Richard Hunne
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Richard Hunne ( - 1514) was a merchant tailor with Lollard sympathies. He charged with heresy in London in 1514
In March 1511, Hunne refused to pay the standard mortuary fee, the baby's christening robe, to the rector of St. Mary Matfelon in Whitechapel after the funeral of his dead baby. The matter was not pursued by the Church until Hunne and a friend challenged the rector of St. Michael Cornhill over the title of 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 in April 1512. The court found in favour of the rector.
On 27 December 1512, Hunne attended vespers at the same church and the priest refused to proceed with the service until Hunne left. According to the account in Hunne was mentioned in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs [1] 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 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 and therefore was a foreign court which could have no legitimate jurisdiction over the King of England's subjects.
The London clergy responded by again charging Hunne, this time for heresy. Hunne was then sent to the Lollards' Tower of St. Paul's Cathedral after a raid on his house in October 1514 had uncovered an English Bible with a prologue sympathetic to Wycliffe's doctrines. Hunne was found hanging in his cell on 4 December 1514. His body was burned on 20 December. Hunne's accusers claimed that he had committed suicide, although they could not convince the coroner's jury, which in February 1515 found that Hunne had been murdered.
In 1515, as a result of this affair, Parliament debated whether to approve a Bill to restore to Hunne's children the property which had been forfeited when their father was found, posthumously, guilty of heresy. The House of Commons petitioned Henry VIII to reform the law on mortuary fees and an attempt was made to extend laws against benefit of clergy. None of the proposed bills was passed.
John Foxe's Book of Martyrs [2] recounts Hunne's case as evidence of the unfairness and unaccountability of English ecclesiastical courts on the eve of the Reformation. It also presents Hunne as a martyr and one of the forerunners of the Protestantism that would soon enter England in the wake of Martin Luther's protest. An anonymous accountThe enquirie and verdite of the quest panneld of the death of Richard Hune wich was founde hanged in Lolars tower published in 1537 suggest that its author also saw the parallels between Hunne's case and the Henrician Reformation's attempt to bring ecclesiastical courts under state control.
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[edit] Select Bibliography
- Davis, E. Jeffries. "The Authorities for the Case of Richard Hunne (1514-15)." The English Historical Review 30, no. 119 (July 1915): 477-488.
- 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.
