Preview: Blessed Thomas Percy's Mementoes

After an hiatus on Monday the 14th as the Son Rise Morning Show prepared for the Solemnity of the Assumption on August 15th, we're back with our series of highlights from Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors, remembering Blessed Thomas Percy, an early Elizabethan martyr.

So on Monday, August 21, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here.

[This Thomas Percy is not to be confused with the Sir Thomas Percy, his father, who participated in the Pilgrimage of Grace during the reign of King Henry VIII, who has not been beatified by the Church. Note from the Catholic Encyclopedia: "When Thomas was eight years old his father was executed at Tyburn (2 June, 1537) for having taken a leading part in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and he also is considered a martyr by many."*]

Father Bowden focuses on the time when Blessed Thomas Percy was imprisoned in Scotland under the title "Friday Abstinence" with verses from the Second Book of Maccabees (6:18-19): 

Eleazar one of the chief of the scribes . . . was pressed to open his mouth to eat swine's flesh. But he, choosing rather a most glorious death than a hateful life, went forward voluntarily to the torment.

Some background from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

On Elizabeth's accession the earl, whose steadfast loyalty to the Catholic Church was known, was kept in the North while the anti-Catholic measures of Elizabeth's first Parliament were passed. Elizabeth continued to show him favour, and in 1563 gave him the Order of the Garter. He had then resigned the wardenship and was living in the South. But the systematic persecution of the Catholics rendered their position most difficult, and in the autumn of 1569 the Catholic gentry in the North, stirred up by rumours of the approaching excommunication of Elizabeth, were planning to liberate Mary, Queen of Scots, and obtain liberty of worship. Earl Thomas with the Earl of Westmoreland wrote to the pope asking for advice, but before their letter reached Rome circumstances hurried them into action against their better judgment. After a brief success the rising failed, and Thomas fled to Scotland, where he was captured and, after three years, sold to the English Government. He was conducted to York and beheaded, refusing to save his life by abandoning his religion. He was beatified by Leo XIII on 13 May, 1895, and his festival was appointed to be observed in the Dioceses of Hexham and Newcastle on 14 November. His daughter Mary founded the Benedictine convent at Brussels from which nearly all the existing houses of Benedictine nuns in England are descended.

According to the website for the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, his feast is still celebrated on that designated date:

His feast day is celebrated in our Diocese on 14 November.

A Chapel at Langley Castle (completed in 1914) has stained glass windows featuring Blessed Thomas Percy (Blessed Thomas Percy was a descendent (sic) of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, who originally owned Langley Castle).

(BTW: Langley Castle is now a hotel. Sic transit gloria mundi!) 

While he was a prisoner in Scotland in Lochleven Castle (where Mary, Queen of Scots was also held for a time in 1567-1568), Blessed Thomas Percy was besieged with loneliness and temptations to deny his Catholicism, including his fast and abstinence:

TORN from his friends and followers, from his wife and his four little girls, and betrayed into the hands of a declared enemy, Bl. Thomas in his captivity at Lochleven had indeed "sunk into deep waters among them that hated him" (Ps 68:15). But he found strength from above in his continual fasts and watchings and pious meditations, and proved himself a true champion of the faith. His Calvinist keeper, the Lord of Lochleven [William Douglas, the Sixth Earl of Morton], brought many of his sect to try and persuade him, by cunning argument and speeches or by threats and promises, to embrace their errors, but he could never be persuaded to depart in the smallest matter from the Communion of the Catholic Church. When, as often happened, meat was brought to him on days which Catholics observe as a fast, he contented himself with bread alone ; and by his example moved some of those attending on him to repent of their apostasy. The fortitude he thus acquired found a witness in Lord Hunsdon [Thomas Carey, Mary's Boleyn's son, Elizabeth I's cousin, and one of Shakespeare's patrons], who reported "that he is readier to talk of hawks and hounds than anything else, though very sorrowful and fearing for his life." (p. 269)

There are other entries for Blessed Thomas Percy, including one on August 13, p. 261, which recounts the seizure of Durham Cathedral during the Northern Rebellion and the celebration of Holy Mass for the first time after the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.

Blessed Thomas Percy was beheaded in York on August 22, 1572.

Blessed Thomas Percy, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Portrait of Blessed Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland (1528-1570, at full length, kneeling on a cushion, wearing a black doublet with a fur trimmed cloak, a white ruff and the Order of the Garter collar and garter, reading a prayer book.

*Since both father and son took part in rebellions, it might be asked why the son is beatified and not the father: Blessed Thomas Percy was offered his life if he renounced his illegal Catholic faith (punishable by fines at that time if he did not attend the government sanctioned Church of England services). During the reign of Henry VIII, his father was not offered such a choice.

And, just to add to the confusion of similar names, there is another Thomas Percy, a Gunpowder Plot conspirator, who died of gunshot wounds on November 8, 1605. His body was exhumed and beheaded during the repercussions of the failed, murderous plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament.