John Forest
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John Forest (d. 1538) was a Franciscan friar and martyr burnt to death on May 22 at Smithfield, London. He was considered an heretic by the Catholic Church and Henry VIII's Church of England.
A member of the Observant Franciscans in their Greenwich convent, Forest announced his refusal in 1525 to submit to Cardinal Wolsey's visitation of the house at St Paul’s Cross. [1] Forest has long been rumoured to have been Katherine of Aragon's confessor, though this remains to be proven. [2] By the beginning of 1538, Forest is living in London, with Conventual Franciscans, where his heterodox teaching aroused the suspicions of Cromwell. Soon afterwards he was under arrest, and a decision was made to prosecute him for heretically identifying the Catholic church of the creed with the Church of Rome, thus contradicting Wolsey’s orders.
Forest was eventually convicted of heresy and ordered to recant his opinions at Paul's Cross. His refusal to do so led to the inevitable punishment of death by burning, which occurred at Smithfield on 22 May. Bishop Hugh Latimer delivered the sermon and read out the list of heresies that Forest was to have abjured:
| “ | First that the Holie Catholike Church was the Church of Rome, and that wee ought to ought to beeleve out the same. Second, that wee should beleeve on the Pope’s pardon for remission of our sinnes. Thirdlie, that wee ought to beleeve and doe as our fathers have donne aforetyme fowertene yeares past. Fourthlie, that a priest maie turne and change the paines of hell of a sinner, truly penitent, contrite of his sins, by certaine penance him in the paines of purgatorie ... | ” |
Famously, extra fuel for the pyre was provided by an enormous wooden statue from the pilgrimage site of Llandderfel in north Wales. [3]
