Thomas Bilney

Winner of Men at Cambridge, c. 1495–1531

Thomas Bilney was born at or near Norwich about 1495 and was brought up at Cambridge “even from a child.” He was a fellow of Trinity Hall, studied both civil and canon law, and was ordained priest in 1519. A small, earnest man, he sought peace with God by fasting, vigils, masses, and indulgences, and found none.1 Drawn by its Latin rather than its doctrine, he bought Erasmus’s New Testament, and he later told Bishop Tunstall what he found there:

I chanced upon this sentence of S. Paul (O most sweet and comfortable sentence to my soul) in his first Epistle to Timothy and first chapiter: It is a true saying and worthy of all men to be embraced, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief and principal. … immediately, I felt a marvelous comfort and quietness, in so much, that my bruised bones leapt for joy.2 Thomas BilneyLetter to Bishop Tunstall, 1527

“Little Bilney” became the winner of men at Cambridge. He drew together the scholars who met at the White Horse Inn, and among those he brought to Christ were Thomas Arthur, Robert Barnes, John Lambert, and Hugh Latimer, who by hearing Bilney’s confession “learned more then afore in many years.”3 Licensed to preach in 1525, he labored with Arthur in Suffolk, where at Hadleigh the people became such readers of Scripture that the town seemed, Foxe said, “rather a university of the learned than a town of clothmaking.” Friars twice pulled him from the pulpit. Examined before Wolsey and Tunstall in November and December 1527, he was persuaded by friends to abjure, bore his faggot at Paul’s Cross, and spent about a year in the Tower. For nearly two years afterward his remorse was so great that his friends could not comfort him.4

In 1531 he took leave of his friends at Trinity Hall at ten o’clock at night, saying that he “would go to Jerusalem.” He preached openly in the fields of Norfolk, confessing the truth he had denied, gave a Tyndale New Testament to an anchoress he had won at Norwich, and was arrested. The night before his death he held his finger in a candle flame and told his friends that though fire “by God’s ordinance is naturally hoot,” God’s word promised comfort in it.5 On August 19, 1531, he was burned in the Lollards’ Pit outside Norwich. At the stake he recited the Creed, prayed the 143rd Psalm (“enter not into judgment with thy servant”), and said to Dr. Warner, who had come weeping to say farewell, “Feede your flock, feed your flock, that when the Lord cometh, he may find you so doing.” The young Matthew Parker was among those who saw him die.6

Bilney was evangelical on justification, saints, and images, but Foxe frankly admits that on the Mass he never departed “from the most grossest Catholics.” Foxe also refutes Thomas More’s claim that Bilney recanted at the stake. Hagstotz says he attended “Trinity College”; he was a fellow of Trinity Hall.7

Other Reformers   Hugh Latimer

Notes

  1. John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 4th ed. (London: John Day, 1583), vol. 2, 998, “Thomas Bilney”; Hilda Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, chapter “Thomas Bilney: Winner of Men for God.” ↩
  2. Bilney to Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, 1527, in Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), vol. 2, 998–1003. ↩
  3. Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, “Thomas Bilney”; Steven J. Lawson, Pillars of Grace, A Long Line of Godly Men 2 (Orlando: Reformation Trust, 2011), chap. 1; Hugh Latimer, sermon on the Lord’s Prayer, 1552, in 27 Sermons. ↩
  4. Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, “Thomas Bilney”; Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), vol. 2, 999–1003, 1008. ↩
  5. Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), vol. 2, 1008–12. ↩
  6. Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), vol. 2, 1012–13; Colin Hamer, Anne Boleyn: One Short Life That Changed the English-Speaking World (Leominster: Day One, 2007), chap. 11. ↩
  7. Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), vol. 2, 1008–09; Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, “Thomas Bilney.” ↩