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Thomas Harding The Last Lollard to be killed before The Reformation in England Thomas Harding (c1448‑1532) was born in Cambridge, Gloucestershire and died in Chesham, Buckinghamshire as a non‑conformist. Harding was a Lollard a movement initiated by John Wycliffe (1330‑1384). In 1368 Wycliffe was rector in Ludgershall, near Aylesbury Buckinghamshire before moving to Lutterworth Leicestershire in 1374 where he died in 1384. There were numerous Lollards in Buckinghamshire and the Chilterns. So it should not be a surprise that it would remain so for many years after Wycliffe moved to Lutterworth. In 1511 some Lollards including Harding spoke out against idolatry and superstition and there was an enquiry into heresy in the locality. Harding and others agreed to renounce their views, like Archbishop Cranmer did in 1556. The penalty for heresy was being burnt at the stake. Ten years later we find Harding had returned to his Lollard views. Harding recanted his views again. Nevertheless six people, who had been charged with him, were sentenced to this awful and barbaric death. Harding moved the short distance from Amersham to Chesham where he had a small property. In the intervening time in Germany William Tyndale published the New Testament in English thanks to the invention of the printing press. In 1532 Harding now an old man was discovered reading a book in English by William Tyndale. He was charged again. Foxe’s "Book of Martyrs" records it as follows, "Thomas Harding, who with his wife, had been accused of heresy, was brought before the bishop of Lincoln, and condemned for denying the real presence in the Sacrament. He was then chained to a stake, erected for the purpose, at Chesham in the Pell, near Botley; and when they had set fire to the fagots, one of the spectators dashed out his brains with a billet. The priests told the people that whoever brought fagots to burn heretics would have an indulgence to commit sins for forty days." His unique place in history is that he was the last to be killed before the English reformation as it was the year prior to the divorce of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, his marriage to Anne Boleyn and the birth of Elizabeth who would become queen in 1558, who came close to being executed for her own protestant beliefs by her sister Queen Mary. NAC |
