An Old Man Who Went Out Like a Total Baddie
Unfortunately for Hugh Latimer and England’s Protestants, Edward VI died young and without issue. He was succeeded by his sister Mary, a staunch Catholic who viewed Protestantism as a heresy, and was determined to restore England to Catholicism. Mary ordered that prominent Protestants, such as Latimer, be imprisoned and tried for heresy. Latimer, along with fellow bishop Nicholas Ridley and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, was tried for heresy in Oxford in 1555. When he refused to renounce his faith, he was convicted of heresy and sentenced to be burned at the stake.
Latimer was chained to the stake alongside Ridley. When the flames were lit, Ridley cried out in anguish. Latimer sought to comfort him even as he himself was being consumed by fire. The old bishop told his colleague: “be of good cheer, master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle in England, as I hope, by God’s grace, shall never be put out.” It could be argued that the candle still burns. Queen Mary’s efforts to restore Catholicism failed. When she died in 1558, she was succeeded by her Protestant sister, Elizabeth I, and England has been Protestant ever since.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
Armitage, Cecil Hamilton, and Montanaro, Arthur Forbes – The Ashanti Campaign of 1900 (2011 Edition)
Black History Heroes – Queen Nana Yaa Asantewaa of West Africa’s Ashanti Empire
Cassius Dio – Roman History, Book LXV, Vespasian
Dangerous Women Project – Yaa Asantewaa, Queen Mother of the Ashanti Confederacy
Encyclopedia Britannica – Agesilaus II
Encyclopedia Britannica – Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus
Encyclopedia Britannica – Hugh Latimer
Henderson, Ernest F. – Blucher and the Uprising of Prussia Against Napoleon, 1806-1815 (2015)
Hernon, Ian – Britain’s Forgotten Wars: Colonial Campaigns of the 19th Century (2002)
Hofschroer, Peter – 1815, The Waterloo Campaign: The German Victory (1999)
Lamb, Harold – Hannibal: One Man Against Rome (1958)
Leggiere, Michael V. – Napoleon and Berlin: The Franco-Prussian War in North Germany, 1813 (2015)
Plutarch – The Parallel Lives: The Life of Agesilaus
Morgan, Gwyn – 69 AD, the Year of the Four Emperors (2006)
Parkinson, Roger – The Hussar General: The Life of Blucher, Man of Waterloo (1975)