Preview: A Martyr and a Confessor in York

Again I'm matching up a martyr and a confessor for our series recollecting the stories of the English Martyrs and Confessors on Monday, May 15 on the Son Rise Morning Show. Blessed Richard Thirkeld or Thirkell and Mary Hutton were contemporaries of Saint Margaret Clitherow--in fact, he had been one of her confessors! She was one of the female Catholic recusants who, like Clitherow, caused the Church of England and secular authorities in York so much trouble, sheltering priests and teaching their children the Catholic Faith.

So please listen live here about about 6:51 a.m. Central/7:51 a.m. Eastern. You may also find the podcast later that day here.

According to the old Catholic Encyclopedia, Thirkeld was:

Educated at Queen's College, Oxford, 1564-1565. Studied at Douai and Rheims, France. Ordained on 18 April 1579 at an age somewhat older than his confreres. Returned to England on 23 May 1579 as a home missioner around York. Confessor to Saint Margaret Clitherow. Arrested on Annunciation Eve in 1583 for the crime of priesthood; the authorities became suspicious when he visited a Catholic prisoner. Lodged in Ousebridge Kidcote prison, York, for two months. He wore a cassock and biretta to trial, was convicted on 27 May 1583 of hearing confessions and bringing the lapsed back to the Church, and was sentenced on 28 May 1583 to death. He used his time in jail to minister to other prisoners, working especially with others sentenced to death. Martyred in secret on May 29 for fear his covert parishioners would cause a civil disturbance. Six of his letters have survived. [This site excerpts two of those letters.]

In this entry for Blessed Richard Thirkeld in Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors (and there are several, including some of those letters he wrote from prison), Father Bowden emphasizes how the martyr engaged in debate with the Dean of York (Matthew Hutton, later Archbishop of York). The dean attacked the practice of asking the intercession of the saints, and when Thirkeld offered to give him some explanation from St. Augustine, changed the subject. He declared the pope to be the anti-christ and when Thirkeld proclaimed that the pope was the Vicar of Christ and the Supreme Head of the Church, the dean "in a fury of passion leaped from his chair, declaring he would not suffer such language." The title for this entry is "Points in Controversy" and the verse is "Carefully study to present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly handling the worth of truth." (2 Timothy 2:15)

After Thirkeld's execution, his head and the head of another martyred priest, Blessed William Hart, was displayed in front the Ousebridge Kidcote prison. Mary Hutton, a recusant Catholic, was accused of removing those heads as relics--and her children were threatened with beating with birches, and so they admitted their mother had done it.

As this site explains, female Catholic recusants were particularly troublesome for the authorities:

. . . After priests the second most feared rebel group were female recusants. There was strict surveillance within the city, monitoring movements and keeping track of church attendance.

Once a month, commissioners conducted a survey of all Catholic prisoners within the prison which outlined females to be manipulators and religious converters as well as the largest group to miss church services. Their imprisonments were often stricter than men, excluding the treatment of priests. . . .

Records show that Catholic women harboured the most priests. In 1593, Ann Thwing was imprisoned for harbouring a priest and was sentenced along with another woman, a Mrs Stapleton. Both women were in York Castle until 1600. Mrs Stapleton was pardoned, Ann’s fate is unknown. In 1599, Eleanore Hunt received a death sentence for harbouring Christopher Wharton, a priest who was also sentenced to death at York Castle.

In 1575, a group of York women – ‘Mrs Dorothy Vavasour’, Frances Hall, Janet Geldad and Isabel Porter – became the first women to stand in front of the High Commission and be charged with ’causes ecclesiastical’. This was the refusal to attend church service.

The following year, the Lord President of Huntingdon, Henry Hastings, was instructed by the council to provide further details into church attendance. His list had 33 names, 23 being women, and included Vavasour, Geldad, Hall and Porter. Also on the list was Margaret Clitherow.

When Mary Hutton was arrested, her husband William Hutton was already in prison for recusancy. Mary was not executed, but she was put in "the low place" in prison and left to die there of fever sometime after Blessed Richard Thirkeld's execution. The title for her Confessor's entry is "Devotion to Relics" and the verse is from Psalm 33/34, verse 20 (cited in John 19:36): "The Lord keepeth all their bones; not one of them shall be broken."

The juxtaposition of these two memories certainly demonstrates the cooperation between the Catholic recusant laity and the missionary priests, both risking their lives. The missionary priests knew what tortures and executions they could/would face. The Catholic laity also knew the monetary and mortal dangers they faced. They were prepared to suffer so the Sacraments could be celebrated, especially the Holy Mass, and the Catholic Faith would survive the Penal times in England.

Blessed Richard Thirkeld, pray for us!

Saint Margaret Clitherow, pray for us!