"I am Thomas" - Thomas Aikenhead Unitarian Martyr

"I am Thomas - a brutal comedy with songs", created by "Told by an Idiot", the composer Iain Johnstone and poet Simon Armitage is now on tour.

It tells the tale of Thomas Aikenhead - the last person to be executed in Britain for blasphemy.

Amongst other statements overheard, he denied the Trinity and was reported, tried, sentenced to death and publicly hanged. He is remembered as one of the Unitarian martyrs.

It provides a salutary tale when freedom of speech is still challenged in so many parts of the world and blasphemy remains a crime.

I have not seen it yet but hope to do so when it comes to London in late April at Wilton's Music Hall.

Thomas Aikenhead Unitarian Martyr 1697

As we enter 2013 Unitarians will be marking the passage of the an Act of Parliament "to relieve persons who impugn the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity from certain penalties", known as the "Trinity Act", "Mr Smith's Act" (after its sponsor William Smith MP). It is hard to comprehend that as recently as 1813 to profess belief in Unitarianism was illegal in Great Britain.

January is a month to remember of sacrifice of Thomas Aikenhead, a young Edinburgh medical student, who allegedly railed against the Holy Trinity and was judicially hanged on 8 January 1679. His was the last execution for blasphemy in Britain. He was charged that for more than twelve months he had blasphemed against God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Scriptures, and all revealed religion. He was found guilty and two appeals were rejected by the Privy Council. The Church of Scotland General Assembly refused to intercede for him and called for his execution. This was carried out just outside Edinburgh.

In relation to Scotland,  the 1813 Statute repealed the two pieces of legislation, the first passed under Charles II and the second under William III, that ordained the punishment of Death for blasphemy under which he was convicted.

In 2012 we marked the deaths of Bartholomew Legate and Edward Wightman in 1662; the last to suffer death by burning for heresy in England. Thomas Aikenhead's death was controversial even at the time when ideas of religious freedom were spreading.

When we comment upon issues of religious freedom in other parts of the world we would do well to remember our own journey as a country and the effects of legal penalties suffered by Unitarians well into the 19th century.

For further information see the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography.

The Struggle for Religious Freedom 2. – the Unitarian Martyrs of 1612

In 1912 the British and Foreign Unitarian Association published a four page pamphlet entitled “Tercentenary of the Unitarian Martyrs” which I recently found stuck in another book from around the same period. Who where these Unitarian martyrs? Where people really burned at the stake for Unitarian views? Surely we should mark there 400th anniversary of these deaths.

Last year we celebrated the birth of Servetus, the Unitarian thinker tried and burned in Calvinist Geneva. Servetus is an important figure as the reaction to his death led to the first serious challenge to the belief that the State should combat religious “heresy” by judicial murder.

Sadly, this ideal took some time to spread. In 1612 we find the last burnings for heresy in England, of Bartholomew Legate at Smithfield, London on 18 March and Edward Wightman at Lichfield on 11 April. Both suffered for denying the Trinitarian doctrine in an appalling repetition of the days of religious conflict in the previous century with the Protestant-Roman Catholic wars.

Bartholomew Legate, according to Fuller’s Church History of Britain, appears to have been a man of fine personal appearance, of high character, scholarly attainments and a very conversant with the Bible. He was a native of Essex, aged about forty. Fuller states in a vile phrase:

“His conversation, for aught I can learn to the contrary, very unblameable; and the poison of heretical doctrine is never more dangerous than when served up in clean cups and washed dishes”

Legate openly expressed his Unitarian views opposing the Athanasian and Nicene creeds. He was cast into Newgate Prison but later released. He resumed preaching and was summoned to appear before the Ecclesiastical Court presided over by the Bishop of London. Convicted of heresy he was handed over to the secular judges.

King James (I of England and VI of Scotland) apparently had many interviews with him to persuade him to recant but failed. On one occasion he ended up kicking Legate when he learned that he did not pray to Jesus Christ. On 18 March 1612 he was fastened to the stake at Smithfield and burned to death surrounded by a huge number of spectators. He was the last that died at Smithfield for religious truth. These events are described in a fictional account of Legate’s life by the author Florence Cregg in 1886 which is in the General Assembly’s online document library.

       

Edward Wightman died less than a month later in Lichfield in the Midlands. He appears to have been “a visionary person whose eccentric opinions would be best met by patience and friendly counsel”. He unfortunately petitioned King James who remitted his case to Bishop Neile of Lichfield. He was tried and condemned and taken to the stake twice; he recanted on the first occasion, then refused to do so in Court and was burned on 11 April 1612. on Easter Saturday.

Fuller interestingly concludes that public execution had the effect of increasing public sympathy for those burned amongst the common people and that King James decided that “heretics thereafter, though condemned, should silently and privately waste away in the prison”. Many years later in September 1662 we find John Biddle, the founder of Unitarian worship in London, dying in prison after suffering six terms of imprisonment. (see the forthcoming “The Struggle For Religious Freedom 3. blog entry)

Ironically then, these deaths had the effect of rendering public execution for religious belief unpalatable in England. The were the last burnings for heresy in England.

This article is based on “Tercentenary of the Unitarian Martyrs” (B&FUA 1912) and  Robert Spears (ed) “Record of Unitarian Worthies” (1870)