Knights of Malta, English Catholic Martyrs

Once Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell started the Attainder process, no one was safe. Today's beatified martyrs were arrested and condemned upon flimsy and amorphous grounds:

On July 8 or 9 or 10, 1539, Sir Thomas Dingley and Sir Adrian Fortescue, Knights of St. John, were executed by order of Henry VIII. In the common pattern of injustice at the time, they were never tried and were attainted in documents that included Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury (who would be finally executed on May 28, 1541).

Adrian Fortescue had been in very high favor at Henry VIII's Court; his mother was Alice Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's aunt. He was made a Knight of the Bath in 1503, along with Henry, then Prince of Wales. In the early years of Henry's reign he accompanied his king to Calais and to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Sir Adrian married twice and had four daughters and three sons.

In 1532 he entered the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, and by the mid 1530's that Order's opposition to Henry VIII's religious policy resulted in suppression of the Order and seizure of its property by the Crown. Knights of the Order were not welcome at Court and were forbidden to wear the habit or badges of their Order. Sir Adrian was imprisoned at Marshalsea, released, and arrested again on February 14, 1539, held in the Tower of London until his execution. He was then attainted and his possessions first cataloged, then seized by the Crown.

The Bill of Attainder contains vague language about his crime, speaking of "sundry treasons". Since the Pole family was the main target of this Bill, including not only the Countess of Salisbury, but also her exiled son Cardinal Reginald Pole and other of his associates, Fortescue's association with the Poles (his son Anthony married Catherine Pole) contributed to his condemnation. [Catherine Pole was Margaret Pole's granddaughter. Catherine's father was Sir Geoffrey Pole, who may have betrayed his brother, Henry Lord Montague--executed on December 9, 1538 with Henry Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter--and was pardoned by Henry VIII.]

Sir Thomas Dingley was a prior of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem; he also was attainted and condemned without trial, accused of travelling to foreign courts in the interests of the king's enemies.

The date of their executions is reported variously--July 8, 9, or 10--and their place of burial is not known. Clearly they did not merit the usual "obsequies perform'd" according to the state.

Sir Adrian's eldest son John held posts in the Courts of Elizabeth I and James I; he contributed books owned by Sir Adrian to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. His youngest son, Anthony, was involved in a conspiracy against Elizabeth I in 1561 and was exiled.

The cult of these two martyrs, beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1895, is honored among the Order of Malta. The Catholic priest and scholar, Adrian Fortescue, 1874-1923, is a direct descendant of this martyr.

Image Credit: Coat of arms of the Knights of Malta from the façade of the church of San Giovannino dei Cavalieri, Florence, Italy.

The Poisonous Cook Gets Cooked (Boiled Alive)

Author Nancy Bilyeau writes at the English Historical Fiction Authors blog about the execution of the cook who attempted to poison Bishop John Fisher. Richard Roose confessed to the crime of poisoning the Bishop's soup but said that it was just supposed to make him or anyone who ate it sick, and that it was just a joke. Such jokes were not funny at that time. Although there's some irony in a cook being boiled to death, the way the punishment fit the crime wasn't funny either:

On April 5, 1531, hardened spectators of public punishment gathered at Smithfield, joined, perhaps, by others who were too ghoulish or genuinely curious to stay away. For an execution had been announced of a type that none had witnessed in their lifetimes, nor ever heard of.

The condemned man, Richard Roose, was not of the magnitude of criminal expected to meet his end at Smithfield. . . .

Roose, the victim of 1531, had not sought to harm King Henry VIII nor Queen Catherine nor any royal councilor. He had not tried to overthrow the nation's government nor change its religious policies. The charge was murder. Roose, a cook in the service of Bishop John Fisher, was accused of murder by poison, his victims an obscure gentleman in the bishop's household and a destitute widow. He is believed to have admitted to the poisoning but claimed it has a joke gone wrong, an accident. There is no testimony to examine because Roose had no trial, by command of Henry VIII. . . .

