John Frith (martyr)

[1] As his ministry progressed, Frith took greater risks with his stance against the Roman Catholic teachings of Purgatory and Transubstantiation.

[9] He also met Thomas Bilney a graduate student of Trinity Hall, and began to have meetings concerning the Protestant Reformation.

While in Oxford, Frith was imprisoned, along with nine others, in a cellar where fish was stored,[9] due to his possession of what the University's officers considered "heretical" books.

One year later, Frith translated A Pistle to the Christian Reader: The Revelation of the Anti-Christ; An Antithesis between Christ and the Pope.

When John Frith first began his studies at Cambridge University; he was tutored by Stephen Gardiner, who later became the Bishop of Winchester.

Gardiner instilled a "love of learning" in the young Frith, and developed a so-called great loyalty and admiration for the youth.

[1] In later years, this loyalty toward Frith ended when Gardiner and Sir Thomas More began to criticize the church, but stopped when they realized that they were only adding fuel to the fire of the heretics.

[8] Frith was called out of Cambridge to attend Oxford University by Thomas Wolsey, who personally gathered young men who excelled in learning and knowledge.

[10] Frith was released with the help and persuasion of Leonard Coxe, who was schoolmaster in Reading, with whom he met and discussed topics such as education, Universities, languages, etc.

[1] Sir Thomas More was the Chancellor of England at the time that Coxe had pushed for and gained Frith's freedom from imprisonment.

[3] While imprisoned in the Tower, Frith composed a book on his views of purgatory and presented it to a tailor named William Holt, a man who made his acquaintance there.

[1][8] Ironically, More was later imprisoned in that same Tower of London for refusing to acknowledge King Henry VIII as supreme head of the Church of England.

[10][14] While imprisoned for approximately eight months in the Tower of London, Frith penned his views on Communion, fully knowing that it would be used "to purchase me most cruel death.

When William Tyndale learned of Frith's plight, he tried to bolster the prisoner's spirits with a pair of letters that still survive.

[citation needed] John Frith was unique among the reformers of the early Tudor period in his predilection for polemics and the very weapons of controversy, many of which he fashioned from the figures of rhetoric.

[citation needed] Frith was tried before many examiners and bishops, including Thomas Cranmer, the recently appointed archbishop of Canterbury.

He replied that neither purgatory nor transubstantiation could be proven by Holy Scriptures, and thus was condemned as a heretic and was transferred to the secular arm for his execution on 23 June 1533.