Sermons on the Card, and Other Discourses

Transcribed from the 1883 Cassell & Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk.
Hugh Latimer, a farmer’s son, was born about the year 1491, at Thurcaston, in Leicestershire. He was an only son, with six sisters, who were all well cared for at home. He was a boy of fourteen when sent to Clare College, Cambridge. When about twenty-four years old, he had obtained a college fellowship, had taken the degree of Master of Arts, and was ordained Priest of the Roman Church at Lincoln. In 1524, at the age of about thirty, he proceeded to the degree of B.D., and on the occasion of his doing so he argued publicly for the Pope’s authority against opinions of Melancthon. Thomas Bilney went afterwards to Latimer’s rooms, gave him his own reasons for good-will to the teaching of Melancthon, and explained to him his faith as a Reformer in a way that secured Latimer’s attention. Latimer’s free, vigorous mind, admitted the new reasonings, and in his after-life he looked always upon “little Bilney” as the man who had first opened his eyes.
With homely earnestness Latimer began soon to express his new convictions. His zeal and purity of life had caused him to be trusted by the University as a maintainer of old ways; he had been appointed cross-bearer to the University, and elected one of the twelve preachers annually appointed in obedience to a bull of Pope Alexander VI. Now Latimer walked and worked with Bilney, visiting the sick and the prisoners, and reasoning together of the needs of Christendom. The Bishop of the diocese presently forbade Latimer’s preaching in any of the pulpits of the University. Robert Barnes, prior of the Augustinian Friars at Cambridge, a man stirred to the depths by the new movement of thought, then invited Latimer to preach in the church of the Augustinians. Latimer was next summoned before Wolsey, whom he satisfied so well that Wolsey overruled the Bishop’s inhibition, and Latimer again became a free preacher in Cambridge.