Two Posts from "The Newman Review": Lost Voices and How to Read Newman

Just a couple of excerpts from two articles in the recent online Newman Review from the National Institute of Newman Studies:

The first is from Julia Meszaros and Bonnie Lander Johnson, editors of the Catholic Women Writers series from the Catholic University of America Press. They explain why these "Lost Voices of the Catholic Literary Revival" deserve to be heard, by being celebrated and read:

The work of these women indicates that the Revival lasted much longer than is usually thought (women were writing earlier and later than most of the men associated with the Revival) and that its writers were located in all areas of Britain and Ireland, not merely in the south of England. Novels by Catholic women are often concerned with different theological questions than we find in the work of Waugh and Greene. They are set in families and villages and in the institutional communities in which the writers themselves first encountered the faith: schools, convents, or convent schools. Almost wholly unrecognized by scholarship of the Catholic novel, or indeed the novel generally, are the frequent depictions of female religious life in novels of the twentieth century.

Highlighted is a book I've had on my "to be read" pile for awhile but now have started to read:

Another writer of the Revival now back in print in the Catholic Women Writers series is Sheila Kaye-Smith, until recently forgotten but a bestseller in the 1920s. Her 1925 novel The End of the House of Alard was written during her conversion from high Anglicanism to Catholicism and, long before Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, explores the post-war erosion of the aristocracy from a Catholic point of view. Faced with the decline of their family estate, Alard’s characters must discern between intrinsic and instrumental goods. In relaying their struggles, Kaye-Smith boldly takes all that was most loved about her own best-selling genre—the aristocracy’s glamour, its age-old traditions, and its role in community-building—and subordinates it to a higher truth. The novel in some ways dramatizes Kaye-Smith’s own experience of how many fruits of the world can, and at times must, be put aside by those who choose God, and how this sacrifice brings with it different riches entirely unseen and unknown by those who refuse to give up what is most dear to them.

The second article offers some insights into what makes reading Newman such a rewarding challenge. (The author, Luigi Rossi  was a Visiting Scholar at NINS during September 2023. He is Assistant Professor (Maître de Conférences) of Education at the Catholic University of the West in Angers, France.):

Compared to my usual diet of scholarly articles and books, Newman’s writings stood out for what appeared to me as their meandering character. Unlike most contemporary works, Newman does not state upfront what he is going to say and then take the reader through the motions of a demonstration delivered blow by blow. He begins, instead, with a puzzle, or a question, that he brings before his audience; he unfolds his thinking slowly, almost searchingly, from his initial questions; he also frequently refrains from tying up his argument, leaving whatever he said simply to “air” with the reader.4

After overcoming my initial disorientation at a style that looks unsystematic––from the standpoint of contemporary academic standards––I started to notice a growing curiosity in me: not just for what Newman says, but precisely for how he says it. To be more precise: I noticed myself referring back to the experience of reading Newman’s texts in order to get a firmer hold on his understanding of how reason operates in the ordinary conduct of life. As I did that, I eventually retrieved within myself a freer, more meandering style of reasoning, not unlike that which Newman practices in his writing. In a way, reading Newman brought me closer to what it is to read a text: making space for it to breathe, for its images to resonate, for its metaphors to blossom into rich associations, and eventually, to witness a meaningful figure come into being by this slow maturation. . . .

Please read the rest there.

I think this is one of the ways that Newman drew his listeners and draws his readers into their imaginations--not of fantasy--but of thought and reality. They were, as evidenced by the popularity of these sermons in their time, and those who read him today--or hear him read as I do at our monthly Newman reading gatherings--engaged in his exploration of an important spiritual, moral, religious truth.

After our most recent "Lovers of Newman" meeting, following a "Colloquy" tradition founded by the late Father Ian Ker in the 1990's, I realized that I could not think of another convert to Catholicism whose pre-conversion works we read with such attention and devotion. 

Can you?

