The trials and death of Richard Hunne

Richard Hunne was a man who became the central character of a 16^th century “cause celebre”, and a figure of interest in the story of the English Reformation during the reign of Henry VIII.

Richard Hunne and the Lollards

Richard Hunne was not a clergyman but a wealthy merchant tailor in London. His father-in-law was a member of the city’s Lollard community, and Hunne himself appeared to have had strong sympathies with the Lollards.

The Lollards first appeared in the 14^th century, and were originally the followers of John Wycliffe, who had translated the Bible into English and protested against some of the teachings of the Catholic Church, notably the belief that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are literally transformed into the flesh and blood of Christ, this being known as transubstantiation. The Lollards were therefore early reformers who were carefully watched by the Church for signs of heresy.

A tragic event and its consequences

Richard Hunne and his wife suffered a personal tragedy on 19^th March 1511 with the death of his infant son at the age of five weeks. Thomas Dryffeld, the rector of the church near where the child died, St Mary Matfelon in Whitechapel, demanded the child’s christening robe as payment for his funeral, but Hunne refused to hand it over. We can imagine that, as a master tailor, Richard Hunne would have known the true value of the robe, and he might even have made it himself. He would quite probably have wished to use the robe again for the christening of later children, as this had always been a common custom, with such robes being passed down the generations.

This may sound like a trivial matter, but it was symptomatic of a wider abuse. Under ecclesiastical law the priest was entitled to claim, as his fee for conducting a funeral, the most valuable possession of the deceased, and this could be something like a craftsman’s tools or a carrier’s cart, which would not then be available to be passed on to the deceased’s family for their support. Richard Hunne knew about such cases, as he was a wealthy and generous man who had helped many local families in such circumstances.

Indeed, Richard Hunne had been a thorn in the side of the clergy for some time before the incident of the christening robe. For example, he had supported other tailors and their families in disputes with the Church over accusations of heresy. His activities were in part responsible for Parliament debating the matter of whether priests were immune from civil law. However, although the law was soon changed so that clerical immunity was abolished for those in minor orders, this only applied to people such as court summoners and vergers, and not priests, deacons and bishops.

Richard Hunne’s argument in the case of his own son was that, under civil law, an infant cannot own any property, so the robe belonged to Richard Hunne and not his dead son.

The response of Thomas Dryffeld was to report Hunne to the Archbishop of Canterbury, with a view to having Hunne excommunicated.

Richard’s Hunne’s first trial and its aftermath

The first “trial” was to be at Lambeth Palace on 13^th May 1512, where the case was to be heard by Cuthbert Tunstall, who later became Bishop of London. Tunstall was clearly not interested in making too much of the affair, and the case was settled out of court with Richard Hunne simply being asked to pay the value of the christening robe (which was quite substantial at six shillings and eightpence) and sent on his way without being excommunicated.

On 27^th December, Richard Hunne tried to attend evensong at St Mary Matfelon, although it was not his local church. It would appear that he went there accompanied by several fellow Lollards, possibly with a view to goading Thomas Dryffeld into taking action against him. If this was his aim, he was soon satisfied, because the service was stopped and he was ordered to leave. The only reason why this could happen, under ecclesiastical law, would be if an excommunicant sought to avail himself of the sacraments, so the assumption must be that Dryffeld believed this to be the case. Hunne promptly sued the priest at the Court of the King’s Bench, for slandering his good name.

Things get much more serious

This was therefore a clash of two jurisdictions, that of the Pope through the Church and the King through the civil courts. The Church now formally excommunicated Richard Hunne, who replied by issuing a “writ of praemunire”. Under the Great Statute of Praemunire it was treasonable to appeal to any power higher than that of the King, which meant that any appeal to the Pope by the persons named in Hunne’s writ would be a matter of treason.

The Pope, meanwhile, had pronounced that spiritual power must not be subordinated to that of the state. This placed the judges in Hunne’s slander case in a dilemma, because it appeared that a decision against Hunne would count as treason, and one in his favour would put them in danger of excommunication.

However, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, sought to keep the matter an ecclesiastical one by having Hunne arrested for heresy, as a copy of the Wycliffe translation of the Bible was found in his house, and there was plenty of evidence of his Lollard opinions. He was therefore placed in the “Lollards Tower” of St Paul’s Cathedral on 14^th October 1514.

The actual second trial of Richard Hunne, however, never really took place. He appeared before Bishop Richard Fitzjames on 2^nd December, but only two days later his body was discovered hanging in his cell. The trial continued posthumously, and testimony was given that he denied transubstantiation and the veneration of saints, and that he possessed heretical literature. He was also declared to have committed suicide, which would in any case have been enough to deny him Christian burial, and his body was cremated on 20^th December.

Consequences and significance

However, Richard Hunne was not the only layman to have been anti-clergy, and a coroner’s jury on 6^th December decided that he had been murdered, having been tortured and strangled and the hanging faked to look like a suicide. The affair looked like leading to major civil disturbance, and the King himself got to hear about it, ordering an inquiry that, in the end, reached no firm conclusion. Richard Hunne’s family members were never able to reclaim his property, which had been forfeited on his posthumous conviction.

The significance of the Richard Hunne affair is not easy to estimate. John Foxe (1517-87) included Richard Hunne in his “Book of Martyrs”, but of course he was not an eyewitness to the events and he had an ulterior motive in drawing attention to Protestants who had suffered at Catholic hands. In 1514, Henry VIII had been King for only five years, and his marriage to Catherine of Aragon had another 19 years to run. It was the ending of that marriage that marked Henry’s break with the Church of Rome.

Although there is a parallel between the legal tussle of Richard Hunne and that of Henry VIII, in that both questioned the right of the clergy to determine civil law, it would not be accurate to see Hunne’s case as leading directly to Henry’s break with Rome. That said, Henry did get to know about the Richard Hunne affair, and it could have been just one of many pieces of evidence that, in his mind, weighed on the side of the Protestant cause against that of the Catholic Church.

© John Welford