Julius Palmer
JULIUS PALMER
Julius Palmer was the son of a merchant living in the city of Coventry. He received his early education at the public school there and was sent to Oxford, where he was graduated and elected a fellow of Magdalene College.
Palmer had been brought up as a Catholic, and he refused to conform to the religious changes made during Edward VI’s time, so he was expelled from the college and served as a schoolteacher in the town of Oxford. When Queen Mary came to power, Palmer was returned to his post at the college. But while he had been away from the college, Palmer had made the acquaintance of several leaders of the reform party and began to doubt whether it was necessary to obey the pope in order to be a good Christian. When the persecution began, he began to look into the cases of those arrested and how they behaved themselves through the whole process of condemnation and burning, even sending one of his pupils to report back to him on the burning of Bishop Hooper.
Before this, Palmer was inclined to think that very few men would brave the fire for the sake of their religion, but when he heard of Hooper’s heroism and attended the examination of Ridley and Latimer, he totally changed his mind. From then on, he studied the scriptures thoroughly and became a zealous reformer.
Palmer began to miss Mass and other church ceremonies, which brought enough suspicion on him that he felt he should leave the college. He accepted a post as a grammar-school teacher in Reading, Berkshire, until driven out of there by enemies who threatened to turn him in for his Protestant beliefs.
Entirely destitute, Palmer went to his mother, hoping to obtain the legacy his father had left him four years before. But his mother was a heartless, bigoted woman who hated the reformers and was afraid of being accused of harboring a heretic. As soon as she saw him standing at her door, she motioned him away: “Get thee gone, heretic! Get thee gone!” she exclaimed.
“Mother, I don’t deserve this!” Palmer replied.
“You have been banished from Oxford and Reading as a heretic.”
Nothing Palmer could say would change his mother’s mind, so he decided to travel to Reading in hopes of getting his back pay there but was arrested and thrown into prison with Thomas Askine and John Gwin. After standing firm at their trials, all three were condemned as heretics.
While in prison awaiting their execution, Palmer comforted his two fellow-sufferers and urged them to hold on to the faith they professed. When the fire was kindled and began to take hold on the bodies of the three martyrs, they lifted up their hands toward heaven and cried out, “Lord, strengthen us! Lord, receive our souls!” And so they continued without any struggle, holding up their hands and calling on the Lord until they died.