Lollards Who Didn't Recant

In a post a few years ago, I discussed the fact that many of the pre-Reformation opponents of Roman Catholicism, such as the Lollards, renounced their views when put on trial. You can read that post for a discussion of the significance of those recantations. For reasons I address there, the pre-Reformation opposition to Catholic beliefs is significant even if some of the people who held those views recanted. But not all of them did, and I want to mention some relevant categories here that could easily be overlooked.

Robert Lutton's Lollardy And Orthodox Religion In Pre-Reformation England (Suffolk, England: The Boydell Press, 2011) mentions that some Lollards fled persecution and were never found (151). If they weren't found, they presumably didn't recant under pressure or for any other reason, as far as we can tell. Lutton also refers to some Lollards who were put on trial posthumously (154). You can't recant at a trial when you're dead.

The Lollards are often thought of as followers of John Wycliffe. A few decades after his death, his body was exhumed and burned by his Roman Catholic opponents, and his ashes were thrown into the Swift River.

"They burned his bones to ashes and cast them into the Swift, a neighbouring brook running hard by. Thus the brook conveyed his ashes into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas and they into the main ocean. And so the ashes of Wycliffe are symbolic of his doctrine, which is now spread throughout the world." (Thomas Fuller, quoted here)