Two of the Eighty-five Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Blessed John Paul II, a layman Blessed Marmaduke Bowes and a priest, Blessed Hugh Taylor suffered in York on November 26, 1585 in York.
The most important point about
these two martyrs is that they were the first to be executed under the 1584 act
against the Jesuits (or any other Catholic priests) who had been born in
England or Wales and then traveled to the Continent for ordination and then
returned as missionaries to the recusant Catholic community, and against those
who assisted them.
Blessed Marmaduke Bowes was born in Ingram Grange in
Yorkshire: Married layman and father. Fearful of the persecutions of the day, he
was a covert Catholic who put in appearances in the Established church to keep
the authorities away. He sheltered priests on the run, and had his children
raised Catholic. In 1585 his children's tutor was arrested and bribed to
apostatize, turn informer, and denounce Bowes for helping priests. Bowes and his
wife were arrested and imprisoned in York; she was released, but Marmaduke was
convicted on the statements of the tutor.
He was the first layman
executed under the law that made helping priests a felony. He was hung on the 26th of November in 1585,
along with Blessed Hugh Taylor, who had just arrived in York in March 1585,
after his ordination in Rheims in 1584. We don't have much other detail about Blessed Hugh Taylor: I suppose we could imagine him growing up in a recusant family and being prepared to endure exile, danger, and death for his parents' Catholic faith. Or, he could have grown up in an Anglican family, read the Fathers, questioned the validity of the Church of England and secretly converted, traveling to Rheims for study and ordination, returning to England to almost immediate capture
Father Taylor was the first to suffer
under the Statute 27 Eliz. c. 2. against priests as traitors passed by
Parliament in 1584. Most of the Catholics executed after 1584 suffered under
this statute (there were a few executed under the 1571 and 1581 statutes which
made it treasonous to call the monarch a heretic or to convert or induce someone
else to become Catholic, respectively). Blessed John Britton was martyred under
the 1571 Statute, for example, in 1598. Blessed George Errington suffered
hanging, drawing, and quartering in 1596 under the 1581 Statue, in another
example, The priests who suffered before 1584 were found guilty of simple
treason, which usually, as in the case of Saints Campion, Briant and Sherwin
coming up on December 1, meant that the Crown accused the priests of some
conspiracy against the Queen.
Blessed Marmaduke may be called a martyr
in spite of himself--he had tried to maintain a public face of conformity,
attending Church of England services to avoid suspicion or fines, but secretly
he helped priests and raised his children in the Catholic Faith. Betrayed by a
Catholic, he was arrested and charged based on evidence offered by his
children's tutor.
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