Not for the Faint of Heart: Blessed Hugh Green

Hugh Green was born in 1584 of Protestant parents; he took his degree at Cambridge in 1605, but then converted to Catholicism and went to Douai to study for the priesthood in 1610. He tried his vocation as a Capuchin, but left that order and was ordained in 1612.

In England he served the Catholics of Dorchester and was given refuge by Lady Blanche Arundell of Lanherne. The Mad Monarchist offers this profile of Lady Blanche, who certainly did not blanch at danger!:

Lady Blanche Arundell was a monarchist I wish I knew more about, but from what I do know she was my kind of girl. The Lady Blanche was born in 1583, the sixth daughter of Lord Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester and Lady Elizabeth Hastings a well respected, Catholic and staunchly royalist family. On May 11, 1607 she married Lord Thomas Baron Arundell of Wardour who, went King Charles I of Britain raised the royal standard at Nottingham was quick to cast his lot with his monarch. While her husband was away at the front Lady Blanche Arundell showed her own heroism when Wardour Castle, Wiltshire, came under attack by the forces of Parliament. With only herself, her children, a handful of maid-servants and 25 men she resolved to defend the castle, her home and family against 1,300 Roundhead troops, including artillery, led by Colonel Edward Ludlow and Sir Edward Hungerford. For eight grueling days Lady Blanche defended the castle against the hopeless odds until she was finally forced to capitulate. However, thanks to her staunch defense she was able to negotiate honorable terms for her surrender which were signed on May 8, 1643. Lady Blanche was able to leave the castle with her head held high but she had no money and no place to go. Fortunately Lord Hertford provided her with accommodations at Salisbury. Her husband later returned at the head of royalist column and took back the castle his wife had so heroically defended but sadly he was later wounded in battle and died at Oxford the same year. When Lady Blanche Arundell died at Winchester on October 28, 1649 she was buried alongside her husband at Tisbury. Her brave defense of her hearth and home, her children and family honor, all in the cause of her King warrants Lady Blanche being listed among the pantheon of great English royalists of the Civil War.

Just before the beginning of the Civil War, Charles I passed another law making the presence of Catholic priests in England a crime punishable by death (forced by Parliament). Although Hugh Green intended to leave England under this ban, he was too late.

He was captured near Lyme Regis, imprisoned and then executed on August 19, 1642. In prison his constancy so affected his fellow-captives that two or three women sentenced to die with him sent him word that they would ask his absolution before death. They did so after confessing their sins to the people, and were absolved by the martyr. A providential reward for his zeal immediately followed. A Jesuit Father, despite the danger, rode up in disguise on horseback, and at a given sign absolved the martyr, who made a noble confession of faith before death.

The story of his execution is more appalling than usual: there was no experienced executioner available, so a barber-cum-executioner spent almost half an hour trying to locate his heart after he had been hung. Finally a soldier mercifully ended this torture. When his head was cut off, the Puritans used it as a football! As Archbishop Challoner notes, this was not an event repeated in the annals of the English martyrs. Blessed Hugh Green is honored at the Church of Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs and St. Ignatius, Chideock, as one of the Dorset martyrs. Here is a link to some pictures of the church.

Please note that this is Jane Austen country, and any reader of Persuasion would remember Anne Elliott's fateful visit to Lyme Regis!

In a very strange coincidence, there was an American style football player named Hugh Green, who was born in 1959. He played for both the Miami Dolphins and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Three Lancashire Martyrs under the Commonwealth

Blessed John (Martin) Woodcock (1603 – 1646):  John Woodcock was born to a “Church Papist” Anglican Father in 1603 at Woodcock Hall in Lancashire. He was sent to Saint Omer to study with the Jesuits there and after finishing his humanities studies he was sent to Rome to complete his theological formation. There he no doubt met the Irish Franciscans who took over at the College of St. Isidore in the same year. He asked to enter the Capuchins but was dismissed from their novitiate after a few months, perhaps because of precarious health. He wandered around Europe aimlessly for three years until he arrived in Douai. There his desire to be a Franciscan was realised when he entered the novitiate of the Friars Minor in 1631. He was given the name Martin of St. Felix and made great progress both in his studies and in sanctity. He was ordained a priest just four years later in 1635. he went to England on the mission but, after a few years, was forced to return on account of his ill health.
His medics sent him to the baths at Spa to recuperate and he there met the Observant General Commissary. He begged permission to return to England where his co-religionists were suffering renewed persecution in the Puritan-led Commonwealth. The Commissary gave him permission and John set out, landing in Newcastle in 1644. He went to his paternal home, but his father, scared for the safety of his son since many would have known that he had spent years abroad and studied for the priesthood, sent him away. The soldiers of the local garrison had, however, already been informed of his arrival and he was arrested immediately and imprisoned in Lancaster Castle, where he lived for two years. He was martyred on 7th August 1646, hanged at Bomber-Bridge while he exhorted the crowd to understand why he had been condemned. John Woodcock was beatified along with 129 other martyrs of England and Wales on 22^nd November 1987 by Pope John Paul II.

