all and singuler the premisses so by vs doone, we notify and signify vnto your highnesse by these presentes sealed with oure seale. Dated the iii. day of Iuly in the yere of our lord 1533. And in the iii. yere of our consecration.
John Stokesley was provided to the see of London on 28 March 1530 and the temporalities assigned on 14 July. As he was out of the country at the time of his promotion, he was not actually consecrated bishop until 27 November 1530.
MarginaliaAndrew Hewet prētise to maister WarrēTHis yonge man Andro Hewet was prentise wt one ma. Warren, a tailor in Watling streat. And as it hapned that he wente vpon a holy day vp Fletestreat towards S. Dunstanes, he met with one William Holt which was forman with the kinges tailor at that present being master Malte, and being suspected by the same Holt, whiche was a dissembling fellowe, to be one that fauoured the Gospell, the saide Andrew departed from him, and wente into an honest house aboute Flete bridge, which was a boke sellers house. Then the same Holt, thinking he had found a good occasion to shew forth some frute of hys wickednesse, sent for certain officers, and searched the house, MarginaliaHewet apprehended.and finding the same Andrewe apprehēded him, and caried him to the bishops house, where he was cast in irons, and beinge there a good space, by meanes of a certaine honest man he had a file cōueied vnto him, MarginaliaThe man that gaue him this file was Valentine Frese the Painters brother, who was afterwarde wyth hys wyfe burned in yorkwherwith he filed of his ironnes, and when he spied his time, he got out of the gate.
Foxe is suggesting here that William Holt, one of the chancellor's spies, set up Andrew Huet (or Hewet) as part of a seemingly wider scheme to uncover a brethren cell. The story of the Freez family is an interesting side bar to Huet's release. Valentine Freez was the brother of Edward (an apprentice painter), the two sons of Frederick (a book printer of York). Foxe relates the story of Edward's arrest for heresy (c.1529) and his going insane while imprisoned in Lollard's Tower. Valentine evaded capture in London, but was taken by bishop Rowland Lee of Coventry and Lichfield after 1534 (L & P, vii, p.514) later to be executed as a sacramentarian in York, condemned not by the church courts but by the council in the North under the terms of the recent 'Act of Six Articles' - see 'Tudor York: Religion and the Reformation', in A History of the County of York: the City of York (London 1961), pp.142-155, which can be found on-line at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=36342.
[Back to Top]Huet must have been rather naïve and Holt and his accomplice played him skilfully. John Chapman was a 'known man' (a member of the Christian Brethren or Lollards) and provided a safe-house/cell near Smithfield. 'Wythers' could be another tailor, Christopher Ravyns of Witham who had previously abjured his radical beliefs.
[Back to Top]John Tibald (Tybal) was a Lutheran sympathizer of Steeple Bumpstead in Essex, who had abjured his beliefs before Tunstal in 1528, had been in London since c.1526 when he and his Thomas Hills had come to purchase an English New Testament from Robert Barnes - see J E Oxley, The Reformation in Essex (Manchester, 1965), pp.10-14; Davis, pp.61-2.]. Tybal was not allowed to return to his home by virtue of injunction.
[Back to Top]Stokesley's chancellor and vicar-general was Richard Foxford 'the persecutor and common butcher of good families of God' (BL Lansdowne MS. 979, fols.90,92v & 98). Chapman, Huet and Tibald were captured in possession of heretical books but taken to separate locations.
There were two prison-towers in London at this time, each known as Lollard's Tower. The old water tower at Lambeth Palace had been converted and was often used to hold accused heretics, often in stocks, and the bishop of London's prison within the precincts of St Paul's. Huet was probably taken to the latter.
[Back to Top]Chapman was eventually freed through the intervention of Sir Thomas Audley, More's successor as Lord Chancellor. Why he would put pressure on London's ecclesiastical machine is unknown, although Susan Brigden supplies a hint that Chapman and others had found favour with the new queen, Anne Boleyn (see, S. Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1989), p.197). Huet had found no such favour, which suggests that he was a disciple of Frith and considered a sacramentarian (which condemned him in the eyes of the king).
[Back to Top]The xx. daye of the monthe of Apryll, thys yonge manne Androw Hewet beinge a tailor of Feuersam in the County of Kent, of thage of xxiiii. yeares, was brought before the chaūceloure of London
Huet's examination before Stokesley, Longland and Gardiner is very similar to Frith's, and his beliefs on the eucharist seem to feature heavily.