Martyrdoms in England – Part 4

Martyrdoms in England – Part 4: England under papist (Roman Catholic) influence was not a safe place for believers in Christ. Neither simple men, husbands, wives, parish priests or university professors were spared persecution nor martyrdom from demon possessed Catholic clergy in the 16^th century. During this time, they arrested Thomas Bilney, a professor of law at Cambridge University for heresy and brought him before the Council of Bishops convened by the Bishop of London. They threatened him repeatedly with torture and burning, and created such fear in him that he recanted his beliefs.

        However, soon after, Bilney repented with great sorrow. Consequently, the agents of satan rearrested him and took him back to the Council where they condemned him to death by burning for being an “obstinate heretic.” Before he was burnt to death, Bilney declared that he fully believed in the Gospel preached by Martin Luther, the German church reformer.

When chained to the stake, he smiled at all who were there and said, “I have had many storms in this world, but soon my vessel will be on shore in heaven.” As the flames roared around him, he stood unmoved and cried out, “Jesus, I believe!” Then he went to meet Him in whom he believed.

Though the Roman Catholic clergy were savage in their cruelty to all alleged heretics, they were especially cruel to those who were once part of the clergy, but later renounced the superstitions and man-made doctrines of the church. At Barnes, in Surrey, Southeast England, a monk named Richard Byfield converted to the true faith in 1535, after reading Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament. As a result, he also came to accept the Gospel preached by Luther.

When the Catholic Church officials discovered this, they arrested him as a heretic and imprisoned him. Because he was a converted Roman Catholic cleric, his accusers tormented him severely while in prison to make him recant his faith. They often confined him in the worst dungeon, where he would almost suffocate from the putrid odours of human waste and stagnant water that nearly covered the dirt floor.

 Rats and cockroaches were his only companions. At times, his jailers would enter his cell and tie his arms behind his back until his shoulders almost dislocated. They would then leave him in that position for days without food or toilet. Other times they would take him to a whipping post and scourge him until there was little flesh left on his back. Still, he refused to recant his faith in Christ. When they exhausted their own cruelty, the papists took Byfield to Lollard’s Tower in Lambeth Palace, where the Archbishop of London had him chained to the wall by his neck and beaten severely once a day by his servants. Finally, he was condemned to death, degraded by his peers, and burnt to death at Smithfield, North of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London.

         About the same time, in 1535, the papists arrested one John Tewkesbury for reading Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament, and accused him of committing an offense against the “holy Mother Church.” Faced with threats of torture and burning, he at first said that he did not believe anything that he had read that contradicted papist doctrines.

He later repented and confessed that he believed the translated Scriptures were true and that papist doctrines were false. For this, his accusers promptly arraigned him before the Bishop of London where they condemned him to death as an “obstinate heretic.”

During the time he was in prison, Tewkesbury was tortured so severely that he was almost dead before his execution at Smithfield. There, he declared loudly his complete loathing of Roman Catholicism, and affirmed his faith in Christ, adding that his cause was just in God’s sight.

In 1536, at Bradford-in-Wiltshire, South-Central England, the papists arrested a harmless villager named Traxnal and burnt him alive. This was because he would not acknowledge that the bread and wine actually turned into the body and blood of Christ during the Catholic mass. He also refused to agree that the pope had supreme authority over the consciences of men and women.

 In 1538, Nicholas Peke from Norwich in Eastern England was burnt as a heretic for the same reasons that Traxnal was executed. Three Catholic priests, Dr Reading, Dr Hearne, and Dr Spragwell officiated at his burning. When Peke had scorched to the point where he was black as tar, Dr Spragwell hit him on his right shoulder with a long white wand and said to him, “Peke, recant, and believe in the sacrament.” Peke replied, “I despise it and you also.”

Then he lunged forward against the chains and spat blood at Dr Spragwell, which was a measure of both his contempt for his murderers and the pains he endured. Dr Reading then told Peke that he would grant him forty days’ indulgence if he would recant his faith in Christ, but the victim paid no attention to Reading’s foolishness and rejoiced that Christ had counted him worthy to suffer for His name’s sake.

The papists also burnt an old monk named William Letton to death at the stake during the reign of Henry VIII at Suffolk in Eastern England. He had spoken out against an idol that the papists carried in a church procession in the area.

I am amazed that billions of people on earth have held on to their Catholic faith despite the Church’s blood stained history. What is about the lies of satan peddled by the papists that attracts the loyalty of these gullible people? I believe that 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 was written with such folks in mind. “And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

And for this cause God shall send them a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” For those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, “Come out of Babylon (the harlot church), My people, so that you do not participate in her sins and suffer from any of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4).