Frith, JOHN, reformer, was born about 1503 at Westerham, Kent, and from Eton passed to King's College, Cambridge, whence in 1525 Wolsey summoned him to his new foundation at Oxford. A twelvemonth later, however, suspicion of heresy drove him a fugitive to the young Protestant university of Marburg, and during his five years' stay here he saw much of Tyndale and Patrick Hamilton, and wrote several Protestant treatises. Venturing back to England in 1532, he was seized and lodged in the Tower, and on 4th July 1533 was burned at
Smithfield. He has been called the author of the Anglican doctrine of the Eucharist.