Last Burning of Heretics in England

1612

Two Anabaptists, Bartholomew Legate and Edward Wightman, were burned separately, Legate at Smithfield and Wightman at Lichfield. Their screams shocked onlookers enough that James I quietly decreed no further executions by fire for heresy. England had cremated its last religious dissidents, though it would find other, less spectacular ways to persecute nonconformists for generations to come.