Bradford, a right holy man and diligent preacher, condemned by Bonner, and brought unto the stake in Smithfield on the first of July ... Or, finally, of any of the rest of the noble army of the martyrs who fought the Lord's battles in those times; only I shall insist on three of the principal leaders, and take a short view of the rest in the general muster [here Heylyn recounts the martyrdom of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley] ...

These goodly cedars of the forest being thus cut down, it was not to be hoped that any favour could be shown to the shrubs and underwoods, which were grubbed up and felled with out any distinction , as well the young sapling as the decayed and withered tree ...

No fewer than two hundred are reported to have been burnt within three years by this cruel and unmerciful tyrant [Bonner, the Marian bishop of London] ... The most eminent of all which number was Mr John Philpot, Archdeacon of Winchester ...

Nor were these storms and tempests in other places of a short continuance, but held on more or less till the death of the Queen, as appeareth by those five persons which were burnt at Canterbury on the 10th of November, 1558, being but one full week before the day of her own dissolution ... 

Nor were these all that suffered in the fury of this persecution. For besides those that suffered martyrdom in the sight of the world, many are thought to have been made away in prison; but many more, to the number of some scores or hundreds, supposed to have been killed by starving, stinks, and other barbarous usages in their several jails. To which if we should add a catalogue of all those who fled the kingdom, and put themselves into a voluntary exile, amounting to the number of 800 or thereabouts, I suppose be well concluded, that, though many persecutions have lasted longer, yet none since Diocletian's time ever raged so terribly.

Such is the Laudian view of the Marian martyrs, those who died in the flames of persecution for the 'orthodox and sober Protestantism' of Book of Common Prayer, Ordinal, and Articles of Religion. Our martyrs.  

(The illustration is a depiction of the martyrdom of John Bradford.)

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