Preview: Saints John Payne and Luke Kirby

The two saints I'll discuss with Matt Swaim on Monday, July 13 on the Son Rise Morning Show both have connections to martyrs we've previously covered: St. John Payne came to England on the mission with St. Cuthbert Mayne; St. Luke Kirby was in the group of priests accused in the Rome and Reims plot that included Sts. Edmund Campion, Alexander Briant, and Ralph Sherwin. Also, Father Payne was accused of a plot against Elizabeth I by Father Campion's betrayer, George Eliott.

St. John Payne was executed on April 2, 1582 at Chelmsford, Colchester, Essex; St. Luke Kirby at Tyburn Tree in London on May 30, 1582 with Blessed William Filby, Blessed Lawrence Johnson, and Blessed Thomas Cottam SJ.

St. John Payne was born in 1532 and went to the English College in Douai in 1574, ordained in 1576, and returned to England with Cuthbert Mayne the same year. Once they arrived in England, Mayne and Payne separated and went to different areas of England, both residing with noble recusant Catholics (Mayne with Sir Francis Tregian; Payne with Lady Anne Petre, widow of Sir William Petre at Ingatestone Hall:

Mayne headed for his native South West England, and Payne headed for Essex. In early July 1851, he and another who had come to England were arrested in Warwickshire while staying at the estate of Lady Petre. It was through the efforts of George “Judas” Eliot, a known criminal, murderer, rapist and thief, who made a career out of denouncing Catholics and Priests for bounty. After being examined at Greenwich, they were committed to the Tower of London on July 14th. Eliot was a Catholic, and had been employed in positions of trust in the Petre household where he had embezzled sums of money. He enticed a young woman to marry him, and then approached Fr. Payne. When he refused, Elliot was determined to make his revenge, and a profit as well, by turning him in.

Fr. John Payne was indicted at Chelmsford on March 22, on a charge of treason for conspiring to murder the Queen and her leading officers. John denied the charges, and affirmed his loyalty to the Queen in all that was lawful; contesting the reliability of the murderer Eliot how had turned him in. No attempt was made to corroborate Eliot’s story, which had been well rehearsed. The guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion. 

The "another" who was arrested with Father Payne was Father George Godsalve or Godsalf, whom Payne had called back to the Catholic Church and who had been ordained at Douai in 1577 (Godsalve had previously been ordained a Catholic deacon during Mary I's reign). He was not executed by the Elizabethan regime, but held in prison for several years, finally released from Marshalsea in 1585 and died in Paris in 1592. Father Payne was racked in August and October and then taken to Chelmsford, the county seat of Essex, in March of 1582 for his trial, in which Eliot was the main witness, and the well rehearsed story was again, the Rome and Reims Plot.

Payne's execution was a wild scene, as he had one more opportunity to defend himself:

At his execution, he was dragged from prison on a hurdle to the place of execution and first prayed on his knees for almost thirty minutes. He then kissed the scaffold, made a profession of faith, and publicly declared his innocence. He was called upon to repent of his treason, and again, Payne denied it. A Protestant minister shouted out that he knew of Payne’s treason, from his brother, years prior. Fr. Payne admitted that his brother was an earnest Protestant, but that he would never had said such a lie. Fr. Payne asked that his brother who was in the same vicinity, be brought in and asked. The execution proceeded and John Payne was at their mercy. What was supposed to be a smooth, quiet execution was anything but that. The crowd had become so sympathetic to John Payne that they hung on his feet to speed up his death and prevented the infliction of the quartering until he was dead.

Robert Rich, 3rd Baron Rich, 1st Earl of Warwick, grandson of Richard "but for Wales" Rich who testified against Saint Thomas More, was the one who urged Payne to repent of the treason he had not committed. Anne Browne, Lady Petre died in April 1582 but her son, John Petre later 1st Baron Petre (a title purchased from James I) remained a Catholic recusant, as did his successors. Ingatestone Hall is partially open to the public with two priest's holes on display.

With Father Luke Kirby, we reach the last of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales who had been beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1889. Please see this blog, authored by a Benedictine Monk in Ireland with the same last name. Some excerpts:

Saint Luke Kirby, priest and martyr. Born in 1549 in England under Edward VI -- an England severed from its Catholic roots -- Saint Luke was educated at Cambridge. He abjured Protestantism and was reconciled to the Catholic Church at Louvain. He studied for the priesthood at Douai College, then in Rome, and was ordained at Cambrai in 1577 for the English mission. . . .

Travelling with Fathers Edmund Campion, Ralph Sherwin and others, he was was arrested almost immediately after he'd landed at Dover.

Imprisoned and Tortured

Five days after his transfer to the Tower of London, Saint Luke was subjected to "the Scavenger's Daughter." This was a hinged hoop of iron; the prisoner was required to kneel and draw himself into a ball, the hoop was placed under his legs and across his back, and then drawn tight, the torturer helping the fit by kneeling on the prisoner's shoulders. Among other things, it caused a flow of blood from the nostrils and sometimes from the tips of the fingers and toes. Father Kirby was tried and found guilty, together with Father Campion and other priests on November 16, 1581. Saint Luke was kept in prison until the end of May, the last four weeks in chains.

His execution was also like another trial--the authorities wanted the priests to admit their treason publicly probably because they knew the trial and guilt verdict would not stand close attention:

Tyburn

When Saint Luke was brought to Tyburn to be executed on May 30th, 1582, Blessed William Filby's body was still hanging from the dreaded 'triple tree'. Standing in the cart beneath the gallows, he declared himself innocent of the treason alleged against him and said that he was, in fact, about to die for the Catholic faith. A number of officials began wearisome discussions with him, arguing points of law and doctrine. They tried in several ways to induce him at first to denounce the Pope and finally to yield in any slight point of doctrine or practice. Father Kirby held fast to the Catholic faith.

Pater Noster

Finally, the Queen’s preachers bid him pray with them, in English, in his last moments: they would pronounce the prayer and asked Luke, if he found nothing objectionable, to repeat their words after them. “Oh,” he said, “you and I are not of one faith, therefore I think I should offend God if I should pray with you.” At this the people began to cry, “Away with him!” So, Saint Luke Kirby, an Englishman saying his Pater Noster in Latin, the language of the Church of Rome, ended his life. After the hanging, his body was gutted and quartered.

Saint John Payne, pray for us!

Saint Luke Kirby, pray for us!

Image Credit: Published under a Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license: the Scavenger's Daughter (or Skevington's Daughter) invented by Sir Leonard Skevington, one of Henry VIII's Lieutenants of the Tower of London.