Sussex Parson: Marc Lloyd's 'Miscellanies': Richard Woodman of Warbleton, Reformation Martyr (d. 22nd June 1557)

Friday, June 18, 2021

Richard Woodman of Warbleton, Reformation Martyr (d. 22nd June 1557)

L. P. Hartley famously wrote: “The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there.”[1] We might feel that acutely when we think about Richard Woodman and the Reformation. It’s amazing to us that publicly disagreeing with the Rector of Warbleton can lead you to being burnt alive. And it’s hard for us to imagine how God and the Christian faith could matter so much to our society and that people would think it right to kill one another over the nature of Holy Communion. Woodman and his executioners agreed on so much.

They all claimed to worship the Triune God and believe the Bible. And yet they thought the points of disagreement worth killing and dying for. It’s inconceivable to us, really. But I think these things do matter and are worth remembering.

Woodman was probably born in Buxted in East Sussex in 1524. He became a farmer and iron-master, employing one hundred men, living in the parish of Warbleton in a meadow near the church, where he was church warden.

Woodman had become convinced of the Reformed or Evangelical Protestant faith of the Reformation.

If we wanted to pick one event as sparking The Reformation, it would be Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg on 31^st October 1517, seven years before Woodman was born.

Luther was an extremely devout monk, but he had become concerned for the salvation of his soul. The question of how sinners can be forgiven by a holy God was at the heart of the Reformation.

We can sum up the Reformation teaching about salvation in five statements – in Latin five “solas”, five “alone” statements:

For Luther and his followers, salvation is:

(1) in Christ alone

(2) by grace alone – by God’s free gift

(3) through faith alone – received by trusting in Jesus

(4) to the glory of God alone

(5) according to Scripture alone.

In other words, they thought the whole system of the Medieval church had gone wrong. Their protest wasn’t just about a few corrupt priests. They rejected the system of indulgences in which time off purgatory could be bought by priests saying mass for the dead. They thought the idea that good works could build up merit was wrong. We are put right with God by Jesus’ death in our place on the cross, not by the prayers of the saints or the sacrifice of the Mass. You don’t need the priest as a go between with God, you need to put your trust in Jesus.

And we know this from the Word of God, not because the Pope says so, or because of the tradition of the Church.

Those “solas” or “alone”s are really important because everyone believed in grace, and faith, and Jesus, and the Bible but the Reformers thought that by adding good works, and merit, and man-made traditions, the Catholic church had undermined the grace of God and the finished work of Christ.

The Reformation gained influence in England in the time of Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547) and was thoroughgoing during the reign of his son Edward VI (r. 1547-1553).

And Woodman had obviously become passionately committed to many of these Scriptural truths.

Our knowledge of him comes from John Foxe’s best-selling, Acts and Monuments of these latter and perilous days, sometimes known as The “Book of Martyrs”, which he wrote from 1563-1583, and which you can read online[2]. It claims to preserve Woodman’s records of his various arrests, release, escapes, trials and a letter he wrote.

Woodman’s troubles began during the reign of the Catholic queen, Bloody Queen Mary (r. 1553–1558), when he was arrested in the parish church at Warbleton for interrupting the Rector’s sermon and criticizing him for turning “head to tail” and preaching the exact opposite “clean contrary” to what he had previously preached. Like many, the Rector had adapted himself to the times. During the highly Protestant reign of Edward VI, he had married but after Mary came to the throne in 1553, he conformed to the Roman Catholic religion again.

Woodman’s story is often a dramatic one. He lived in the woods near his house for six or seven weeks with his Bible and ink and “other necessities”, so as to avoid arrest. He escaped to Flanders and from there to France but he secretly returned home. He was at last betrayed by his brother, whom he’d fallen out with over money.

On the day of his final arrest, he hid in the eaves of house while the authorities searched it for him, but thinking he was about to be discovered, in desperation jumping from his house without shoes on, he says, he stepped upon a sharp cinder with one foot, in a great mirey hole, and fell down withal, and was caught by Parker the Wild!

The Dictionary of National Biography recounts the tradition that Woodman was detained in the second story of the church tower at Warbleton, which, it says, bears some indications of having been used as a prison[3].

Woodman shows great courage and boldness at his various hearings (of which there were thirty-two in all) before an assortment of Bishops and others, including one unnamed fat priest, and they get into lengthy legal and theological arguments, and a certain amount of mutual abuse.

Though he can’t really understand Latin, Woodman shows better Bible-knowledge than some of his inquisitors who dismiss his arguments as “Bible babble, Bible babble”! He’s accused of heresy and of preaching, marrying and baptising without being a priest, which he denies.

Woodman is committed to the authority of Scripture and says he’s willing to be corrected by it, but he’s not persuaded by some of the traditions of the church or willing simply to accept the authority of his betters, much to their annoyance. They discuss familiar Reformation disputes: the marriage and learning of the clergy and the number of sacraments. There are detailed discussions about baptism, original sin and the freedom of the will. The Bishop of Chichester says that “We offer up in the blessed Sacrament of the Altar the body of Christ, to pacify the wrath of God the Father”. But Woodman says we are sanctified by the once for all offering of Christ on the cross.

Woodman was eventually condemned, he says, “for God’s everlasting truth” because he would not believe that there remained neither bread nor wine after the words of consecration at Communion and because he claimed that the body of Christ was only received by the faithful.

This can seem pretty technical and obscure stuff to us, but the Reformed thought we risked idolatry if we said the bread and wine of Holy Communion become Jesus’ body and blood. And these arguments get us into how we can know God and be saved. Is it by obeying the Pope or believing the Bible? And is it through trusting Jesus or receiving the merit of the church and the saints?

After his trial, Woodman says to his accusers: “I am no heretic, I take heaven and earth to witness: I defy all heretics: and if you condemn me, you will be damned, if you repent it not. But God give you grace to repent all if it be his will.”

Woodman wrote during his final imprisonment: “So I was carried to the Marshalsea again, where I am, and shall be as long as it shall please God: and I praise God most heartily, that ever he hath elected, and predestinated me to come to so high dignity, as to bear rebuke for his name’s sake: his name be praised therefore, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Foxe concludes: “And thus have you the Examinations of this blessed Woodman, or rather Goodman: wherein may appear as well the great grace and wisdom of God in that man, as also the gross ignorance and barbarous cruelty of his adversaries…”

On 22 June 1557, along with nine others, Woodman was burnt at the stake in Lewes, in front of the Star Inn, where the Town Hall is today. This was the largest number of people burnt in England at one time and was intended to serve as a warning to others.

The Bible text on the Woodman memorial in the churchyard at Warbleton is John 16v2:

Jesus said to his disciples: “They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.”

Some words from Hebrews chapter 11:

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

…

And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”