The English Reformer Hugh Latimer (c.1495–1555), whose early life we looked at last month, preached hundreds of sermons, but there are only 41 extant.
Of these, 28 were preached at Grimsthorpe, Lincolnshire, at the estate of Katherine Willoughby (1519–1580), the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, or to country congregations near to her castle.
The Grimsthorpe sermons
The Grimsthorpe sermons, along with the 13 others extant, were actually copied down as Latimer preached. This proved quite difficult, as the copyists struggled to keep up with what has been called ‘the torrent of the preacher’s eloquence’ and fluency. The Grimsthorpe sermons especially reveal a preacher who was able to adapt himself to his audience: he explicates a biblical text in its context, explains points of doctrine, empha-sizes moral lessons, warns against the errors of the Roman Catholic Church, and all the while the sermons are suffused with passion and earnestness
