Everything about Robert Barnes totally explained
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Robert Barnes (
1495 –
July 30,
1540),
English reformer and
martyr, born about
1495, was educated at
Cambridge, where he was a member, and afterwards prior of the convent of
Austin Friars, and graduated DD. in
1523.
He was apparently one of the Cambridge men who were wont to gather at the
White Horse Tavern for
Bible-reading and
theological discussion early in the third decade of the
16th century. In
1526, he was brought before the vice-chancellor for preaching a
heterodox sermon, and was subsequently examined by Wolsey and four other bishops. He was condemned to
abjure or be burnt; and preferring the former alternative, was committed to the Fleet prison and afterwards to the Austin Friars in
London.
He escaped to
Antwerp in
1528, and also visited
Wittenberg, where he made
Martin Luther's acquaintance. He also came across
Stephen Vaughan, an agent of
Thomas Cromwell and an advanced reformer, who recommended him to Cromwell: "Look well," he wrote, "upon Dr Barnes' book. It is such a piece of work as I've not yet seen any like it. I think he'll seal it with his blood" (
Letters and Papers of Henry VIII).
In
1531 Barnes returned to
England, and became one of the chief intermediaries between the
English government and
Lutheran Germany. In
1535 he was sent to
Germany, in the hope of inducing Lutheran divines to approve of Henry's divorce from
Catherine of Aragon, and four years later he was employed in negotiations connected with
Anne of Cleves's marriage. The policy was Cromwell's, but
Henry VIII had already in
1538 refused to adopt
Lutheran theology, and the statute of Six Articles (
1539), followed by the king's disgust with Anne of Cleves (
1540), brought the agents of that policy to ruin.
An attack upon
Bishop Gardiner by Barnes in a sermon at
St Paul's Cross was the signal for a bitter struggle between the
Protestant and
reactionary parties in Henry's council, which raged during the spring of
1540. Barnes was forced to apologize and recant; and Gardiner delivered a series of sermons at St Paul's Cross to counteract Barnes' invective. But a month or so later Cromwell was made
earl of Essex, Gardiner's friend,
Bishop Sampson, was sent to the
Tower, and Barnes reverted to Lutheranism. It was a delusive victory. In July, Cromwell was attainted, Anne of Cleves was divorced and Barnes was
burnt (30th July, 1540).
Barnes was one of six executed on the same day: two, William Jerome and
Thomas Gerrard, were, like himself, burnt for heresy under the
Six Articles; three,
Thomas Abel,
Richard Fetherstone and
Edward Powell, were hanged for treason in denying the royal supremacy. Both Lutherans and Catholics on the continent were shocked. Luther published Barnes' confession with a preface of his own as
Bekenntnis des Glaubens (1540).
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