Coming under the influence of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, in his formative years and through that influence went up to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he became a fellow. He was ordained and then married, becoming a parish priest and, in 1585, Master of the Temple in London.
Richard became one of the strongest advocates of the position of the Church of England and defended its ‘middle way’ between puritanism and papalism. Perhaps his greatest work was Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity which he wrote as the result of engaging in controversial debates.
He showed Anglicanism as rooted firmly in Scripture as well as tradition, affirming its continuity with the pre-Reformation Ecclesia Anglicana, but now both catholic and reformed. Richard became a parish priest again near Canterbury and died there on this day in the year 1600.
AND
Martin of Porres who was born in Lima in Peru in 1579, the illegitimate son of a Spanish knight and a black Panamanian freewoman.
He joined the Third Order of the Dominicans when he was fifteen years old and was later received as a lay brother into the First Order, mainly because of his reputation for caring for the poor and needy.
As the friary almoner, he was responsible for the daily distribution to the poor and he had a particular care for the many African slaves, whose lives were a dreadful indictment of the Christian conquistadores. Martin became sought after for spiritual counsel, unusual for a lay brother at that time. His care for all God’s creatures led many to love and revere him and his own brothers chose him as their spiritual leader.
He died of a violent fever on this day in 1639 and, because of his care for all, regardless of class or colour, is seen as the patron saint of race relations.
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