Others were not so fortunate. Three or four persons were
burned at Norwich in the reign of Elizabeth for unchristian doctrines,
among them Francis Kett who had been a Fellow of Corpus Christi,
Cambridge. Under James I, who
[86] interested himself personally in such matters, Bartholomew Legate
was charged with holding various pestilent opinions. The king summoned
him to his presence and asked him whether he did not pray daily to Jesus
Christ. Legate replied he had prayed to Christ in the days of his
ignorance, but not for the last seven years. "Away, base fellow," said
James, spurning him with his foot, "it shall never be said that one
stayeth in my palace that hath never prayed to our Saviour for seven
years together." Legate, having been imprisoned for some time in
Newgate, was declared an incorrigible heretic and burned at Smithfield
(1611). Just a month later, one Wightman was burned at Lichfield, by the
Bishop of Coventry, for heterodox doctrines. It is possible that public
opinion was shocked by these two burnings. They were the last cases in
England of death for unbelief. Puritan intolerance, indeed, passed an
ordinance in 1648, by which all who denied the Trinity, Christ's
divinity, the inspiration of Scripture, or a future state, were liable
to death, and persons guilty of other heresies, to imprisonment. But
this did not lead to any executions.
The Renaissance age saw the first signs of the beginning of modern
science, but the mediaeval prejudices against the investigation
[87] of nature were not dissipated till the seventeenth century, and in
Italy they continued to a much later period.
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