April 11: A Decollation, A Burning, and A Coronation

On April 11, 1554, Thomas Wyatt the Younger was executed on Tower Hill for leading his eponymous rebellion against Mary I. I have to post on this event for three reasons: using the words "eponymous" and "decollation" and using this great profile portrait.

The Wyatt Rebellion, as this site notes, failed completely:

The plan itself involved too many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ if it was to succeed. The noble conspirators planned to remove Mary, instate Elizabeth as Queen and arrange for her to marry Edward Courtenay – a man Mary had already rejected as a husband. [It sounds like the Gunpowder Plot!]

The plan was for three rebellions to take place in separate parts of the country. They would occur at the same time – in the Midlands, the West Country and Kent. The plan was that the government would not know which one to put down first and each would blossom as a result of their localised success and attract more and more supporters among the common people.

The French Navy would blockade the English Channel with eighty ships so that the Habsburgs would not be able to help Mary.

The plan failed miserably. The Imperial Ambassador, Simon Renard, had heard rumours that such a plot existed and informed the Lord Chancellor, Stephen Gardner [sic], of his concerns. Gardner brought in Courtenay for questioning as Renard had mentioned his name. The records stated that Gardner’s questioning was ‘robust’ and Courtenay was not a man who could stand up to this. Edward Courtenay told Gardner all that he knew about the plot so that the government knew about the plot even before it had begun – even if Courtenay would not have known about the details.

The ‘uprisings’ in the Midlands and the West Country were a failure as few of the people there gave Carew and the Duke of Suffolk the support they needed for success. It seems that though there was concern about Mary marrying a foreigner, loyalty to the Queen took precedence. Those in the Midlands did not want to commit treason (Suffolk raised a force of just 140 men) while many in the West were Catholic. . . .

Only two of the leaders were executed for their treason – Wyatt and the Duke of Suffolk. Other minor nobles were also executed but some – guilty of treason – were spared. In total about 90 rebels were executed but many of the common people who had joined Wyatt and survived were spared. Two other casualties were Lady Jane Grey and her husband Guildford Dudley. Both had been in prison since the failed attempt to put Lady Jane on the throne and had nothing to do with Wyatt’s rebellion. However Mary felt that she could no longer risk anyone rallying to Lady Jane’s cause – hence her execution – especially as her father, the Duke of Suffolk, had been involved in this plot and had been executed for treason.

I find it interesting that the website does not mention that Queen Mary had rallied her people to defend her and their city. Even John Foxe, who had no reason to present Mary in a good light, recounted her bravery, her devotion, and her resolve in her speech at Guildhall:

I am your Queen, to whom at my coronation, when I was wedded to the realm and laws of the same (the spousal ring whereof I have on my finger, which never hitherto was, not hereafter shall be, left off), you promised your allegiance and obedience to me…. And I say to you, on the word of a Prince, I cannot tell how naturally the mother loveth the child, for I was never the mother of any; but certainly, if a Prince and Governor may as naturally and earnestly love her subjects as the mother doth love the child, then assure yourselves that I, being your lady and mistress, do as earnestly and tenderly love and favour you. And I, thus loving you, cannot but think that ye as heartily and faithfully love me; and then I doubt not but we shall give these rebels a short and speedy overthrow.

Some details about Wyatt's execution for treason; although he was beheaded and therefore did not endure the full agony of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, his remains were eviscerated and quartered as a the body of a traitor would be:

After he was beheaded, his body was subjected to all the barbarities that formed part of punishment for treason. Next day his head was hung to a gallows on ‘Hay Hill beside Hyde Park,’ and subsequently his limbs were distributed among gibbets in various quarters of the town (Machyn, Diary, p. 60). His head was stolen on 17 April.

On April 11, 1612 the last execution for heresy took place in England, during the reign of James I. Edward Wightman was actually burned at the stake twice:

Wightman seems to have denied the doctrine of the Trinity, denied that Jesus Christ was God, denied the Resurrection and the legitimacy of Holy Communion and maintained that he himself was both the Holy Spirit and, though not himself divine, the Messiah appointed by God as the saviour of the world. From a modern perspective it seems clear that he had gone completely insane.

Wightman was eventually put on trial in the diocesan court in Lichfield, which in December pronounced him guilty of blasphemy and of promoting the heresies of figures ranging from Simon Magus to the Arians, the Manicheans and the Anabaptists. He was sent to the stake in the square in Lichfield in March 1612. When the flames began to scorch him he cried out in pain and it was thought he wanted to recant. Some of the crowd of spectators rushed to rescue him, though getting burned themselves. He was taken back to prison to recover, but when he was brought before the court again he refused to sign a formal recantation and on Easter Saturday in April he was sent back to the stake and was this time burned to death.

Finally, on April 11, 1689, William of Orange and Mary his wife and the daughter of the overthrown and deposed James II were crowned together in Westminster Abbey. A few notes from this blog, which indicate that we don't have all the details about the regalia used at this double coronation:

As we know, Mary and William were crowned as joint-monarchs in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey on 11 April 1689. An interesting note, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who typically presides over the coronation, refused to do so because he continued to support James II. So for this coronation, the bishop of London crowned the new queen and king (things like this happened several times in the Middle Ages, but there would often be a second coronation done with the AB of Canterbury for sake of continuity and because of fears over the illegitimacy of the ceremony).  . . 

King Edward’s Chair (or St. Edward’s Chair or the Coronation Chair) has been used for the coronation of English (and British later on) since Edward II, with the exceptions of Edward V and Edward VIII, both of whom were not crowned. Oddly enough, Mary II was not crowned in the chair as well. A second chair was constructed before the coronation for Mary to sit in. . . .

For the coronation of Mary and William there is no mention of the use of St. Edward’s Crown. Instead, some of the sources state that they wore their pair of imperial state crowns. A second crown, then, was either used from a previous queen (perhaps the consort of James II?) or a new crown imperial state crown was made for one or both of the new monarchs. 

Scarisbrick on What Might Have Been

In The Catholic Herald, Henry VIII biographer J.J. Scarisbrick writes about a plot to depose Henry VIII and restore Catholicism to England; the plot involved Pope Paul III, Francis I of France, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, and some people in Calais, including Father Gregory Botolph:

With the support of several like-minded colleagues (including perhaps even the governor of Calais himself, Arthur Lord Lisle, illegitimate son of Edward IV and no friend of the upstart Tudors)**, Botolph rode out and put a proposal to the papal legates.

Botolph’s plan was this: if the pope provided a taskforce of mercenaries, Botolph and his friends would open the gates of Calais to them and help them capture the port.

From there, they could commandeer ships and sail to nearby England, seek out the by-then excommunicated king and capture or kill him if he resisted arrest, as he surely would. They could also rescue Pole’s mother.

Such mercenaries were readily available. Since Pope Paul’s grandfather had made the family’s fortune as a condottiero, that is, a captain of professional soldiers for hire, he knew all about them. They would have been armed with muskets – weaponry as yet little known in England – capable of piercing almost any armour at several hundred yards. With only a few swords and perhaps pikes to defend him, Henry would not have stood a chance.

Botolph found his way to the papal legates and put his proposal to them. Farnese thought he was mad and perhaps even a spy. But Cervini believed him and immediately gave him money, horses and a guide to take him to Rome.

He reached the city quickly and sought out Cardinal Pole, who promptly took him to see the pope – whom he convinced of his plan. Indeed, Botolph later boasted that he had so impressed Pope Paul that, during his short stay in Rome, he was able to come and go in the papal apartments as he pleased. Not for nothing did he have the nickname “Sweet Lips”.

Paul, Pole and Botolph agreed the following: Cervini would go ahead with his proposed mission to England under the aegis of the king of France. Once Henry had, as was expected, turned down the generous offer, he would be excommunicated and deposed. In September that year, a papal contingent of some 300 musketeers would carry out its mission and in the inevitable shoot-out probably kill Henry.

**Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle was Henry VIII's official representative in Calais. He was Henry VIII's (illegitimate) uncle. Arthur was close to Henry VIII, serving as Privy Councilor, Vice-Admiral of England, and attending The Field of the Cloth of Gold. As Deputy of Calais he represented his majesty's interests and served his nephew. I'm not sure how that makes him "no friend of the upstart Tudors". It may have made things a little awkward, but Viscount Lisle served his monarch loyally (according to the standards of the time).

Of course, we know things did not turn out as planned, because Botolph talked too much and agents of Henry heard something about what he was saying.

The result was that Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and two of his retinue were executed, along with Giles Heron, husband of St. Thomas More's daughter Cecily, a Carmelite, a Carthusian, a Benedictine, and others on August 4, 1540. 

Botolph's fate is unknown, but he cost several men their lives--as well as alerting the authorities so that the plot could not proceed--because he talked when he shouldn't have.

Montagu and Exeter Executed

On January 9, 1539, Henry Pole, Baron Montagu and Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter were beheaded on Tower Hill, victims of the so-called Exeter Conspiracy. As the Tudor Times notes, other family members were still held in the Tower, including Margaret Pole, Montagu's mother, the Countess of Salisbury; Gertrude (nee Blount, daughter of William Blount, Baron Mountjoy), Marchioness of Exeter; and Jane (nee Neville), the Baroness Montagu:

Neither Lady Salisbury, nor Lady Exeter were tried. Lady Salisbury was moved to the Tower, and summarily executed in 1541, with no trial or formal charge ever having been made against her.

Lady Exeter was released in 1539, and given a pension, although the Exeter estates remained confiscated.

The two boys remained in the Tower. Henry Pole, Montague's son, disappeared and Edward Courtenay, Exeter's son, remained imprisoned until 1553.

The Tudor Times also presents some theories about why Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, on pretty flimsy evidence, accused these families of treason and acted against them:

Others historians are in agreement with the contemporary European assessment about dynastic fears. Both France and the Empire believed that Henry's concerns were dynastic, and that he wished to annihilate the remaining members of the House of York. Exeter was his first cousin and grandson of Edward IV, and Montague was Edward IV's great-nephew. M L Bush and Dr David Starkey disagree with this assessment, pointing to the favour shown by Henry to his relatives.

Far more worrying than a claim by Montague or Exeter was the idea that his "illegitimate" daughter, Mary, might marry Reginald Pole (who, despite being a Cardinal was not actually a priest) and be placed on the throne by a popular uprising. Mary's reinstatement in the succession had been a demand of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and the Poles and Exeters had been strong supporters of Mary and her mother, Katharine of Aragon. Henry would have been determined to protect his baby son, Edward, at all costs.

Another theory is that the Poles were being punished for Reginald Pole's activities abroad and certainly, if Reginald had not written De Unitate and not attempted to provoke an invasion, then Geoffrey would not have been committing treason by corresponding with him or trying to join him. However, this does not seem to account entirely for the charges against Exeter, Nevill and Carew.

Here's a link to the timeline of events.

Jane Pole, the Baronness of Montagu, was released in 1540 while Edward Courtenay, Montagu's son, was held in the Tower until the accession of Mary I in 1553--held for 15 years in the Tower without specific charge, trial or conviction, except that he was the son of a traitor. Mary I named him the first Earl of Devon, and there was talk that he would be a good match for her as a native, noble English consort. Things did not work out that way, however, and he ended up in exile.

Margaret Pole was held in the Tower until May 27, 1541 when she was brutally beheaded (without charge, trial, or conviction). That must be one of the low points of Thomas Cromwell's career as Henry VIII's henchman. Henry Pole, junior we could call him, Montagu's son, was held in the Tower until his death in late 1542--Alison Weir believes of starvation.

Image Credit: Henry Courtenay, KG, shown 2nd from left wearing a mantle displaying the arms of Courtenay, with in the 1st quarter the Royal arms of England within a bordure counter-changed, detail from procession of Garter Knights in the Black Book of the Garter, c.1535, Royal Collection, Windsor.

Image Credit: Portrait of Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon (1526 - 1556). In background a ruined castle, possibly Tiverton Castle, seat of the Earls of Devon

Coincidences on August 22

On August 22nd, 1553, John Dudley, the First Duke of Northumberland, was executed for his role in the attempted coup d'etat to place his daughter-in-law, Jane Dudley (nee Grey) on the throne, diverting the succession from Mary Tudor as Queen of England and Ireland. 

