5 May – Can’t kill him for heresy, let’s try treason…

On this day in Tudor history, 5th May 1543, religious radical, Adam Damplip, also known as George Bucker, was hanged, drawn and quartered in Calais, which was an English territory at the time.

Although it was his heretical preaching that had got him into trouble, he couldn't be executed as a heretic, so he was condemned as a traitor instead - clever, but nasty!

Let me explain more in today's talk.

Also on this day in Tudor history, 5th May 1542, just under three months after the execution of her stepgranddaughter, Queen Catherine Howard, Agnes Tilney, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, was pardoned and released from the Tower of London. Find out how she ended up in the Tower in last year’s video:

And in 1536, in the lead-up to Queen Anne Boleyn’s execution, there were eight prisoners in the Tower of London – the queen and seven men. Who were they and what was going on. Find out in the 5th May 1536 video:

Also on this day in history:

• 1535 – Death of Charles Booth, Bishop of Hereford. He was buried in Hereford Cathedral.
• 1542 – Birth of Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter, courtier and soldier, and the eldest son of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, by his first wife Mary Cheke.
• 1586 – Death of Sir Henry Sidney, courtier and Lord Deputy of Ireland. His body was buried in the Sidney Chapel at Penshurst and his heart in Ludlow, where he lived as President of the Council in the Marches of Wales.
• 1623 – Death of Philip Rosseter, lutenist, composer and theatre manager.
• 1625 – Burial of James I (VI of Scotland) in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey. He had been King of England for twenty-two years, and was known for uniting the crowns of England and Scotland.

Transcript:

On this day in Tudor history, 5th May 1543, religious radical, Adam Damplip, also known as George Bucker, was hanged, drawn and quartered in Calais, which was an English territory at the time.

Nothing is known of this Protestant martyr’s early life, but he was in Padua, in Northern Italy, in 1536 with Reginald Pole, who became a cardinal that year. He also became close to Cosmo Gheri, bishop of Fano, who was about to write a biography of John Fisher, the Catholic Bishop of Rochester, who had been executed in London in 1535 for refusing to accept the king as supreme head of the church. Bucker claimed to have served Fisher as his priest and told of how after Fisher had been imprisoned in the Tower of London, Bucker took the king’s side, but, after Fisher’s death, he had a vision in which Fisher confronted him about his desertion, and so he repented. Bucker then travelled to Rome on pilgrimage and there, Gheri had to intercede on his behalf after he killed a man.

By April 1538, he was in Calais as Adam Damplip on his way home to England. Instead of taking ship on to England, he stayed in Calais preaching, although Cardinal Pole was sending him money to try and get him to go back to Rome. He was supported financially in Calais also by Arthur Plantagent, Lord Lisle, Deputy of Calais, who recommended Damplip to Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and said that Damplip’s sermon on Romans was the best he’d heard. Damplip was taken to England by a member of Lord Lisle’s household but he was being investigated, and Cranmer warned him that he could well be imprisoned. Damplip wrote a statement of his religious opinions and he was eventually able to return to Calais. However, in 1539, it was alleged that he was preaching against the sacrament of the altar and baptism – heresy. In 1540, a royal commission went to Calais to investigate and they found that Damplip, with his preaching, was causing division there. On 22nd July 1540, Damplip was attainted for treason for his correspondence with the traitor Cardinal Pole. He was imprisoned in London’s Marshalsea prison and after Easter 1543 he was released and sent back to Calais on 2nd May to prepare for his execution.

On 5th May 1543, Damplip was hanged, drawn and quartered as a traitor for accepting money from Cardinal Pole, rather than being executed as a heretic. Martyrologist John Foxe explains:

“The cause whiche firste they layd to his charge, was for heresie. But because by an acte of Parliamente, all suche offences done before a certayne daye, were pardoned (through which Acte he could not be burdened with anye thing that he had preached or taught before) yet for the receiuing of the foresayd French crowne of Cardinall Pole, (as you heard before) he was condemned of treason, and in Calice cruelly put to death, being drawne, hanged, and quartered.”

So they couldn’t get rid of this man who was causing trouble in Calais for heresy, so they picked his link to the king’s enemy Cardinal Pole. Clever, but nasty.