And I'm thinking particularly of our reading of his Parochial and Plain Sermons and other sermons he wrote as an Anglican, not just as explorations of his developing thought, but as sources of spiritual, moral, and religious insights and guidance. Since I attended my first Newman School of Catholic Thought in 1979, I've been encouraged to read these Anglican sermons. It's true that at our monthly sermon readings we have discussions about a more Catholic understanding of some matters, but primarily, as Father William R. Lamm did so many years ago in 1934, we appreciate his spiritual legacy and his goals in those sermons (from my 2021 review of Father Lamm's book):

Father Lamm's thesis is that in Newman's sermons given as Vicar of the University Church of St. Mary's the Virgin in Oxford, he had a special purpose. He wanted to give general spiritual direction to those students in his congregation who wanted to be REAL Christians, who wanted to pursue holiness and perfection in the spiritual and moral life. Therefore, Father Lamm argues that Newman's spiritual legacy centers around these themes: what keeps us from becoming perfect (not considering grave, mortal sin) and what can help us become perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.

What Newman sees as keeping us from pursuing holiness and the realizing of God's Presence in our souls, according to Lamm, is our hypocrisy as we deceive ourselves about our spiritual state, deceive others, and attempt to deceive God. What will help us pursue holiness and the realizing of God's Presence is Surrender to God's Will through repentance, and the practice of a host of virtues, including love, faith, hope, obedience, and fervour, summed up as sincerity and simplicity--watching for God and developing the habit of prayer. . . .

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Preview: St. Thomas More on God's Grace and the "World"

On Monday, February 26, we'll continue our series on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on at our usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

We're going to begin with the prayer itself after our general introduction last week to More's circumstances and plan for his life and death in the Tower of London. Now we'll begin to see how applicable his plan is to our Lenten practices of fasting, almsgiving and prayer. Here are the lines for this conversation:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at naught.To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company.
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.

Give my thy Grace, good Lord; More begins in the right place, asking God's grace to accomplish his plan of life. I think that's where we should begin too. "Oh God, come to my assistance. Make haste to help me." We can't do this on our own, saving ourselves, manifesting our own willpower to achieve these ends. Whatever we set out to do or not to do, we have to discern that it's what is best for us to do, with God's grace, and then ask for His grace to help us persevere with our Lenten discipline so it transforms us by the end of the season, prepared for the Holy Triduum and Easter Sunday!

His first petitions introduce the negative and positive aspects of his preparation, and ours: 

To set the world at naught.

To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.

First to treat the world as nothing of importance; to become detached from the world. How do we do this?

Like Thomas More, husband, father, and friend, diplomat and author, former Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Chancellor, if we're active laity, we have to be involved in the world in many ways, in our families, workplaces, our cities, states, and country. We can't abandon it.

I think he offers two ways to face this challenge: 

First, setting our minds fast upon the Lord, through prayer, spiritual reading, silence, and all the different ways Catholic tradition has given us. That's part of any Christian life, intensified during Lent.

Second, to avoid the "blast of men's mouths", the cacophony of talk and endless speculative debate. Perhaps not reading or listening to all the "talking heads" on television and radio discussing politics or sports to no consequence? When I heard some sports talk still discussing the Super Bowl two weeks after the event, debating who lost the game for the 49ers, I thought, how useless! They've got to fill the hours, but I don't have to listen or watch.

In the following lines, perhaps the first part ("To be content to be solitary,/Not to long for worldly company.") applies most directly to More's situation in the Tower of London, but the last part can apply to us as we try to "Little and little utterly to cast off the world/And rid [our minds] of all the business thereof", especially when it's not really our business . . .

I'm sure Matt or Anna will have other responses and suggestions . . .

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Preview: St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation": A Guide for Lent

For February 19 and 20 in his Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day of the Year (and he does include an entry for February 29 during a Leap Year!), Father Henry Sebastian Bowden chose one of the prayers Saint Thomas More wrote in the Tower of London. Some sources date this prayer to sometime in 1534 (More was imprisoned on April 17, 1534; he was tried on July 1, 1535 and executed on July 6), as he began his life in prison.

Since Saint Thomas More spent the last months of his life, as he said, meditating on the Passion of Christ and preparing himself for death, I thought it could make a good guide for the Lenten Season.

Therefore, on Monday, February 19, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will start our discussion of this great prayer on the Son Rise Morning Show, continuing to reflect on its riches each Monday of Lent 2024. 