The other two who suffered on August 7 were alumni of the College and Seminary at Valladolid, Spain: BLESSED Thomas WHITAKER (alias STARKIE) was born , the son of a schoolmaster in Burnley, Lancashire. He studied for the priesthood as St. Omer and VALLADOLID, where he was ordained priest in 1638.

For 5 years he worked on the Mission in Lancashire. He was finaly arrested and jailed for 2 years during the Civil War. He was condemned to death for being a priest.

BLESSED Edward BAMBER (alias HELMES, REDING) was born in Carleton, near Blackpool in the County of Lancashire. He was a seminarian in St. Omer, and at the English College of St. Gregory in SEVILLE, where he was ordained a priest the year 1626. Upon returning to England, he disembarking in the port of Plymouth, he was stopped and incarcerated, but immediately released. For sixteen years he served the Catholic Mission, mainly in Lancashire. Imprisoned again between 1643 and1646, he was condemned for being priest. He and Father Whitaker were included with Father Woodcock among the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Blessed John Paul II.

Alias, Martyr: Blessed William Ward

Blessed William Ward was born William Webster in Thornby, Westmorland around 1560 and was raised as an Anglican. Although there isn't any record in the sources I found of his educational career, he became a teacher and then travelled to Spain with a Catholic friend. Something happened while he was in Spain--perhaps the expressions of faith, attending Mass with his friend, the art and culture influenced him--and William Webster became a Catholic.

Back home, he converted his mother--under laws passed by Elizabeth I's government, both his efforts and her conversion were treasonous felonies. Webster was repeatedly imprisoned for professing his faith--paying fines for his recusancy and refusal to attend Church of England services. When he was over 40 years old he went to Belgium to study for the priesthood; he arrived there on 18 September, 1604; received the minor orders on 16 December, 1605; the subdiaconate on 26 October, 1607; the diaconate on 31 May, 1608; and the priesthood on the following day, taking the name Father William Ward. On 14 October he started for England, but was driven on to the shores of Scotland, arrested, and imprisoned for three years.

Upon being released, he worked the next 30 years in and around London, secretly ministering to the Catholic population and the poor in general. According to Bishop Challoner, "he was zealous [with a] fiery temperament, severe with himself and others, and especially devoted to hearing confessions. Though he had the reputation of being a very exacting director his earnestness drew to him many penitents. So mortified was his personal life and so secret his numerous charities that he was even accused of avarice." Father Ward was frequently jailed or banished during the reigns of both James I and Charles I, as  those periods of relative tolerance ebbed and flowed. He was in London when Parliament issued the proclamation of 7 April, 1641, banishing all priests under pain of death, but refused to retire, and on 15 July was arrested in the house of his nephew. (Charles I had to accept this proclamation because he needed funds from Parliament to fight the rebels in Ireland.) Six days later he was brought to trial at the Old Bailey and was condemned on 23 July. Martyred at age 81 on July 26, 1641, he died uttering the words: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, receive my soul!” He was among the 162 English Martyrs Pope Pius XI beatified in 1929.

Blesssed Henry Heath, OFM

Henry Heath was born to Anglican parents in Peterborough. He undertook university studies in Cambridge where he was noted for his piety and perspicacity in religious matters. After gaining his degree he was appointed University Librarian which gave him the opportunity to read Catholic and Protestant authors on the matters of greatest concern to his faith. His reading of the Church Fathers led him to seek reconciliation with the Catholic Church.

He then moved to London and on to Douai in Flanders. There he met the friars of the Province of England who had opened St. Bonaventure College and Friary there in 1618. He asked to join the friars. The founder of the college and Provincial Commissary John Gennings, was understandably wary about accepting him. Henry was a recent convert and the English secret service was apt to use pretend converts to gain information on those training for the mission. Henry convinced Gennings of the authenticity of his faith and so was admitted to the novitiate in 1623 or 1624 at the age of 24. He was given the name Paul of St. Magadelene. His penitential life of fasting and extended contemplation gained him the respect of his confreres and he was known for his devotion to the crucified Jesus and his holy Mother. He was ordained a priest and became in turn Guardian, Novice Master, a lecturer in theology known for his Scotism, then Provincial Commissary of Flanders where he promoted the Recollect reform.

When persecution broke out once more in England, after the defeat of Charles I in the English Civil War, he asked to return home to support his suffering brothers and compatriots. At London he was mistaken for a criminal and arrested but when it was discovered that he was a priest he was condemned to death and confined in Newgate prison. There he continued to give consolation to his Catholic compatriots and heard confessions until on 17th April 1643 he was led to Tyburn and hanged. As he was led to the scaffold the prayer heard on his lips was: “Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”.

