Preview: Saint Edmund Campion, SJ in Father Bowden's "Mementoes"

There are many reasons to admire, imitate and be inspired by Saint Edmund Campion, SJ: his intelligence, his courage, his care for his flock (he went back to a house to minister to the Catholics there and was thus captured), his ability to defend the teachings of the Church, and of course, his holiness, well attested by his martyrdom. 

Thus it's no surprise that Father Henry Sebastian Bowden mentions Campion 20 (twenty) times in his Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day in the Year, not counting the poem Saint Henry Walpole, SJ wrote about his mentor in martyrdom (Campion's blood splashed on Walpole and he left London to study for the priesthood and return to England as a missionary and martyr) included as an appendix ("Why do I use my paper, ynke and penne?") 

And it's no surprise that we'll look at what Father Bowden says about Campion's martyrdom in our next segment on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, December 4.

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time at about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, the last segment in the second national hour on EWTN Radio. Please listen live here and/or catch the podcast later here.

I chose the most dramatic of the mementoes Father Bowden offers, the description of the day of Campion's martyrdom, December 1, 1581, with the title "A Sight to God and Man" because of the richness of the details in the account. As we read the description, we can try to imagine what that day was like, as though we are witnessing it:

In the splash and mud of a wet December morning, Campion was led forth from the Tower, still in his old gown of Irish frieze. Undaunted he saluted the vast crowd, saying, “God save you all, gentlemen! God bless you and make you all good Catholics!” 

Irish frieze was a coarse, woven woolen cloth, very durable, with the nap left on one side. This garment would have been stripped from Campion once his execution began. On his way to a horrible death, Campion is both undaunted and loyal to his mission as a Catholic priest: to offer blessings and good will.

After kneeling in prayer he was strapped on the hurdle, Sherwin and Briant being together bound on a second hurdle. They were dragged at the horses’ tails through the gutter and filth, followed by an insulting crowd of ministers and rabble. 

Saint Ralph Sherwin, SJ (31 years old) and Saint Alexander Briant (25 years old) had been imprisoned, tortured, and tried at the same as Campion (41 years old). They and other Catholic priests had been accused of complicity in the Rome and Reims Plot, an invention of the Court. The gutters and streets would have been wet, and dirty not just from mud but from horses' dung and other waste. That was below them; above them were insults and curses.

Still some Catholics were consoled by a word from him, and one gentleman, like Veronica on another Via Dolorosa, most courteously wiped his face all spattered with mire and filth. Passing under the arch of Newgate, whereon still stood an image of Our Lady, Campion raised himself and saluted the Queen of Heaven, whom he hoped so soon to see. 

These two gestures of honor, one to comfort Campion and the other to show devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, are moving intervals as the martyrs are drawn to brutal executions.

At the gallows he began with a sweet firm voice, “Spectaculum facti sumus Deo Angelis et hominibus,”* but the Sheriffs interrupted him, and urged him to confess his treason. He repeatedly maintained his innocence, and having declined to join in prayer with the ministers, asked all Catholics for a Credo for him in his agony, and while again professing his loyalty to the Queen he went to his reward.

Campion begins by citing the verse Father Bowden includes in this memento, from St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians: *“ We are made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.”—1 Cor. 5:9. 

In his biography of Saint Edmund Campion, Richard Simpson cited the martyr's last words:

"I am a Catholic man and a priest; in that faith have I lived, and in that faith do I intend to die. If you esteem my religion treason, then am I guilty; as for other treason, I never committed any, God is my judge. But you have now what you desire. I beseech you to have patience, and suffer me to speak a word or two for discharge of my conscience."

He was not allowed to continue and his execution was almost another trial as he was questioned again about his loyalty to the Pope as the head of the Catholic Church and/or to the Queen of England. His final statement was:

"Wherein have I offended her? In this I am innocent. This is my last speech; in this give me credit — I have and do pray for her." Then the Lord Charles Howard asked of him for which queen he prayed, whether for Elizabeth the queen. To whom he answered, "Yea, for Elizabeth, your queen and my queen, unto whom I wish a long quiet reign with all prosperity."

Then he was stripped, hanged until barely conscious, eviscerated, beheaded, and quartered. During this agony, his blood splashed on the bystander, Henry Walpole. Then Sherwin and Briant endured the same agony. 

How long could I -- or you -- have watched it?

He and his companions, and Henry Walpole, were canonized among the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope St. Paul VI in Rome on October 25, 1970.

Saint Edmund Campion, pray for us!
Saint Ralph Sherwin, pray for us!
Saint Alexander Briant, pray for us!
Saint Henry Walpole, pray for us!

Preview: Another Confessor, George Gilbert and "The Catholic Association"

Just a reminder, when Father Henry Sebastian Bowden included Confessors in the title of his Mementoes, men and women who suffered for their loyalty to the Catholic Faith during the long English Reformation but did not suffer martyrdom, he is not indicating that these Confessors are Beatified or Canonized Saints. (Blesseds and Saints are either martyrs or confessors), so there could be some confusion.

On Monday, October 2, we'll discuss another Confessor, George Gilbert, SJ, in our continuing series on the Son Rise Morning Show. So I'll be on at my usual time, around 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, to talk with Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim about George Gilbert, SJ, and The Catholic Association he formed with the approval of Pope Gregory XIII (at left). Please listen live here or find the podcast later here.

The Catholic Association was a group of brave, young Catholic men of land and fortune who dedicated themselves to raising funds to support the missionary priests, to help those missionary priests with the contacts they needed to, as safely as possible, celebrate the Sacraments with the recusant, underground Catholic community.  As the Catholic Encyclopedia explains in the entry for another member of the Association, Stephen Brinkley, 

The members undertook to content themselves with the bare necessaries of their state of life, to spend the remainder of their goods in the cause of the Church, and to devote themselves wholly to the salvation of souls and the conversion of heretics.

They did so at a particularly dangerous time for Catholics in England as the great Jesuit missionary martyrs St. Edmund Campion, St. Robert Southwell, and other Jesuit missionaries Father Robert Parsons, Henry Garnet, and John Gerard, were coming to England. Stephen Brinkley helped Father Edmund Campion print and distribute his Decem Rationes (Ten Reasons), producing them at a hidden press in the Stonor House so they were placed on benches of St. Mary's the Virgin in Oxford in 1581, the year of Campion's imprisonment, torture, disputations on the Decem Rationes, trial, and execution. Brinkley was also arrested and tortured that year.

