St. Ambrose Barlow, OSB and the Barlows of Barlow

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, today's martyr was

b. at Barlow Hall, 1585; d. 10 September, 1641. He was the fourth son of Sir Alexander Barlow, Knight of Barlow Hall, near Manchester, by Mary, daughter of Sir Uryan Brereton, Knight of Handforth Hall, Co. Chester, and was baptized at Didsbury Church 30 November, 1585; the entry in the register may still be seen. Educated at the Benedictine monastery of St. Gregory, Douai, he entered the English College, Valladolid, 20 September, 1610, but returned to Douai where his elder brother William Rudesind was a professed monk. He was himself professed in 1616 and ordained, 1617. Sent to England, he laboured in South Lancashire with apostolic zeal and fervour. He resided chiefly at Wardley Hall, the seat of the Downe family, near Manchester, and at Morley's Hall, a mansion of the Tyldesleys, in the parish of Leigh, some seven miles from Manchester. At the former, his skull is still preserved, in a little receptacle on the staircase. At the latter he was apprehended for the fifth and last time on Easter Sunday, 25 April, 1641. He was arrested by the Vicar of Eccles, who marched at the head of his parishoners, clad in his surplice, and was followed by some 400 men armed with clubs and swords. He was preaching at the time and could have escaped in the confusion, but yielded himself up to his enemies, and was carried off to Lancaster Castle. Here after four months' imprisonment he was tried, on 6 or 7 September, and sentenced next day, having confessed that he was a priest. On Friday, 10 September, he suffered the usual penalties at Lancaster.

A beautiful picture of his life is given by Challoner from two manuscript relations belonging to St. Gregory's monastery, one written by his brother Dom Rudesind Barlow, President of the Anglo-Benedictine Congregation. There is another manuscript, entitled "The Apostolical Life of Ambrose Barlow", written by one of his pupils for Dom Rudesind, which is at present in the Library of Owen's College, Manchester. It is to be printed among the publications of the Chetham Society. This contains many details hitherto unpublished. Two portraits of this martyr exist and also one of his father, Sir Alexander. Many of his relics are also preserved, a hand being at Stanbrook Abbey near Worcester.

More about his brother, William Rudesind, here, also in the Catholic Encyclopedia. According to this site, the Barlows of Barlow Hall (image at right) suffered often because of their fidelity to the Catholic Church:

But Chorlton's great glory is the record, in these days of trial, of its chiefs, the ancient family of Barlow. The Barlow’s were Lords of Barlow (Boars Wood), and lived at Barlow Hall from the time of Edward 1 (1272-1307). With the Trafford’s of Trafford and the Premonstratensian Abby of Cockersand they were the owners of Chorlton. The reign of Edward VI found the head of the family, Alexander Barlow, Member of Parliament for Wigan, and no doubt a foe to innovation, since in the succeeding reign (Mary, 1553-1558) he was the great supporter of the Catholic Revival at Manchester. When this short-lived revival ended and the last Catholic Warden of Manchester, Laurence Vaux, fled before Elizabeth's Commissioners, it was to Alexander Barlow that he consigned for safety the deeds of the Collegiate Church. He met his death a Confessor for the Faith, arrested in that August night of 1584 when over fifty Catholic gentlemen of the county were carried off to goal in one great round-up. Alexander Barlow was imprisoned in the new goal improvised in the old Catholic chapel that stood midway on Salford Bridge (the Modern Victoria Bridge replaced it in 1838), was transferred hence in 1585, and died still a prisoner in the same year. He lies buried in the old Collegiate Church. 

His son, a second Alexander Barlow, succeeded him, "that most constant Catholic" the Douay Diary calls him, and to whose constancy the fines he paid over a period of thirty years, as the Recusancy Rolls record, bar (sic) eloquent testimony. Three years bore (sic) he died he made his will and therein tersely described himself: “I die a true, perfect recusant Catholic “(1617). 

The next Barlow third Alexander, son of the second was equally staunch. He was listed in 1641 as refusing, with his wife and family, to sign the Protestation drawn up by the Parliament against the revival of Popery, and the family were noted as by this time "living in Salford in very reduced circumstances," ruined by fifty years of continued heavy fines. This Sir Alexander was the brother of two famous Benedictine monks Rudesina (sic) Barlow, the Provincial of the restored English Congregation and founder of the Abbey, now at Stanbrook, and Ambrose Barlow, the Martyr. . . .

A later generation saw Anthony Barlow still a recusant and paying a double land tax as such, and his two sons attainted for high treason as Jacobites.