Three Things about July 4th

First of all, it is our country's Independence Day, celebrating our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain as first published on July 4, 1776:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. . . .

We the people, with our Constitution, our local, state, and federal governments, our actions, our causes, and our blood, have been living out these words, struggling to fulfill them, fighting over what they mean, and uniting again around those ideas expressed 243 years ago.

Happy Independence Day!

Second: On July 4 in 1603 Philippe de Monte, a Spanish composer died; on July 4 in 1623 William Byrd, an English composer, died. They had collaborated, long distance, on a setting of Psalm 136. Gallicantus made a CD of the music and the ideas that brought de Monte and Byrd into collaboration:

The connection that brings together the music of William Byrd (c1540-1623) and Philippe de Monte (1521-1603) is a most unusual one: a very rare documented instance of two composers from distant parts of Europe engaging in a personal musical exchange. According to an 18th-century manuscript in the British Library, de Monte had come to England in 1554 as a singer in the choir that accompanied his employer, the Spanish king Philip II, as he contracted a dynastic marriage to Mary Tudor. It seems that de Monte may have made contact with the young William Byrd, for some 30 years later he sent him the eight-part motet Super flumina Babylonis, and the following year, Byrd responded with his own eight-part Quomodo cantabimus, whose words are drawn from verses of that same psalm, No 136. Exactly what occasioned this musical transaction is not known, but the words must have held particular resonance for Byrd at that time, as this famous psalm of captivity and exile would surely be interpreted as a barely veiled allusion to the dangerous situation that he and his fellow recusant Catholics were facing under a Protestant regime in England at a time when political tensions were aggravating the existing religious ones; perhaps word of these developments had reached de Monte, either in Prague or via his benefice at Cambrai, near the Catholic English College at Douai.

Third: on July 4, 1594, one Catholic priest and three laymen were executed under Queen Elizabeth I's penal recusancy laws in Dorchester: 

Blessed John Cornelius, SJ priest and martyr

Blessed Thomas Bosgrave, martyr
Blessed John Carey, martyr
Blessed Patrick Salmon, martyr

They were all from Ireland! They are numbered among the Chideock Martyrs.

On July 4, 1597, one Catholic priest and three laymen were executed under Queen Elizabeth I's penal recusancy laws in York: 

Blessed William Andleby, priest and martyr
Blessed Henry Abbot, martyr
Blessed Thomas Warcop, martyr
Blessed Edward Fulthorp, martyr

More about these eight martyrs here. As Robert Hugh Benson asked in the title of one of his novels, "by what authority" did Queen Elizabeth I execute men for being Catholic priests and other men for helping Catholic priests? Only by the power and authority of "absolute Despotism"!

Blessed martyrs of England and Ireland, pray for us!