Church, which still flourishes, and forms a third member in alliance
with the Unitarians of Great Britain and America. As, however, these
Transylvanian (popularly called 'Hungarian') Unitarians had until the
nineteenth century little or no connection with the English and
Americans, and have not materially affected the development of the
movement, we omit the details of their special history.

In England a number of Anti-trinitarians suffered burning in the
sixteenth century, being usually, but loosely, described as 'Arians.'
The last two in England who died by fire as heretics were men of this
class. In March, 1612, Bartholomew Legate was burned at Smithfield, and
a month later Edward Wightman had the same fate at Lichfield. So late as
1697 a youth named Pakenham was hanged at Edinburgh on the charge of
heretical blasphemy. Although these were the only executions of the kind
here in the seventeenth century, the evidence is but too clear that the
authorities conceived it to be their duty to put down this form of
opinion with the severest rigour. In a letter sent by Archbishop Neile,
of York, to Bishop Laud, in 1639, reference is made to Wightman's case,
and it is stated that another man, one Trendall, deserves the same
sentence. A few years later, Paul Best, a scholarly gentleman who had
travelled in Poland and Transylvania and there adopted Anti-trinitarian
views, was sentenced by vote of the House of Commons to be hanged for
denying the Trinity. The Ordinance drawn up in 1648 by the Puritan
authorities was incredibly vindictive against what they judged to be
heretical. Happily, Oliver Cromwell and his Independents were conscious
of considerable variety of opinion in their own ranks, and apparently
the Protector secured Best's liberation. It was certainly he who saved
another and more memorable Unitarian from the extreme penalty.

This man was _John Bidle_, a clergyman and schoolmaster of Gloucester.