The murder motive and the question of a larger plot were soon obscured by Henry VIII's drastic actions. He decided that Roose should be condemned by attainder without a trial--a measure usually used for criminals who were at large. Roose was in prison. And a bill was passed in Parliament making boiling a form of legal capital punishment for poisoning. This crime was especially heinous, the king's representatives said.

Chapuys questioned the King's actions in his letter to Emperor Charles. Regardless of the "demonstrations of sorrow he makes he will not be able to divert suspicion."

But no accusations were made, of course. And in April the crowds of Smithfield witnessed Roose's death, to their horror. According to an eyewitness:

"He roared mighty loud, and divers women who were big with child did feel sick at the sight of what they saw, and were carried away half dead; and other men and women did not seem frightened by the boiling alive, but would prefer to see the headsman at his work."

Anne Boleyn was implicated by rumor in the attempt on Bishop Fisher's life--and there is record of another attempt at assassination when a shot was fired at his house at Lambeth. Was Henry VIII covering something up? As Bilyeau demonstrates, Henry had admired and valued Fisher, but once the latter opposed him on the matter of the divorce, that regard dissipated. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes the acts of attainder used against Bishop Fisher before his trial for treason:

That the regime might well by this stage have entertained the most profound suspicions about Fisher's loyalty is shown in the way that he was implicated in the proceedings now being taken against the Holy Maid of Kent. After she had been induced to confess publicly to fraud, proceedings were expedited by act of attainder, and Fisher was by the same act convicted of ‘misprision of treason’ and sentenced to confiscation of goods and imprisonment at the king's pleasure for having concealed the predictions she shared with him (these were all of course, as Fisher vainly pleaded in his own defence, public knowledge). Even now the regime had not abandoned all hope of—if not winning Fisher over—at least cowing him into submission. Had he been willing to take the ‘oath to the succession’ (an oath required in 1534 of all adult males, recognizing Henry's divorce and second marriage, and implicitly repudiating papal authority), he would doubtless have been restored to full honours. But he was not, and in April he was therefore confined in the Tower of London. About the end of the year a further act of attainder deprived him of his preferments, including the see of Rochester. In the course of 1535 pressure was put on him to affirm or deny Henry's status as ‘Supreme Head of the Church of England’ (which had been recognized by act of parliament late in 1534). Eventually, he seems to have uttered a denial of this title (possibly elicited by chicanery), which left him liable to the penalties of high treason under a new treason act passed that year. And so in June 1535 he was indicted, tried, convicted, sentenced, and, on Tuesday 22 June, decapitated on Tower Hill. His death, which Catholic Europe unanimously interpreted as martyrdom, was of no small importance in perpetuating after his death the reputation as a theologian which he had acquired earlier in his life. Now his witness against the innovations of his time was sealed in the blood of martyrdom—and death for the truth was no longer the exclusive preserve of the protestant reformers.

Father and Son Martyrs: The Feltons of Bermondsey Abbey

Today is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Blessed John Felton (executed 8 August 1570) during the reign of Elizabeth I in the aftermath of the Northern Rebellion and the publication of Regnans in excelsis by Pope St. Pius V:

Almost all of what is known about Felton's background comes from the narrative of his daughter, Frances Salisbury. The manuscript that holds her story has a blank where his age should be, but it does say that he was a wealthy man of Norfolk ancestry, who lived at Bermondsey Abbey near Southwark. He "was a man of stature little and of complexion black". His wife had been a playmate of Elizabeth I, a maid-of-honour to Queen Mary and the widow of one of Mary's auditors (a legal official of the papal court).