As Father Bowden describes George Gilbert, he was:

OF an old Suffolk family, possessed of a large fortune, a Puritan by profession, he followed in his youth the life of a gay cavalier. Going abroad, however, his eyes were opened to the faith, and he was reconciled by Father Parsons at Rome. Returning to England, he devoted himself to the services of the missionary priests, and formed for this purpose, with Lord Henry Howard, Lord Oxford, Mr. Southwell, Lord Paget, and other young men, a " Catholic Association," which was solemnly blessed by Pope Gregory XIII, on April 14, 1580. The members promised to imitate the lives of the Apostles, and to devote themselves wholly to the salvation of souls and the conversion of heretics. They were to be content with the necessaries of their state, and to bestow all the rest for the good of the Catholic cause. They supplied the priests with altar requisites, with horses, and various changes of apparel, and disguised themselves as grooms or servants and escorted the priests through the country from house to house. To Gilbert is due the first idea of the frescoes of the English martyrs in the English College, Rome. He was admitted to the Society of Jesus on his death-bed.

The Catholic Association found danger very quickly, as the arrests of 1581 led Parsons, Brinkley, and Gilbert to leave England. The Dictionary of National Biography provides these details, showing that Gilbert continued to work for Catholics in England in exile:

Proceeding afterwards to Rome, he entered the English College as a pensioner, and devoted himself to promoting the catholic (sic) cause in England. Gregory XIII frequently consulted him on a matter of high importance that necessitated his going to France. Gilbert was so eager about his preparations for departure that he was seized with a fever, which terminated fatally on 6 Oct. 1583. While on his deathbed he was admitted into the Society of Jesus. The pope declared that his death would be a serious blow to Catholicism in England. 

Gilbert incurred great expense by covering the walls of the English College at Rome with frescoes of the English martyrs.. . .

In a way, Gilbert's greatest service to the Jesuit and other priests may have been those frescoes of the English martyrs in the Venerabile in Rome (the Venerable English College). They were important to the Cause of the Martyrs of England and Wales, as evidence of a cult of devotion and veneration. Engravings of the frescoes were collected after Gilbert's death on October 6, 1583, by a Marian era priest, Father William Good, SJ in a volume titled Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea (The trophies of the English Church). Among the martyrdoms pictured: Saints Edmund Campion SJ, Alexander Briant SJ, and Ralph Sherwin, on December 1, 1581.

Father Bowden chose a verse from the Acts of the Apostles to accompany this confessor's memento (4:32):

And the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul: neither did any one say that aught of the things which he possessed, was his own; but all things were common unto them.

May George Gilbert and other members of the Catholic Association rest in the peace of Christ.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Pope Gregory XIII attributed to Bartolomeo Passarotti

Image Credit (Public Domain): Execution of Edmund Campion, Alexander Briant and Ralph Sherwin: engraving by Giovanni Battista Cavalieri (after Niccolò Circignani's frescoes in the chapel of the Venerable English College in Rome), and published in Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea (Rome 1584). Stonyhurst Collections

Preview: Saint Philip Howard and the Jesuit Connection

Anna Mitchell of the Son Rise Morning Show asked me to come on their second EWTN hour on Monday, October 18 at my usual time (about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central) to talk about the feasts of St. Philip Howard and of the North American Martyrs on October 19. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate.

There is a connection between this English lay martyr in chains in the Tower of London and these Jesuit missionaries in North America: the Jesuit Connection.

St. Philip Howard died on October 19, 1595, condemned to death at a time and date of Queen Elizabeth I's pleasure, found guilty of praying for the success of the Spanish Armada. 

It was the influence of two English Jesuit missionaries--and his own wife's faith--that brought Howard to the Tower and his long imprisonment (1585-1595): St. Edmund Campion, SJ and Father William Weston, SJ.

First, he witnessed one of Saint Edmund Campion's debates with the Anglican divines in the Tower of London in 1581, based on Campion's "Decem Rationes" (Ten Reasons). Campion did so well in proving his case in these debates that he never had the opportunity to go through all his Ten Reasons. Howard was impressed by Campion's brilliance and convinced that the Anglicans, while being unfair (they had books and Campion didn't; they could ask questions and Campion couldn't) hadn't proved the Jesuit wrong. Certainly, Campion had made Howard think about the Catholic Church.

Second, Howard was reconciled to the Catholic Church by Father William Weston, SJ on September 30, 1584 at Arundel Castle in Sussex. At the same time, Howard reconciled with his wife Anne and became a devoted husband.

Howard tried to leave England, knowing that he was not welcome at Court because of his conversion (which showed in his changed behavior). He was arrested at sea in 1585 and imprisoned in the Tower. His wife was pregnant with their second child, the son he would never see.

There's a third Jesuit connection during his imprisonment: another martyr, St. Robert Southwell, SJ, who was Anne's chaplain, wrote An Epistle of Comfort for him. When Southwell was held in the Tower before his execution, Howard and he communicated through messages carried by Howard's dog.

Saint Philip Howard died of dysentery on October 19, 1595. He is now buried in the Cathedral of Our Lady and St. Philip Howard in Arundel. His wife, Anne Howard, the Countess of Arundel died on April 19, 1630 when she was 73 years old. She never remarried after his death and struggled to survive during Elizabeth I's reign; King James I restored her jointure lands, which she'd received as her own when she married, so that solved some of her financial troubles.

As to the Northern American or Canadian Martyrs, they aren't just connected to the Society of Jesus, they are Jesuits:

• Saint Rene Goupil (lay brother), martyred in 1642
• Saint Isaac Jogues and Saint Jean de Lalande, martyred in 1646
• Saint Antoine Daniel, in 1648, 
• Saints Jean de Brebeuf, Noel Chabanel, Charles Garnier, and Gabriel Lalement, in 1649

Unlike the Jesuit priests and martyrs who returned to England after study on the Continent, ministering to hidden Catholics, wearing disguises, sought by authorities for treason, these French Jesuits prepared for missions to the Native Americans, the Algonquins and Hurons, etc. As this panegyric to their efforts proclaims:

Members of the Society of Jesus who dedicated themselves to the conversion of the American Indians took Christ’s words very literally. They journeyed from Renaissance France to the frontiers of North America that they might preach and baptize. After pouring the saving waters of Baptism on a dying Indian child, Saint John de Brebeuf, the great pioneer of this mission, exclaimed with joy, “For this one single occasion I would travel all the way from France; I would cross the great ocean to win one little soul for Our Lord!” And so pleased was God with the genuine zeal and the extraordinary sacrifices of these Jesuit apostles that He bestowed upon Father Brebeuf and seven of his fellow missionaries the glorious crown of martyrdom. . . .

