"Armed dignitaries of Oxford lead the two prisoners to a ditch near Balliol College. Crowds line the route to the stake. The first prisoner, Nicholas Ridley, aged fifty-five, until recently bishop of London wearing a black fur gown, velvet cap and a pair of slippers walks cheerfully to his death. The second prisoner, a former bishop of Worcester and Gloucester, walks behind him, wearing a shabby woolen coat with a frayed cap and handkerchief on his head. ‘Are you there?’ Ridley calls to his dear friend. ‘Yes, I’m coming as quickly as I can’, replies the seventy-five year old Hugh Latimer, affectionately known as ‘old father Latimer’.
'Be of good courage’
At the stake, the two men embrace one another, kneel to pray, and then listen to a fifteen-minute sermon by Dr. Smith on ‘Though I give my body to be burnt and have not charity it profits me nothing’. For the preacher, love to God equals belief in earning salvation by good deeds and sacraments - especially the sacrament of the Mass in which the priest offers Christ as a sacrifice for sins. The condemned men had preached that acceptance with God comes through Christ alone who died on the cross once-for-all to atone for sin – his death makes the re-offering of Christ in the Mass unnecessary and blasphemous.
‘Repent and come home to the Church and you will save your lives and your souls’, thunders the preacher. ‘May we speak?’ asks Ridley. ‘Only if you renounce your erroneous opinions’, replies Dr. Marshall, the vice-chancellor. ‘Well’, he answers, ‘so long as breath is in my body I will never deny the Lord and his truth, God’s will be done to me’. Death by burning is now inevitable.
Ridley gives clothing and other items to bystanders; Latimer has nothing to give. ‘Shall I wear my belt?’ Ridley asks his companion. ‘It will cause you more pain if you keep it, besides it will do a poor man good’, answers Latimer. Ridley throws the belt into the crowd and prays, ‘I beseech you Lord, take mercy upon this realm of England, and deliver the land from all her enemies’.
At the stake the smith fastens a chain round the waists of both men. The executioners tie bags of gunpowder around their necks and light a bundle of sticks at their feet. Latimer says, ‘Be of good courage master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out’. As the fagots catch fire, Ridley says loudly, ‘Lord, into your hands I commend my spirit; Lord, receive my spirit!’ Latimer prays, ‘O Father of heaven, receive my soul’. Latimer burns quickly, but Ridley lingers longer because the fire burns badly on his side of the stake.
Tears flowed from hundreds of faces as they watched Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer bravely die on 16 October 1555 – 450 years ago this year. As the flames consumed their bodies, Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury and a chaplain of Henry VIII watched from his prison window. His turn to die a martyr’s death came the following year on 14 February 1556. These courageous men were just three of some three hundred believers who died during the reign of Mary Tudor, English Queen from 1553 until her death in 1558. A memorial in Oxford, near Balliol College, commemorates the deaths of Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer."
~From
Such a Candle - Latimer and Ridley by Stan Evers
May we always remember the stories of old and keep that candle burning, so help us God. A blessed Reformation Day to you all!