On August 22nd, 1572, Thomas Percy, Seventh Earl of Northumberland, was executed for his role in the Northern Rebellion, which might have had the result of deposing Elizabeth I and placing Mary, the erstwhile Queen of Scots on the throne of England and Ireland (and Scotland). 

What a fascinating coincidence, that two scions of the same household would die on the same date, with 19 years separating their executions! These two men have another thing in common: at the block both of them spoke strongly of their Catholic faith. John Dudley reverted to Catholicism while in the Tower of London--perhaps he hoped for mercy from Mary--and he publicly retracted and regretted the efforts of the Edwardine government to introduce Calvinist reforms, warning the people against listening to deceptive preachers teaching new things:

And one thing more good people I have to say unto you, which I am chiefly moved to do for discharge of my conscience; that is to warn you and exhort you to beware of these seditious preachers, and teachers of new doctrine, which pretend to preach God's word, but in very deed they preach their own fancies, who were never able to explicate themselves, they know not today what they would have tomorrow, there is no stay in their teaching; doctrine, they open the book, but they cannot shut it again. Take heed how you enter into strange opinions or new doctrine, which hath done no small hurt in this realm, and hath justly procured the ire and wrath of god upon us, as well may appear who so list to call to remembrance the manyfold plagues that this realm hath been touched with all since we dissevered ourselves from the catholic church of Christ, and from the doctrine which hath been received by the holy apostles, martyrs, and all saints, and used through all realms christened since Christ.

And I verily believe, that all the plagues that have chanced to this realm of late years since afore the death of king Henry the eight, hath justly fallen upon us, for that we have deuvded [divided] ourself from the rest of Christendom whereof we be but as a spark in comparison: Have we not had war, famine, pestilence, the death of our king, rebellion, sedition among ourselves, conspiracies? Have we not had sundry erroneous opinions sprung up among us in this realm, since we have forsaken the unity of the catholic Church? and what other plagues be there that we have not felt?

Thomas Percy was stubbornly recalcitrant, in the Elizabethan government's view, as a Catholic, not repenting of his betrayal of Elizabeth, but warning the English that they were schismatic. While he was in prison, and on the scaffold, he was urged to conform to the Church of England and thus save his life, but he declared himself a lifelong Catholic and would not budge. In defiance of the norms of executions, he did not repent of his sins against the queen or warn others against committing such sins after him--his only regret was for the common people who suffered for their zeal in defending the Catholic Church. He is one of the Ten Blessed Martyrs of Sussex and a stained glass window honors him in Sacred Heart Church, Petworth. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1895.

First in a Series: English Catholic Martyrs at the End of July

We're entering another period with a cluster of martyrs, starting today with two Popish Plot victims, canonized in 1970 among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Father Philip Evans, SJ and Father John Lloyd suffered martyrdom on July 22, 1679 in Cardiff, Wales. Although they were tried for supposed involvement in the Popish Plot, they were found guilty of their priesthood and their presence in Wales. This blog provides some detail about their background and contains this great understatement: "1678 was a bad year to be a Roman Catholic priest on the island of Great Britain. (There were many such years in in the 1600s.) But, in 1678, there was a fictional plot by Roman Catholic to assassinate King Charles II. (This was ironic, given the Roman Catholic sympathies of the House of Stuart.) Anyway, a wave of anti-Roman Catholic hysteria swept the land,where authorities political and religious had planted, watered, and nurtured anti-Roman Catholicism for a long time. And hysterical people did not check facts, to confirm or refute them. So the two priest-martyrs became prisoners. They became casualties of hysteria and religious bigotry. Their crime was to be priests, a charge considered on par with committing treason." That's because, of course, of the Elizabethan statute which declared the mere presence of an English Catholic priest in his own native land to be an act of treason.

As the site summarizes their careers: St. Philip Evans, educated at St. Omer Monastery in France, became a Jesuit in 1665, at age 20. Ten years later, at Liege, he entered the priesthood then embarked for his Welsh mission. For three years Evans ministered there.

St. John Lloyd, educated at Ghent (now in Belgium, but a Hapsburg domain) and at Valladolid, Spain (also a Hapsburg domain at the the time). Ordained at Valladolid in 1653, he began this twenty-four-year long Welsh mission the following year.

Among the priests who suffered during the Popish Plot hysteria, St. John Lloyd's long tenure as a missionary priest is not unusual: St. John Kemble served his flock in Monmouthshire for more than 50--fifty--years! and St. David Lewis, SJ served in Wales for 30 years. Pope Paul VI canonized today's martyrs (and John Kemble and David Lewis) among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970. Since today is the feast of St. Mary Magdalen, their feast is usually observed--in parishes named for them, for instance, and in the dioceses of Wales, on July 23. They are also honored on October 25, the Feast of the Welsh Martyrs, and May 4, the Feast of ALL the Martyrs of England and Wales.

St. John Lloyd and St. Philip Evans, pray for us!

Treason in 1688

From Crisis Magazine, K.V. Turley writes about "The Last Catholic King of Ireland":

The King’s brother, the Duke of York, was now King James II of England and of Ireland, and James VII of Scotland. This passing of throne from one brother to another was not met with universal rejoicing, however, for James was Catholic. And one who had come to the Faith in adulthood through a path of reason and, of course, grace—a path that was as unpopular as it was to prove dangerous for him. But that was not the whole story. Whereas Charles had placated the oligarchy that since his return from exile had effectively ruled, James was made of different stuff. His was a character as straight as his brother’s had been strategic, it was this that was to be his undoing. As he ascended the throne, it is fair to say that traitors encircled him, a virtual vipers nest, who were ready to sell him to the highest bidder. Conveniently, and to that end, they did not have far to look.

Across the sea in Holland lived one of the oddest pairs ever to sit upon any throne in Europe: their names, William, Prince of Orange, and his spouse, the daughter of James, Mary. A strange woman who cried bitter tears on her wedding day, her husband’s manner and reputation were odder still. It was towards these that the whole treacherous cabal now crept. At the time its members were in the employ of James, no doubt with endless assertions of loyalty, whilst all the while searching for an opportunity to betray him. Despite protestations of fears about religion, this circle was really only ever interested in one thing: its own ambitions. It didn't take long before it found the basis on which to rally the mob and produce the coup d’état it longed for, ironically, wrapped in the guise of “Religious Liberty.”

Turley also describes James's conversion in exile after the failure of the Battle of Boyne:

By 1690, his libertine youth long since behind him, he turned inward. Soon after, in November of that same year, he was to be seen making pilgrimage to the Cistercian monastery of La Trappe, one of the most austere of all religious houses. There he sought out a hermit—a former soldier and man of the world who had shunned all for a life of solitude and silence in a forest near the monastery. The conversation that passed between the two left an indelible mark. When asked if there was anything the man missed of the world the reply was as blunt as it was thought provoking. And, needless to say, it was the king who left their brief exchange the more thoughtful. Later this was to be compounded by his stay at the monastery where the first chant he heard intoned was Psalm 118, its words of lament for this changing world and all its woes struck a chord for the Royal who sat listening. When he left the monks some days later, to those around him he was a changed man; one determined to live his Catholic faith in as heroic a fashion as he had observed in the cloisters of La Trappe.

Thereafter, this desire for sanctity was now to be lived out in the world as his prayer and reception of the Sacraments intensified. In addition, he took to the mortification of the flesh with a zeal (and an iron chain) that raised ironic smiles among the more worldly courtiers of Versailles, for this deposed King had become a penitent. Suddenly all his life, both the intensely personal vices he had struggled with since youth through to the very public calamity sealed at the Boyne, appeared to at last make sense. And as it did so, he understood that the loss of his realm was mysteriously the Will of God and with this knowledge, he resolved to spend what time was left him in prayer and penance.

Read the rest there.

Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk Born

The surname Howard comes up often on this blog, and just like any other post on the Howard family, our challenge today is to keep all the people named Thomas, Henry, Elizabeth, Anne, Margaret, and Mary straight, not to mention the Earls, Dukes, and Lords so that the whole story makes sense and we can understand the impact of all these relationships and plots!

Here goes:

Today's Howard was born on March 10, 1536. He was the grandson of Thomas Howard, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, who was uncle to two of Henry VIII's consorts, Anne Boleyn (Elizabeth Howard married Thomas Boleyn) and Catherine Howard (Edmund Howard's daughter).

The 4th Duke of Norfolk's father was Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, who was executed just days before Henry VIII died. Thomas Howard the 4th thus succeeded to the family title when his grandfather died in 1554. His mother, by the way, was Frances de Vere of Oxford.

John Foxe, the great Protestant martyrologist and hagiographer, was a teacher of today's Thomas Howard. Howard and his brother Henry Howard, lst Earl of Northampton were under the care of their evangelical aunt, Mary Howard FitzRoy, Duchess of Richmond and Somerset, widow of Henry FitzRoy, Henry VIII's only recognized illegitimate son. Howard continued to patronize Foxe, but Howard also began to involve himself in political efforts to promote Catholicism in England. (His brother Henry would be known as a crypto-Catholic and fall out of Elizabeth's favor.) Note that when Thomas Howard the 3rd was released from the Tower of London at the beginning of Mary I's reign he told John Foxe to find new employment.

Thomas Howard the 4th married thrice and the fourth marriage he attempted got him into big trouble, to say the least. His first wife was Mary FitzAlan, heiress to the Arundell estates. Their son was Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundell and Catholic martyr/saint. (Mary died after his birth in 1557.)

His second wife was a widow-heiress, Margaret Audley (Lady Jane Grey's first cousin). Their eldest son, another Thomas Howard, later 1st Earl of Suffolk, was one of Queen Elizabeth's admirals in the battle against the Spanish Armada and survived to serve James I for many years. The younger son was William Howard, who would be imprisoned as a Catholic by Elizabeth I like his half-brother Philip.

His third wife was another widow, Elizabeth Leyburne Dacre, whose first husband was Thomas Dacre, 4th Baron Dacre. Elizabeth Leyburne's family were recusant Catholics. By her first marriage she had three daughters and Thomas Howard the 4th arranged marriages between her three daughters and his three sons after her death in 1567:

Anne Dacre married Philip Howard (their son was named Thomas)
Elizabeth Dacre married William Howard
Mary Dacre married Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk (and died soon after)

Thomas Howard the 4th's sister Jane was married to Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmoreland, a Catholic peer in the North of England. Neville joined Thomas Percy, the 7th Earl of Northumberland in the Northern Rebellion against Elizabeth I in 1569.

Jane Howard Neville encouraged her brother to marry the former Queen of Scotland who was now Elizabeth's prisoner or guest, having sought refuge in 1568, hoping for assistance in regaining her throne. But Elizabeth first wanted to find out if Mary was at all implicated in the murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. So by November of 1569, Mary's position was precarious--and this idea of the Earl Marshall of England marrying the Catholic threat to Elizabeth's throne, while the North of England was rebelling, led to Thomas Howard the 4th's imprisonment in the Tower of London.

At the same time, of course, Mary, the ertswhile Queen of Scot was still Elizabeth's most likely successor, since she had rejected the claims of the Grey family. Since Elizabeth was not married, and did not seem likely to be married, any discussion of or action that might influence the succession was very dangerous, as the surviving Grey sisters, Catherine and Mary, found out when they married without Elizabeth's approval.

In the meantime, of course, the Northern Rebellion had fallen apart; Percy and Neville had fled to Scotland and Elizabeth's retribution on the rebels was proceeding apace. Evidently, imprisonment in the Tower somehow led Thomas Howard the 4th to greater designs against Queen Elizabeth. Upon his release he became involved in the Ridolfi Plot of 1570 which aimed at executing the Queen and placing Mary, Queen of Scots (and her consort, Thomas I, King of England?) on the throne. The plot was discovered by Elizabeth's spy network and Thomas Howard the 4th was executed for treason on June 2, 1572. His lands and titles were forfeit to the throne, of course.

His son Philip Howard, however, would succeed to his maternal grandfather's title, the Earl of Arundel, when Henry FitzAlan died in 1580--but he ended up dying in the Tower of London, perhaps just because Elizabeth feared a Howard in exile, supported by the Pope and Catholic monarchs. Nevertheless, Elizabeth restored Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk to the blood in 1584 and he served her in various offices and efforts, including the trial of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, but ended up leaving office under James I in some disgrace. Thomas Howard the 4th's youngest son, William Howard became a Catholic in 1584, lived in retirement and recusancy in Naworth Castle, Cumberland and died in 1640.

The Indisputable Logic of Blessed Christopher Bales

Blessed Christopher Bales, priest and martyr, and companions (laymen who assisted him) Blessed Alexander Blake, and Blessed Nicholas Horner, were all executed on March 4, 1590 at three different sites in London. More about their stories here. They were beatified on December 15 in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

 

What I want to highlight today is Father Bales' great question to the presiding judge at his trial, which presents an excellent historical argument against the idea that these martyrs were traitors because they had studied for the Catholic priesthood on the Continent and returned to serve the oppressed Catholics of England--even if Elizabeth's Parliament had technically made it so. It was an unjust law. 

Philip Caraman, SJ, includes Blessed Christopher Bales' question to Judge Anderson in his collection of primary sources, The Other Face: Catholic Life Under Elizabeth I:

 

He was asked by the judge according to custom . . . when judgment was about to be pronounced, if he had anything to say for himself. He answered, "This only to I want to know, whether St. Augustine sent hither by St. Gregory was a traitor or not." They answered that he was not . . . He answered them, "Why then do you condemn me to death as a traitor? I am sent hither by the same see: and for the same purpose as he was. Nothing is charged against me that could not also be charged against the saint." But for all that they condemned him. (Greene, Collections); page 230.

Judge Anderson replied that no, St. Augustine of Canterbury was not a traitor in the 5th and 6th centuries but that the law had changed in the 16th century. So the universal Catholic Church had indeed remained the same--just as Blessed John Henry Newman found during the Long Vacation of 1839, as he was studying the history of the Monophysite heresy. As he searched ancient Church history to establish the apostolic foundation of the Anglican Via Media, he found something disturbing:

My stronghold was Antiquity; now here, in the middle of the fifth century, I found, as it seemed to me, Christendom of the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries reflected. I saw my face in that mirror, and I was a Monophysite. The Church of the Via Media was in the position of the Oriental communion, Rome was where she now is; and the Protestants were the Eutychians. (from the Apologia pro Vita Sua, chapter 3)

So Rome (the Catholic Church) "was where she now is" in the fifth and sixth centuries--both in Kent and in Egypt (where the Monophysites dissented from the Council of Chalcedon)--and in the sixteenth century, when Blessed Christopher Bales continued St. Augustine of Canterbury's work as a missionary in England, sent by Pope Urban VII. If Judge Anderson had looked closely enough, he would have seen himself in that same mirror.

A Layman and a Priest in York: Martyrs under the New Acts of Treason

Two of the Eighty-five Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Blessed John Paul II, a layman Blessed Marmaduke Bowes and a priest, Blessed Hugh Taylor suffered in York on November 26, 1585 in York.

The most important point about these two martyrs is that they were the first to be executed under the 1584 act against the Jesuits (or any other Catholic priests) who had been born in England or Wales and then traveled to the Continent for ordination and then returned as missionaries to the recusant Catholic community, and against those who assisted them.

Blessed Marmaduke Bowes was born in Ingram Grange in Yorkshire: Married layman and father. Fearful of the persecutions of the day, he was a covert Catholic who put in appearances in the Established church to keep the authorities away. He sheltered priests on the run, and had his children raised Catholic. In 1585 his children's tutor was arrested and bribed to apostatize, turn informer, and denounce Bowes for helping priests. Bowes and his wife were arrested and imprisoned in York; she was released, but Marmaduke was convicted on the statements of the tutor.

He was the first layman executed under the law that made helping priests a felony. He was hung on the 26th of November in 1585, along with Blessed Hugh Taylor, who had just arrived in York in March 1585, after his ordination in Rheims in 1584. We don't have much other detail about Blessed Hugh Taylor: I suppose we could imagine him growing up in a recusant family and being prepared to endure exile, danger, and death for his parents' Catholic faith. Or, he could have grown up in an Anglican family, read the Fathers, questioned the validity of the Church of England and secretly converted, traveling to Rheims for study and ordination, returning to England to almost immediate capture

Father Taylor was the first to suffer under the Statute 27 Eliz. c. 2. against priests as traitors passed by Parliament in 1584. Most of the Catholics executed after 1584 suffered under this statute (there were a few executed under the 1571 and 1581 statutes which made it treasonous to call the monarch a heretic or to convert or induce someone else to become Catholic, respectively). Blessed John Britton was martyred under the 1571 Statute, for example, in 1598. Blessed George Errington suffered hanging, drawing, and quartering in 1596 under the 1581 Statue, in another example, The priests who suffered before 1584 were found guilty of simple treason, which usually, as in the case of Saints Campion, Briant and Sherwin coming up on December 1, meant that the Crown accused the priests of some conspiracy against the Queen.

Blessed Marmaduke may be called a martyr in spite of himself--he had tried to maintain a public face of conformity, attending Church of England services to avoid suspicion or fines, but secretly he helped priests and raised his children in the Catholic Faith. Betrayed by a Catholic, he was arrested and charged based on evidence offered by his children's tutor.

Summer Reading List on the Son Rise Morning Show

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show a little earlier than I usually am--at 7:35 a.m. Eastern, 6:35 a.m. Central--this morning. I'll be sharing my summer reading recommendations with Brian Patrick and the listeners of the EWTN Radio Network.

I have one nonfiction and three fiction books to recommend:

I'll post my review of Ryan S. Topping's Rebuilding Catholic Culture: How the Catechism Can Shape Our Common Life this weekend, but others much more influential and important than I have praised and recommended this book, per the Sophia Institute Press website:

"This book deserves to take its place among the Catholic classics."

Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P.

Prior of Blackfriars, Cambridge

"This extraordinary book should be read by every Catholic parent, pastor, educator, politician — in fact, everyone."

Michael O'Brien
Author of A Father's Tale: A Novel

"This profound work of scholarship is a delight to read. It is shot through with gentle humor, and has a Chestertonian sense of paradox and irony. His exposition of the liturgy is particularly powerful."
Fr. John Saward
Oxford University, and author of Sweet and Blessed Country

"Ryan Topping wields the Catechism as a weapon of wisdom with which he demolishes the nonsense of the worldly philosophies and the sophistries they espouse."

Joseph Pearce

Writer-in-Residence at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

Three works of fiction, starting with The Mirrored World by Debra Dean, which I reviewed here.

Treason: A Catholic Novel of Elizabethan England, which I reviewed here. 

And Mr. Blue, which I discussed here and reviewed here. 

What are your summer reading recommendations or plans? Have you read any of these books and have any comments about them? Please share if you like.

"Treason" Historical Fiction Plus Tension

I requested and received a review copy of Dena Hunt's historical novel published by Sophia Institute Press; the book arrived Friday in the mail and I finished it Saturday. Except for one issue of historical accuracy, I found the book to be an exciting and effective story about recusant Catholics and missionary priests in Elizabethan England.

Matching the achievement of Robert Hugh Benson in depicting the religious conflict and crisis of Reformation England, Dena Hunt adds the element of suspense in Treason: A Catholic Novel of Elizabeth England. With omniscient narration weaving several different story lines in several different locations to a seven day plot, Hunt depicts the underground lives of a missionary priest, the recusant Catholics who shelter him, an unhappily wed wife, an Anglican minister who secretly reads Catholic texts from the Fathers of the Church, and a wealthy family whose home hides many secrets. The various plot lines all come together on the seventh day, and the epilogue depicts the Eighth Day, when two vocations are fulfilled.

Readers of Benson will recognize one of the supporting characters in Hunt's ensemble: Patricia, the Reverend Andrew Wilson's wife resembles Lady Torridon of The King's Achievement in her cold demeanor and dark black eyes and Marion Dent, the Rector's wife in By What Authority in her effect on the recusant Catholics in her village--but without the ducking! But where Benson builds up the tension year after year from 1570 to 1581 and beyond, Hunt presents all that action rapidly, as the main characters meet along the way until they gather at the Anders' home in Somerset and the chaotic climax of the story.

While Hunt keeps up the pace and the novel reads swiftly and easily, she does pause for passages of beautiful description--like this, when Caroline, one of the main characters, explores the grounds of a destroyed convent years after Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries:

The emptiness of it all was so strangely full--like its silence, so deep that it was full of sound. Everything, every place in this ruin, was full of its own contradiction, like two worlds existing together, in the same place, at the same time. How could that be? It was as though there had been a sketch over which a contradictory overlay had been placed in an attempt to eradicate it. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the two realities existed together, and instead of the intended contradiction, the overlay had made something else altogether. Destruction had  been transformed into creation--its intention notwithstanding--and it was a creation greater, more beautiful, than the reality it meant to destroy. Destruction had succeeded only in making it eternal.

There are other passages of similar depth as the characters try to reconcile how much they have to hide with how much they want to share their faith and love. Each of them struggles with what they must do to remain true to that faith and love while striving to survive. As Father Stephen tells Caroline when she confesses deceit, "Everyone has to be deceptive now."

The only quarrel I have with the book is the year in which Hunt sets it: 1581. It was not an act of treason to be a Catholic priest in England in 1581; that law was not passed until 1585. The great litany of martyred priests had not yet begun in 1581 as the English mission was redeveloping slowly after the execution of Cuthbert Mayne in 1577; Saints Edmund Campion, Ralph Sherwin, and Alexander Briant would suffer on December 1, 1581. If Father Stephen Long or the two other priests mentioned in the story were to be sentenced to death for treason in the May of 1581, it would not have been for their priesthood and presence in England per se; it would have been for their efforts to convert Anglicans (1581 law), for defending papal supremacy in the Church (1563 law), or for calling Elizabeth a heretic or a schismatic (1571). After 1585, it would be treason for a Jesuit or seminary priest to enter the country (27 Eliz., c. 2)--and I think that Hunt would have done well to set her Catholic novel of Elizabethan England after 1585.

Contents:

Introduction by Joseph Pearce

Preface by Dena Hunt

Prologue

1. The twenty-first of May, in 1581 (in Devonshire)

2. The same day, in Somerset

3. The next morning, May 22, in Blexton

4. The following day, May 23, on the road to Bath

5. The morning of May 24, at The Rose and Thorn

6. The evening of the same day, May 24

7. The morning of May 25

8. The morning of May 26

9. The afternoon of the same day, the twenty-sixth of May

10. The twenty-seventh of May

Epilogue: The fifteenth day of August 1581

It's a very effective historical novel; well-paced and plotted: highly recommended.

A Winchester Martyr on Lady Day

Blessed James Bird or Byrd or Beard was hung, drawn, and quartered for the crime of converting to Catholicism and denying the ecclesial supremacy of Elizabeth I on March 25 in 1593--when he was about 19 years old. He was born and he died in Winchester.

He had traveled to Reims in France after his conversion in his 19th year to attend the seminary but had decided that he didn't have a vocation to the priesthood after all. Returning to England, the authorities suspected what he'd been up to and presented him with the Oath of Supremacy (which by statute requiring certain officials to take the oath, he would normally not have been ask to do). When he refused to take the Oath or even attend an Anglican service--even after his father begged him to--he was condemed to death.

This blog tells a rather charming--or horrible--story of his father seeing his head still on the pole upon the gates of Winchester:

BORN at Winchester of a gentleman's family and brought up a Protestant, he became a Catholic and went to study at Rheims. On his return he was apprehended and charged with being reconciled to the Roman Church, and maintaining the Pope under Christ to be the Head of the Church. Brought to the bar he acknowledged the indictment and received sentence of death as for high treason, though both life and liberty were offered him if he would but once go to the Protestant Church. When his father solicited him to save his life by complying, he modestly answered that, as he had always been obedient to him, so he would obey him now could he do so without offending God-After a long imprisonment he was hanged and quartered at Winchester, March 25, 1593. He suffered with wonderful constancy and cheerfulness, being but nineteen years old. His head was set upon a pole upon one of the gates of the city. His father one day passing by thought that the head bowing down made him a reverence, and cried out: "Oh, Jemmy my son, ever obedient in life, even when dead thou payest reverence to thy father. How far from thy heart was all treason or other wickedness."

