Martyrdom of John Frith and Andrew Hewet (1533)

Martyrdom of John Frith and Andrew Hewet (1533): We continue our series on how the so-called “Mother Church,” Roman Catholicism killed those who put their faith in God’s word in the 16^th century. Two saints of Christ, John Frith and Andrew Hewet are the focus of this month’s narrative.

Frith was a young man noted for his godliness, intelligence, and knowledge. In the secular world, he could have risen to any height he wishes, but he chose, instead, to serve the church and work for the benefit of others. He studied at Cambridge and there became acquainted with William Tyndale, a Christian reformer and Protestant. 
Tyndale was later killed by the Catholics for translating the Old and New Testaments of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek respectively into English. Before his death, Tyndale planted in Frith deep roots of the true Gospel, honesty and piety.

 In 1518, Thomas Wolsey, the Cardinal of York, who built a new college at Oxford was appointed papal legate, the pope’s direct agent to England. This made him England’s most powerful cleric. He also was an ambitious and greedy man, whose church work was more for himself than others. He financed the building of his college by closing a number of monasteries and using the money designated for them.

He also constructed a palace for himself at Hampton Court on the left bank of the River Thames. From 1513 to 1529, he was chief adviser to Henry VIII, but fell from the king’s favour when he failed to secure the pope’s approval of Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

For his new college, Wolsey gathered the best of furnishings from the church institutions throughout England, and obtained the best professors that were available. Among them was John Frith. At first, Wolsey was elated with his professors and the level of education they brought to his college, but then he learnt that many of them, including Frith, were meeting to discuss the abuses of the papal church, so he had them arrested and imprisoned.

 Not long after his arrest, Frith was released from prison on the condition that he stays within ten miles of Oxford. Rather than stay in the roving prison, he immediately left England for Germany where he met with Tyndale and other church reformers who had also left England to escape persecution. He stayed in Germany for two years and secretly returned to England.

Wearing poor clothing as a disguise, Frith travelled to Reading, west of London, to meet with a friend. In Reading however, the Police arrested him as a vagabond and put him in the stocks until someone could identify him. Such prisoners were seldom fed, and when Frith became sick from hunger, he asked to see the local schoolmaster, a Leonard Cox.

 When Cox arrived, Frith spoke to him in Latin and complained about his imprisonment. They also spoke to each other in Greek. Thereafter, Cox told Reading’s officials that such a well-educated and excellent young man should not be in the stocks. Frith was freed immediately. But his liberty was short-lived, because Sir Thomas More, who was then the Chancellor of England, had offered a reward for his capture and was searching for him throughout England.

Frith continually disguised himself and moved from place to place, but he was finally captured and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Ironically, More was beheaded on July 6, 1535, after he was found guilty of treason by Henry VII. The Roman Catholic Church promptly declared him a saint and canonised him.

 After a while, Frith was arraigned before the archbishop of Canterbury, and then the Bishop of Winchester, on the charge of heresy. He also appeared before an assembly of London’s bishops. He was examined on two points of heresy – his rejection of the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, and its claims that communion host of blood and wine turned into the real blood and flesh of Christ once they are sanctified by a priest.

 During his examination by the bishops, Frith stated that he could not agree with them that purgatory was an article of faith that he must believe, under the pain of damnation, and that what the priest prayed over at Mass were not the real blood and flesh of Jesus. On June 30, 1533, the bishops condemned him to death. He died in pains as the faggots that were lit by his Catholic tormentors burnt slowly. Despite his agony, he showed grace in his death.

 The second person in our narrative, Andrew Hewet, was a twenty-four-year-old tailor’s apprentice when the Catholic Church murdered him on the same day with John Frith. He was arrested after a papal agent, William Holt, told the authorities that he (Hewet) believed in the reformation doctrines. This was after both men had a discussion on Christian values. A certain papal official later searched for Hewet and found him in a bookseller’s house where he had gone to buy a book and arrested him.

 Thereafter, the Catholic inquisitors arraigned Hewet before the Bishop’s Council, where he was accused of not believing that the communion hosts became actual blood and body of Christ once they are sanctified by a priest. In his response, Hewet told them that he did not believe in their doctrine. Asked what he did believe, he replied, “I believe as John Frith believes.”

The prosecutor asked again, “Do you believe that the consecrated host is the actual body of Christ who was born of the virgin Mary?” Hewet replied, “No, I do not.” When the prosecutor demanded to know why he did not believe it, Hewet replied, “Jesus Himself said, ‘if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, He is there; believe him not: For false Christs and false prophets shall rise.”

 Many of the bishops smiles condescendingly at him, as if he were a foolish child, and then, Stokesley, the bishop of London said, “Frith is a heretic, and has already been sentenced to be burnt. If you do not recant your opinions, you will burn with him.” Hewet responded, “Truly, I am content with that.” His inquisitors then took him to where Frith was, and burnt him to dead at the stake next to his.

 Anyone who reads these stories and still holds on to the demonic doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church has indeed sold his soul to satan.