14. Hugh Latimer And Nicholas Ridley
Explanatory Notes
136 Lord Rich: Richard Rich, first Baron Rich. A member of the Privy Council, he was actively involved in the prosecution of heretics and suppression of heterodoxy.
13. JOHN BRADFORD AND JOHN LEAF
139 Sir John Harington: Sir John Harington of Exton, vice-treasurer of English military forces in France, whom Bradford served as an auditor late during the reign of Henry VIII.
140 Martin Bucer: an influential Strasbourg theologian whom Edward VI appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge
(1549 – 51).
142 to try what should become of his just doing: to decide how to respond to the restoration of Roman Catholicism.
143 preventing his hour: returning prior to the appointed time.
backside: an area at the rear of Queen's Bench and Marshalsea Prisons, which abutted each other in Southwark.
144 to receive the sacrament at Easter in one kind: Protestants disapproved of the Roman Catholic practice of withholding the sacramental element of wine from members of the laity, who were required to receive it once each year at Easter.
145 your chain is now a-buying: an executioner is now purchasing the chain to secure you to the stake.
shifted himself: he apparelled himself with.
146 nurse: one who offers support.
wedding garment: Bradford likens the garment in which he will die to wedding attire for his marriage to Jesus Christ as the Bridegroom (Revelation
18: 23) after death.
147 Master Rogers's scholar: an ironic reference to Leaf's study of the 'Matthew' Bible, in which Rogers combined English translations by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale.
148 Cardmaker: John Cardmaker, a Protestant cleric and well-known preacher in London who had been executed barely one month earlier on 30 May.
149 'Strait is the way . . . few there be that find it': Matthew 7: 14.
14. HUGH LATIMER AND NICHOLAS RIDLEY
151 Lord Williams: John Williams, Baron Williams of Thame. As Sheriff of Oxfordshire, he oversaw the executions of Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer.
all ready to: prepared for.
Bocardo: the prison over North Gate, Oxford, where Latimer, Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer were jailed prior to execution.
Friar Soto: Pedro de Soto, a Spaniard who received appointment as Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford during the reign of Mary I.
Explanatory Notes 151 pretty way: considerable distance.
152 of: from.
Doctor Smith: Richard Smith recanted and then went into exile during the reign of Edward VI. He received appointment as chaplain to Mary I and Philip of Spain and resumed duties as Lecturer in Theology at the University of Oxford.
if I yield my body to the . . . nothing thereby: 1 Corinthians 13: 3.
the goodness of the cause . . . maketh the holiness of the person: Protestants and Catholics alike subscribed to this patristic definition of martyrdom.
Oecolampadians: followers of Johannes Oecolampadius.
old Church of Christ, and the Catholic faith: Protestants contested this claim to authority on the basis of apostolic succession (i.e., direct succession from the apostles of the early Christian church).
153 Vice . . . Oxford: Richard Smith.
form: platform.
Doctor Marshall: Doctor Richard Marshall, Dean of Christ Church. The marginal gloss incorrectly designates Marshall, rather than Smith, as Vice Chancellor of Oxford University.
poesy: motto or epigram.
there is . . . opened: Latimer would have recalled that Jesus uttered this aphorism (Matthew 10: 26) in the context of a prophetic warning against fear of persecutors 'who kill the body but cannot kill the soul' (Matthew
10: 28). Latimer's cryptic consolatory message suggests that he models his death on the crucifixion of Jesus.
suffered: permitted.
them: themselves.
Sir Henry Lee: despite his Protestantism, he remained in favour under Mary I and filled the office of Master of the Leash.
races: roots.
154 lightly: readily.
truss: a snug garment.
brother . . . gunpowder in a bag: Ridley's brother-in-law, George Shipside, mercifully supplies gunpowder in the expectation that its ignition would kill the victims before their bodies were consumed by fire.
play the man: an allusion to Eusebius' account of a voice from heaven that exhorted St Polycarp, the second-century martyr whose elderliness corresponded to that of Latimer, to 'play the man' when he entered the Roman arena where he would die (Ecclesiastical History, 4.15.17). These words have the appearance of an artful embellishment, because they were added in the second edition fifteen years after Latimer's death.
light such a candle . . . never put out: Protestants interpreted the text from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5: 14 – 16) to which Latimer alludes as a prefiguration of the Reformation.