1543–1579), a Dutch carpenter or joiner from Southwark, was the first Familist preacher in England, though he subsequently recanted his belief when faced with death by burning.
He changed views in religion, professing Arianism under Queen Mary, and being imprisoned in Wood Street, London, until on Elizabeth's succession he recanted his errors before Edmund Grindal at St. Paul's Cross.
Eventually, however, Vitell became a convert to the teaching of Nicholis (Henrik Niclaes), the founder of the Familists or ‘Family of Love.’[2] He wandered up and down in East Anglia spreading mystical doctrines, and found a hearing at Cambridge, Willingham and Balsham in Cambridgeshire, Strethall in Essex, at Colchester (where he was living at Michaelmas 1555), and other places.
[2] Eight of the treatises—‘The Prophetie of the Spirit of Love,’ ‘A Publishing of the Peace upon Earth,’ ‘A joyful Message of the Kingdom,’ ‘Proverbs,’ ‘Documentall Sentences,’ ‘Correction and Exhortation out of Heartie Loue,’ ‘A good and fruitfull Exhortation,’ ‘A Distinct Declaration’—were printed abroad in 1574 and covertly introduced into England.
They occasioned the attack of John Rogers, ‘The Displaying of an Horrible Sect,’ 1578, to which Vitell replied in a work not extant, entitled ‘Testimonies of Sion of the great Stone of Foundation layd therein of Judgement and Righteousness and of holy Priesthood, and spiritual Oblation through Jesus Christ brought forth through the Lord's elected minister Henry Nicholas.’ This was reprinted and answered, paragraph by paragraph, by Rogers in his ‘Answere vnto a wicked and infamous Libel made by Christopher Vitels, one of the chiefe English Elders of the pretended Family of Loue’ [1578]; another ed.