previous next
[10] principle of persecution for opinions in all its extent. In 1579, W. Hamont, a plough-wright, of Hetherset, near Norwich, underwent the same frightful sentence. The heretical opinions laid to his charge, as reported by Mr. Locke,1 are evidently such a distortion and exaggeration of Unitarianism as might be expected from violent and prejudiced judges under such circumstances. In 1583, John Lewis was burnt at Norwich for denying the deity of Christ. Some years after, two other persons suffered at the same place for blasphemy, by which term there is every reason to believe we are to understand some form of Unitarianism.

In the following reign of James I. two persons suffered in the same cause. In 1611, Bartholomew Legatt, called an Arian, said to have been well versed in the scriptures, and a man of unblamable conversation, being apprehended, King James himself conferred with him, in order to convince him of his error. This not succeeding, he was committed to Newgate, and, after being examined before Bishop King at his consistory at St. Paul's, was declared to be a contumacious and obstinate heretic; and as such, he was burnt at Smithfield, on the 18th of March, amidst a vast concourse of people. A pardon was offered him, when he was at the stake, if he would recant, but he refused it. The next month Edward Wightman, of Burton-upon-Trent, was convicted of heresy as an Arian2 and Anabaptist, and eight

1 See Mr. Locke's Letters to Limborch, Oct. 7, 1699.

2 So he is called; but the heretical tenets ascribed to him as reported by Mr. Locke, as far as they are intelligible or credible, shew him to have been rather a believer in the simple humanity of Christ.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Norwich (United Kingdom) (2)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Locke (3)
Jesus Christ (2)
Edward Wightman (1)
John Lewis (1)
Bartholomew Legatt (1)
King (1)
W. Hamont (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
October 7th, 1699 AD (1)
1611 AD (1)
1583 AD (1)
1579 AD (1)
March 18th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: