Preview: Bowden's "Mementoes" of Blessed Francis Page, SJ

Continuing our series on the Son Rise Morning Show based on Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors on Monday, April 24 we'll explore his comments on (then Venerable) Blessed Francis Page, SJ. This segment will offer listeners the first hints of Father Bowden's elegant style.

I'll be on at my usual hour, around 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central. Please listen live here and subscribe to the daily email for reminders here.

Francis Page was born in Antwerp of English parents—his date of birth is unknown— and went to England to study law at one of the Inns of Court in London. While his parents were Protestants (presumably Anglicans), he had been living in a Catholic country; at the Inns of Court he met more Catholics. He fell in love with a Catholic girl who wanted him to convert to Catholicism before they married: two very dangerous actions! It was a felony for her to try to convert him and an act of treason for him to become a Catholic, But he loved her and so studied the faith, with yet another consequence, one she had surely not foreseen.

As the Jesuits in Singapore explain:

His Catholic roommate had, as his confessor, Fr John Gerard, a Jesuit priest. So it was to Fr Gerald that Francis went for instruction. The more he studied religion, the more he felt drawn to the priesthood. Much to his fiancée’s sorrow, Francis called off the marriage as he began to think of the priesthood. When Fr Gerard was arrested and transferred to the Tower of London, Francis would stand outside the prison everyday just to get a glimpse of the priest and for his blessing. His suspicious actions led to a brief arrest and after his release, Francis decided to follow the call and joined the English College in Rheims, France. He was ordained in 1600.

Father Bowden devotes two entries to Blessed Francis Page, SJ on April 27 and 28, pages 142 and 143. As he does with each of the mementoes in the book, Bowden gives a title to the meditation and provides a verse from the Holy Bible for meditation. On April 27, the title is “Light and Darkness” and the verse is from the Book of Job: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away . . . blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

On April 28, the title is "Love, Earthly and Heavenly" and the Bible verse is "With the robe of justice he hath covered me, as a bridegroom decked with a crown, and as a bride adorned with her jewels." from Isaiah 61:10.

Between the two entries, Father Bowden describes how Blessed Francis Page barely escaped the raid on Saint Anne Line's safe-house as he was celebrating Mass on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord on February 2, 1601, and how he was finally arrested when a woman who had pretended to be a Catholic informed on him. But it's in the entry for April 27, that Father Bowden offers some great spiritual counsel as he describes Father Page's reactions to the news that his day of execution, April 20, 1602, had been set:

Fr. Page received the message as from heaven, and, having celebrated the Holy Mysteries, was so filled with joy and supernatural light that it seemed as it nothing could separate him from the love of his Lord. But that he might know that this sensible devotion is God's free gift, and might learn something also of the anguish of His Savior in Gethsemane, he was of a sudden deprived of these extraordinary favors, and like his Master, became sad, sorrowful, even unto death. . . . The storm continued until the sheriff sent to him to prepare for death as the hour was at hand. The message in a moment restored calm to his soul and he went to meet death with every sign of joy. The whole way to Tyburn his soul was engaged in prayer, and with the holy name of Jesus on his lips the cart was drawn away--on April 20, 1602*.

Father Bowden describes Father Page's feelings of Consolation and Desolation, to use the Ignatian terms, in this passage as an example of a martyr's true heroism. Toward the end of Elizabeth I's reign, a Catholic missionary to England knew the danger he faced, and Father Page, having escaped capture, imprisonment, and execution once before, and knowing that Anne Line had suffered in his place on February 27, 1601, surely knew his day of martyrdom could, would come. So he was able to persevere through that Desolation of fear and trepidation. He asked Father Floyd, a Jesuit priest in prison with him, to pray for him so he could prepare again to face his death with Consolation and poise, demonstrating his resolution at Tyburn Tree, which he did.

Father Floyd also received the martyr into the Society of Jesus: having been instructed by a Jesuit, Father John Gerard, Page had contacted Father Henry Garnet, SJ about his interest in joining the Society, but had been arrested before he could return to the Continent for his formation.

Blessed Francis Page, SJ, pray for us!

*The year is incorrect on page 142, however.

Image Credit (Public Domain): James Tissot's The Grotto of the Agony (La Grotte de l'agonie)

Sir Robert Dudley, RIP--and His Second Wife

Sixty-one years and two days after his father, Queen Elizabeth's favorite Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester died (September 4, 1588), Sir Robert Dudley, his illegitimate son died on September 6, 1649 outside Florence, Italy. His mother, Douglas or Douglass Howard Sheffield Stafford, had supported him with written testimony in a Star Chamber trial early in King James I's reign that she and Robert Dudley had been married before he married Lettice Knollys in 1578, thus claiming that Sir Robert Dudley was Leicester's legitimate heir. The Star Chamber ruled against him and he and Elizabeth Southwell left England for Italy in 1605.

Part of the reason his father's marital issues had been so confusing is that as Elizabeth I's favorite Leicester had feared her anger if he did marry again after Amy Robsart died in 1560, found dead on September 8. He told Douglas that he could not marry her because of this fear, yet he acknowledged their son and Sir Robert was with Leicester at Tilbury preparing for the Spanish Armada to land in 1588 before he died.

Sir Robert's mistress, Elizabeth Southwell disguised herself as a page and they converted to Catholicism, received a dispensation from the Pope and were married; Robert and Elizabeth had thirteen children. Elizabeth died in 1631 after the birth of their last child so Robert survived her for 18 years. They were both interred in San Pancrazio in Florence.

Elizabeth Southwell, a former lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth I, is perhaps more interesting, although Sir Robert was an explorer and writer. Her version of Queen Elizabeth's death has been part of the story of that queen through the centuries, source of the famous line that "must" is not a word to use to princes and other details of her death:

Written or dictated in April 1607 by Elizabeth Southwell (1584–1631), a maid of honor who attended the Queen during her final illness, this detailed account weaves political, medical, magical, and theological observations into a haunting narrative that culminates with the explosion of Elizabeth’s corpse during her wake. Southwell’s manuscript is preserved in the Jesuit Archives in London among the papers of the English Jesuit Robert Persons, who used “the greatest part of the sayd narration, though not all” in a lengthy refutation of the Oath of Allegiance.1 A manuscript copy of Persons’s redaction of Southwell’s manuscript, labeled “strange and incredible particulars,” is transcribed in John Nichols’s Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, the source from which Southwell was most often cited by twentieth-century historians.

Almost all of Chapter Three (quoted above), "Some Strange Eruption to Our State: Elizabeth Southwell’s Manuscript Account of the Death of Queen Elizabeth" from Catherine Loomis' book The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen from Palgrave Macmillan may be found in the book preview on Amazon.com (search for Elizabeth Southwell).

Loomis seems to accept most of Elizabeth Southwell's eyewitness account--and she was a cousin of Saint Robert Southwell--but analyses how Father Robert Persons, SJ used it against the memory of Elizabeth I in various ways. She refers to Sir Robert Dudley and Elizabeth Southwell as "recusants" but I think they had acknowledged Elizabeth I's supremacy while in England and probably James I's before they left for Italy and became Catholic.

James I refused to recognize Dudley as Leicester's heir and gave his titles to other courtiers in England; Charles I awarded Dudley's English/Anglican wife the title of Duchess of Dudley in 1644 and recognized Dudley's legitimacy but did not restore his lands or titles. Dudley served Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany as a naval advisor.

Sadly, the church in which Robert and Elizabeth were buried is no longer a church--it's a museum. There a funeral chapel, still consecrated for Catholic worship, inside the museum, but Robert and Elizabeth's tombs are not included in the Rucellai family sepulchre.

"Render to God the things that are God's."

John Hungerford Pollen, SJ appropriately wrote the biography of Father John Morris, SJ, for the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Canon, afterwards Jesuit, F.S.A., b. in India, 4 July, 1826; d. at Wimbledon, 22 Oct., 1893, son of John Carnac Morris, F.R.S. He was educated partly in India, partly at Harrow, partly in reading for Cambridge with Dean Alford, the New Testament scholar. Under him a great change passed over Morris's ideas. Giving up the thought of taking the law as his profession, he became enthusiastic for ecclesiastical antiquities, took a deep interest in the Tractarian movement, and resolved to become an Anglican clergyman. Going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October, 1845, he became the friend, and then the pupil of F.A. Paley, grandson of the well-known divine, and already one of the leading Greek scholars of the university. 

The conversion of Newman, followed by the receptions of so many others, deeply impressed him, and he was reconciled by Bishop Wareing, 20 May, 1846. A storm followed, beginning in the "Times", which made itself felt even in Parliament. Paley had to leave Cambridge (which led to his subsequently joining the Church), while Morris was practically cast off by his family. 

He then went to the English College, Rome, under Dr. Grant, and was there during the revolution of 1848. Soon after the restoration of the English Hierarchy in 1850, he was made Canon of Northampton, and then returned as vice-rector to Rome (1853-1856). He now became postulator for the English Martyrs, whose cause owes perhaps more to him than to any other person. Returning to England, he took part in the third Synod of Westminster, became secretary to Cardinal Wiseman, whom he affectionately nursed on his death-bed, and served under Archbishop Manning, until he became a Jesuit in 1867. 

He taught Church History from 1873-1874; he was Rector of St. Ignatius' College, Malta, from 1877-78; master of novices in 1879; and director of the writers of the English Province in 1888. Always remarkable for his ardent affectionate nature, his untiring energy and earnest holiness of life, he was also an excellent scholar, an eloquent speaker, and a high-principled leader of souls. 

His death befitted his life; for he expired in the pulpit, uttering the words, "Render to God the things that are God's." 

His principal works are: "The Life and Martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket" (London, 1859 and 1885); "The Life of Father John Gerard" (London, 1881), translated into French, German, Spanish, and Polish; "Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers" (3 vols., London, 1872-1877); "Letter-books of Sir Amias Poulet" (London, 1874); and many contributions to "The Month", "The Dublin Review", "Archæologia", and other periodicals.

He is buried in the Gap Road Cemetery in Wimbledon.

I say it's appropriate that Pollen wrote about Morris because he had written a book-length biography of his Jesuit colleague, including his letters. Pollen describes the influence of St. John Henry Newman's conversion on Morris in 1845 when he just arrived at Cambridge:

John Morris went up to Cambridge in October, 1845, carrying with him the high expectations which Alford had formed of his future progress, and the proud hopes which his father entertained of his distinguishing himself at the University. His stay there was destined to be brief, though pregnant with important issues. It resulted in a cruel disappointment to his father, while it permanently affected his tutor’s position. As regards himself, it ended in his embracing the true faith, and receiving the further great grace of a vocation to the religious life. Before he had time to settle down in his rooms in the New Court at Trinity, the whole country was talking of John Henry Newman’s reception into the Catholic Church. Thousands of Anglicans besides Morris felt that their own adherence to the body in which they were born might soon become a point for serious consideration, and they set about examining anew the grounds of safety for their own position. In Morris’s case, the Anglican theory of the Church, to which he had hitherto clung, began slowly to lose its force with him. At first, indeed, with inborn loyalty, he tried his best to preserve his confidence in the beliefs which he had so ingenuously accepted. His state of mind at that time reveals itself in a series of letters, which he wrote from Cambridge, to Mr. Ambrose Lisle Phillipps, and which show that he held out as long as he conscientiously could, against the ever deepening conviction, that the Roman Church was after all the one and only Church.

In chapter 8 of that biography, Pollen describes Morris's efforts to promote the causes of the English Catholic martyrs of the Reformation era, beginning with this description of their status before Morris (and he) worked so diligently to document their sufferings:

As Father Morris’s conversion and religious vocation were the most important events, of which we are cognizant in his interior life, so the chief external work of his life is connected with his efforts in behalf of the English Martyrs. In this cause he was engaged for forty years, not continuously indeed, but with interruptions due to the delays of others or to the pressure of conflicting occupations, not to any want of perseverance on his part. Fifty years ago the names and the fame of the splendid line of witnesses to England’s lost Faith were in danger of falling into hopeless oblivion. They had already faded away into mere distant, indistinct memories, the long but inevitable silence of ecclesiastical authority concerning them having given rise to a feeling of uncertainty in the minds of Catholics. If the sufferers had really died for the Faith, why did they not receive the honour due to martyrs? Could it possibly be that there was something more than false accusation in the treason with which they had been charged by their persecutors ? Hence had arisen timidity in speaking and writing of them, a timidity which was natural in those who had so long languished under a cruel proscription, and were now looking for fairer treatment from their former oppressors.

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Holy Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us!

Father John Floyd, SJ, RIP--and his Brother Henry

According to Edwin Hubert Burton in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Father John Floyd, SJ, was a Catholic missionary in Recusant era England and a controversialist of that era, writing many works under several pseudonyms:

English missionary, wrote under the names Flud, Daniel à Jesu, Hermannus Loemelius, George White, Annosus Fidelis Verimentanus, and under the initials J. R. Some of his works have been erroneously attributed to Robert Jennison, S. J. He was b. in Cambridgeshire in 1572; d. at St.-Omer, 15 Sept. 1649. he was educated at the Jesuit College at Eu, then at the English College at Reims (17 March, 1588) and finally the English College in Rome (1590), where he entered the Society of Jesus, 1 Nov., 1592. Nothing is known about his ordination, but in 1606 he was a missionary priest in England. On 6 April in that year he was arrested at Worcester while attempting to visit Ven. Edward Oldcorne (sic) who was to suffer martyrdom next day. Having been imprisoned for twelve months he, with forty-six other priests, was banished for life. He then spent four years teaching at St.-Omer, though Foley (Records, IV, 238), is mistaken in supposing he published any controversial works at that time. 

Then (1913) Venerable Edward Oldcorne, SJ was beatified in 1929.

On 31 July, 1609, he was professed of the four vows, and soon after returned to England, where he laboured on the mission for many years, being often captured, but effecting his escape by buying off the pursuivants. In 1612 he published his first work, "The Overthrow of the Protestant Pulpit Babels", in which he replied to Crawshaw's "Jesuit Gospel". He was in return answered by Sir Edward Hoby in his "A Counter-Snarl for Ishmael Rabshakeh a Cycropedian Lycaonite, being an answer to a Roman Catholic who writes himself J. R." Father Floyd countered in 1614 with "Purgatorie's Triumph over Hell, maugre the barking of Cerberus in Syr Edward Hobyes Counter Snarle". This controversy closed with Hoby's rejoinder, "A Curry-comb for a Cox-combe", published in 1615. Father Floyd next turned his attention to Marc' Antonio de Dominis, formerly Archbishop of Spilatro, who had apostacized and become Protestant dean of Windsor. Against him Father Floyd wrote four works: "Synopsis Apostasiæ Marci Antonii de Dominis, olim Archepiscopi Spalatensis, nunc Apostatæ, ex ipsiusmet libro delineata" (Antwerp 1617). It was translated into English by Father Henry Hawkins, S.J., in 1617, and again by Dr. John Fletcher in 1828. "Hypocrisis Marci Antonii de Dominis detecta sui censura in ejus libros de Republicâ Ecclesiasticâ" (Antwerp, 1620); "Censura ex Librorum X de Republicâ Ecclesiasticâ Marci Antonii de Dominis" (Antwerp 1620, Cologne, 1621); "Monarchiæ Ecclesiasticæ ex scriptus M. Antonii de Dominis Archepiscopi Spalatensis Demonstratio, duobus libri comprehensa" (Cologne, 1622). All four works appeared under the signature Fidelis Annosus Verimentanus.

His brother Henry was also a Jesuit missionary in England, who died of natural causes in London about nine years before John, according to the Dictionary of National Biography:

FLOYD, HENRY (1563–1641), Jesuit, elder brother of Father John Floyd [q. v.], born in Cambridgeshire in 1563, received his education in the English College of Douay during its temporary removal to Rheims. On 8 May 1589, being then a deacon, he was sent with other students by Dr. Richard Barret, president of the college, to assist in commencing the new English College founded by Father Parsons at Valladolid (Records of the English Catholics, i. 220, 224). For a time he was stationed at the ‘residence’ or seminary established by Parsons at Lisbon. He was probably ordained priest in 1592, and he defended universal theology with great applause at Seville on 20 Feb. 1592–3. From Lisbon he crossed over to England about 1597, and for nineteen years he was chaplain to Sir John Southcote. In 1599 he entered the Society of Jesus, and in 1618 was professed of the four vows. He underwent many vicissitudes owing to his great zeal, and at various times was incarcerated in Newgate, the Clink, and the Fleet prisons in London, and in Framlingham and Winchester gaols. On James I's accession, being sent into banishment with many other priests, he returned to Lisbon, but soon revisited England, and again fell into the hands of the pursuivants. After serving the mission in the London district for many years, he died in London on 7 March 1640–1.

The Sir John Southcote mentioned as the patron of Father Henry Floyd, SJ, must be Sir John Southcote, the son of an MP and Judge, also named John:

Southcote was probably the John Southcote of Bodmin who in 1544 helped Tregonwell to buy and sell land in the south-west: in 1549 he was to be of similar assistance to Henry Chiverton. He bought land himself near London and late in life settled in Essex. Mary promoted him serjeant and Elizabeth made him a judge, in which capacity he revised the bill settling the form of consecration for bishops before its enactment in 1566 (8 Eliz. c.1) and took part in the conference in 1577 on how to deal with recusancy. According to his descendants he shared their Catholicism and resigned his office rather than condemn a priest, retiring to his house at Merstham in Surrey ‘where for three years he led a penitential life and happily ended his days’, this, however, conflicts with evidence of his continuing to serve as a judge until a year before his death at Witham. His son John was reported as having attended mass in 1584 and his daughters married into Catholic families, but his own conformity is borne out by his retention as a justice of the peace in all the home counties after 1564.4

The Southcote Family is included in Volume One of The Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers Related by Themselves edited by--you guessed it--a Jesuit, Father John Morris, SJ (1826-1893).

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. 

Peter Wentworth, RIP in the Tower

Peter Wentworth, MP for Northampton, argued often on matters of Church and State in Elizabethan Parliaments. He also ended up in prison for those arguments because they displeased Queen Elizabeth I. According to the History of Parliament website, he displeased her one more time, by reminding her that she should make it clear who would succeed her when she died:

In 1587, after the death of Mary Queen of Scots, he had drafted A Pithie Exhortation of her Majestie for establishing her successor to the crowne, a tract published by a friend after his death. Its language was forthright, his admonitions to the Queen at times needlessly and shockingly frank. In a letter to Burghley he later defended the sharpness of his language by quoting 'the spirit of God in Solomon': 'The wounds of a lover are faithful, and kisses of an enemy are deceitful'.

Wentworth intended to present his tract in the Parliament of 1589 and launch a campaign for settling the succession; but he evidently found the time unpropitious. He tried to persuade Burghley to approach the Queen on the subject, and again in 1590 came to London to renew this quixotic plan. Next year he turned to the Earl of Essex, hoping that he would present his tract to the Queen. But copies of the tract were leaked to the Privy Council, and in August 1591 they committed him prisoner, this time to the Gatehouse. He was incorrigible. Instead of seeking pardon, he tried once more to get Burghley to approach the Queen, convinced that this statesman believed as he did: which may, indeed, have been true. Wentworth was released from the Gatehouse in November, confined for a time in a private house, and finally set at liberty in February 1592. . . .

Wentworth was imprisoned in the Tower, where he remained till his death four-and-a-half years later. It is clear from several surviving petitions and letters that he could have secured his freedom within a reasonable time if he had been prepared to acknowledge his fault and give pledge of future silence, without which he remained a potential focus of unrest and disturber if the Queen's delicately poised policy for the peaceful transition of the crown at her death. Instead of repentance, in every petition he reiterated the argument of his "Pithie Exhortation": to do otherwise, he declared, would be to 'give her Highness a most detestable Judas-kiss'. In 1594, when Doleman's "Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England" was published—a disturbing Catholic tract—he was reckless enough, at the instance of some friends, to write an answer, entitled "A Discourse containing the Author's opinion of the true and lawful successor to her Majesty". It was published after his death along with his "Pithie Exhortation" and, fortunately for Wentworth, seems to have been kept secret from the authorities. Wentworth pronounced in favour of James VI's title to the succession—a judgement he would have strongly opposed earlier, thus, incidentally, vindicating the Queen in her policy of letting time simplify the problem. Doleman had been led to exalt the rights of Parliament. Thus, ironically enough, Wentworth found himself expounding the limitations of those rights.

To keep Wentworth where he could do no harm to the state was the main concern of Queen and Council. As he put it himself: 'The causes if my long imprisonment ... a truth plainly delivered. His second wife was permitted to live with him in the Tower, and there she died, July 1596, 'my chiefest comfort in this life, even the best wife that ever poor gentleman enjoyed' There was a proposal to release him on the pledges of sureties in July 1597, when he asked not to be sent home to Lillingstone Lovell, where memories of his wife would be too much for him. On 10 Nov. that year he died. An inquisition post mortem taken at Oxford in 1599 was concerned with his manor of Lillingstone Lovell and house, woods, etc. in the parish and in Lillingstone Dayrell. Wentworth's children married into puritan families, and one of his sons, Thomas, emulated his father in Parliament in James I's reign.

Elizabeth I did not want to name a successor! Since she had not married she had no children, but there was a line of succession either in England (the Grey sisters), or in Scotland (James VI). Leanda de Lisle has written two books about the choices Elizabeth I faced. It's ironic, isn't it, that her father's greatest concern was a stable and orderly succession--that her half-brother changed their father's will about the succession--that Mary I acknowledged that Elizabeth would succeed her, but Elizabeth would not name her successor until she was on her deathbed, and then only with a nod.

Father Robert Parsons, SJ, was likely the author of "Doleman's Conference". More about it here from the British Library.

Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November!

November 5th marks the anniversary of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. I think this is one of the saddest episodes of Catholic reaction to the recusancy and penal laws imposed upon them by the English government. It was so desperate and impossible, not to mention absolutely murderous and immoral. Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and the other conspirators thought that they could blow up Parliament and the Royal Family, except for Elizabeth, the oldest daughter whom they would kidnap and force to rule under their control--and the people of England would rise up against their rulers and put them in charge!

Instead they either died on the scaffold as traitors or in fights with local constabularies, implicating priests accused of hearing their confessions and not betraying the sanctity of the Sacrament by reporting them to the government. Priests like Blessed Edward Oldcorne and Henry Garnett, SJ suffered torture and death--while the government tortured St. Nicholas Owen relentlessly to discover the location of the priest hiding holes he'd constructed in Catholic safe houses.

Remember remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder, treason

Should ever be forgot...

For a couple of centuries, the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot was marked by prayers of thanks for deliverance from Catholic plotting. Bonfire Night and the burning of Guy Fawkes and sometimes the current Pope in effigy also continued for two centuries--and there are still bonfires throughout England and former colonial areas today, but some of the historical and religious implications have faded.

Now there is great concern for pets, who might be frightened by the bonfires and fireworks, as this story demonstrates.

November 5 also recalls the invasion of Prince William III of Orange, landing at Brixham, Torbay in 1688. And this, also, to me is one of the saddest responses of the Anglican elite to the possibility of religious tolerance in England--invite an invasion and depose a legitimately ruling king! William the new conqueror brought a force of around 21,000--mostly foreign mercenaries--including cavalry and artillery. The fact that 1688 was the 1ooth anniversary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada also seemed providential to the Whigs and Tories who rejected James II and his young son and heir. Unlike the Spanish attempt 100 years ago, this invasion would succeed!

More Popish Plot Victims and Martyrs

As this site notes, Sunday, July 22, 2012 is the anniversary of the martyrdom of St. John Lloyd and St. Philip Evans, SJ--333 years ago.

St John Lloyd [was] a Welsh priest who was hanged, drawn and quartered together with St Philip Evans on 22 July 1679 at Gallows Field in Cardiff, Wales. To have spent 25 years ministering to Welsh Catholics without being caught by the authorities is a rather amazing achievement compared to the majority of the other priests among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

St John Lloyd was born around the year 1630 in Breconshire, Wales, into a fervent Catholic family. One of his brothers became a priest and died in prison for the Faith and one of his sisters joined the Blue Nuns. Growing up, the stories of the priestly martyrs who preceded him must have inspired young John to follow in their footsteps. By the age of 19 John had travelled to Spain to enrol at the seminary of the Royal college of St Alban at Valladolid, and had taken the missionary oath to return to Wales to serve as a priest. After 4 years of study John was ordained in 1653 or 1654, and sent back to Wales.