The Society of Jesus had been founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola during the turbulent times following the Protestant Revolution. By the dawning of the seventeenth century the Jesuits had won renown as zealous missionaries and ardent defenders of the Catholic Faith.

The Order was still at the peak of its power, prestige, and holiness when a new mission field began to unfold. France, eldest daughter of the Church, was beginning to colonize North America, and the vast untamed regions of the New World were inhabited by pagan natives who had never before been evangelized.

They achieved some success among the Hurons, learning their language, living with them, and were martyred, mostly, by the Iroquois, who were constant enemies of the Huron, after horrendous torture.

This is beyond the scope of our discussion on Monday, but I should mention here that English Jesuits were still suffering arrest and execution in their native land in approximately the same years as these eight North American martyrs:

Blessed Thomas Holland in 1642

Blessed Ralph Corby in 1644

Saint Henry Morse in 1645

Blessed Peter Wright in 1651

(All at Tyburn.) I don't know if these English and French Jesuits would have ever met on the Continent; the English had separate colleges and seminaries established for them. There's another research topic!

Saint Philip Howard, pray for us!

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us!

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us!

Saint Jean de Lalande, pray for us!

Saint Antoine Daniel, pray for us!

Saint Jean de Brebeuf, , pray for us!

Saint Noel Charbanel, pray for us! 

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us!

Saint Gabriel Lalement, pray for us!

This Morning: Sts. Owen and Garnet, SJ on the Son Rise Morning Show

Just a reminder that I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to continue our series on the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales. Anna Mitchell and I will discuss Saint Nicholas Owen, SJ and Saint Thomas Garnet, SJ.

Please listen live here on the Sacred Heart Radio website; the podcast will be archived here; the segment will be repeated on Friday next week during the EWTN hour of the Son Rise Morning Show (from 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. Eastern/5:00 to 6:00 a.m. Central).

As I commented Friday, Nicholas Owen was the master-engineer and builder of priest-holes or priest-hides (and other hiding places) in recusant Catholic's homes. He worked alone and secretly to construct these hiding places. Many of them have been found, but probably not all: Britain Magazine lists the Top Five.

Father Henry Garnet, SJ, Saint Thomas Garnet's uncle, was also captured on January 23, 1606. He has not been beatified or canonized I presume because of questions about his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot. According to the old Catholic Encyclopedia (1909): 

It is a matter of regret that we have as yet nothing like an authoritative pronouncement from Rome on the subject of Garnet's martyrdom. His name was indeed proposed with that of the other English Martyrs and Confessors in 1874, and his cause was then based upon the testimonies of Bellarmine and the older Catholic writers, which was the correct plea for the proof of Fama Martyrii, then to be demonstrated. But these ancient authorities are not acquainted with Garnet's actual confessions which were not known or published in their time. The consequence was that, as the discussion proceeded, their evidence was found to be inconclusive, and an open verdict was returned; thus his martyrdom was held to be neither proved nor disproved. This of course led to his cause being "put off" (dilatus) for further inquiry, which involves in Rome a delay of many years. 

The Jesuits in Britain offer this biography:

Henry Garnet was born in 1555 in Derbyshire. He travelled to Rome to become a Jesuit in 1575 and after studying and teaching for 11 years, returned as a missionary to England in 1586,a period of extreme danger for Catholics.  Garnet’s brethren were regularly betrayed and arrested, tortured and executed.  Victims included Robert Southwell, with whom Garnet had travelled to England, and William Weston, the only other Jesuit in England at the time of his return.  Garnet thus became superior of the English mission.   He ministered secretly to recusant Catholics, moving from safe house to safe house at great risk, to celebrate the sacraments and the principal liturgical events.  When he became aware of plots against the Crown, he consistently advised against them.  In 1604 he told the authorities of what became known as the Bye Plot, foiled mainly through his intervention.  A year later he became aware of the much more serious Gunpowder Plot through information given under the seal of confession.  Once all the main conspirators had been tried and condemned and therefore unable to given evidence, Garnet, with four companions, was finally captured at Hindlip Hall, Worcestershire.  He was tried and executed in May 1606, despite lack of any evidence that he was a conspirator. 

Father Henry Garnet, SJ was executed by hanging, drawing, and quartering on May 3, 1606. Catholic spectators at his execution regarded him as a martyr. There was a famous relic--lost during the French Revolution--of a bloodstained husk of straw on which some saw Garnet's image. It's depicted on his portrait above.

Preview: Saints Nicholas Owen and Thomas Garnet, SJ

On Monday, September 21, we'll move on in our Son Rise Morning Show series highlighting the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales to the reign of James I of England who succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603. Anna Mitchell and I will discuss Saint Nicholas Owen, the Jesuit lay brother and Saint Thomas Garnet, SJ, two Jesuits who suffered martyrdom in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot.

Catholics in England had hoped for some tolerance and leniency from King James VI of Scotland as he travelled south to take his new throne and crown, uniting the kingdoms of Scotland and England in his personal rule. They were disappointed, however, when he continued to impose the same fines and restrictions on them and some Catholics plotted against the King, his family, and Parliament to murder them, lead an uprising, and place one of James I's daughter on the throne as a figurehead--the Gunpowder Plot, discovered on November 5, 1605. The plotters were either killed as they tried to escape or arrested, tried, and executed for treason, most famous among them, Guy Fawkes, the gunpowder expert.

As a result of this discovered Plot, stricter laws were passed against Catholics and a nation-wide search for Jesuits and other priests began, since the Jesuits were supposed to have contrived in the Plot. Father Henry Garnet, SJ, the uncle of Saint Thomas Garnet, SJ was among those who were executed with the plotters.

Saints Owen and Garnet are among those who were arrested, questioned, and tortured in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot. Saint Nicholas Owen died under torture in the Tower of London on March 22, 1606; Saint Thomas Garnet was hanged, drawn, and quartered on June 23, 1608.

Owen had been captured on January 23, 1606 along with Blessed Edward Oldcorne, Blessed Ralph Ashley, and Father Henry Garnet when they had all finally emerged from their hiding places at Hindlip Hall. The pursuivants who had searched the house for days didn't find them, but the four Jesuits were suffering hunger and thirst. The Jesuits in Britain website notes this about him:

Many of the martyrs of England died very public deaths on the scaffold of Tyburn, but Nicholas died as he had lived; in secret. We have no memorable saying of his to meditate on – his priest holes, which are his wordless prayers, are all that remain. Nicholas in his agonised, furtive death had finished with all concealment and disguises and was welcomed by Campion and all the martyrs into a fellowship where there is no use for human language.

We do, however, have the record of what he said under torture in 1606:

He confesses that he has known and sometimes attended Henry Garnett, the Provincial of the Jesuits for around four years.

He confesses that he was at the house of Thomas Throgmorton called Coughton at the beginning of November last year, when the Lady Digby was there and by the watch that was in town they knew that Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy, and the rest of the gun powder plotters were up in arms.

That on All Saints Day last year, Garnett said Mass at Coughton House, and that at that Mass there were around half a dozen people.

That Henry Garnett was at Henlipp, the house of Thomas Abington some six weeks before he was apprehended and Hall the Jesuit was there about three days before the house of Mr Abington was searched.

That while he was staying with Garnett, he made his fire and served him and that both he and Garnett hid in a secret room below the dining room.

As the Jesuit website notes:

There was no new information in these confessions and the authorities lost patience. The tortures became more violent and on the next day, despite a plate they had fitted around Nicholas to prevent the torture further damaging his pre-existing injuries, Nicholas died, quite literally broken apart by the torture.

The authorities were now in an awkward position. Not only had they been torturing illegally an already injured man, but they had murdered him before extracting a confession. A cover up was swiftly arranged with an inquest returning a verdict of suicide.

The cover up was as bad as the crime and Catholics did not believe that Owen would have committed suicide.

Saint Thomas Garnet was not executed as a direct result of the Gunpowder Plot aftermath, but he was arrested, questioned, and tortured in 1605 by the authorities because he was Father Henry Garnet's nephew. They wanted to know more about Henry Garnet's involvement in the Plot. Thomas Garnet was eventually released and exiled in 1606. The Jesuits in Singapore tell Saint Thomas Garnet's early life story on their website:

St. Thomas Garnet was born in 1574 at Southwark, England as the son of an Oxford don. Because Catholic colleges had been turned over to aggressive Protestants, young Thomas went to the continent in 1593 to attend the newly opened Jesuit college at Saint Omer.

Garnet's father Richard Garnet was at Balliol College at Oxford when restrictions were being placed on any students who seemed to be leaning toward Catholicism. The Catholic Encyclopedia praises him: "and by his constancy gave great edification to the generation of Oxford men which was to produce Campion, Persons and so many other champions of Catholicism." Garnet studied at Saint Omer and returned to England in 1595 only because his ship on the way to Valladolid was diverted to the shores of England by a storm. He and his companions were held by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, and encouraged to conform to the Church of England. He eventually escaped and returned to the Continent.

Thomas studied for the priesthood at the College at Valladolid in Spain and was ordained in 1599; he returned to England and, as noted above, was caught up in the Gunpowder Plot investigation. When he was exiled in 1606, he and the other priests onboard a ship set for Flanders (Belgium) were warned that they would be executed if they returned to England.

As the College of Saint Alban's in Valladolid describes his last visit to England and his martyrdom:

The following year, however, he returned surreptitiously to England, where he was betrayed for being a priest. In November 1607, he was intensively interrogated for the Protestant Bishop of London by Sir Thomas Wade, the superintendent of the keep and a renowned torturer of priests. However, having refused to answer Wade’s questions nor make the new anti-Catholic oath of loyalty, Father Thomas was moved to the Old Bailey prison.

He refused an opportunity given to him by Catholics to escape, choosing to obey an inner voice that said to him “Noli fuguere”(“Don’t flee”). Condemned for his priesthood, he was stripped, hung, drawn and quartered at the gallows in Tyburn, London on June 23 1608.

Saint Nicholas Owen, pray for us!

Saint Thomas Garnet, pray for us!

A Marian Era Priest: Blessed Thomas Woodhouse

I'll post my preview for Monday's episode of our Son Rise Morning Show series tomorrow: Saint Richard Reynolds of Syon Abbey and Saint John Stone of the Austin Friars House in Canterbury will be our subjects!

Blessed Thomas Woodhouse is claimed by the Jesuits as their English Recusant era protomartyr because he was accepted into the order the year before his execution. According to the Singapore Jesuit website:

Fr Thomas Woodhouse was the first Jesuit to die for Christ in the conflict between the Catholic Church and the English monarchy between 1573 and 1679. Very little is known about his life prior to his imprisonment under Elizabeth I. He was born in England and was ordained probably in 1558, during the final year of the reign of Mary Tudor, the Catholic queen. He could not accept Elizabeth I who instituted religious reforms, including a non-Catholic prayer book, together with the 1559 decree declaring her supremacy in matters of religion. He resigned his parish position in Lincolnshire in 1560 and became tutor to the children of a wealthy family in Wales. He later left this position because of religious differences.

He was caught saying Mass, violating the law, on May 14, 1561 and held in prison for 12 years, able to minister to many Catholics and others in prison. Remember that prisons at this time in England were not run by the government and funded by tax dollars, they were run on a pay as you go basis by proprietary prison keepers. Prisoners had to pay their keep; somehow Father Woodhouse received enough donations to pay his room and board in prison.

Fr Woodhouse continued to celebrate Mass whenever he could, despite laws against the Catholic Mass and was arrested on May 14, 1561, while at Mass. He was imprisoned in London’s Fleet Prison where he spent the next twelve years. He was able to develop an apostolate to other prisoners because the prison officials were quite tolerant. He brought some of the inmates back to the Church. He also wrote short essays which he tied to a stone and threw them out whenever he saw a suitable individual pass his cell window. In 1572, he wrote to the Jesuit provincial in Paris as there was no Jesuit mission in England, requesting to enter the Society of Jesus. He was accepted. In his enthusiasm, he wrote a letter to William Cecil, the queen’s treasurer asking him to persuade the queen to accept the pope’s authority. Instead of doing what Fr Woodhouse asked, Cecil ordered him to be brought to trial on June 16, 1573 at Guildhall and when he repeatedly refused to acknowledge the judges’ authority and contested the competence of a secular tribunal to try a priest on religious matters, he was found guilty of high treason and was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.

