Foxe - The Book of Martyrs

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
It was on the afternoon of the day when those faithful soldiers of Christ, Ridley and
Latimer, perished, that Gardiner sat down with a joyful heart to dinner. Scarcely had he taken
a few mouthfuls, when he was seized with illness, and carried to his bed, where he lingered
fifteen days in great torment, unable in any wise to evacuate, and burnt with a devouring fever,
that terminated in death. Execrated by all good Christians, we pray the Father of mercies, that
he may receive that mercy above he never imparted below.
Mr. John Philpot
This martyr was the son of a knight, born in Hampshire, and brought up at New College,
Oxford, where for several years he studied the civil law, and became eminent in the Hebrew
tongue. He was a scholar and a gentleman, zealous in religion, fearless in disposition, and a
detester of flattery. After visiting Italy, he returned to England, affairs in King Edward's days
wearing a more promising aspect. During this reign he continued to be archdeacon of
Winchester under Dr. Poinet, who succeeded Gardiner. Upon the accession of Mary, a
convocation was summoned, in which Mr. Philpot defended the Reformation against his
ordinary, Gardiner, again made bishop of Winchester, and soon was conducted to Bonner and
other commissioners for examination, October 2, 1555, after being eighteen months'
imprisoned. Upon his demanding to see the commission, Dr. Story cruelly observed, "I will
spend both my gown and my coat, but I will burn thee! Let him be in Lollard's tower, (a
wretched prison,) for I will sweep the king's Bench and all other prisons of these heretics!"
Upon Mr. Philpot's second examination, it was intimated to him that Dr. Story had said
that the lord chancellor had commanded that he should be made away with. It is easy to
foretell the result of this inquiry. He was committed to Bonner's coal house, where he joined
company with a zealous minister of Essex, who had been induced to sign a bill of recantation;
but afterward, stung by his conscience, he asked the bishop to let him see the instrument again,
when he tore it to pieces; which induced Bonner in a fury to strike him repeatedly, and tear
away part of his beard. Mr. Philpot had a private interview with Bonner the same night, and
was then remanded to his bed of straw like other prisoners, in the coal house. After seven
examinations, Bonner ordered him to be set in the stocks, and on the following Sunday
separated him from his fellow- prisoners as a sower of heresy, and ordered him up to a room
near the battlements of St. Paul's, eight feet by thirteen, on the other side of Lollard's tower,
and which could be overlooked by any one in the bishop's outer gallery. Here Mr. Philpot was
searched, but happily he was successful in secreting some letters containing his examinations.
In the eleventh investigation before various bishops, and Mr. Morgan, of Oxford, the latter
was so driven into a corner by the close pressure of Mr. Philpot's arguments, that he said to
him, "Instead of the spirit of the Gospel which you boast to possess, I think it is the spirit of the
buttery, which your fellows have had, who were drunk before their death, and went, I believe,
drunken to it." To this unfounded and brutish remark, Mr. Philpot indignantly replied, "It
appeareth by your communication that you are better acquainted with that spirit than the Spirit
of God; wherefore I tell thee, thou painted wall and hypocrite, in the name of the living God,
whose truth I have told thee, that God shall rain fire and brimstone upon such blasphemers as
thou art!" He was then remanded by Bonner, with an order not to allow him his Bible nor
candlelight.
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