Latimer, HUGH, Protestant martyr, was born at Thureaston, near Leicester, about the year 1485. 'My father,' he tells us, 'was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own; only he had a farm of three or four pound by year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled as much as kept half a dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep; and my mother milked thirty kine. He kept me to school . . . and was as diligent to teach me to shoot as to learn me any other thing.' An only son, Hugh was sent at fourteen to Cambridge, in 1510 (while still an undergraduate) was elected a fellow of Clare, and, having taken orders some nine years before, was in 1523 appointed a university preacher. In 1524 for his B.D. thesis he delivered a philippic against Melanchthon, for he was, in his own words, 'as obstinate a papist as any in England.' Next year, however, through much talk with Bilney (q.v.), he 'began to smell the Word of God, forsaking the school doctors and such fooleries,' and soon becoming noted as a zealous preacher of the reformed doctrines. The consequence of this new-born zeal was that many of the adherents of the old faith were strongly excited against him, and he was embroiled in controversies. The question of the divorce brought Latimer more into notice. He was one of the Cambridge divines appointed to examine as to the lawfulness of Henry's marriage, and he declared on the king's side. This secured him the royal favour, and he was made chaplain to Anne Boleyn and rector of West Kington in Wiltshire. In 1535 he was consecrated Bishop of Worcester; and at the opening of Convocation on 9th June 1536 he preached two powerful sermons urging the work of reformation. After a while that work rather retrograded than advanced, and Latimer found himself with his bold opinions in little favour at court. He retired to his diocese, and laboured there in a continual round of 'teaching, preaching, exhorting, writing, correcting, and reforming, either as ability would serve or the time would bear.' This was his true vocation; he was an eminently practical reformer. Twice during Henry's reign he was sent to the Tower, in 1539 and 1546, on the former occasion resigning his bishopric. At Edward VI.'s accession he preemptorily declined to resume his episcopal functions, but devoted himself to preaching and practical works of benevolence. The pulpit was his great power, and by his stirring, homely sermons he did much to rouse a spirit of religious earnestness throughout the land. At length by Edward's death (1553) he was stayed in his course of activity. In April 1554 he was examined at Oxford, and committed to Bocardo, the common gaol there, where he lay for more than a twelvemonth, feeble, sickly, worn out with his hardships. In September 1555, with Ridley and Cranmer, he was brought before a commission, and after an ignominious trial was found guilty of heresy and handed over to the secular power. On 16th October he was burned with Ridley opposite Balliol College, exclaiming to his companion, 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.'
Latimer's character presents a combination of many noble and disinterested qualities. He was brave, honest, devoted, and energetic, homely and popular, yet free from all violence; a martyr and hero, yet a plain, simple-minded, unpretending man. Humour and earnestness, manly sense and direct evangelical fervour, distinguish his sermons and his life, and make them alike interesting and admirable.
His sermons, letters, &c. were edited, with a memoir, by the Rev. G. Elwes Corrie (2 vols. 1844-45). See also Tulloch's Leaders of the Reformation (1859); and the Lives by Gilpin (1755), the Rev. R. Demaus (1869), and R. M. and A. J. Carlyle (1900).