The Burning of Edward Wightman: Puritanism, Prelacy and the Politics of Heresy in Early Modern England

Atherton, Ian; Como, David R.

doi:10.1093/ehr/cei330

Cited by 16 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…35 The parallels drawn by Sparke projected the Ranters as heretics and blasphemers, whose prosecution by the state was both necessary and legitimate; as Ian Atherton and David Como have shown, the burnings of Wightman and Legatt, at the order of James I and within machinery of the Church of England, had commanded widespread support in 1611. 36 Michael Sparke, a substantial publisher and active member of the Stationers' Company, worked with a group of publishers with well-established Presbyterian links; The narrative history of King James was thus a polemical nod towards the need for the punishment and restraint of dangerous blasphemous opinions.…”

Section: The Dynamics Of Ranter Stereotypingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ranter and Quaker stereotyping in the English Revolution

Peters¹

2022

Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Early Modern England

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Section: The Dynamics Of Ranter Stereotypingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ranter and Quaker stereotyping in the English Revolution

Peters¹

2022

Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Early Modern England

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“…The last ‘heretic’ burned in England was a Protestant, Edward Wightman, who died in 1612. Atherton and Como seek to rescue him from his conventional depiction as an unfortunate but insignificant religious madman. They stress that Wightman was a direct offshoot of the radicalism inherent in much puritan belief, not an irrelevant curiosity.…”

Section: (Iii) 1500–1700  Henry French  University Of Exetermentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of periodical literature published in 2005

Pratt¹,

Schofield

French

et al. 2007

The Economic History Review

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“…The last person to be burned under the heresy statute for denying the Holy Trinity was Edward Wightman in 1612, and the last to be executed for blasphemy was Thomas Aikenhead in 1697. 34 Undoubtedly, the need for ecclesial and political control of belief preoccupied the ruling elites of church and state until the end of the early modern period. But many of the views identified as heretical in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have no roots in Reformation "fundamentalism," as James Simpson would have it, or in the syntheses of belief promulgated by the various Reformation churches.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

English Reformations

Aers¹,

Smith²

2010

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

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Discussing current historiography of the English Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and those movements regarded as its medieval precursors, we decided that a special issue of JMEMS could contribute fruitfully to this subject. As its statement of purpose proclaims, JMEMS aims to foster "the rigorous investigation of past cultural forms and their historiographical representations, representations whose political dimensions will be of special interest." It has also sought to overcome distortions of our understanding of the past produced by the patterns of periodization on which our disciplines are made. 1 A special issue on "English Reformations," we thought, is well suited to these paradigms of inquiry. We are grateful to our contributors for bringing this thought to fulfillment. We have used the plural noun in our title for a number of reasons. It gestures toward the continuity of the ideologies of reform across the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The commitment to reform the Church and its people was a constituent component of the late medieval church and, increasingly so, of its lay elites. 2 This commitment could take many different and contradictory forms. Reform could be initiated by leading ecclesiastic authorities (for example, the Gregorian reforms of the late eleventh century, those of the Fourth Lateran Council or, more locally, those of Archbishop Peckham in 1281); sometimes it could be initiated outside this hierarchy but appreciated and ordered by the hierarchy (for example, St. Francis's movement); sometimes it emerged among clergy and people in ways that led to mortal combat with the authorities of the Roman Church, a combat in which reformers might be classified and persecuted as heretics by the Church and secular authorities (for example, Waldensians or Wycliffites). But however different and conflicting such forms might have been, it is important to recognize that they were sponsored by dynamics of reform intrinsic to medieval Christianity. Who declared, "The Christian faith. .. was once a schism"? 3

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The Burning of Edward Wightman: Puritanism, Prelacy and the Politics of Heresy in Early Modern England

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Ranter and Quaker stereotyping in the English Revolution

Ranter and Quaker stereotyping in the English Revolution

Review of periodical literature published in 2005

English Reformations

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