His act of treason was denying the Queen's supremacy, which he had denied with that letter to William Cecil, urging Elizabeth to return to the Church and accept Papal authority. 

Fr Woodhouse met a martyr’s death three days after his trial at Tyburn. He was the second priest, but the first Jesuit, to be executed in England on religious grounds. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on Dec 9, 1886.

The first priest "to be executed in England on religious grounds" was Blessed Thomas Plumtree.

More about Blessed Thomas Woodhouse here.

Jesuits Land in Virginia: A Spanish Mission

You might remember several years ago the news about graves found in the ruins of the Church of England chapel in the Jamestown Colony: there were indications that one of the men buried there, Captain Gabriel Archer, might have have been a secret Catholic or a crypto-Catholic, as he had what researchers thought was a reliquary. I haven't seen any update to this story or new information about the provenance of that object.

But here's another story about Catholics in Virginia: today is the anniversary of the landing of Jesuit missionaries in the lower Chesapeake Peninsulas to establish the Ajacan Mission in 1570--37 years before the English colony at Jamestown. According to this website the mission was:

Located possibly on the Rappahannock or the Potomac River but more likely between the King and the Queen Creeks where they empty into the York River, this mission was the result of a second attempt by Spain to extend its domination of North America into the Chesapeake Bay, or as they called it, Bahía de Santa María, or Bahía de Madre de Dios.

The first attempt had been made in August 1566, when two Dominican friars and thirty-seven Spanish and Portuguese soldiers sailed to that area, called Ajacán by their guide and interpreter, Don Luis de Velasco, a converted, hispaniolized Algon­quian Indian who had been taken from the area on an earlier voyage in 1561. While searching for a landing site, Don Luis claimed to not recognize the sur­round­ings, and after a strong storm arrived, this first attempt was abandoned.

On 10 September 1570, the members of the second colonizing expedition, after making their first landfall probably at either Cape Henry, Point Comfort, or the southeastern tip of present-day Newport News, decided to disembark at what may have been College Creek, just east of James­town, and travel by smaller boat and foot to their preferred site on the York River. The colonists consisted of two Jesuit priests, including Father Juan Baptista de Segura as leader, one other priest, three Jesuit brothers, three lay catechists, the young son of a Spanish colonist from Santa Elena (present-day Parris Island, South Carolina), and Don Luis de Velasco, once again as guide and interpreter. They arrived at an inopportune time in that the Indians whose territory they chose to settle were experiencing a drought, and food was in short supply. Having to rely on the local inhabitants for sustenance, many of whom had left the area to search for food elsewhere, the Jesuits soon became more of an irritant than an inspiration, especially to Don Luis.

Except for the young son of a Spanish colonist, Alonso de Olmos, the rest of the party was murdered either by Don Luis or the nearby Native American Indians on February 9, 1571. A later Spanish military expedition rescued de Olmos, tried to find Don Luis, and tried & execution some of the Indians for the murder of Jesuits.

After receiving a report from Father Juan Rogel in 1572 about the situation, Jesuit Superior General, Saint Francis Borgia determined not to pursue missions in the area since the Spanish military didn't intend to colonize the region either. That had been an issue when Father de Segura at first wanted to go to Virginia, according to this website, because he did not the military presence to force the Indians to become Catholic (influenced by example of Bartolomé de las Casas):

Segura insisted, against the advice of Florida governor Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, that the Jesuits did not need military protection on their mission. He instead placed his faith in Don Luís, who promised that the land he called Ajacán would be rich in potential converts and natural resources.

The Cause for Beatification and Canonization for the eight martyrs--Fathers Juan Bautista de Segura, Jesuit vice provincial of Havana, Cuba, and Luis de Quiros, former head of the Jesuit college among the Moors in Spain, three were Jesuit brothers and three novices--was opened in the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Virginia in 2003. 

Saint Edmund Arrowsmith, SJ

Saint Edmund Arrowsmith, SJ, is one of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales. From the Jesuits in Britain:

Edmund Arrowsmith was born in Lancashire in 1585.  His mother was a member of the Gerard family – prominent recusants who included Fr John Gerard and Bl Miles Gerard.  His parents were imprisoned for adherence to the faith and he and his siblings were taken in by neighbours.

In 1605 he enrolled at the English College, Douai.  He was ordained at Arras in December 1612, returning to Lancashire the following year to carry out priestly ministry in secret.  Stonyhurst College still holds the small trunk of vestments and equipment which he carried from house to house.  He was arrested in 1622, but released the following year on an amnesty from King James. He joined the Jesuits in 1624.

In 1628 Edmund was betrayed to the authorities and was convicted of being a Roman Catholic priest.  He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Lancaster on 28th August, now his feast day.

Edmund was beatified in 1929 and canonized as one of the Forty Martyrs by Pope Paul VI in1970. His hand was preserved by his family and it now rests in the Church of St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith, Ashton-in-Makerfield.  

That parish hosts an annual pilgrimage Mass to venerate the martyr's Holy Hand (it was held on Sunday, August 25 this year)!

His last words were "O Bone Jesu!" (O Good Jesus!), the first words of a sequence of psalms attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, sung here by The Sixteen in Robert Parson's Latin motet:

O good Jesus.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him.’ O Lord.
Into your hands I commit my spirit: deliver me, Lord God of truth. O Messiah.
I have spoken: Lord, make me know my end. O Holy One.
And what is the number of my days: that I may know what is lacking in me. O my God.
You have broken my bonds: I will offer you the sacrifice of praise and call on the name of our Lord. O Emmanuel.
I have no refuge; no one cares for my life. O Christ.
I have cried to you, O Lord, I have said, ‘You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living.’ O our King.
Give me a sign of your goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put to shame, for you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me. O teacher.
You have let the light of your face shine on us: you have filled my heart with joy. Amen.

St. Edmund Arrowsmith, pray for us!