Felton was arrested for fixing a copy of Pope Pius V's Bull Regnans in Excelsis ("reigning on high"), excommunicating Queen Elizabeth, to the gates of the Bishop of London's palace near St. Paul's. This was a significant act of treason as the document, which released Elizabeth's subjects from their allegiance, needed to be promulgated in England before it could take legal effect. The deed brought about the end of the previous policy of tolerance towards those Catholics who were content occasionally to attend their parish church while keeping their true beliefs to themselves. . . .
[this policy had already ended, and not just with the Northern Rebellion of 1569; the fines for recusancy had been mounting because the government was becoming frustrated with how Catholics were holding out against conformity]

The law records say that the act was committed around eleven at night on 24 May 1570, but Salisbury claims it happened between two and three in the morning of the following day, the Feast of Corpus Christi. Felton had received the bulls in Calais and given one to a friend, William Mellowes of Lincoln's Inn. This copy was discovered on 25 May and after being racked, Mellowes implicated Felton, who was arrested on 26 May. Felton immediately confessed and glorified in his deed, "treasonably declar[ing] that the queen . . . ought not to be the queen of England", but he was still racked as the authorities were seeking, through his testimony, to implicate Guerau de Spes, the Ambassador of Spain, in the action. Felton was condemned on 4 August and executed by hanging four days later in St. Paul's Churchyard, London. He was cut down alive for quartering, and his daughter says that he uttered the holy name of Jesus once or twice when the hangman had his heart in his hand. He was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII.

His son, Blessed Thomas Felton, remained true to the Catholic Faith and followed in his father's footsteps to the scaffold (although at Tyburn, not St. Paul's). He was born about 1567 at Bermondsey Abbey, Surrey, was in his youth page to Lady Lovett. Afterwards he was sent to the English College at Rheims, where he received the first tonsure from the hands of the Cardinal de Guise, archbishop of Rheims, in 1583. He then entered the order of Minims, but being unable to endure its austerities he returned to England. On landing in England Fleton was arrested, brought to London, and committed to the Poultry Compter. About two years later his aunt, Mrs. Blount, obtained his release through the interest of some of her friends at court. He attempted to return to France, but was again intercepted and committed to Bridewell. After some time he regained his liberty, and made a second attempt to get back to Rheims, but was rearrested and recommitted to Bridewell, where he was put into "Little Ease" and otherwise cruelly tortured. He was brought to trial at Newgate, just after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and was asked whether, if the Spanish forces had landed, he would have taken the part of Queen Elizabeth. His reply was that he would have taken part with God and his country. But he refused to acknowledge the queen to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England, and was accordingly condemned to death. The next day, 28 August 1588, he and another priest, named James Claxton or Clarkson, were conveyed on horseback from Bridewell to the place of execution, between Brentford and Hounslow, and were there hanged and quartered.

Like his father, he was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII.

The Minims or Order of Minim Friars were founded by St. Francis of Paola in Italy during the fifteenth century. The "austerities" mentioned above include not just the usual vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, but a vow of a "Lenten way of life"--constant abstinence from meat and dairy products.

On the other hand, if you like Paulaner beer from Munich, that's from a former Minim friary!

Blesseds Knights Fortescue and Dingley

On July 8 or 9 or 10, 1539, Sir Thomas Dingley and Sir Adrian Fortescue, Knights of St. John, were executed by order of Henry VIII. In the common pattern of injustice at the time, they were never tried and were attainted in documents that included Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury (who would be finally executed on May 28, 1541).

Adrian Fortescue had been in very high favor at Henry VIII's Court; his mother was Alice Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's aunt. In the early years of Henry's reign he accompanied his king to Calais and to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was made a Knight of the Bath in 1503, along with Henry, then Prince of Wales. Sir Adrian married twice and had four daughters and three sons.

In 1532 he entered the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, and by the mid 1530's that Order's opposition to Henry VIII's religious policy resulted in suppression of the Order and seizure of its property by the Crown. Knights of the Order were not welcome at Court and were forbidden to wear the habit or badges of their Order. Sir Adrian was imprisoned at Marshalsea, released, and arrested again on February 14, 1539, held in the Tower of London until his execution. He was then attainted and his possessions first cataloged, then seized by the Crown.

