Edward Wightman
| Edward Wightman | |
|---|---|
| Born | c.1580? |
| Died | 11 April 1612 Lichfield, Staffordshire, England |
| Cause of death | Execution by burning |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Mercer then Minister |
| Spouse(s) | Frances Darbye of Hinckley |
| Children | 7 children—2 boys and 5 girls |
Edward Wightman (c.1580? – 11 April 1612) was an English radical Anabaptist, executed at Lichfield on charges of heresy. He was the last person to be burned at the stake for heresy in England.
Edward Wightman may have been the child baptised at Hinckley, Leicestershire, on 14 July 1580, by his father, John Wightman. He attended Burton Grammar School and entered the clothiers business of his mother's family. Eventually, he served an apprenticeship as a woollen draper in the town of Shrewsbury. He married Frances Darbye of Hinckley in 1593 and settled in Burton upon Trent. Apart from his mercer's business in Burton he also became a minister of the local Anabaptists Church.
He became involved with the Puritans and in 1596 was chosen as one of the leaders assigned to the investigation of demonic possession of 13-year-old Thomas Darling. This suggests that by the mid-1590s Wightman was an important and well-respected public figure, taking part in the newly formed movement that began to hold sway over Burton’s society and politics. His involvement in the Darling case proved a turning point in his life, making him entirely amenable to the possibility of unmediated spiritual intervention. Darling claimed not just to be possessed by the devil, but engaged in a series of ‘spiritual wars’ in which both demonic and angelic voices were said to emanate from him:
As I know at this present for a certainty, that I have the spirit of God within me: so do I with the like certainty believe, that in my dialogues with Satan, when I [quoted] sundry places of scripture, to withstand the temptations he assaulted me with: I had the spirit of God in me, and by that spirit resisted Satan at those times, by [quoting] the scriptures to confound him.
Wightman's adoption of "heresy" commenced with his understanding of the mortality of the soul, adopting the "soul sleep" view of Martin Luther. In one of his early public messages he preached that “the soul of man dies with the body and participates not either of the joys of Heaven or the pains of Hell, until the general Day of Judgment, but rested with the body until then".
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