When the two faiths collided in Oxford

11:56am Thursday 30th November 2006

This year marks the 450th anniversary of the burning at the stake of an Oxford martyr, writes CHRIS KOENIG

I must return to the Oxford Martyrs, whom I mentioned all too briefly back in March, before this 450th anniversary year of Archbishop Cranmer's horrible death is quite gone.

Thomas Cranmer spent two miserable Christmases in Oxford - 1554 in the Bocardo Prison, which overlooked the city's north gate, next to St Michael's Tower, and 1555 in slightly greater comfort at Christ Church - while Queen Mary I arranged for the wisest in the land to prove that Catholicism was the only true faith.

In March 1554, together with Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, he was brought to Oxford and incarcerated in the stinking Bocardo two years before his burning.

In April a disputation was held at the Divinity School during which Latimer and Ridley defended themselves, in Latin, against the heresy of claiming that there was no Real Presence at the mass (that is, Transubstantiation), while Cranmer submitted his defence in writing.

A couple of days later they were all summoned before the Papal commissioners, sitting in the Church of St Mary the Virgin, the University Church, and told they had been proved wrong and offered the opportunity to recant. All three refused.

The Queen wanted them burned but had to bide her time as laws calling for the burning of heretics had been repealed in 1547. A Bill to re-enact the statute was quickly brought before Parliament but thrown out by the Lords. Not until the autumn of 1554, and the sitting of a new Parliament, did Mary get her way.

Latimer and Ridley were tried again for heresy and were burned in the town ditch on October 16, 1555 (a cross in the middle of what is now Broad Street, outside Balliol, still marks the spot, with Cranmer forced to watch).

Cranmer, who had been ceremoniously humiliated by having his vestments stripped off him, was only too human: he recanted six times. But when in March 1556 he was summoned to mount a platform in the University Church to publicly proclaim his written recantations, he instead said: "Forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished, for if I may come to the fire it shall first be burned."

Famously, when he did indeed come to the fire, also in the town ditch, he held his right hand in the flame and shouted: "I see Heaven open and Jesus on the right hand of God."

Meanwhile, sales people sold a special Oxfordshire cake, called Holybake cake, to onlookers.

He was brave all right, though some unkind souls maintain that he had been told he would burn anyway, whether he recanted or not, and therefore had nothing to lose!

In any case, back in 1553 he had already been sentenced in London to be hung, drawn and quartered for supporting Lady Jane Gray's claim to the throne. A grisly choice there.

The memorial was built between 1841-3 on the site of the Robin Hood Inn. An inscription on the base of the monument bears witness "against the errors of the Church of Rome".

Perhaps it was Mary's miserable childhood (broken home) that made her so "Bloody", but she can have done little to win friends and influence people in Oxford, a town that had long been predominantly Catholic.

By the 19th century they rejoiced at the reported words of Latimer, uttered as he was led to the stake: "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley. We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out."

Editor's choice