I'll be on at our usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later. 

Father Bowden titles the two entries, on pages 63 and 64, "In the Shadow of Death" (1) and (2) with the final verse from the Benedictus, "To enlighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death" and "To direct our feet into the way of peace" divided between them. (Luke 1:79)

For our first episode, we'll just review the issues More is dealing with in this prayer: all that he's lost and all that he hopes to gain. The entire text is a litany of petitions. As he wrote this in the margins of his breviary Thomas More was preparing himself for death, either in prison or by execution. He had already lost his freedom, his influence, his power, his friends, and many of the comforts of his family and he was praying to be reconciled to those losses. I don't think this was easy for Saint Thomas More: Although the petitions seem measured and calm, More was facing a great struggle.

Here is the text as Father Bowden presents it:

"In the Shadow of Death" (1)

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at naught.

Note: you may see these first two lines written at the top and bottom of a page from More's breviary here.

To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company.
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help.
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
To know my own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God.
To bewail my sins past
For the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here;
To be joyful of tribulations.

"In the Shadow of Death" (2)

To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life,
To bear the cross with Christ.
To have the last thing in remembrance,
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand.
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell.
To pray for pardon before the Judge come,
To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me.
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness.
Recreations not necessary to cut off;
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all 

To set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ.

To think my most enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.

Father Bowden does not include this final line in these two entries:

[These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and layed together all upon one heap.]

Saint Thomas More starts out preparing to lose much that he held dear; then he prays for what he needs not just to replace but to surpass those things; then he meditates on preparing for death and repenting of past sins--then he mentions again all the things he needs to give up and what he'll gain thereby. As Father Bowden concludes the prayer, More wants to be grateful, even, to those who've put him in the Tower of London, comparing his situation to the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. 

Finally, More compares worldly treasures to spiritual goods, with the latter far surpassing the former.

Each Monday of Lent, we'll discuss More's " A Godly Meditation" as a pattern for Lent, as it serves as a model of detachment, repentance, and faith in God. Some of the things More gave up may easy for some of us, or as hard or harder for some of us as they were for him, but what he stood to gain--"the comfort of God" and "the winning of Christ" are as precious to us as they were to him.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Preview: The End of Shrovetide/Mardi Gras/Carnival/Fasching on the Son Rise Morning Show

In order, from the title: Shrovetide in England/Mardi Gras in Louisiana/Carnival in parts of Europe/Fasching in Germany; not to mention the Liturgical pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima! These are all different names for the lead-up to Lent, which was at least partially a practical matter of emptying out the larder of meat and meat by-products before the very strict Lenten period of fasting and abstinence. 

On the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, February 12, we'll talk about Shrovetide and the Pancake Races held in England and in Liberal Kansas (!): the background for Pancake Day and free short stacks at various locations in the USA! I'll be on at our usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later. 

Here is a good source for a description of Shrovetide and Shrove Tuesday:

Shrove Tuesday is the last day of what traditionally was called "Shrovetide," the weeks preceding the beginning of Lent. The word itself, Shrovetide, is the English equivalent for "Carnival," which is derived from the Latin words carnem levare, meaning "to take away the flesh." (Note that in Germany, this period is called "Fasching," and in parts of the United States, particularly Louisiana, "Mardi Gras.") While this was seen as the last chance for merriment, and, unfortunately in some places, has resulted in excessive pleasure, Shrovetide was the time to cast off things of the flesh and to prepare spiritually for Lent.

That excessive merriment and pleasure--that is, gluttony and drunkenness--is the reason that some churches started the tradition of the Forty Hours Devotion (Quarant'ore in Italian) leading up to Ash Wednesday, from the last Sunday of the Septuagesima "season", Quinquagesima, through Tuesday. Instead of partying, Catholics were encouraged to adore the Blessed Sacrament in the Monstrance.

Actually, the English term provides the best meaning for this period. "To shrive" meant to hear confessions. In the Anglo-Saxon "Ecclesiastical Institutes," recorded by Theodulphus and translated by Abbot Aelfric about AD 1000, Shrovetide was described--as follows: "In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him as he then may hear by his deeds what he is to do in the way of penance." To highlight the point and motivate the people, special plays or masques were performed which portrayed the passion of our Lord or final judgment. Clearly, this Shrovetide preparation for Lent included the confessing of sin and the reception of absolution; as such, Lent then would become a time for penance and renewal of faith.

