[1] By Rand Winburn

 Trained as a humanist scholar, having graduated from King’s College, Cambridge in 1525, John Frith was handpicked by Cardinal Wolsey as junior canon of his new institution, Cardinal College, (now Christ Church), Oxford. Much to the Cardinal’s chagrin and extreme displeasure, the college was to become a center for discussing and dispensing Reformation ideology. Upon discovery of the radicals and their treasure trove of German and Swiss Protestant books which were subsequently burned, some recanted, others preferred imprisonment, resulting in death to the weaker ‘heretics.’ Frith was released from prison on the proviso he not travel beyond a ten mile radius of the campus. Soon after, Frith escaped, preferring exile in Antwerp and/or Marburg to Oxford.

 It was while in exile that Frith met William Tyndale, becoming his closest friend and ally. Together they lived, worked and planned their work in the name of Christ. Their goal was to translate the Bible and other Protestant tracts, while producing their own Protestant works which would build up, edify, and aid in the salvation of their native England. To that end, their personal safety took a back seat.

 Frith’s work of translation included that of Patrick’s Places, Luther’s De Antichristo[2] (which he revised and expanded),  and an enlarged, adapted version of Passional Christi und Antichristi.[3]De Antichristo, written under the alias, Richard Brightwell, soon achieved official ‘banned’ status. He further produced polemical treatises denying Purgatory, which engaged the wrath of Sir Thomas More in detailed refutation.

 Leaving the confines and safety of the continent, Frith ventured back into England to seek a book agent to distribute contraband Protestant books. This resulted in his capture, whereupon he hid his true identity while kept in the stocks. His release was managed by the local Reading schoolmaster, taking pity upon this obviously well educated vagrant who spoke both Latin and Greek.

 It was at the beckoning of Thomas Cromwell that Frith and other English Protestants, such as Robert Barnes, were compelled to return to England. In July, 1532, Frith returned, pastoring a small Protestant church for four month, preaching the ‘newly-rediscovered gospel of justification by faith,’ making him a hunted man. Arrested as he attempted to escape to the continent, Frith was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

 During this time in captivity he left a legacy which surpassed by 50 % his previous voluminous writings. It was one year after his return to England that Frith was condemned for heresy and burnt at Smithfield.

“And so John Frith and [his disciple] Andrew Hewet were taken together from Newgate to Smithfield, on 4 July 1533. Foxe tells of their martyrdom partly at the end of his account of Frith, and partly after relating Hewet’s story: how Frith willingly embraced the faggots, glad to face the death which was to complete his true purgatory and bring him into his Master’s presence; how one Doctor Cooke forbade the people to pray for them, any more than they would do for a dog, and how Frith, smiling, asked the Lord to forgive him; and how Frith remained constant even when the wind prolonged his death by carrying the flames away from him and onto Hewet. Frith died as the Protestant whose theology had taught him to expect persecution; as the pastor who knew the value of a good example to the flock; and above all as the Christian who knew the necessity of dying to sin and the certainty of victory over the last great enemy.”[4]