ians suffered burning in the
sixteenth century, being usually, but loosely, described as 'Arians.'
The last two in England who died by fire as heretics were men of this
class. In March, 1612, Bartholomew Legate was burned at Smithfield, and
a month later Edward Wightman had the same fate at Lichfield. So late as
1697 a youth named Pakenham was hanged at Edinburgh on the charge of
heretical blasphemy. Although these were the only executions of the kind
here in the seventeenth century, the evidence is but too clear that the
authorities conceived it to be their duty to put down this form of
opinion with the severest rigour. In a letter sent by Archbishop Neile,
of York, to Bishop Laud, in 1639, reference is made to Wightman's case,
and it is stated that another man, one Trendall, deserves the same
sentence. A few years later, Paul Best, a scholarly gentleman who had
travelled in Poland and Transylvania and there adopted Anti-trinitarian
views, was sentenced by vote of the House of Commons to be hanged for
denying the Trinity. The Ordinance drawn up in 1648 by the Puritan
authorities was incredibly vindictive against what they judged to be
heretical. Happily, Oliver Cromwell and his Independents were conscious
of considerable variety of opinion in their own ranks, and apparently
the Protector secured Best's liberation. It was certainly he who saved
another and more memorable Unitarian from the extreme penalty.

This man was _John Bidle_, a clergyman and schoolmaster of Gloucester.
His Biblical studies led him to a denial of the Trinity, which he lost
no occasion of making public. During twenty years, broken by five or six
imprisonments, he persisted in the effort to diffuse Unitarian
teachings, and even to organize services for Unitarian worship. His
writings and personal influence were so widely recognized that it became
a fashion later to speak of Unitarians as 'Bidellians.' Cromwell was
evidently troubled about him, feeling repugnance to his doctrine yet
averse to ill-treat a man of unblemished character. In 1655, ten years
after Bidle's first imprisonment, the Protector sent him to the Scilly
Islands, obviously to spare him a worse fate, and allowed him a yearly
sum for maintenance. A few months before Cromwell's death, he was
brought back to London, and on being set at liberty at once renewed his
efforts. Finally, he was caught 'conventicling' in 1662 and sent to
gaol, and in September of that year he died.

II. INF