BARTHOLOMEW LEGATE, THE MARTYR.
An erroneous date, resting on such authorities as Mr. Hallam and Mr. J. Payne Collier, deserves a note. The former in his Const. Hist. (ii. 275. note, second edition), and the latter in the Egerton Papers, printed for the Camden Society (p. 446.), assigns the date 1614 to the death of Bartholomew Legate at Smithfield. The latter also gives the date March 13. Now the true date is March 18, 1611-12, as will appear by consulting—1. The commissions and warrants for the burning of Legate and Wightman, inserted in Truth brought to Light, or the Narrative History of King James for the first Fourteen Years, 4to. 1651; 2. Chamberlain's Letters to Sir Dudley Carleton, dated Feb. 26, 1611 (1611-12), and March 25, 1612, printed in The Court and Times of James I., vol. i. pp. 136. 164.; and 3. Wallace's Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. ii. p. 534. Fuller, in his Church History, gives the correct date, and states that his "burning of heretics much startled common people;" "wherefore King James politicly preferred that heretics hereafter, though condemned, should silently and privately waste themselves away in the prison."
Legate and Wightman were, in fact, the last martyrs burnt at the stake in England for their religious opinions.
A.B.R.