He was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

St. Augustine of Canterbury a Traitor in 1590?

Blessed Christopher Bales, priest and martyr, and companions (laymen who assisted him) Blessed Alexander Blake, and Blessed Nicholas Horner, were all executed on March 4, 1590 at three different sites in London. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, his career as a missionary priest in England was brief:

 

Priest and martyr, b. at Coniscliffe near Darlington, County Durham, England, about 1564; executed 4 March, 1590. He entered the English College at Rome, 1 October, 1583, but owing to ill-health was sent to the College at Reims, where he was ordained 28 March, 1587. Sent to England 2 November, 1588, he was soon arrested, racked, and tortured by Topcliffe, and hung up by the hands for twenty-four hours at a time; he bore all most patiently. At length he was tried and condemned for high treason, on the charge of having been ordained beyond seas and coming to England to exercise his office. He asked Judge Anderson whether St. Augustine, Apostle of the English, was also a traitor. The judge said no, but that the act had since been made treason by law. He suffered 4 March, 1590, "about Easter", in Fleet Street opposite Fetter Lane. On the gibbet was set a placard: "For treason and favouring foreign invasion". He spoke to the people from the ladder, showing them that his only "treason" was his priesthood. On the same day Venerable Nicholas Horner suffered in Smithfield for having made Bales a jerkin, and Venerable Alexander Blake in Gray's Inn Lane for lodging him in his house.

 

They were  beatified on December 15 in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

 

Philip Caraman, SJ, includes Blessed Christopher Bales' question to Judge Anderson in his collection of primary sources, The Other Face: Catholic Life Under Elizabeth I:

 

He was asked by the judge according to custom . . . when judgment was about to be pronounced, if he had anything to say for himself. He answered, "This only to I want to know, whether St. Augustine sent hither by St. Gregory was a traitor or not." They answered that he was not . . . He answered them, "Why then do you condemn me to death as a traitor? I am sent hither by the same see: and for the same purpose as he was. Nothing is charged against me that could not also be charged against the saint." But for all that they condemned him. (Greene, Collections); page 230.

The Catholic Encyclopedia also has an entry on Blessed Nicholas Horner and his sufferings and consolations:

Layman and martyr, born at Grantley, Yorkshire, England, date of birth unknown; died at Smithfield, 4 March, 1590. He appears to have been following the calling of a tailor in London, when he was arrested on the charge of harbouring Catholic priests. He was confined for a long time in a damp and noisome cell, where he contracted blood poisoning in one leg, which it became necessary to amputate. It is said that during this operation Horner was favoured with a vision, which acted as an anodyne to his sufferings. He was afterwards liberated, but when he was again found to be harbouring priests he was convicted of felony, and as he refused to conform to the public worship of the Church by law established, was condemned. On the eve of his execution, he had a vision of a crown of glory hanging over his head, which filled him with courage to face the ordeal of the next day. The story of this vision was told by him to a friend, who in turn transmitted it by letter to Father Robert Southwell S.J., 18 March, 1590. Horner was hanged, drawn and quartered because he had relieved and assisted Christopher Bales . . .

Blessed Everald Hanse: Twisted Words

Blessed Everald Hanse was born in Northamptonshire; executed 31 July 1581. He was educated at Cambridge, and was soon presented to a good living. His brother William, who had become a priest in April 1579 tried to convert him, but in vain until a sharp attack of illness made him enter into himself. He then went over to Reims in northern France (1580–1581), was ordained and returned but his ministry was very short.

In July he was visiting in disguise some Catholic prisoners in the Marshalsea, when the keeper noticed that his shoes were of a foreign make. He was closely examined, and his priesthood was discovered. As yet there was no law against priests, and to satisfy the hypocritical professions of the persecutors, it was necessary to find some treason of which he was guilty. He was asked in court at the Newgate Sessions, what he thought of the pope's authority, and on his admitting that he believed him "to have the same authority now as he had a hundred years before", he was further asked whether the pope had not erred (i.e. sinned) in declaring queen Elizabeth I Tudor excommunicated, to which he answered, "I hope not." His words were at once written down as his indictment, and when he was further asked whether he wished others to believe as he did, he said "I would have all to believe the Catholic faith as I do." A second count was then added that he desired to make others also traitors like himself. He was at once found guilty of "persuasion" which was high treason by Elizabeth. He was therefore in due course sentenced and executed at Tyburn.

The trial is noteworthy as one of the most extreme cases of verbal treason on record, and it was so badly received that the Government had afterwards to change their methods of obtaining sentences. The martyr's last words were "O happy day!" and his constancy throughout "was a matter of great edification to the good". The Spanish ambassador wrote: "Two nights after his death, there was not a particle of earth on which his blood had been shed, which had not been carried off as a relic."

He was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. As you might recall, Elizabeth I's Parliament did not create the statutes that made the presence of a Catholic priest in England a matter of treason until 1585. When her government came to try St. Edmund Campion and his companions later in 1581, the court had to find them guilty of some conspiracy or another, because the kind of verbal twisting and interpretation they had to do to find Father Hanse guilty did not look good.

Blessed George Swallowell, Layman

I posted earlier this week on St. John Boste and Blessed John Ingram--today is the anniversary of the death of Blessed George Swallowell on July 26, 1594 in Darlington. He was a layman and former Anglican minister and was condemned to death for the crime of becoming a Catholic, which was not just a felony punishable by hanging, but an act of treason--according to Parlimentary statute--punishable by drawing, hanging, and quartering.

This story provides some excellent background to the situation of Catholics in Durham, especially after the Northern Rebellion, when many showed themselves most ready and willing to return to the Catholic faith. About today's martyr, the author, Chris Lloyd notes:

George Swalwell - his name is often spelled Swallowell - was born in Darlington in 1564. He became a clerk at Trimdon in 1575 and, after he was ordained in 1577, became a curate there. A few years later he moved on to work and teach in the parish of Houghton-le-Spring.