While this week of Shrovetide condoned the partaking of pleasures from which a person would abstain during Lent, Shrove Tuesday had a special significance in England. Pancakes were prepared and enjoyed, because in so doing a family depleted their eggs, milk, butter, and fat which were part of the Lenten fast. At this time, some areas of the Church abstained from all forms of meat and animal products, while others made exceptions for food like fish. For example, Pope St. Gregory (d. 604), writing to St. Augustine of Canterbury, issued the following rule: "We abstain from flesh, meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, and eggs." These were the fasting rules governing the Church in England; hence, the eating of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.

And the eating of bacon on Collop/Shrove Monday!

Here is a recipe for pancakes from the Tudor era: specifically, from The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin from 1588:

To make the pancakes:

Take new thicke Creame a pinte, four of five yolks of Egs, a good handful of flower, and two or three spoonfuls of ale, strain them altogether into a faire platter, and season it with a good handful of Sugar, a sooneful of Synamon and a little Ginger: then takea frying pan, and put in a little peece of Butter, as but as your thombe, and when it is molten browne, cast it out of your pan, and with a ladle put to the furthesr side of your pan some of your stuffe, and hole your pan aslope, so that you stuffe may run abroad all ouer all the pan, as thin as may be: then set it to the fyre, and let the fyre be verie soft, and when the one side is bakes, then turne the other, and bake them as dry as ye can without burning.

After one Tudor housewife starting making her pancakes, she heard the church bells ring and ran to church, carrying the frying pan with a pancake in it, still wearing her apron, and tying a scarf around her head--and that's how the tradition of Pancake Races began. Since 1950, ladies in Olney, England and Liberal, Kansas (USA) have competed in the International Pancake Day races!

Book Review: "Cradle of Redeeming Love" by John Saward

Just in time for Candlemas, I finished this book by John Saward, Cradle of Redeeming Love: The Theology of the Christmas Mystery. I had read it almost a decade before, and both times I've read the Ignatius Press paperback edition. Now it is published by Angelico Press, with a similar cover image and similar cover blurb:

In Cradle of Redeeming Love, John Saward returns to the mystery of Christ’s incarnation and birth. Drawing upon both the rich traditions of the Church and the writings of the great Christian mystics, he fashions a work both new and old, revolutionary and orthodox. This profoundly moving meditation on the meaning of the Incarnation will enrich any contemplation on the life of Christ.

The subject of this book is the “Christmas” dogma: the divinely revealed truth of the Nativity of Christ, as proclaimed by His infallible and immaculate Bride, the Church. It is the splendor of this truth, of “Love’s noon in Nature’s night,” which for two millennia has captivated the minds of Fathers and Schoolmen, activated the genius of poets, painters, and musicians, and, in even the bleakest of mid-winters, brightened the eyes of little ones kneeling by the Crib.

And also, as our Greater Wichita G.K. Chesterton group continues to read The Everlasting Man (also for the second time as group, but with different members), I must note how often Father Saward quotes and references Chesterton throughout the book. There are also a few mentions of Saint John Henry Newman, but the theologian and saint quoted most often is Saint Thomas Aquinas, whose feast (though superseded by Sunday! as we know Saint Thomas would think entirely fitting!) was January 28, opening Catholic Schools week. Other saints and theologians frequently cited are Pope St. Leo the Great, Saints Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Cyril of Alexandria, and Jerome, etc. In addition to Chesterton, Father Saward also cites another Englishman, Father Frederick Faber of the London Oratory, especially Faber's book Bethlehem: The Sacred Infancy of Our Most Dear and Blessed Redeemer.

What impressed me most this reading was Father Saward's emphasis in Chapter One, "How great the mystery!" The Mysteries of the Life of Jesus, that every act of Jesus's life on earth was an act for our salvation: not just (!) His Passion, Death and Resurrection, but every act from His Infancy and through His active ministry: every teaching, every healing, every rejection--everything the Incarnate Son of God did on earth was for our salvation. Not just for our moral improvement, doctrinal instruction, or our spiritual development, but for our salvation. 