The Bill of Attainder contains vague language about his crime, speaking of "sundry treasons". Since the Pole family was the main target of this Bill, including not only the Countess of Salisbury, but also her exiled son Cardinal Reginald Pole and other of his associates, Fortescue's association with the Poles (his son Anthony married Catherine Pole) contributed to his condemnation. [Catherine Pole was Margaret Pole's granddaughter. Catherine's father was Sir Geoffrey Pole, who may have betrayed his brother, Henry Lord Montague--executed on December 9, 1538 with Henry Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter--and was pardoned by Henry VIII.]

Sir Thomas Dingley was a prior of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem; he also was attainted and condemned without trial, accused of travelling to foreign courts in the interests of the king's enemies.

The date of their executions is reported variously--July 8, 9, or 10--and their place of burial is not known. Clearly they did not merit the usual "obsequies perform'd" according to the state.

Sir Adrian's eldest son John held posts in the Courts of Elizabeth I and James I; he contributed books owned by Sir Adrian to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. His youngest son, Anthony, was involved in a conspiracy against Elizabeth I in 1561 and was exiled.

The cult of these two martyrs, beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1895, is honored among the Order of Malta. The Catholic priest and scholar, Adrian Fortescue, 1874-1923, is a direct descendant of this martyr.

Blessed Margaret Pole

Martyr of England. She was born Margaret Plantagenet, the niece of Edward IV and Rich­ard III. She married Sir Reginald Pole about 1491 and bore five sons, including Reginald Cardinal Pole. Margaret was widowed, named countess of Salisbury, and appointed governess to Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Queen Catherine of Aragon, Spain. She opposed Henry’s mar­riage to Anne Boleyn, and the king exiled her from court, although he had called her “the holiest woman in England.” When her son, Cardinal Pole, denied Henry’s Act of Supremacy, the king imprisoned Margaret in the Tower of London for two years and then beheaded her on May 28. In 1538, her son Henry Pole, Lord Montague was executed for treason and her other surviving son, Geoffrey was also arrested and found guilty of treason, but was pardoned. She was never given a legal trial, but included in an Act of Attainder that accused many of treason on quite flimsy grounds. Margaret Pole was devoted to the Five Wounds of Jesus; the Pilgrimage of Grace proceeded under banners emblazoned with the Five Wounds of Jesus; therefore, Cromwell and Henry's flawed logic was that her devotion proved her support of  rebellion. Nevermind that devotion to the Five Wounds of Jesus was popular throughout England in the 16th century. Her sons' opposition to Henry's marital and ecclesial efforts was enough. She rightly protested against the lack of due process and there are various reports about how horrible her execution was: certainly the headsman was incompetent.

She was seventy when she was martyred in 1541. Margaret was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. She is buried in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. Margaret Pole had planned a resting place for herself in what is now Christchurch Priory in what was, before 1539, an Augustinian Priory, in the Salisbury Chantry, where Masses would be said for the repose of her soul. More on her life and times here. Her daughter Ursula had married Henry Stafford, who was the eldest son of Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham executed on May 17, 1521 for treason. Ursula and Edward survived the double blows of two parents beheaded for treason against Henry VIII, and Stafford was named Baron Stafford during the reign of Edward VI. One of their sons, Thomas, would also lose his head after participating in the Wyatt Rebellion against Mary I.

Blessed Margaret Pole's other son, Reginald, returned to England in 1554 to reconcile the English church and nation to the Catholic Church and the Papacy, becoming the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury in 1556. He died two years later and is buried in Canterbury Cathedral. You may read my review of her standard biography, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership by Hazel Pierce here.

Busy Day at Smithfield: Henry VIII Executes Catholics and Protestants

On July 30, 1540, two different sets of martyrs set off for Smithfield for execution. There were three Catholics, who had refused to swear Henry VIII's Oaths of Succession and Supremacy, and there were three Protestants--more properly, Zwinglians--who refused to accept the definition of Christian sacramental doctrine outlined in Henry VIII's Six Articles.

Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherston, and Edward Powell had all been chaplains and defenders of Queen Catherine of Aragon--very learned men; graduates of the University of Oxford. Thomas Abel had written Invicta veritas. An answere, That by no manner of law, it may be lawfull for the most noble King of England, King Henry the eight to be divorced from the queens grace, his lawfull and very wife. B.L. in 1532 and had also been implicated in the Nun of Kent cause celebre. Richard Fetherston had also written against Henry's divorce of Catherine in Contra divortium Henrici et Catharinae, Liber unus although no copy of the text survives. He also tutored the Princess Mary. Henry VIII had favored Edward Powell for his works against Lutheran doctrines in earlier days, but then Powell ran afoul of Henry's changing policies and desires to cast aside Catherine of Aragon.

The Zwinglians Robert Barnes, Thomas Garrett, and William Jerome were also taken to Smithfield that day. Robert Barnes had attended the University of Cambridge and had "hung out" at the White Horse Inn with other Lutheran minded students and masters. While Thomas Cromwell was in power, they had preached against the Catholic Bishop, Stephen Gardiner, but once Cromwell fell and was executed on July 28, 1540, they lost their protector and were sentenced to death.

Both the Catholics and the Zwinglians were sentenced to death without trial. Bills of Attainder condemned the Catholics as Traitors and the Zwinglians as Heretics. Three hurdles dragged the men to Smithfield from the Tower; each hurdle held a traitor and a heretic. At Smithfield, the traitors were hung, cut down and butchered while alive, their bodies quartered and their heads cut for display; the heretics were burnt alive at the stake. A poem titled, "The Metynge of Doctor Barnes and Dr. Powell at Paradise Gate and of theyre communicacion bothe drawen to Smithfylde fro the Towar" described the juxtaposition of the Catholic and the Protestant that day.

This day demonstrates Henry VIII's equal opportunity injustice; he sentenced both those who refused to swear the oaths he demanded and those who refused to obey the religious doctrine he required. The Catholics certainly knew the dangerous route they were taking -- defending Catherine against the king's wishes and refusing the oaths. By 1540, the pattern of execution for those offenses was well established. The Zwinglians were probably caught off guard by Cromwell's sudden fall; on the leading edge of Protestant thinking and theology, they lost their protector and were caught up in the strange factional divisions Henry countenanced in the later years of his reign. (See chapter 2 in Supremacy and Survival, in the section titled, "Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, and Henry's Reformation" for more insight into that period.)

Catherine's former chaplains were beatitified by Pope Leo XIII; the Zwinglian preachers were honored by John Foxe in his Acts and Monuments.

(Thomas Abel carved the bell in the wall of his cell in the Tower of London--it is obviously a pun on his last name. What a hallmark of grace under pressure!)

"1536 and All That"

Reading 1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII was rather frustrating. Suzannah Lipscomb organizes the book with a repetitive structure: each part and each chapter followed a pattern of summary, exposition, summary. "Here is what I am going to tell you; I'm telling you now; This is what I told you." I tired of the repetition and the feeling of deja vu.

In her introduction she discusses her concern about the word "change" and locating the cause of the change in one year. As I read the book I could see why--at the same time she argues that Henry VIII changed and that the events of 1536 made him change, she keeps describing how much he stayed the same and how these changes had been building since early in his reign. He wanted his way before 1536 and he wanted his way after 1536. What changed was the lengths to which Henry would go to get his way--but that potential had been present before 1536 as Thomas More famously warned Thomas Cromwell.

He believed in the divine right of kings before 1536; with Cromwell's help he was able to bolster that belief by taking the title of Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England and proclaiming England an Empire (himself its Emperor)--and those actions date to 1534. Probably more crucial than anything that happened in 1536 was his reading of Tyndale's argument in The Obedience of a Christian Man that the King and not the Pope should control the church in his own territory. Anne Boleyn gave him that book well before 1536.

He used his power to execute those who threatened his divine supremacy before 1536; he continued to do so after 1536: what changed was the legality of the methods he used as he relied upon Acts of Attainder and a rather adaptable definition of treason, but even those tendencies were present in the execution of his father's former counselors and the Earl of Buckingham and the executions of Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent and her confessors in 1534. The pattern was already there.

