Blessed Thomas Plumtree, 1570 Martyr

Blessed Thomas Plumtree, formerly of Corpus Christi College at Oxford, served as chaplain to the Northern Rising of Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland and Charles Neville, Earl of Westmoreland. He officiated at the Mass in Durham Cathedral on December 4, at which clergy and people who had conformed to the new religion were reconciled to the old faith. With the establishment of the Church of England at the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign, Father Plumtree had been forced first from his rectorship at Stubton and then from his role as schoolmaster by the requirements of the Oath of Supremacy, etc. He was charged with having said Mass and offered freedom if he renounced his Catholicism, on the scaffold in the Durham Castle marketplace!--which he refused. Pope Leo XIII declared him a martyr and beatified him in 1886. The Catholic Church of St. Cuthbert in Durham mentions him in the history of their church.

For more information about the Northern Rising, see my review of a recent study of the rebellion.