Another Jesuit Martyr's Christmas Hymn

Saint Robert Southwell (1561 to February 21, 1595) is the famous Jesuit martyr who wrote a great Christmas poem, "The Burning Babe", but Saint Jean de Brébeuf (March 25, 1593 to March 16, 1649), one of the North American Jesuit martyrs, also wrote a poem for Christmas, set to a French tune (Une Jeune Pucelle). He wrote the poem in Wendat, the Huron's language. This version includes the hymn in Wendat, French, and English. The most commonly used translation is by Jesse Edgar Middleton:

'Twas in the moon of winter-time
When all the birds had fled,
That mighty Gitchi Manitou
Sent angel choirs instead;
Before their light the stars grew dim,
And wandering hunter heard the hymn:

Refrain:
"Jesus your King is born, Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria."

Within a lodge of broken bark
The tender Babe was found,
A ragged robe of rabbit skin
Enwrapp'd His beauty round;
But as the hunter braves drew nigh,
The angel song rang loud and high. Refrain

O children of the forest free,
O sons of Manitou,
The Holy Child of earth and heaven
Is born today for you.
Come kneel before the radiant Boy
Who brings you beauty, peace and joy. Refrain

This website discusses some controversy about the hymn, but the controversy really centers not on the original, but on the Middleton translation:

The first claim is that the song uses broad generalizations that depict a Western idealized image of native cultures. Some see this as Western culture appropriating native images and slotting them into a Western religious story. Others argue the images are not of native cultures at all, but just Western interpretations of what native culture should look like. In particular, people point out the images of "broken bark" and "ragged robe of rabbit skin", and phrases like "people of the forest free".

The second issue is that the song confuses different native cultures. For example, "Gitchi Manitou" is an Algonquian word for "Great Spirit", which is a different language group from Huron/Iroquoian language.

Thirdly, some critics say the Huron Carol is a tool to convert people from one set of beliefs to another. The very act of trying to change someone's religion is seen as disrespectful to that person's beliefs. Meanwhile, the use of traditional beliefs to convey a different religious meaning can be seen as deceptive.

The author then notes that a more exact translation reveals Brebeuf's knowledge of the Huron culture and his efforts to convey his love for Jesus, sharing instead of imposing. 

Like St. Robert Southwell, St. Jean de Brebeuf suffered greatly during his martyrdom, as summarized by Bert Ghezzi:

In 1649, the Iroquois attacked the Huron village where John was living. They brutally martyred him, Gabriel Lalement, his companion, and their converts. Their suffering is indescribable: bludgeoned, burned with red-hot hatchets, baptized with boiling water, mutilated, flesh stripped off and eaten, hearts plucked out and devoured. 

St. Robert Southwell, pray for us!

St. Jean de Brebeuf, pray for us!

Best wishes for a happy, holy, and Merry Christmas!

Blessed Thomas Holland, SJ: Acts of Faith, Hope and Love

From The Jesuit Curia in Rome:

Thomas Holland (1600-1642) suffered from poor health during the whole of the seven years he spent in active ministry in his native England. Despite his suffering he fearlessly moved around London to bring the sacraments to Catholics during a period of oppression.

He was born in Lancashire and attended the English College at Saint-Omer in Flanders for six years. He moved to Valladolid, Spain, in August 1621, to attend the English College there and then returned to Flanders in 1624 so that he could enter the Jesuits. He did his novitiate and theological study in Flanders and was ordained there before being assigned to be the spiritual director of the scholastics at Saint-Omer. In 1635 he was assigned to the English mission in the hope that his native air would meliorate the poor health he had begun to suffer.

The conditions in which he had to live in England made his health worse, not better. He had to stay indoors all day and travel only at night because of the danger of arrest by priest-hunters. The hardships he endured caused a loss of appetite, which only worsened his condition. Ill health, however, did not keep from ministry; and he continued until his arrest on Oct. 4, 1642 on suspicion of being a priest. He was detained at New Prison in London for two weeks and then taken to Newgate at the time of his trial. No evidence could be put forth proving that he was a priest, and he had been very careful in prison not to be caught praying, but when the court asked him to swear that he was not a priest, he refused; the jury found him guilty and condemned him to die. The French ambassador offered to intervene to try to win his freedom, but Holland said he preferred martyrdom. Some Capuchin friends smuggled Mass supplies into prison so he could celebrate the Eucharist one last time. On the morning of Dec. 12 he was dragged to Tyburn to be executed. He prayed for those who had condemned him and for King Charles I, the royal family, parliament and the nation. He gave the hangman the little money he had, forgave him for what he was about to do and then was hanged until he was dead. His body was then beheaded and quartered and exposed on London bridge.

This Jesuit site provides more details about his execution and his beatification:

Fr Holland was dragged to Tyburn at mid-morning of the 12th and seeing a crowd had gathered in silence, he spoke: “I have been brought here to die a traitor, a priest and a Jesuit; but in truth none of these things has been proved.” Then mounting the cart, he placed the noose about his neck and told the people that he was truly a priest and a Jesuit and that he pardoned the judge and jury that had condemned him.. He recited his acts of faith, hope, charity and contrition and then prayed for King Charles I and the nation “for whose prosperity and conversion to the Catholic faith, if I had as many lives as there are hairs on my head, drops of water in the ocean, or stars in the firmament, I would most willingly sacrifice them all.” These words brought cheers from the crowd. He then forgave his executioner for what he is about to do and gave him the few coins he still had in his pocket.

With eyes closed in prayer, Fr Holland looked at a priest in the crowd and received absolution. [So he had opened his eyes!] After he was hanged, his body was beheaded and quartered and exposed on London Bridge. Fr Holland was only forty-two years of age and a Jesuit for eighteen years. Pope Pius XI beatified him on December 15, 1929.

Blessed Thomas Holland, pray for us!

Sir Philip Sidney and St. Edmund Campion

Sir Philip Sidney, courtier, diplomat, poet, and soldier, is known as the great champion of Elizabethan, Protestant England. But he had connections to someone who would become the most hunted man in England, Edmund Campion.

