James Bainham (d.1532), martyr, was according to Foxe, a son of Sir Alexander Bainham, who was Sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1497, 1501 and 1516, though his name did not occur in any of the pedigrees of the family. He was a member of the Middle Temple, and practised as a lawyer.

He married the widow of Simon Fish, another of the "Suplication of Beggars". In 1531 he was accused of heresy to Sir Thomas More,then Chancellor, who imprisoned and flogged him in his house in Chelsea, and then sent him to the Tower to be racked, in the hope of discovering other heretics by his confession.

On 15 December 1531 he was examined before Stokesley, Bishop of London, concerning his belief in purgatory, confession, extreme unction, and other points. His answers were as far as possible couched in the words of Scriptures, but were not satisfactory to the court, and his approval of the works of Tyndale and Frith were evident.

The following day, being threatened with sentence, he partially submitted, pleading ignorance, and was again committed to prison.

In the following February he was brought before the Bishop's chancellor to be examined as to his fitness for readdmission to the church, and after considerable hesitation abjured  nil his errors,and, and having paid a fine of 20 pounds and performed pennance by standing with a faggot on his shoulder during the sermon at Paul's Cross, was released.

Within a month after he repented of his weakness, and openly withdrew his recantation during services at St Austin's Church, he was accordingly apprehended and brought before the Bishop's vicar-generalon 19 and 20 April. One of the articles alleged against him was that he called Thomas Beckett to be a thief and a murderer, an opinion which the King adopted within a very few years.

He was sentenced as a relapse heretic and burned in Smithfield on 30 April 1532. In the "Calendar of State" a notice of contempory account of an interview with and Latimer, the day before his death.

(Foxes Acts and Monmenta Harlean Manuscript 422 f. 00

(Source: Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 1)

This is from a wood cut done in 1532.

James Baynham the Martyer