from his orders, and handed over to the secular arm for execution. With great cheerfulness and fortitude he prepared for his end. He wrote a letter of farewell, that still survives (Nasmith, Cat. MSS. in C. C. C. Cambridge, p. 355), to his father and mother, and drew up two discourses (printed in Townsend's Foxe, vol. iv. ap. v.) that are almost wholly devotional in their character. He was constantly assailed by the arguments and entreaties of the chiefs of the four orders of friars who had houses in Norwich; and Dr. Pellis also pressed him to recant. Bilney's gentle and simple soul could hardly be unmoved by these efforts. Differing so little as he did from the church, it was doubtless a great consolation to him to hear mass, to confess, to receive the eucharist and absolution. The clergy and the Norwich townsmen were glad to see him so penitent. On the morning of his execution (19 Aug. 1531) he heard mass in the chapel of the Guildhall where he was imprisoned, and was exhorted to make n thorough recantation before the people at his execution. He was led through the Bishopsgate into a low valley called the Lollard's Pit under St. Leonard's Hill, which was thronged with the crowd assembled to witness his martyrdom. He spoke to the crowd, admitted his error in preaching against fasting, exculpated the anchoress and even the friars, but exhorted the people to believe in the church and eulogised chastity. Dr. Pellis then produced a bill, saying, 'Thomas, here is a bill; ye know it well enough.' 'Ye say truly, Mr. Doctor.' answered Bilney. He then read the bill, but apparently either to himself or in an inaudible voice, so that none knew what the tenor of the document was (Appendices to Foxe; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. v. No. 372-3, but cf. 522 and 560. Foxe's account seems the less trustworthy).
The flames were then lighted, and Bilney soon perished. A controversy as to the precise nature of his last utterances sprang up between Read the mayor and an alderman Curatt, and their contradictory depositions still remain. Sir Thomas More, relying upon Curatt, asserted in the preface to his pamphlet against Tyndale that Bilney recanted all his heresies. This the protestants denied. Foxe argues with much violence against More, but More had seen the depositions of which Foxe was ignorant, and Foxe's main argument is the denial of Matthew Parker, who was present at his old teacher's execution. The truth seems to be that Bilney was so little of a heretic, that a mere statement of his views would have borne the appearance of a recantation to those who, like More, regarded him as a thorough Lutheran. Had Bilney's over-scrupulous conscience allowed him to stay quietly at Cambridge a year or two more, he would have found all and more than he contended for accepted by the very men who hounded him on to death. The execution of a man so gentle and harmless as Bilney was peculiarly disgraceful to the government, even if, as most people then admitted, it was right to burn heretics and sacramentaries.
[Our main authority for Bilney's life is Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. iv. in Townsend's edition, which also gives valuable appendices of documents and state papers, all of which, with the other documents bearing on the subject, are summarised in Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII, vol. v., edited by Mr. Gairdner; Foxe's account can be verified and checked by comparison with the extracts from the register of Tunstal, MS. Baker xxi., and by Cole's transcripts from the register of West. MS. Cole xxvi.; Latimer's Sermons; Blomefield's Norfolk; Tanner's Bibliographia Britannica; an excellent modern summary is in Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses, i. 42, a longer one in Dean Hook's Ecclesiastical Biography.]
BILSON, THOMAS (1546-7–1616), bishop of Winchester, was eldest son of Herman Bilson, grandson of Arnold Bilson, whose wife is said to have been a daughter of the Duke of Bavaria, 'natural or legitimate,' says Anthony à Wood, 'I know not'. He was born in the city of Winchester in 1546-7, and went to the school there. Thence he proceeded to Oxford and entered New College, where he passed B.A., 10 Oct. 1566; M.A., 25 April 1570; B.D., 24 June 1579; and D.D., 24 Jan. 1580-1. He became 'a most noted preacher' on taking holy orders, in 'these parts and elsewhere,' says Wood. He is also stated by some (adds the Athenæ) to have been a schoolmaster. He was installed a prebendary of Winchester on 12 Jan. 1576, and warden of the college there. He was consecrated bishop of Worcester on 13 June 1596, and translated to Winchester on 13 May 1597. 'He was.' continues Anthony à Wood, 'as reverend and learned a prelate as England ever afforded, a deep and profound scholar, exactly read in ecclesiastical authors and with Dr. Richard Field of Oxon (as Whitaker of Cambridge) a principal maintainer of the church of England, while Jo. Rainolds and Thomas Sparke were upholders of puritanism and nonconformity … In his younger years he was infinitely studious and industrious in poetry, philosophy, and physics,' and also in ecclesiastical divinity. To the last, 'his geny chiefly inciting him, he became,' says the same authority, 'so complete in it, so well skill'd in languages, so read in the fathers
