Preview: Last of the 40: Three Popish Plot Martyrs

On All Souls Day, Monday, November 2, Matt Swaim and I will conclude our Son Rise Morning Show series on the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales with the stories of Saint John Plessington, Saint John Kemble, and Saint David Lewis, the last Welsh martyr. These three martyrs were arrested in and near Wales. Kemble and Lewis were taken from Wales to London to be questioned about the Popish Plot and when authorities accepted that they'd had nothing to do with the Plot (which had never been a Plot), they were returned to Wales to face trial and execution for a being Catholic priests in England, acts of treason according to an Elizabethan statute. Plessington was merely arrested, charged with that crime, and executed. 

Saint John Plessington was born in Lancashire in 1637 in a Royalist (supporting the monarchy during the English Civil Wars) and Catholic family. He studied with the Jesuits at Scarisbrick Hall in Lancashire and then at what is now called the Royal College of Saint Alban at Valladolid, Spain, and then at Saint Omer Seminary in France, being ordained in 1662 on the Feast of the Annunciation. He returned to England in 1663, sometimes using the name John Scarisbrick and according to the Diocese of Shrewsbury, he:

based himself largely at Puddington Hall, near Burton, Wirral, where he laboured without harassment for more than decade as chaplain to the Massey family and tutor to the children.

But in 1678 the pretended revelations of a conspiracy to assassinate Charles II and replace him with his Catholic brother James created national hysteria. In December that year they claimed their first victim, Edward Coleman, and until 1st July 1681, with the martyrdom of St Oliver Plunkett, Catholics were executed in locations all over England. According to a local tradition, St John was drawn into the plot at the insistence of a Protestant landowner simply because he had forbidden a match between his son and a Catholic heiress. Three witnesses gave false evidence of seeing St John serving as a priest: he forgave each of them by name from the scaffold.

Saint John Plessington was hanged, drawn, and quartered on July 19, 1679. The Diocese of Shrewsbury has longed hoped to find his relics because the Massey family was able to prevent his quartered body to be displayed after his execution in Boughton, Cheshire:

The authorities had demanded that the quartered remains of St John were to be displayed at the four corners of Puddington Hall, near Burton, where he had served as chaplain to the obstinately Catholic Massey family and tutor to their children. When the soldiers arrived with the body, they were stoned by the locals and fled. The Masseys instead laid out the remains of the priest on an oak table to the hall in preparation for his burial.

Plessington was about 42 years old and had served in Monmouthshire for about 16 years.

Saint John Kemble was born during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in 1599 so was about 80 years old when he was executed. Like Father Plessington, he had been able to serve Catholics for many years (54) without much trouble. As this Herefordshire history website describes his life and martyrdom:

[His] family was staunchly Catholic, and already included four priests when John studied for his priesthood and was ordained at Douai College on 23rd February 1625, following which he returned to England and began his work as a missionary in Herefordshire and Monmouthshire. His popularity steadily grew, and not just among the Catholics…..he was a very likeable man, and he continued to serve for more than 50 years, living with his brother at Pembridge Castle.

Then, poor John was caught up in the horrific doings of Titus Oates the perjurer who fabricated the Popish Plot, which was the non-existent conspiracy by Catholics to kill King Charles II. Oates was a spectacularly nasty character, with no scruples whatsoever, and his fraud was eventually uncovered but sadly too late to save many an innocent man.

In 1678, Captain John Scudamore of Kentchurch (a lapsed Catholic, although his wife and children were parishioners of John Kemble) arrived at Pembridge Castle to arrest the elderly John Kemble, and although people tried hard to get him to escape he merely said “According to the course of nature I have but a few years to live. It will be an advantage to suffer for my religion and therefore I will not abscond.” He was taken to Hereford, where he spent three months in gaol, before being taken to Newgate Prison in London…….no comfortable trip as he was bundled backwards onto a horse like a sack. For anyone that would have been torture, but for an 80 year old it must have been almost unbearable. When interrogated, John refused to admit to a non existent plot, and eventually was sent back to Hereford…by foot. There, in accordance with Elizabeth I’s Statute 27 he was tried for the treasonable offence of being a Catholic priest and for saying Mass, and was duly declared guilty, being condemned to be hanged drawn and quartered.

Before he was executed on August 22, 1679, he asked to smoke his pipe one last time, drink a cup of wine, and finish his prayers. A "Kemble Cup" and a "Kemble Pipe" became well-known terms in the area. He was buried in the Anglican churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin at Welsh Newton.

The last of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales, and the last of the Six Welsh Martyrs, was Saint David Lewis, SJ. As the Jesuits in Singapore website notes, it's a similar story to that of the six Popish Plot martyrs among the 40: he was arrested after serving the Catholic people for years because of the rewards promised during a time of fear and crisis:

David Lewis, a Welshman, was born in Abergevenny, Gwent, the youngest of 9 children to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. He was raised as a Protestant and studied at the Royal Grammar School where his father was the headmaster. He read Law at the Middle Temple and became a Catholic in 1635. He returned to Abergevenny and lived with his parents and came to know his maternal uncle, John Prichard, a Jesuit priest ministering in South Wales. David was ordained to the priesthood in Rome in 1642 and entered the Jesuit Roman Novitiate in 1645.

After working in Wales for a year, Fr Lewis was recalled to Rome to serve as the Spiritual Director to the seminarians at the English College. He returned to work in Wales on the Hereford-Gwent border and for the next 30 years he worked tirelessly in the apostolate, showing special interest and care for the poor and needy and was twice superior of that district.

Because of the plot fabricated by Titus Oates, alleging that the Jesuits were intent on the murder of Charles II and the re-establishment of the Catholic faith in the land, anti-Catholic hatred ran high. Fr Lewis was arrested, betrayed by an apostate couple, who were eager to earn the 50 pounds for the capture of a Jesuit and the 200 pounds offered by the Welsh magistrate, John Arnold, a rabid Calvinist.

Like Father Kemble, he was taken to London for questioning and then returned for trial, found guilty, and condemned for his priesthood. He was finally executed on August 27, 1679, speaking to the witnesses of his martyrdom:

“I believe you are here not only to see a fellow native die, but also with expectation to hear a dying fellow native speak……. I speak not as a murderer, thief or such-like malefactor, but as a Christian, and therefore am not ashamed. My religion is the Roman Catholic; in it I have lived above this 40 years; in it I now die, and so fixedly die, that if all good things were offered me to renounce, all should not move me one hair’s-breadth, from my Roman Catholic faith. A Roman Catholic priest I am; a Roman Catholic priest of the religious order called the Society of Jesus I am, and I bless God who first called me… Please now to observe I was condemned for reading Mass, hearing Confessions, administering the Sacraments, and dying for this I therefore die for my religion.”

Saint John Plessington, pray for us!

Saint John Kemble, pray for us!

Saint David Lewis, pray for us!

40 Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us!