Thomas Bilney
Thomas Bilney (1495 – 1531), a scholar known as “Little Bilney”.
The story so far…
Week 3: An Occult History of Britain (Part 1)
1527 and the cardinal is away. Heretics may play. “The scriptures, to me, are as honey”, Little Bilney tells a gathering in the city. Cromwell has come to keep him quiet, but there’s no shutting up Thomas Bilney. “There’s one who will jump into the fire.”
Week 4: An Occult History of Britain (Part 2)
A year later, we learn that Bilney was arrested shortly after that meeting, for he has been in the Tower ever since. When Cromwell tells Wolsey of the deaths of two scholars in his own cellars in Oxford, he asks Wolsey to help free Bilney. “I am a child, he thinks, who cannot be consoled.”
Week 9: Arrange Your Face (Part 2)
Anne Boleyn: “You know they have burned Little Bilney? While we have been in the woods playing thieves.”
He was taken preaching in open fields, handing out Tyndale’s gospels. Thomas More says he recanted in the fire. Cromwell says that is not what he heard.
“He was a fool,” Anne says, not to save himself. Cromwell says he could be granted no more mercy.
“They say that Little Bilney, the night before he was burned, held his fingers in a candle flame, and called on Jesus to teach him how to endure the pain. That was not wise, to maim yourself before the event.”