He was destined for a career in the Church before his elder brother Arthur died and he regarded himself as a devout Catholic and a good hand with theology before 1536--reading the Bible and determining the Pope had to have been wrong to grant the dispensation so he could marry Catherine of Aragon; he continued this interest in theology as the Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England with the proclamations he made about religious doctrine, church discipline, and worship. He thought he was a Catholic before 1536 and he continued to after 1536, but he had been dissenting from Catholic teaching for a long time.

It's tempting to look at 1536 and the events of those twelve months (the fall at the tournament; the written attack by Reginald Pole; Anne Boleyn's miscarriage, arrest, trial, and execution; the death of Henry Fitzroy, and the Pilgrimage of Grace) as a source for a radical change in behavior. I think rather that there was a development of Henry's characteristic behavior dating from 1534, the beginning of his "reign of terror" against anyone who opposed him. That's when the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Succession, crucial to determining who was for and who was against Henry, were passed. Elizabeth Barton was attainted and executed in 1534. Bishop Fisher and Thomas More were imprisoned in 1534. The Treasons Act was passed in 1534. If any year changed Henry VIII, it was 1534--or rather, Henry VIII changed most radically that year and the behaviors he'd developed continued to determine his reaction to opposition and difficulty.

The Tyranny of Henry VIII and the Knights of St. John

On July 8 or 9 or 10, 1539, Sir Thomas Dingley and Sir Adrian Fortescue, Knights of St. John, were executed by order of Henry VIII. In the common pattern of injustice at the time, they were never tried and were attainted in documents that included Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury (who would be finally executed on May 28, 1541).

Adrian Fortescue had been in very high favor at Henry VIII's Court; his mother was Alice Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's aunt. In the early years of Henry's reign he accompanied his king to Calais and to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was made a Knight of the Bath in 1503, along with Henry, then Prince of Wales. Sir Adrian married twice and had four daughters and three sons.

In 1532 he entered the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, and by the mid 1530's that Order's opposition to Henry VIII's religious policy resulted in suppression of the Order and seizure of its property by the Crown. Knights of the Order were not welcome at Court and were forbidden to wear the habit or badges of their Order. Sir Adrian was imprisoned at Marshalsea, released, and arrested again on February 14, 1539, held in the Tower of London until his execution. He was then attainted and his possessions first cataloged, then seized by the Crown.

The Bill of Attainder contains vague language about his crime, speaking of "sundry treasons". Since the Pole family was the main target of this Bill, including not only the Countess of Salisbury, but also her exiled son Cardinal Reginald Pole and other of his associates, Fortescue's association with the Poles (his son Anthony married Catherine Pole) contributed to his condemnation. [Catherine Pole was Margaret Pole's granddaughter. Catherine's father was Sir Geoffrey Pole, who may have betrayed his brother, Henry Lord Montague--executed on December 9, 1538 with Henry Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter--and was pardoned by Henry VIII.]

Sir Thomas Dingley was a prior of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem; he also was attainted and condemned without trial, accused of travelling to foreign courts in the interests of the king's enemies.

The date of their executions is reported variously--July 8, 9, or 10--and their place of burial is not known. Clearly they did not merit the usual "obsequies perform'd" according to the state.

Sir Adrian's eldest son John held posts in the Courts of Elizabeth I and James I; he contributed books owned by Sir Adrian to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. His youngest son, Anthony, was involved in a conspiracy against Elizabeth I in 1561 and was exiled.

The cult of these two martyrs, beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1895, is honored among the Order of Malta.

I am reading Suzannah Lipscomb's 1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII. While I am not sure that I accept all of her psychological explanation for changes in Henry VIII's behavior, she does point out that after that crucial year, the king displayed an "increasing tendency not to pursue conviction through due process and common law but through parliamentary attainder and a widening definition of treason" (p. 191). Sir Adrian, a "friend" as Thomas More and Henry Norris once had been, was caught up in the net of attainder (posthumous in More's case) just like sixty-four other people during Henry VIII's reign. No wonder Sir Walter Raleigh called him the perfect image of the tyrant!