As this biography of Campion notes, Sidney met with Campion when visiting Prague, while the latter was studying for the priesthood in April, 1577:

Meanwhile Rudolph II had succeeded to the imperial throne; and the “magnificently provided” Envoy who was sent to[67] Prague, bearing the congratulations of Queen Elizabeth, was none other than Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney’s mind was set upon seeing his old friend Campion, and talking with him; but he managed only with difficulty to carry out his wishes. He went officially in the Emperor’s train to hear his friend (not yet in priest’s orders) preach, and on his return to England unguardedly spoke with delight of the sermon. Whenever Sidney visited the Continent he was supposed to become tainted with a hankering after Catholicism, though in all his public actions he was conspicuously Protestant. Campion, who knew him from boyhood and was not given to misjudgment, believed that he had almost won over the star of English chivalry: “this young man so wonderfully beloved and admired,” he calls him in 1576; a testimony doubly interesting, when we remember that Philip Sidney was then but three-and-twenty, to the effect which his short life made upon all his contemporaries. “He had much conversation with me,” Campion’s letter goes on, “and I hope not in vain, for to all appearances[68] he was most keen about it. I commend him to your remembrances at Mass, since he asked the prayers of all good men, and at the same time put into my hands alms to be distributed to the poor for him; this trust I have discharged.” He ends by hoping that some of the missionaries then going back to England from Douay will have “opportunity of watering this plant . . . poor wavering soul!” Fr. Parsons in his Life of Campion tells us that Sidney “professed himself convinced, but said that it was necessary for him to hold on the course which he had hitherto followed.” Such was the sad answer of Felix to St. Paul.

Sidney and Campion had met before, of course, since Sidney had accompanied Elizabeth to Oxford when Campion had made his great impression on the queen and had earned the patronage of Sidney's uncle, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Sidney had also studied at Oxford while Campion was a Fellow at St. John's and Proctor. Edmund Campion had served in Sidney's father's household in Ireland, where Sir Henry Sidney served as Elizabeth's Lord Deputy. Campion wrote his History of Ireland while in Sidney's service and had dedicated it to Leicester.

Katherine Duncan-Jones, a Somerville College Shakespeare Scholar, wrote a biography of Sidney in 1991 that Blair Worden appreciated in the London Review of Books (subscription required) in a review essay about Philip and Algernon Sidney:

Katherine Duncan-Jones’s Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet is the first major biography of its subject since 1915. Rarely is a scholarly book so spirited, or a spirited book so scholarly. Duncan-Jones’s learning, always profound and never advertised, is communicated with elegance and lightness of touch. She aims ‘not to debunk’ Sidney but to ‘summon him to life, spots and all’. Like so many of his family – not least Algernon – Philip had a querulous, at times violent character. He could also be a prig and a snob. And he could be deeply devious, a characteristic ruefully observed by a victim of it who remarked that Sidney had been bred up ‘at a bad school’, the school of the unscrupulous Leicester. On the credit side are his undoubted charm and affability and the breadth and discernment of his artistic and literary patronage. There is also a bottomless generosity, although here Duncan-Jones seems less clear-eyed than usual. He was indeed wonderfully generous, but with whose money? His mentor Hubert Languet apparently ate into his lifesavings to assist Philip’s gift-giving. On his deathbed Philip willed away endless possessions, and left Sir Francis Walsingham, his father-in-law and executor, to sink beneath the burden of Philip’s debts. . . .

Sidney’s religious beliefs interest Duncan-Jones more than his political ones. They nonetheless remain elusive. Her principal contribution is to emphasise his contacts and friendships with Roman Catholics, which appear to contradict the conventional picture of zealous Protestantism. Much is made of his ties with Edmund Campion, who hoped for Sidney’s conversion. I suspect that Sidney followed Leicester’s example and sought a power base across the religious boundaries even as he backed the party of forward Protestantism. Both in his life and in his art Duncan-Jones detects a growing religious intensity in the final years of Sidney’s life. When he went to the Netherlands the intensity acquired an apocalyptic strain, which seems to sit oddly beside his doctrinally liberal Platonism. How little we sometimes understand the theological equipment of the political thinkers of Early Modern England. The same puzzling combination would appear a century later, with so many of Philip’s characteristics, in his great-nephew Algernon.

Duncan-Jones also contributed an essay on Campion and Sidney to a collection edited by Thomas M. McCoog, SJ, The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits.

St. Edmund Arrowsmith, SJ

Today's English Catholic Martyr was raised in a recusant family and suffered much for his Catholic faith and his priesthood. Executed on the vigil of the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, it is interesting to note that his defense of holy matrimony brought about his final arrest. Like St. John the Baptist, speaking to Herod, he told one of his flock that his marriage was not valid and was betrayed.

According to this site, Catholic Online:

St. Edmund Arrowsmith (1585 - 1628) Edmund was the son of Robert Arrowsmith, a farmer, and was born at Haydock, England. He was baptized Brian, but always used his Confirmation name of Edmund. The family was constantly harrassed for its adherence to Catholicism, and in 1605 Edmund left England and went to Douai to study for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1612 and sent on the English mission the following year. He ministered to the Catholics of Lancashire without incident until about 1622, when he was arrested and questioned by the Protestant bishop of Chester. He was released when King James ordered all arrested priests be freed, joined the Jesuits in 1624, and in 1628 was arrested when betrayed by a young man he had censored for an incestuous marriage. He was convicted of being a Catholic priest, sentenced to death, and hanged, drawn, and quartered at Lancaster on August 28th. He was canonized as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI in 1970. His feast day is August 28th.

The Catholic Truth Society has published a biography of St. Edmund Arrowsmith as one of its Saints of the Isles Series.

He recited the prayer O bone Jesu (Oh, Good Jesus, have mercy on us; because you have created us, you have redeemed us through your most Precious Blood), on his way to execution. There is another version of the prayer, attributed to St. Bernard of of Clairvaux, sung here by The Sixteen conducted by Harry Christophers:

O bone Jesu. Illumina oculos meos,
ne unquam obdormiam in morte,
nequando dicat inimicus,
prevalui adversus eum.

O Adonai. In manus tuas, Domine,
commendo spiritum meum,
redemisti me, Domine Deus veritatis.

O Messias. Locutus sum in lingua mea,
notum fac mihi finem meum.

O Agios. Et numerum dierum meorum quis est,
ut sciam quid desit mihi.

O Heloi. Dirupisti Domine vincula mea,
tibi sacrificabo hostiam laudis,
et nomen Domini invocabo.

O Emmanuel. Periit fuga a me,
et non est qui requirat animam meam.

O Christe. Clamavi ad te, Domine, dixi,
tu es spes mea, portio mea in terra viventium.

