Hugh Latimer's famous account of what passed between him and Bilney when Bilney 'conuerted' him in 1524. 27 sermons preached by the ryght Reuerende father in God and constant matir [sic] of Iesus Christe, Maister Hugh Latimer, as well such as in tymes past haue bene printed, as certayne other commyng to our handes of late, whych were yet neuer set forth in print, (STC 15276) in the section known as Certayn Godly Sermons, made vppon the Lordes Prayer, at fol. 13B (reprinted in the Parker Society edition of Latimer's Sermons, ed. George Elwes Corrie (Cambridge, 1844), pp. 334-5. The word 'conuersion' was Day's and Foxe's anachronistic term for Bilney's influence on his contemporaries. 'Conversion' was not a term that the early evangelicals often used (see Peter Marshall, `Evangelical conversion in the reign of Henry VIII', in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, eds. Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie [Cambridge, 2002], pp. 14-37).

Hugh Latimer became University Chaplain in 1522. Although one of his duties was the custody of Cambridge's elaborate silver processional cross, which was brought out at several important occasions during the academic year, Latimer was more correctly known as Chaplain of the University rather than as its `croskeper'. Foxe's source for his information here was from Ralph Morice in British Library, Harley MS 422, fols. 84-8, 90.

Bilney and Thomas Arthur went preaching together from the university to Ipswich and Norwich and onward to London during the summer of 1527. Theirs was an aggressive preaching itinerary, and they were followed at every step by Dominican friars. At Ipswich, Bilney was heard to say that Christ was the only mediator between us and the Father. To petition the saints was to injure the blood of Christ. Bilney was accused of preaching in the churches of St Helen's Bishopsgate, St Magnus, and also in the churches of Willesden (in the week of Pentecost), Newington (in the week of Pentecost), Kensington, and Chelsea outside the city, as well as Ipswich on 28 May. At Willesden, Bilney spoke against going on pilgrimages and offerings to saints. He recommended that worshippers stay at home. At the church of St Magnus (which was always an important City church, as it stood on the north end of London Bridge), the parishioners were gilding their new rood, and here Bilney denounced idolatry. Chelsea is particularly noteworthy, as Sir Thomas More's residence was next to what is now known as Chelsea Old Church, where he intended to be buried next to the chantry chapel he built there. Arthur preached at Cambridge on Whitsunday; and also at Walden; and St Mary Woolchurch in London at the feast of the Trinity. Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 119-120; Gregory Walker, 'Saint or schemer?: the 1527 heresy trial of Thomas Bilney reconsidered', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 40 (1989), pp. 219-38; Patrick Zutshi and Robert Ombres, `The Dominicans in Cambridge 1238-1538', Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, vol. 60 (1990), pp. 313-73.

Robert Barnes had shocked the university and the hierarchy of the English Church when he was the first of the Cambridge evangelicals to openly criticize Thomas Cardinal Wolsey in a sermon he delivered at St. Edward's Church in Cambridge on Christmas Eve in 1525.

The records of Bilney's and Arthur's examinations are preserved in the Register of Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of London, in Guildhall Library, MS 9531/10 fols. 130B-136A.

Among the other examiners whom Foxe did not name was the bishop of Carlisle. The octagonal chapter house of Westminster Abbey has remained relatively unchanged in the intervening centuries. It is reached from the Cloister and it retains its original tile floor and wall paintings.

Wolsey's examination of Latimer, as related by Ralph Morice in British Library Harley MS 422, fols. 84-8, 90, should be compared with his examination of Arthur and Bilney.

The date of any previous conversation between Arthur and Sir Thomas More is not known.

It had been illegal to preach or teach any of Martin Luther's doctrine any where in western Europe since mid 1520, when his books and sermons were banned by Pope Leo X in his Bull Exsurge Domine. When Luther continued to defy the pope by burning the Bull with books of canon law publicly in late 1520, Leo excommunicated him at the beginning of 1521. Heresy was illegal in England under the terms of both canon law and statute: the 1408 Constitutions of Archbishop Thomas Arundel, printed in William Lyndwood, Provinciale, (seu Constitvtiones Angliae) (Oxford, 1679; rpt. 1968), p. 286; 5 Ric. II, st. 2, c. 5 (1382); 2 Hen. IV, c. 15 (1401); 2 Hen. V., st. 1, c. 7 (1414). See also J. A. Guy, 'The Legal context of the controversy: the law of heresy', in The Debellation of Salem and Bizance in The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 10 (1987), pp. xlvii-lxvii.

28 November 1527. Tunstall, West and Fisher came to the house of Richard Nix, near Charing Cross, perhaps out of consideration for Nix's partial blindness. Nix was a member of Bilney's college, Trinity Hall.

2 December 1527. Despite `the same place', this part of the proceedings resumed at the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey.

The records of Bilney's and Arthur's examinations are preserved in the Register of Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of London, in Guildhall Library, MS 9531/10, fols. 130B-136A. Arthur's and Bilney's examinations have also been discussed by Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation, (Oxford, 1989), pp. 71, 111-113, 116, 119, 122-3, 127, 161, 195, 204, 260.

All traveling preachers, whether friars, monks, or learned secular clergymen, were required under the terms of English statute (2 Henry IV, c. 15, printed in Statutes of the Realm, vol. 2, pp. 125-8) and canon law (William Lyndwood, Provinciale, (seu Constitvtiones Angliae) (Oxford, 1679; rpt. 1968), Lib. V, tit. 5, pp. 288-9) to hold a license, usually from the bishop in whose diocese they wanted to preach. John Fisher, bishop of Rochester and chancellor of Cambridge obtained new licensing powers for the university under the terms of a Bull issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1503. A Cambridge University preaching license permitted its holder to preach anywhere in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Damian Riehl Leader, A History of the University of Cambridge, vol. 1, The University to 1546 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 246-7, 278-9; Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 117-119. Arthur was licensed to preach by Cambridge University in 1519-20 in the same group that included Nicholas Shaxton and Thomas Cranmer. Grace Book B, Part II: Containing the Accounts of the Proctors of the University of Cambridge, 1511-44, ed. Mary Bateson (Cambridge, 1905), p. 77. Bilney was issued a license to preach in the diocese of Ely in 1525, which Bishop West retracted after he was convicted of heresy. Cambridge University Library, MS EDR, G/1/7, fol. 33A.

For Arthur to preach that `euerye man may preach' was unusual, and against canon law and statute. Here he may have been influenced by some of the writings of Erasmus, or the idea of the priesthood of all believers, found in Martin Luther's [Of the Babylonian Captivity of the Church] - De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae (Basle: Adam Petri, 1520).

For the crosses on the walls of London, see also Patrick Collinson, 'Truth and Legend: the Veracity of John Foxe's Book of Martyrs', in Elizabethan Essays (London, 1994), pp. 151-77 at p. 175, n. 88.