Rowland+Taylor

=Rowland Taylor= =1510-1555=

From Northumberland, Rowland Taylor earned his law degree and then a doctorate from Cambridge in the 1530s. He also married Margaret, niece of William Tyndale (who translated the Bible into English, and for it, was burnt by Henry VIII in 1536). But as evangelical thought developed under Henry and flourished under Protestant King Edward VI, Taylor served each of the three great Bishops of the English Reformation: Latimer, Cranmer (who ordained him) and Ridley. From 1544 he was the Rector of Hadleigh in Suffolk, a post he remained in till his arrest. He also served more broadly as Archdeacon.  Taylor was arrested soon after ‘Bloody’ Queen Mary ascended the throne in 1553. She ordered an immediate return to Roman Catholic rule in obedience to the Pope. But Taylor opposed the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation, which claimed the bread and wine in Holy Communion became the literal body and blood of Christ. He also denounced the Catholic requirement for compulsory clerical celibacy, which as a Protestant he had abandoned as unbiblical. The trial proceedings ran over a couple of years. January 1555 was an ominous month for Anglican clergy in England. On the 20th, Parliament revived the old statute of burning convicted heretics. Two days later a commission of bishops and lawyers examined Taylor and several others. One recanted his evangelical beliefs and was pardoned. Another equivocated and was held in the Tower of London. But Taylor remained committed. On 30 January, he was excommunicated and sentenced to death. Days before his execution in his home town of Hadleigh, he spent a short time with his wife, Margaret. In the tears before parting, he gave her his precious copy of the Book of Common Prayer. Taylor loved the book, which he had used every day in prison, because it constantly pointed to the saving grace of Jesus. Foxe's Book of Martyrs records his words to his family: > “I say to my wife, and to my children, The Lord gave you unto me, and the Lord hath taken me from you, and you from me: blessed be the name of the Lord! I believe that they are blessed which die in the Lord. God careth for sparrows, and for the hairs of our heads. I have ever found Him more faithful and favourable, than is any father or husband. Trust ye therefore in Him by the means of our dear Saviour Christ's merits: believe, love, fear, and obey Him: pray to Him, for He hath promised to help. Count me not dead, for I shall certainly live, and never die. I go before, and you shall follow after, to our long home.” On 9th February 1555, Taylor became the third of about 250 Protestants martyred by Queen Mary. Just before he was burned at the stake he said, with a loud voice, “Good people! I have taught you nothing but God's holy Word, and those lessons that I have taken out of God's blessed book, the holy Bible: and I am come hither this day to seal it with my blood”.

References: Picture http://www.kentuckystewarts.com/WilliamCharlieStewart/TaylorRowand.htm Text http://solapanel.org/article/rowland_taylor_protestant_martyr/