Equivocation and Recantation During the English Reformation: The ‘Subtle Shadows’ of Dr Edward Crome

Writing from prison during the Marian persecution, Nicholas Ridley praised the elderly Dr Edward Crome to his friend John Hooper, who was incarcerated with Crome. Ridley had heard of Crome's ‘most godly and fatherly constancy in confessing the truth of the gospel’, and declared, ‘For the integrity and uprightness, the gravity and innocency of that man, all England, I think, hath known long ago.’ Ridley also wrote to John Bradford in 1555 that Crome was a ‘fatherly example of patience and constancy, and all manner of true godliness’.