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William, brother of Thomas (born 1517),
was also born in Hemel Hempstead, and both brothers later on are of the
foremost of the leaders of the Puritan cause - among the earliest of the
"godly martyrs" who, regardless of the cruel and fiendish threats,
stood forth bravely, eloquently and unflinchingly as champions of human
rights, and in consequence were burned at the stake. William Carman was the
first of the two brothers subjected to such a revolting death, in 1557;
"with God in his heart and a song of praise to God on High, this
saintly man met his end," says and old chronicle of the time (see
Bloomfield's "History of Norfolk" and other authorities elsewhere
named). A year later, the same old chronicle, "on the 19th of May,
1558, were these three godly martyrs burned at one fire at Norwich, namely:
William Seaman of Mendlesham in Soffolk, Thomas Carman of Herts, and Thomas
Hudson of Aylesham.
William Carman, the martyr of 1557, had two sons and two daughters. Both sons died young and the line became extinct, surviving in the female line, and one of the daughters married a Seaman of Norwich (of the line of Sir Peter Seaman, who at the close of the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries was of much prominence and wide influence, and successively alderman, lord mayor, and member of Parliament for Norwich, and a descendant of the William Seaman, the "godly martyr" of 1558). - (American Families of Historic Lineage, Long Island Edition, National Americana Society, NY, undated).
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