From page 78-79 in the Ignatius press edition:

But the mysteries of the life of Jesus are more than just a series of dogmatic instructions and moral lessons. They provide not only a model for outward imitation but also a source of inward transformation. . . . they sanctify us by an efficient as well as an exemplary causality; they not only show us how to be holy in the likeness our Saviour but reproduce that likeness in our souls. From the fleshly birth of the Head comes the spiritual rebirth of the members. When the divine Messiah takes on the Old Law at His Circumcision, He lifts the burden from other men. The immersion of His body in the Jordan gives a new sacramental vocation to water. His victory over Satan in the wilderness strengthens His faithful against temptation. His Passion saves us my merit, satisfaction, sacrifice and redemption. His Resurrection from the tomb is the source and model of our own resurrection, in soul and in body. "Redemption," says the Catechism [of the Catholic Church], "comes to us above all through the blood of his cross, but this mystery is at work throughout Christ's entire life." [517] As Pope Pius II [in Mediator Dei, no. 163], in each mystery, Christ is the 'Author of our salvation.'

I think this knowledge should make a great difference in the way I read or, especially, hear the Gospels proclaimed at Holy Mass! 

As a good friend of mine said, who finished the book before Christmas, this is a book to read again and again--probably more often than every ten years!

Preview: Margaret Powell, Recusant Catholic Confessor

Among the beatified and canonized English martyrs, there are only several women (Saints Margaret Ward, Margaret Clitherow, Anne Line, and Blessed Margaret Pole), but there are many whom Father Henry Sebastian Bowden would call Confessors. In his daily Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors, he highlights one such Confessor, Margaret Powell, who was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death in 1642 for aiding and abetting Blessed Thomas Bullaker, OSF, one of the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Pope John Paul II. So on Monday, February 5, we'll continue our series on the the Son Rise Morning Show by remembering this brave woman.

I'll be on at our usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

Father Bowden titles her entry for February 6 (p. 48) "The Sunamitess Rewarded" with this verse from 2 Kings 4:8: "now there was a great woman there, who detained him to eat bread; and as he passed often that way, he turned into her house to eat bread." Margaret Powell is the "great woman"; Blessed Thomas Bullaker the prophet Elisha; the bread is the Holy Mass in Bowden's analogy.

As he describes her, Margaret Powell was "of good birth," but "reduced to great poverty through her sufferings for the Faith." Like Saint Margaret Clitherow, she was married to a Protestant, but still ministered to priests in prison, and often had one visit their home to say Mass. In October 1642, Father Thomas Bullaker "was seized while saying Mass, and Margaret and her boy, aged twelve, who was serving the Mass, were taken with him".

One of the sources Father Bowden mentions in his introduction is "Mrs. Hope's Franciscan Martyrs". Mrs. Anne Hope's Franciscan Martyrs in England was published in 1878; she was convert to Catholicism after studying Church History and moved to Edgbaston to be close to Saint John Henry Newman at the Birmingham Oratory (are you surprised?) She provides these details about Margaret Powell (p. 140):

M. de Marsys, a gentleman in the household of the Comte d'Harcourt, the French ambassador, tells us that this lady was Margaret Parkins, the wife of Mr. Powell, a Protestant. She was about thirty years of age, and though connected with the principal families of England, was reduced to great poverty by the constant persecutions which she suffered for the cause of God. She had an only son whom she educated with great care in the Catholic faith. She devoted herself to prayer, fasting, and good works, especially to waiting upon priests who were ill in the prisons, gladly shutting herself up with them, and nursing them with such care and liberality that even the most hardened heretics could not but admire her extra- ordinary virtue.

Mrs. Hope also provides Father Bowden these comments about her behavior at trial (p. 150):

One of the judges, who was a Puritan, exhorted her to think of her soul and her family, and to embrace the religion of the kingdom instead of giving her life for papistical superstitions. But she answered, smiling, that "as soon as the Parliament should have made choice of a religion they might invite her to receive it; as at the present moment they were disputing on it among themselves, it was ridiculous to make such a proposal to her." Her eloquence, her modest and courageous bearing, and her presence of mind touched even the Protestants who were present. The judges, therefore, finding that they drew from her only disagreeable truths and repartee which exposed them to the laughter of the bystanders, sent her back to prison.

