When I sat down to read Morning Prayer today, I found myself sad. Last week’s Angelus referred to the cruel and unchristian executions—burning at the stake—of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, bishops who opposed the return of Roman Catholicism under Queen Mary Tudor. Executions of Christians by other Christians for heresy began in the year 385. The first was a bishop in the country we know as Spain. His name was Priscillian. The last person to be burned at the stake for heresy in England was Edward Wightman, on the eleventh of April in 1612.[1] He was a Puritan.[2]
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