house.’ After a month's imprisonment here he was called up for repeated examinations. He proved by thirty respectable witnesses that he had not been arrested for heresy, and on 18 Dec. 1555 was set unconditionally at liberty, his detention under the statute on which he was arrested being held illegal.
Assertions being made that he had purchased his release by submission to the church, Woodman vindicated his consistency by itinerant preaching in the neighbourhood of his home. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but he escaped to Flanders, and thence to France. After an absence of three weeks he secretly returned home; he was at last betrayed by his brother, with whom he had had disputes upon money matters. He was taken in his own house, and on 12 April 1557 sent to London. Confined again in Bonner's ‘coalhouse,’ he was six times examined during a period of eight weeks. Thence he was removed to the Marshalsea, the sheriff's prison in Southwark. While here he wrote the account of his examinations preserved by Foxe. His second examination took place on 27 April before John Christopherson [q. v.], bishop-designate of Chichester, during which it appeared that a technical difficulty vitiated the legality of the proceedings, the bishop-designate not yet having been consecrated. On 25 May 1557 Woodman was brought before John White (1510?–1560) [q. v.], bishop of Winchester, at St. George's Church, Southwark. White had no jurisdiction except such as arose out of Woodman's answers to Pole's commissioners which had been given in his diocese. These were on a second hearing (15 June) at St. Mary Overy produced against him. Woodman at once took the legal point that he was not resident within White's diocese, and that White had therefore no jurisdiction under the act 2 Henry IV, c. 15. He was remanded till 16 June, when Christopherson appeared as an assessor together with William Roper [q. v.], one of the commissioners for the suppression of heresy appointed in the previous February. Woodman was now ordered to be sworn, under this inquisitorial commission, as suspect of heresy. He refused to swear, and again appealed to his ordinary under the statute of Henry IV. This point had been foreseen, for Christopherson not being yet consecrated, Pole had nominated Nicholas Harpsfield [q. v.], archdeacon of Canterbury, as ordinary. Thereupon Woodman allowed himself to be entrapped into a declaration upon the nature of the sacrament and excommunicated. Throughout his examinations he behaved with great boldness. He was taken to Lewes, and burnt there in company with nine others on 22 June.
Traditions of Woodman linger in Sussex. The site of his house is still pointed out. He is said to have been confined in the second story of the church tower of Warbleton, which bears some indications of having been used as a prison. An old stone cellar at Uckfield is said to have been another place of his imprisonment, and the third is the great vault under the Star inn (now the town hall) at Lewes, in front of which he and his fellow-martyrs were burnt.
[Foxe's Actes and Monuments (Book of Martyrs), ed. 1641, pp. 799–827; Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation; Wilkins's Concilia, 1737, vol. iv.; Lower's Worthies of Sussex, 1865, pp. 138–147; Strype's Memorials of the Reformation, vol. iii.; Dixon's Hist. of the Church of England, 1891, vol. iv.; Horsfield's Hist. of Sussex, 1835, i. 572.]
WOODMAN, RICHARD (1784–1859), engraver, son of Richard Woodman, an obscure engraver who worked at the end of the last century, was born in London on 1 July 1784. He served his apprenticeship with Robert Mitchell Meadows, the stipple engraver, in whose manner he worked, and for some years found considerable employment upon book illustrations, chiefly portraits of actors, sportsmen, and nonconformist ministers. Plates by him are found in Knight's ‘Gallery of Portraits,’ the ‘Sporting Magazine,’ the ‘British Gallery of Art,’ and Cottle's ‘Reminiscences.’ His largest and best work is the ‘Judgment of Paris,’ from the picture by Rubens, now in the National Gallery. During the latter part of his life Woodman practised chiefly as a painter of miniatures and small watercolour portraits, which he exhibited occasionally at the Royal Academy between 1820 and 1850. He died on 15 Dec. 1859.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1893.]
WOODNOTH. [See Wodenote and Wodenoth.]
WOODROFFE, BENJAMIN (1638–1711), divine, son of the Rev. Timothy Woodroffe, was born in Canditch Street, St. Mary Magdalen parish, Oxford, in April 1638. He was educated at Westminster school, and was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1656, matriculating on 23 July 1656. He graduated B.A. 1 Nov. 1659, M.A. 17 June 1662, and he was incorporated at Cambridge in 1664. From about 1662 he was a noted tutor at Christ Church, and in 1663 he studied chemistry with Antony Wood, John Locke, and others, at