John’s missionary territory consisted of the South Wales counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. For the next 24-25 years John travelled between homes of loyal Catholics, administering the sacraments and encouraging his flock to remain faithful. Things were going OK on the quiet, until the political climate changed with the Titus Oates plot. With the motivation for persecution refreshed, priest hunters tried extra hard and soon arrested John in November 1678 at the home of the recusant John Turberville at Penllyn. . . .

More information on St. Philip Evans, SJ, see this story of his life and death by the great 20th century historian of the martyrs of the English Reformation, Jesuit Father Philip Caraman.

John Carroll and the Carroll Family

Hearing Kevin Schmiesing on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday morning, I was reminded that John Carroll, former Jesuit, became the first Catholic bishop in the United States of America on November 6, 1789. His older brother Daniel was one of only two Catholics to sign the Constitution and one of only five men who signed both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. His cousin Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the only Catholic who signed the Declaration of Independence and also served as the first Senator from Maryland.

I've mentioned the Carroll family before on this blog and I include Maryland, the Calverts (Lords Baltimore), and the attempt to establish a colony in the New World where the colonists could be loyal both to their sovereign and their Church in several chapters of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. The link between the Carrolls and the English Reformation begins with the Jesuit College of St. Omer in what is now France, but was then the Spanish Netherlands (roughly today's Belgium). Robert Parsons/Persons, SJ founded the College for the education of England Catholic boys who could not otherwise receive a Catholic education. Charles, Daniel and John all attended the College at St. Omers, which subsequently moved to Bruges, Liege and finally to Stonyhurst in England (!) because of unrest in those continental areas.

John Carroll continued his education in the Jesuit seminary and was ordained in 1769 and finally returned to Maryland as a missionary priest in 1773, after Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus. With his cousin Charles, he accompanied Samuel Chase and Benjamin Franklin to Quebec on the Continental Congress's attempt to gain French (Catholic) Canadian support for the Revolution in 1776. Once colonial independence had been won from Great Britain and eventually religious freedom assured by the Constitution, Catholics had greater freedom in the new United States of America. Archbishop Charles Chaput describes the reasons for Charles Carroll's support of the Revolution and the Constitution in his book, Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life, (Chapter Five. The American Experiment)--I'm attending a book group at Eighth Day Books reading and discussing this book weekly.

Carroll was elected the first Catholic bishop on November 6, 1789 by the clergy (24 out of 26 voted for him) and his selection was approved by Pope Pius VI. The next year Carroll was ordained in England and then took up his see in Baltimore, Maryland. Among his accomplishments were the founding of Georgetown University, holding the first diocesan synod in 1791, and building the first Catholic cathedral in the United States, now the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He laid the cornerstone but did not live to see it completed. Pope Pius VII raised Baltimore to the Archdiocesan level, and Carroll as its first Archbishop, overseeing bishops in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Bardstown, Kentucky. Archbishop John Carroll died on December 3, 1815 and he is buried in the cathedral he founded--more detail on his life here at its official website. You might note the location of his ordination as bishop--England. The Catholic Church in the colonies had been under the leadership of the ordinaries of England, specifically the Vicars Apostolic. It was Bishop Richard Challoner who wrote to Carroll in 1773 about the suppression of the Jesuits, and Benjamin Franklin even opined that the Catholics of the new USA should rather be led by French bishops.

This connection between the Carrolls and the struggles of Catholics in England to secure freedom of worship and religious conscience after the English Reformation fascinates me, especially as I see -- per Archbishop Chaput's book cited above -- that this is really an ongoing struggle for balance and justice between Church and State in every nation and society. John Carroll and the Carrollton family made great contributes to that balance and justice and I think it's good to remember the election of the first Catholic bishop in the United States of America (even though it's a little late!)