Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer were among the early Anglican bishops who were executed during the reign of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I. Hugh Latimer was born around 1490 and graduated from Clare College, Cambridge. King Henry VIII made him a royal chaplain in 1530, and five years later appointed him to the See of Worcester, a position he relinquished in 1539 in opposition to the king’s reactionary policies against the progress of the Reformation. During the reign of Edward VI, Latimer became prominent as a preacher, but he refused to resume his see. With the accession of Queen Mary in 1553 he was imprisoned, and, on October 16th, 1555, he was burned at the stake in Oxford alongside Bishop Nicholas Ridley.

Nicholas Ridley was born in Northumberland and was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. A supporter of Archbishop Cranmer’s reforming agenda, he was made Bishop of Rochester and participated with Cranmer in the preparation of the first Bookof Common Prayer. He was translated to the See of London in 1550, where he was a strong advocate for and administrator of the principles of the Reformation. His unwillingness to recant of his Protestant theology and his opposition to the accession of Queen Mary led to his condemnation and his execution in 1555.

According to a famous, but possibly apocryphal account, Latimer said to Ridley before their execution: “Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

Thomas Cranmer was born in Nottinghamshire, England, on July 2nd, 1489 and studied theology at Cambridge University, where he subsequently taught. During his years at Cambridge, he diligently studied the Bible and the new doctrines emanating from the continental Reformation. A chance meeting with King Henry VIII in 1529 led to his involvement in the “King’s Affair” – the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer prepared the King’s defense and presented it to the universities in England and Germany, and to Rome. While in Germany, Cranmer associated with the Lutheran reformers, especially with Andreas Osiander, whose daughter he married. When Archbishop Warham died, the King obtained papal confirmationof Cranmer’s appointment to the See of Canterbury, and he was consecrated on March 30th, 1533. Among his earliest acts was to declare the King’s marriage null and void. He then validated the King’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. Her child, the future Queen Elizabeth I, was Cranmer’s godchild.

During the reign of Edward VI, Cranmer had a free hand in reforming the worship, doctrine, and practice of the Church. He was principally responsible for the first Book of Common Prayer of 1549, and for the second Book, in 1552. But at Edward’s death he subscribed to the dying King’s will that the succession should pass to his cousin, Lady Jane Grey. For this, and also for his reforming work, he was arrested, deprived of his office and authority, and condemned by Queen Mary I, a staunch Roman Catholic. He was burned at the stake on March 21st, 1556.

Cranmer wrote two recantations during his imprisonment, butultimately denied his recantations and died heroically, saying, “Forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, there my hand shall first be punished; for if I may come to the fire, it shall first be burned.”