  

British History Online has some detail about the indictments of Father Bullaker and Margaret Powell (though the dates don't match Father Bowden's timeline):

August 31: Also record of the arraignment &c. of Thomas Bullaker for being a catholic priest; and also of Margaret Powell, for receiving and harbouring the said Thomas Bullaker (pro hospitacione Tho. Bullaker). Against the name of Thomas Bullaker appears this minute "non vult directe respondere nec se super patriam ponere, Ideo consideratum est quod predictus Thomas Bullaker trahetur super hurdellam usque furcas de Tiborne et ibidem suspendetur et vivens ad terram prosternatur, quodque interiola et membra sua e corpore suo abscindentur et in conspectu comburentur, quodque caput ejus abscindetur, et corpus ejus in quatuor partes dividetur, Et quod corpus et quarteria ejus ponantur ubi Dominus Rex assignare voluerit."—Against the record of Margaret Powell's arraignment appears the memorandum "po se Repr usq' prox sine ball" = She puts herself 'Not Guilty' on a jury of the country, and is reprieved without bail till next Session.—In the record of the proceedings of the next Session, viz., of 7 December, 18 Charles I., appears this memorandum, "Itt is thought fitt and soe desired by this Courte that Mr. Serjeant Phesant doe attende the House of Lords to acquainte theire Lordships with the proceedings against one Margarett Powell, convicted for the felonious receivinge Thomas Bullaker a Popishe Priest (who was executed the last Session) knowinge him to bee soe, And to knowe theire Lordships' pleasure whether shee shall bee executed according to the judgment given against her or be reprieved." G. D. Reg.

Thus, Father Bullaker was condemned to being hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn in great Latin detail and Margaret, representing herself, pled not guilty and was bound over for trial. A later entry further notes:

September 11: True Bill that, at St. Sepulchre's London co. Midd. on the said day, Thomas Bullaker late of the said parish clerk, born within the kingdom of England, and after the Feast of St. John the Baptist, 1 Eliz., and before the said 11 Sept., 18 Charles I., made and ordained "Sacerdos anglice a Seminarye Preist" by authority derived and pretended from the See of Rome, was and remained &c.; and that, at St. Sepulchre's London co. Midd. on the said 11 Sept, 18 Charles I., knowing him to be a priest of such kind as is abovesaid, Margaret Powell late of the said parish spinster received, harboured, comforted and maintained the said Thomas Bullaker. The clerical note over Thomas Bullaker's name at the bill's head is, "Nihil dic' Judiciu' qd. trahetur suspendetur et quartiatur videlt.' At the bill's foot appears the usual record in full of the sentence for execution at Tiborne, in the manner prescribed for the execution of felons, convicted of high treason. A note over Margaret Powell's name shows that at a subsequent Session, held on 7 Dec, 18 Charles I., she was found 'Guilty' and sentenced to be hung. G. D. R., 5 Oct., 18 Charles I.

Blessed Thomas Bullaker was executed at Tyburn on October 12, 1642, but according to Father Bowden's memento, Margaret Powell was not hanged as sentenced (evidently Parliament ordered her reprieved in December 1642). Bowden comments on her reaction:

At her trial, she had "expressed her joy at the prospect of laying down her life for the Faith in which she had been born, and which she hoped with God's mercy to bear unspotted to the grave." When she heard that her "sentence was deferred, she burst into tears; yet quickly recovering herself, she offered her new lease of life to God as obediently as she had accepted death." 

Whether she remained in prison for the rest of her life or was released, the record does not say--nor could I find out the fate of "her boy, aged twelve." But we might remember that the reward of the Sunamitess was the life of her son, miraculously conceived although her husband was old and miraculously restored to life by the Prophet Elisha (2 Kings 4:16-37)

Blessed Thomas Bullaker, pray for us!

Margaret Powell, rest in peace! (and pray for us!)