In 1590, his work caused him to visit a Catholic languishing in Durham Jail because of his faith. They fell into argument during which George saw the light and converted to Catholicism. Rather than keep it hidden, he rushed to the pulpit in Houghton and announced that he had hitherto been in error, that there was "no true mission" in Protestantism and so he quit the church on the spot. He was arrested and thrown in Durham Jail.

He came to trial a year later and was reprieved. However, the authorities decided to have another go at him in 1594. They had lost the only witness, known as Willie, who had heard George's pulpit pronouncement, but a fellow called Finch testified that he had once heard Willie tell the story, and this was enough. On Tuesday, July 23, George was sentenced to death for treason. He stood in the dock with two other accused Catholics, Father John Ingram, of Warwickshire, and Father John Boste, of Penrith. Poor Mr Boste had already done time in the Tower of London, where he had been stretched on the rack at least four times "in a manner that rendered him a permanent cripple".

When the death sentence was announced, George immediately reconverted to Protestantism and promised to do whatever the judge said if he could keep his life. But Mr Boste fixed him with a steely stare and asked: "George Swalwell, what hast thou done?" George immediately converted back once more to Catholicism, and the judge ordered that he be hanged, drawn and quartered at Darlington.

On July 24, Mr Boste was executed at Durham; on July 25, Mr Ingram was executed at Gateshead; on July 26, it was George Swalwell's turn.

Here are some details of Blessed George Swallowell or Swalwell's execution, from the same article:

"Upon the day designed for execution, he was brought two miles off the place on foot, and then was put into a cart, where he lay on his back with his hands and eyes up to heaven, and so he was drawn to the gallows," records Bishop Richard Challoner in his 1741 book, Memoirs of the Missionary Priests.

The gallows had been erected on Bakehouse Hill, between the Market Square and Tubwell Row. "To terrify him the more, they led him by two great fires, the one made for burning his bowels, the other for boiling his quarters," says Challoner.

Four priests accompanied him on the walk across the Market Square to the gallows, beseeching him to reconvert yet again to the Protestant faith. He would not listen, and they became so fed up with him that they beat him with a rod to make him climb the ladder to his death more quickly.

The rope was put around his neck and "Mr Swalwell desired if there were any Catholics there they would say three paters, three aves and the creed for him, and so making the sign of the cross, he was turned off the ladder". He was cut down before he lost consciousness "and the hangman, who was but a boy, drew him along by the rope yet alive, and there dismembered and bowelled him, and cast his bowels into the fire". "Then the hangman cut off his head and held it up saying: 'Behold the head of a traitor!' His quarters, after they were boiled in the cauldron, were buried in the baker's dunghill."

The Lady's Not for Hanging: Margaret Bulmer in Fiction and History

About a month ago I read Nancy Bilueau's debut novel, The Crown. At the beginning of the novel, set in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace and during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, "Joanna Stafford, a Dominican nun, learns that her favorite cousin has been condemned by Henry VIII to be burned at the stake. Defying the sacred rule of enclosure, Joanna leaves the priory to stand at her cousin’s side. Arrested for interfering with the king’s justice, Joanna, along with her father, is sent to the Tower of London." Joanna Stafford's cousin is none other than Lady Margaret Bulmer, the natural daughter of Edward Stafford, the Third Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham was accused of treason against Henry VIII and beheaded on May 17, 1521. Margaret Bulmer was sentenced to death for her part in the Pilgrimage of Grace and burned alive at Smithfield on May 27, 1537. Now that I am rereading H.F.M. Prescott's The Man on a Donkey as I said I ought to, I have met Margaret Stafford again and her little sister Julian. Prescott is indeed depicting Margaret as impulsive and obstinate. I wonder how or if Prescott will depict Margaret's fate?

Sharon L. Jackson wrote about Margaret (Cheyne) Bulmer in her Dangerous Talk and Strange Behavior: Women and Popular Resistance to the Reforms of Henry VIII. According to this review,

Margaret Cheyne's crime was to encourage her husband, Sir John Bulmer, to take part in the Pilgrimage of Grace against Henry VIII's Reformation and reforms. The rebellion built upon a combination of economic, social, political and religious resentments festering in the North of England. Witnesses attested that Margaret Cheyne had encouraged her husband to join the Pilgrimage of Grace and, fatally, to continue treasonous activities after the rebellion's failure in the autumn of 1536. She, herself, admitted that she incited Bulmer to resist the king. But was this a political decision, or, as Jansen herself suggests, the words of "a woman who wanted desperately to get out of the way of danger, not to plunge her husband or herself into it any further"? (p. 17). Jansen continues to undermine her case for Margaret Cheyne's political motivations. Little evidence survives documenting Margaret Cheyne's activities during the rebellion.[3] Her treason conviction appears to have been based upon the vague assertions of a few individuals. At the same time, other women, such as Lady Rhys, Lady Anne Hussey and Elizabeth Stapleton, took seemingly far more active roles in the rebellion yet escaped unscathed. But according to Jansen, Margaret Cheyne's parentage, combined with hostile relations with her in-laws, arguably left her dangerously vulnerable to the machinations of her enemies and accusers. Nevertheless, Jansen confidently declares that, "I would argue that Margaret Cheyne's presence among the rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace was deliberate rather than accidental, her participation in the rebellion much more significant than historians have realized" (p. 34).

Henry VIII had pardoned the Bulmers after the Pilgrimage of Grace, but they were accused of treason and executed when another Northern rebellion arose. We usually think of people being burned alive in connection with "Bloody Mary" and her reign's efforts to stamp out heresy; however, being burned alive was the usual form of capital punishment for women found guilty of treason. The usual sentence for men convicted of treason was being drawn, hung and quartered, but since that sentence involved nudity, women were burned at the stake. Anne Boleyn was found guilty of treason and condemned to be burned at the stake. The monarch could commute either sentence to the more merciful beheading, but Henry did not show that mercy to Margaret Bulmer, as he did to Anne Boleyn. Women were also burned at the stake if they murdered their husbands or tampered with currency. Thus, to misquote Christopher Fry, the Lady's Not for Hanging.