Richard Hunne was an English merchant tailor in the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

during the early years of the reign of

Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disagr ...

(1509-1547). After a dispute with his priest over his infant son's funeral, Hunne sought to use the English

common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omniprese ...

courts to challenge the church's authority. In response, church officials arrested him for trial in an ecclesiastical court on the capital charge of

heresy Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...

. In December 1514, while awaiting trial, Hunne was found dead in his cell, and murder by church officials was suspected. His death caused widespread anger against the clergy, and months of political and religious turmoil followed.

Life

In March 1511, Hunne refused to pay the standard mortuary fee, the baby's christening robe, to the rector of

St Mary Matfelon The St Mary Matfelon church, popularly known as St Mary's, Whitechapel, was a Church of England parish church on Whitechapel Road, Whitechapel, London. The church's earliest known rector was Hugh de Fulbourne in 1329, and in the medieval period t ...

Whitechapel Whitechapel is a district in East London and the future administrative centre of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is a part of the East End of London, east of Charing Cross. Part of the historic county of Middlesex, the area formed a c ...

, Thomas Dryffeld, after the funeral of his dead five-week-old son called Stephen. The matter was not pursued by the

Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Ch ...

until Hunne and a friend challenged the rector of

St Michael Cornhill St Michael, Cornhill, is a medieval parish church in the City of London with pre-Norman Conquest parochial foundation. It lies in the ward of Cornhill, London, Cornhill. The medieval structure was lost in the Great Fire of London, and replaced b ...

over the title to a tenement in November 1511. Hunne was then sued by the rector of St Mary Matfelon for the mortuary fee and appeared in the ecclesiastical Court of Audience, presided over by

Cuthbert Tunstall Cuthbert Tunstall (otherwise spelt Tunstal or Tonstall; 1474 – 18 November 1559) was an English Scholastic, church leader, diplomat, administrator and royal adviser. He served as Prince- Bishop of Durham during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edw ...

, chancellor to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in April 1512. The court found in favour of the rector. On 27 December 1512, Hunne attended

vespers Vespers is a service of evening prayer, one of the canonical hours in Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic (both Latin and Eastern), Lutheran, and Anglican liturgies. The word for this fixed prayer time comes from the Latin , meani ...

at the same church and the priest refused to proceed with the service until Hunne left. According to the account of Hunne in

John Foxe John Foxe (1516/1517 – 18 April 1587), an English historian and martyrologist, was the author of '' Actes and Monuments'' (otherwise ''Foxe's Book of Martyrs''), telling of Christian martyrs throughout Western history, but particularly the s ...

's ''

Acts and Monuments The ''Actes and Monuments'' (full title: ''Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church''), popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, is a work of Protestant history and martyrology by Protestant Engli ...

'',
at hrionline.ac.uk the priest shouted "Hunne, thou art accursed and standest accursed!", meaning by this that Hunne had been excommunicated by the ecclesiastical court. Hunne responded in January 1513 by suing the priest for

slander Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

claiming his character and business had been ruined by the priest's accusation. He also counteracted with a '' praemunire'' charge against the church court in which he had been arraigned and argued that its authority derived from a

Papal legate 300px, A woodcut showing Henry II of England greeting the pope's legate. A papal legate or apostolic legate (from the ancient Roman title ''legatus'') is a personal representative of the pope to foreign nations, or to some part of the Catholic ...

and therefore was a foreign court which could have no legitimate

jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels. Ju ...

over the

King of England The monarchy of the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as the British monarchy, is the constitutional form of government by which a hereditary sovereign reigns as the head of state of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies (the Baili ...

's subjects. The London clergy responded by again charging Hunne, this time for

. Hunne was then sent to the Lollards' Tower of

St Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglicanism, Anglican cathedral in London and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London ...

, after a raid on his house in October 1514 had uncovered an

English Bible Partial Bible translations into languages of the English people can be traced back to the late 7th century, including translations into Old and Middle English. More than 100 complete translations into English have been written. In the United S ...

with a prologue sympathetic to

Wycliffe Wycliffe (and other similar spellings) may refer to: People *John Wycliffe (and other spellings) (c.1320s – 1384), English theologian and Bible translator * Wycliffe (name), includes a list of other people with the name Places * Wycliffe, Count ...

