He was a native of Durham and became an alumnus and priest of Douai College during its residence at Rheims, and was sent on the English mission a year after his ordination. He came to London to seek counsel in order to rid himself of the scruples of conscience with which he was troubled. On the third Sunday in Advent, 1591, the house where he was staying was searched by constables and churchwardens and sidesmen of the Protestant Parish Church with the object of finding which of the inmates did not attend the services. Father Patenson was seized and condemned at the first session held after Christmas. The night before his execution he was put into the “condemned hole” with seven malefactors who were to suffer with him on the following day. He converted six of them and helped them to make their peace with God. The persecutors were so enraged at the profession of the Catholic Faith they made on the scaffold, and the constancy with which they accepted an ignominious death in satisfaction for their past crimes, that the Martyr was treated with more than usual barbarity.
Since execution by hanging, drawing, and quartering was already pretty barbarous, that last statement makes me wonder. He was probably fully conscious after they hanged him and the butchery afterwards must have been done as roughly as possible. Father Patenson was martyred on January 22, 1592 and beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929.
Tyburn Convent updated their website in 2013.
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