Preview: Blesseds Duckett and Corby in "Holy Rivalry" and with "The Kiss of Peace"

On Monday, September 18, we'll continue our series on the Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors by Father Henry Sebastian Bowden on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here.

As of today, the book is still on sale for $10.00! You cannot say I haven't told often enough!

Father Bowden offers four mementoes of Blessed John Duckett and three of Blessed Ralph Corby, SJ during the month of September. The two martyrs share three mementoes, because although they came to England as missionary priests by separate paths, served in the missionary field in vastly different durations (Duckett for about a year; Corby for 14 years), and were arrested separately, they shared imprisonment in London and went to Tyburn together for execution on September 7, 1644--during the English Civil War. They were both arrested and executed under Parliamentary authority.

For Blessed (then Venerable) John Duckett, on page 300 (September 20) in the book, Father Bowden offers an example of a Catholic priest as an Alter Christus (Another Christ), echoing the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus says "If therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way." (John 13:8) in a memory explaining how Father Duckett admitted he was a Catholic priest "To Save Others":

He was taken, in company with two Catholic laymen, as he was going to baptize two children on the Feast of the Visitation, July 2. His captors, the Parliament soldiers, carried him before a committee of the Sequestrators at Sunderland. He declined to answer as to his priesthood and demanded proof, but was committed to prison by reason of the Holy oils and books found on him. Again examined, and again refusing to inculpate himself, he was threatened with lighted matches placed between his fingers to make him confess what he was. This availing nothing he was sent back to prison. After an hour he was again called, and found his two companions on the point of being shipped and sent away, merely because he would not confess who he was. "Seeing this," he says, "and also fearing that the Catholics of the neighbourhood who knew me might suffer, and especially those with whom I lived, I confessed myself to free them and the country." His self-sacrifice was successful, and seemed an inspiration from Heaven. No more inquiry was made after his friends, but Father Duckett was sent up to London in company with Father Corby, a Jesuit, who was taken in these parts as he was going up to the altar to say Mass.

So Father Duckett did not admit immediately to his priesthood, even enduring some torture, but when the two laymen were threatened and he also became concerned for others in the Durham area where he was captured--especially the family or families of the children who were to be baptized--he confessed to save their lives.

The Catholic Encyclopedia offers some details about his life before his arrest, imprisonment, and execution: He was probably a grandson of Venerable [Blessed] James Duckett [a layman executed on April 19, 1601, also at Tyburn], born at Underwinder, in the parish of Sedbergh, Yorkshire, in 1603; died 7 September, 1644. He was ordained priest in 1639 and afterwards went to Paris where he studied three years in the College of Arras. He had an extraordinary gift of prayer, and while yet a student would spend whole nights in contemplation. On his way to the English mission, he spent two months in spiritual exercises, under the direction of his uncle, the Carthusian prior at Nieuport.

Then, when Fathers Duckett and Corby are in prison and are offered an opportunity for one of them to escape, Father Bowden offers the story of their "Holy Rivalry":

RALPH CORBY, alias Darlington, was born near Dublin of English parents, natives of Durham, who had gone over to Ireland for the free exercise of their religion. The piety of the family is sufficiently attested by the fact that both parents and children entered into religion: the father and his three sons into the Society of Jesus, the mother and her daughters into the Order of St. Benedict. After twelve years' hard work, notwithstanding continuous ill-health, among the poorer Catholics in Durham, he was arrested and sent up to London with Father Duckett. They were escorted from Westminster to Newgate by a company of Parliament soldiers, with a captain at their head, beating drums and firing off their muskets through the crowded streets, as if they had been the enemy's generals taken in war as in the old Roman battles. In prison the life of one of them could have been saved by an exchange made for a prisoner in the hand of the Emperor of Germany. The offer was first made to Father Corby, who declined it on the ground that Father Duckett, being younger, could do more work than himself; but he in his turn refused it with thanks, as Father Corby's life, on account of his experience, was of greater value.

He cites a verse from the First Letter of John for this scene: "Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us." (3:1) I wonder what the Puritan authorities thought of them, both rejectiing a chance to be freed, in exile of course (but probably to return).

In describing their executions at Tyburn Tree, Father Bowden offers these details ("The Kiss of Peace"):

They went out to suffer with their tonsures shaved, the one in his Jesuit's habit, the other in his priest's cassock. At the gallows Father Duckett made no speech, but told an heretical minister that he had not come hither to be taught his religion, but to die for it. After a short discourse from Father Corby, the two confessors turned to each other. Together they had been arrested, supported each other by their mutual courage and self-sacrifice, and with a last most loving embrace they together received their eternal crown. ("Salute one another in a holy kiss; all the saints salute you." 2 Cor. 13:12)

With these three mementoes, Father Bowden offers poignant examples of these martyrs' camaraderie in the midst of danger and suffering as they prepared for their executions. They were both beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

Blessed John Duckett, pray for us!

Blessed Ralph Corby, pray for us!