We may never know the identity of the powerful dignitary who so successfully used Phillips as his front man in the arrest of Tyndale, but the prime suspicion rests upon John Stokesley. His hatred of the reformers was venomous, and he boasted of the number of heretics he had killed. Beside Stokesley, even Thomas More appeared gentle. Unsuspecting, the reformer felt attracted to the easy manner and eloquent speech of the young student lawyer, and before long he invited him to the Poyntzes’ home. There he dined, admired Tyndale’s small library, warmly commended his labors, and talked easily of the affairs in England and the need for reform. He even stayed overnight. Tyndale stood immovable, his keen eyes gazing toward the common people. A silence fell over the crowd as they watched the prisoner’s lean form and thin, tired face; his lips moved with a final impassioned prayer that echoed around the place of execution: “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.” Fast forward to 2023, and The Handbook remains an integral part of my entrepreneurial toolkit, this time for my talent management venture, THE SOCIAL CHAMP LTD. It’s been a decade-long partnership that has seen my brand and business flourish through invaluable celebrity collaborations. Here, in his solitary darkness, Tyndale waited for the end. The merchants, with all their power at Antwerp, were powerless here, and few would risk their livelihood to try to save him. His work that remained undone could never be completed. Tyndale knew he had “finished the course.”

RMN’22 – Digging Deeper: Telling the Stories of Rural LGBTQ+ Lives | Rural Museums Network on RMN’21: Telling the Stories of Rural LGBTQ+ Lives Finally, the long-awaited trial began. Tyndale had been in the castle for 18 months, and now everything was set. A long list of charges was drawn up: Henry Phillips arrived in Antwerp during the early summer of 1535. He came from a wealthy and therefore notable English family, and his father, Richard, had been three times a member of parliament and twice high sheriff. In addition, Richard Phillips held the lucrative post of Comptroller of the Customs in Poole Harbor.Henry Phillips was the third and last son in the family, and in 1533 he registered at Oxford for a degree in civil law. And being a man of some ability, he was apparently well-set to gain a good position and follow a respectable life. For the opening session, the Rural Museums Network brought together a panel of experts who were passionate about the representation of Gypsy, Roma and Travelling communities in our rural histories. Jeremy Harte, John Henry Phillips, and Georgina Stevens discussed how and why GRT histories have a place in our museums, as well as who we should be working with to make these stories accessible to all. A strong chain hung from the top, and a noose of hemp was threaded through a hole in the upright. The attorney and the great doctors arrived first, and seated themselves in state nearby. The prisoner was brought in and a final appeal was made that he should recant.

John Henry Phillips left school at 16 and spent four years touring Europe in a band before returning to education to pursue an archaeology degree, something he'd been interested in for much of his life. He worked at West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village as a volunteer and, growing up near RAF Bury St Edmunds, at Rougham, he relished the crumbling wartime buildings from the more recent past. “There are so many World War II airfields and pillboxes around here,” he says. “Archaeology is absolutely everywhere in Suffolk.” The book is an easy read and moves along but is full of emotion and tears. It tells of a relationship between a young man and the last surviving member of a specific British ship and their hope to find the ship and memorialize it in some way, to tell its story. However, Phillips had another side to his character that now came to deter him. Entrusted with a large sum of money by his father to pay to someone in London, Henry reached the big city and gambled away his trust.I enjoy reading history, continually learning more and more from days gone by. I saw this book about the search for a boat sunk off the beaches of Normandy in 1944. I normally plow through a book but this one had me reading it over a couple weeks. Letters of indignant complaint poured into the court at Brussels. Letters also began to arrive at the court of King Henry. And behind all this action was the never-tiring hand of faithful Thomas Poyntz. But it was a forlorn hope. Emperor Charles V was making up for lost time by turning upon the Lutherans with a vengeance, and Henry VIII, having toppled the pope over the cliffs of England, was anxious to prove he was still a loyal Roman Catholic and certainly no heretic. Just to demonstrate his point, 14 Dutch Anabaptists were sent to the stake in England within a few days of Tyndale’s arrest. The letter is typical of Tyndale; there is no cringing flattery, no frantic plea for mercy, no long and tedious defense or protests of loyalty, faithful service, humble obedience and so on, all of which is so familiar in letters from 16th-century condemned cells. Tyndale asks for his needs, determines to go on with his study, longs only for the salvation of his captors, and is ready for whatever God’s sovereign purpose may be. Whether his request was granted cannot yet be told. The author, this young man, has tremendous feelings and cries throughout with the last couple of chapters being full of his mental struggles, trying to move on after this undertaking. At times, I felt it could have ended a bit earlier or perhaps edited down a bit.

He arrived at the Poyntz home about May 21, 1535, and, in his courteous and charming manner, invited himself to lunch. He then returned into the town, presumably to set the officers in their appropriate place for ambush. Phillips’ scheme was working according to plan, only requiring that Tyndale, who had already been invited out to lunch that day, cancel the arrangement made with Mrs. Poyntz and invite Phillips to join him in the town. In this he was not disappointed.Thomas Poyntz had misgivings about the relative stranger, but when Tyndale assured him of the man’s Lutheran sympathies, he put his doubts aside. This was the greatest mistake Tyndale ever made. He was right in this. Antwerp was full of eyes, ears and mouths. As early as April of that year the Imperial attorney in Brussels had issued a warrant for the arrest of the three leaders of English reform: Tyndale, Joye and Dr. Barnes. This warrant was passed to the leaders at the Bergen in case one of the wanted men should visit the great trade fair held in that town in April. A helpful note forewarned the Antwerp merchants of all these official communications.