O Rex noster. Fac mecum signum in bonum,
ut videant qui oderunt me, et confundantur,
quoniam tu Domine adiuvisti me,
et consolatus es me.

O Rabbi. Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine,
dedisti laetitiam in corde meo. Amen.

St. Thomas Garnet: Exile, Return, and Execution

From the Jesuits in Singapore website:

St. Thomas Garnet was born in 1574 at Southwark, England as the son of an Oxford don. Because Catholic colleges had been turned over to aggressive Protestants, young Thomas went to the continent in 1593 to attend the newly opened Jesuit college at Saint Omer.

Garnet's father Richard Garnet was at Balliol College at Oxford when restrictions were being placed on any students who seemed to be leaning toward Catholicism. The Catholic Encyclopedia praises him: "and by his constancy gave great edification to the generation of Oxford men which was to produce Campion, Persons and so many other champions of Catholicism." That generation of the Garnet family produced at least four religious vocations: Henry Garnet became a Jesuit and three girls, Margaret, Eleanor, and Anne braved exile to become nuns of the Augustinian convent in Louvain.

A storm in the English Channel caused Thomas and his companions to be captured by the English Navy who tried to force them to accept Elizabeth's religion. After months of abuse, they escaped. Later Thomas returned to England as a Jesuit.

His uncle, Fr. Henry Garnet, was superior of all Jesuits in England, and in charge of the entire network of priests working secretly among the Catholics who had refused to take the oath of Supremacy. Thomas Garnet worked near Warwickshire for six years, but his ministry ended with the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. The Jesuit martyrs of this time were known for their intelligence, joy, humor, and for their deep understanding of martyrdom as apostolic.

The gallows is the best pulpit anyone could ever preach from. A plot was hatched to break Thomas out of jail, but he wrote his superior asking that the plotters not try. He was martyred on 23 June 1608 in Tyburn, England by hanging. He was beatified in 1929 and canonized in 1970 with 39 other Martyrs of England & Wales.

On the scaffold he announced that he was the happiest man alive that day. His steadfastness in facing death impressed the crowds, so he was dead after hanging from Tyburn Tree before quartering and beheading. St. Thomas Garnet's missionary career during James I's reign shows the relative leniency of that king.

Because James wanted to preserve peace with Spain and France, Catholic countries he did not consistently target priests--and certainly not laity--for execution throughout his reign. Of course not every priest arrested during the reign of Elizabeth I was executed since some were held in Wisbech prison. Even after the terror of the Gunpowder Plot, Father Thomas Garnet, since nothing connected him then with any of the plotters, was (after torture) released into exile. 

Five Jesuit Martyrs; Victims of the Popish Plot

The Jesuits in Britain website gives some background to the Popish Plot, specifically how intra-Catholic conflict contributed to the anti-Jesuit, anti-Catholic conspiracy dreamed up by Titus Oates:

There were two separate forces behind the Popish Plot (known to some Catholics as the Presbyterian Plot). One was political. For many years the old Cromwellian Lord Shaftesbury and the puritan (Whig) faction had been stoking the fires of religious hatred against Catholics and France, in a long game to end absolute monarchy and once again to depose a king. Charles II openly favoured religious toleration of Catholics. This meant a significant minority in parliament always voted with the king. The Whigs therefore wanted to eliminate the Catholics in parliament. The Plot was constructed against the Catholics at court – the Queen, the Duke and Duchess of York, and their clergy, many of whom were Jesuits. The ultimate target, the King, exerted his energy to defend his Queen and his brother. He could not defend all the accused despite the clearly absurd nature of the accusations.

Non Jesuit Catholics were seeking an oath of allegiance to the King which could be accepted by Rome and allow them constitutional rights. Jesuits always blocked this, being unable to compromise their obedience to the pope. In this way they made an enemy of Dr. Sergeant, a secular Catholic priest – the secondary force which caught so many Jesuits in the plot. Early in the onset of hysteria Dr. Sergeant made false denunciations of Jesuits to the Privy Council which lent credence to the plotters. . . .

More on Father John Sergeant here, who seems to have been a contentious figure. This page on the Jesuits in Britain website includes his portrait.

On June 20, 1679, Fathers John Gavan, William Harcourt (aka William Barrow), Anthony Turner, Thomas Whitbread, and John Fenwick all suffered execution at Tyburn, but not without added drama:

Some of the first to be arrested were the Jesuits who had spurned Oates at St. Omer – William Ireland and Bl Thomas Whitbread who was English provincial. Fr Whitbread was tried in June 1679 alongside fellow Jesuits John Fenwick, John Gavan, William Harcourt and Anthony Turner. Fr Gavan, who was the spokesman, presented an eloquent defence. A brave group of Jesuit novices travelled from St. Omer to give evidence that Oates had been at St Omer's on crucial dates when he claimed to be in London witnessing Jesuit plotting. But the judges argued that as Catholic witnesses could receive a papal dispensation to lie on oath, they were not credible.

The five were hanged at Tyburn where the crowd stood in silence for an hour while each made a speech maintaining his innocence. On the scaffold they were offered the King’s pardon on condition they admit their guilt, but all refused.

Pope Pius XI beatified these five martyrs in 1929; St. Giles-in-the-Fields would be well-worth a visit on a pilgrimage to London, as they, and six other Popish Plot martyrs, are buried there. St. Oliver Plunkett was buried there but his remains have been moved:

Eleven Roman Catholics who were implicated in an alleged plot to kill Charles II were executed for treason at Tyburn and buried here in 1679 – William Ireland SJ and John Grove on 24 January, Lawrence Hill and Robert Greene on 21 February, Thomas Pickering, OSB on 21 May, Fr Thomas Whitebread SJ, Fr William Barrow (alias Harcourt) SJ, Fr John Fenwick, SJ, Fr John Gavan, SJ, Fr Anthony Turner, SJ on 20 June, and Richard Langhorne on 14 July. They were beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929.

On 1 July 1681 Oliver Plunkett, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, who was implicated in an alleged plot for a French invasion of Ireland, was hanged drawn and quartered at Tyburn and buried here. His body was later removed to Lamspring Abbey in Germany and is now at Downside Abbey in Somerset. His head was taken to Rome, and then given to the Archbishop of Armagh, and is now displayed at St Peter’s Church in Drogheda, County Louth. He was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1975.