's teachings. Hunne was found hanging in his cell on 4 December 1514, and the circumstances were suspicious. There was widespread anger against the clergy among the populace of the City of London. The Church went ahead with Hunne's heresy trial in spite of his death, and he was duly condemned. His corpse was

burned at the stake Death by burning (also known as immolation) is an execution and murder method involving combustion or exposure to extreme heat. It has a long history as a form of public capital punishment, and many societies have employed it as a punishment ...

on 20 December. Hunne's accusers claimed that he had committed suicide, but they could not convince the coroner's jury, which in February 1515, charged Horsey, chancellor to the Bishop of London, and two other church officials with Hunne's murder. The political and religious crisis continued to grow. Bishop FitzJames of London wrote to the King's Chancellor, Archbishop Wolsey, asking him to persuade the King to prevent Horsey being put on trial. He said that Horsey would not get a fair trial because of the strength of public feeling, which had built up against the Church: "...if my chancellor be tried by any twelve men in London, they be so maliciously set in favor of heretical depravity that they will cast and condemn my clerk though he be as innocent as Abel." The king eventually intervened to stifle the situation. Horsey was kept in prison until the anger in London abated. Then he was brought before a civil court, but King Henry had ordered his attorney general to see that the case was dismissed on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Horsey went free, but the public anger was acerbated by his release, and

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. ...

became more and more involved. To calm the situation, Wolsey went before Parliament and on his knees made an apology to them on behalf of the clergy. Wolsey's real aim, however, was to get Parliament to agree to the case being tried in Rome. Then, the king intervened, rejecting Wolsey's proposal and stating that the sovereign of the realm had previously made his decision and that no one had a right to overrule his decision but God himself. Wolsey later fined Horsey and expelled him 160 miles from the capital. Horsey lived out the rest of his life in great poverty.

Aftermath

In 1515, as a result of this affair, Parliament debated whether to approve a bill to restore to Hunne's children the property that had been forfeited when their father was found, posthumously, guilty of heresy. The

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

petitioned

to reform the law on mortuary fees and an attempt was made to extend laws against

benefit of clergy In English law, the benefit of clergy (Law Latin: ''privilegium clericale'') was originally a provision by which clergymen accused of a crime could claim that they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts and be tried instead in an eccl ...

. None of the proposed laws was enacted. Foxe recounted Hunne's case as evidence of the unfairness and unaccountability of English ecclesiastical courts on the eve of the English Reformation. He also presented Hunne as a martyr and one of the forerunners of the

Protestantism Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

that would soon enter England in the wake of

Martin Luther Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation and the namesake of Luther ...

's protest. An anonymous account, "''The enquirie and verdite of the quest panneld of the death of Richard Hune which was founde hanged in Lolars tower''", published in 1537, suggests that its author also saw parallels between Hunne's case and the

Henrician Reformation The English Reformation took place in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church. These events were part of the wider European Protestant Reformation, a religious and pol ...

's attempt to bring ecclesiastical courts under state control.

References

Notes

Select bibliography

* Bernard, G.W. ''The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012 (Chapter 1: "The Hunne Affair," pp. 1–16). * Dale, Richard. "The Death of an Alleged Heretic (Richard Hunne: d.1514) Explained" ''Reformation and Renaissance Review'': 15:2: 2013. * Davis, E. Jeffries. "The Authorities for the Case of Richard Hunne (1514–15)." ''The English Historical Review'' 30, no. 119 (July 1915): 477–488. * Ogle, Arthur. ''The Tragedy of the Lollards Tower'': Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1949. * Smart, S. J. "John Foxe and 'The Story of Richard Hun, Martyr.'" ''Journal of Ecclesiastical History'' 37 (1986): 1–14. * Wunderli, R. "Pre-Reformation London Summoners and the Murder of Richard Hunne." ''Journal of Ecclesiastical History'' 33 (1982): 209–24. * Marius Richard "Thomas More"- Chapter 8 the Richard Hunne Affair.

External links

Woodcut of Hunne in Lollards Tower from the ''Book of Martyrs''.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hunne, Richard Prisoners murdered in custody English murder victims People murdered in England People excommunicated by the Catholic Church English people who died in prison custody Prisoners who died in England and Wales detention Lollards British tailors Year of birth missing 15th-century births 1514 deaths 15th-century English people 16th-century English people