Historian Iain Murray has rightly noted: ‘The advance of the church is ever preceded by a recovery of preaching [the Word].’
The Reformation, a time of great spiritual advance, was no exception. Now, among the remarkable cadre of preachers raised up during the Reformation, the English preacher Hugh Latimer (c.1495–1555) deserves more attention than he is often given in accounts of the English Reformation. The 20th-century historian Patrick Collinson once described Latimer as one of the greatest English-speaking preachers of the 16th century. And according to Augustine Bernher (fl.1550s –1570s), a Francophone pastor who was mentored by Latimer and later pastored during the reign of Elizabeth I (1533–1603), ‘if England ever had a prophet, he was one’.
‘The child of everlasting joy’
Hugh Latimer’s father, also called Hugh Latimer, was a yeoman-farmer in Thurcaston, a small village in Leicestershire. The younger Latimer was the only son among seven siblings, and having profited from his early education, he entered Clare Hall (now Clare College) at the University of Cambridge when he was 14. He received his BA in 1510 and his MA four years later, in 1514. Around the time that he received his MA, he was ordained a priest at Lincoln. In 1524 he obtained his BD, which proved to be a key turning-point in his life.
