Latimer, Hugh [key], 1485?–1555, English bishop and Protestant martyr. Latimer was educated at Cambridge, entered the church, and came under the influence of the Reformation. He first became prominent by defending Henry VIII's divorce from Katharine of Aragón and in 1535 was made bishop of Worcester. His strong Protestant convictions led him to resign his see after the passage of Henry VIII's Six Articles (1539). He was kept in close confinement until the accession of Edward VI (1547), when he resumed preaching against the abuses of church and clergy in eloquent and vivid sermons. When the Roman Catholic Mary I came to the throne he declined to evade trial, refused to recant his Protestantism, and with Nicholas Ridley was burned at the stake as a martyr.
See A. G. Chester, Hugh Latimer, Apostle to the English (1954).
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