Henry Heath was beatified along with 84 other martyrs of England and Wales on 22nd November 1987 by Pope John Paul II.

Charles I's Court Painter: Anthony Van Dyke

Anthony Van Dyke was born on March 22, 1599 in Antwerp. In 1632, he visited England for the second time and soon became Charles I's official court and portrait painter, developing a flattering style that influenced later painters like Kneller and Lely. In 2009, the Tate Britain held an exhibition titled "Van Dyck and Britain":

Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) was the greatest painter in seventeenth-century Britain. Though trained in Flanders, he had a huge impact on British cultural life as the principal painter at King Charles I’s ostensibly elegant court, where his impact was similar to that of Hans Holbein at the court of Henry VIII.

Van Dyck was born and trained in the great art centre of Antwerp. He made a brief visit to London in 1620-21 before returning in 1632 to King Charles I’s court. Intensely ambitious and hugely productive, he re-invented portrait-painting in Britain, retaining his pre-eminence until his premature death at the age of 42. Working in a period of intense political ferment during the run-up to the British Civil War, van Dyck portrayed many of the leading characters of the period. His iconic portraits of King Charles I have shaped our view of the Stuart monarchy, while the compositions he used influenced many future generations of British painters.

This visually sumptuous exhibition brings together some of the finest and most magnificent paintings that van Dyck produced during his years in Britain. It also reveals his continuing visual legacy through portraits by artists from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, including Sir Joshua Reynolds and John Singer Sargent. Featuring loans from The Royal Collection and The National Trust, this exhibition explores the context of van Dyck’s key English works, examining his innovative approach to painting the British elite. It also looks at his use of costume and his luscious, sparkling depiction of the rich fabrics of the period, and how his art was itself influenced by more local British painting.

Of his style and method of portraying the royal family, the exhibition notes:

These royal portraits show van Dyck's ability to mix fantasy and reality in the representation of kingship. Charles I relied upon van Dyck to provide the idealising portraits that would bolster his public image. These paintings embodied the kings view of divine rule and of Neoplatonic ideas about the self-regulation of the passions. The portraits suggest a happy, settled ruling family at the head of a nation at ease with itself and with its king.

Of course, we know that wasn't so:

It was all an illusion. 'Loving rule' may have been implied by the portraits of the king and queen, the image of Cupid and Psyche, or the masques in which the royal couple participated at court. In fact, Charless relationship with Parliament had broken down, leaving him increasingly isolated. There was fear of Catholic conspiracies and discontent that the Protestant king had taken a Catholic wife.

Charles I's favor to a foreign and Catholic painter just compounded the Parliamentary view that Charles was too Catholic: the Puritans could point to his use of a Catholic artist as another cause of their discontent with the king's rule.

Van Dyke died in London before the English Civil War began.

Several of his paintings are in the National Gallery in London. Although Queen Henrietta Maria's chapel with its baroque Catholic paintings was ransacked and destroyed, the Royal collection gathered by Charles, including all the Royal Portraits seemed to have survived.

Yet Another Historical Novel: "The Spanish Match"

Sophia Institute Press announces a new historical novel, The Spanish Match, telling the story of the proposed marriage between Charles, James I's son and heir, and the Infanta of Spain:

Murder, mayhem, and religion fustrate the royal courtship that, through love, seeks to make peace between warring enemies England and Spain:
A novel based on actual events.

In 1623 Charles, heir to the throne of England, dons a disguise, crosses the Channel, rides horseback across France, and sneaks into Madrid, capital of England’s proud Catholic enemy, Spain.

His mission? To woo the lovely María, sister of the King of Spain, and accomplish by marriage what decades of war have failed to do: reconcile the two embittered nations.

Once Charles and María meet, neither palace intrigues nor bloody murders cool their growing attraction. One thing alone prevents their union: María’s Catholic Faith . . . which she will not abandon and England cannot abide.

Yes, Charles’s marriage to Catholic María would briefy unite the kingdoms, but could soon destroy the monarchy. Outraged at the prospect of a Catholic queen, Charles’s Puritan subjects are sure to rise up and take from him not only his throne, but even his life . . . and María’s . . . plunging Europe into warfare greater than any seen before.

From detailed records of this actual love’s gambit author Brennan Pursell has crafted a moving novel of faith, courage, danger, and hope, a tale in which the fate of nations hangs on the love of two young people: Prince Charles of England and Princess María of Spain.

Here is an interview with the author and here is an excerpt from novel.

There is a connection for the Sunday Shrine series--the Queen's Chapel at the Palace/Court of St. James, originally built for the use of the Infanta, but then used by Henrietta Maria, Charles I's French Queen. It was designed by Inigo Jones, but Henrietta Maria supervised some Baroque decoration. Diane Purkiss discusses the Catholic Reformation motives behind these improvements in her book, The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain starting on page 30 in this preview from Google Books.