John Frith - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Frith was born to an innkeeper named Richard Frith in Sevenoaks Inn at Westerham, Kent, England (now known as The Grasshopper on the Green, it has a plaque in his memory, as does the town church of St Mary's). He went to Sevenoaks Grammar School. He was further educated at Eton College before being admitted as a scholar to Queens' College, Cambridge, although he received his Bachelor of Arts degree as a member of King's. While Frith was at Cambridge, his tutor was Stephen Gardiner, who would later take part in condemning him to death. He also met Thomas Bilney a graduate student of Trinity Hall, and began to have meetings concerning the Protestant Reformation. It may have been at one of these meetings that Frith met with William Tyndale. After graduating in 1525, Frith became a junior canon at Thomas Wolsey's Cardinal College, Oxford. While in Oxford, Frith was imprisoned, along with nine others, in a cellar where fish was stored, due to his possession of what the University's officers considered "heretical" books. Frith was released and fled England, joining Tyndale who was then residing in Antwerp.