English Lawyer Saints in the June "Magnificat"

Every month, the Magnificat prayer book features a sequence of Catholic saints, beatified and canonized, in a certain category (educators, social workers, parents, etc). 

In June the theme is "Saints Who Studied Law." Of course, one saint that could be included in the series (on days that are not Solemnities--and there a quite a few in June that do not occur on Sundays!) is Saint Thomas More. But he's not included because the prayers and readings for Mass are for his optional memorial with Saint John Fisher today, and the meditation for the day is from one of his Tower prayers--and there's another regular column by Anne Burleigh in which he's highlighted. 

(Last year, Magnificat featured Saint Paulinus of Nola's memorial; the year before when featuring the prayers for More and Fisher, Saint John Fisher was emphasized.)

But of those featured in the June series, four of them are English saints: of those four, three are martyrs:

On p. 89, Saint Thomas Becket, Bishop and Martyr +1170 (December 29 feast day)

On p. 143, Saint Thomas de Cantelupe (aka Saint Thomas of Hereford), Bishop +1282 (August 25 feast day)

On p. 183, Blessed John Storey, Layman and Martyr +1571 (June 1 feast day)

On p. 289, Blessed Richard Langhorne, Layman and Popish Plot Martyr +1679 (July 14 feast day)

And a fourth martyr, Blessed Dermot O'Hurley, Irish Bishop tortured and martyred by Elizabethan authorities +1584 (June 20 feast day) is connected with the English effort to extirpate Catholicism from the realm.

Of course, the space for these stories is limited, but I did think--and I sent an email to the editors--that the one on Blessed John Storey should have been clearer about the kind of "important positions" he "was granted" during Mary I's reign. I'm sensitive to this because I've been accused of skipping over this issue myself on this blog, although I've posted these details at least twice:

In August of 1533, Storey and his family returned to England after Edward VI died and Mary, Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon’s Catholic daughter succeeded to the throne in spite of the attempt to supplant her by the Protestant Lady Jane Grey. Story went back to Oxford as Regius Professor of Law but then took on important duties in the revived Catholic Church, serving as Chancellor for the dioceses of London and Oxford, and Dean of the Arches, the ecclesiastical court of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In his role as Chancellor for the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner, he took part in heresy trials. He also served as proctor or representative for Queen Mary I at the trial of Thomas Cranmer in Oxford and joined efforts to control the publication of heretical books in several dioceses.

When Mary I and Reginald Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury, died on November 17, 1558, Storey, like other Catholics in England, waited to see what direction Elizabeth I would take in religion. Her first Parliament began to introduce bills leading to the establishment of the Church of England, and John Storey found himself under attack for his opposition and for his work during Mary I’s reign. In May of 1560 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Fleet, from which he escaped briefly, being recaptured and taken to Marshalsea Prison in April or May of 1562. He escaped from Marshalsea before he could be confronted with the taking of Elizabeth I’s Oath of Supremacy and fled again to Louvain, leaving everything he owned behind in England. His family joined him in exile again and the Duke of Alba offered him financial assistance and a position as a customs official. John Storey renounced his allegiance to Elizabeth I and placed himself in the service of Philip II of Spain, ruling in the Spanish Netherlands. He remained there for seven years.

Elizabethan authorities tracked him down, kidnapped him, and brought him back to England to face trial for treason: he argued he was loyal to his sovereign, Philip II, but was condemned anyway. The execution was brutal, especially for a 70-year old man, because it was conducted in angry revenge (not justice). Blessed John Storey, pray for us!

Preview: Gunpowder and Popish Plot Martyrs on "Church and Culture" with Deal Hudson

Yesterday, I recorded an interview with Deal Hudson for his Church and Culture program on Ave Maria Radio. Last August we talked about four Tudor era English Catholic Martyrs: two from the reign of Henry VIII and two from Elizabeth I's. 

This time we told the stories of four martyrs from the Stuart Dynasty: two from the reign of James I in the aftermath of the real Gunpowder Plot and two from Charles II's reign during the fake Popish Plot.

Background for the Gunpowder Plot ("Remember, remember, the Fifth of November"):

Catholic conspirators, frustrated by King James I not keeping his promise to be lenient with Catholics once he succeeded Elizabeth I, did plot to murder the king, his family, his Court, and members of Parliament by blowing up Parliament when they were all gathered there. They conspired to commit murder and terrorism to place James's Protestant daughter on the throne and through an uprising, take over the government and change England's state religion. It was outlandish, stupid, and sinful. 

The plot was discovered because one conspirator thought of a relative who would be in attendance and warned him not to go. Authorities searched the undercroft of the House of Lords and captured Guy Fawkes when he checked on the gunpowder, depicted above in an 1823 painting by Henry Perronet Briggs. 

He was tortured; other conspirators killed in a raid; others captured, tried, and executed as traitors (hanged, drawn, and quartered). Father Henry Garnet, SJ was also questioned and tried and executed: controversy about how much he knew about the Gunpowder Plot, how strenuously he advised against it, etc., has meant that he has not been beatified or canonized as a martyr. As I wrote in my review of Jessie Child's God's Traitors (the story of Vaux family's efforts to remain Catholic in Elizabethan and Stuart England) several years ago:

Anne Vaux feared that young men she knew well like Robert Catesby were plotting something horrible and she wanted Father Henry Garnet to tell them not to go forward with their plans. Did Father Garnet do enough? did he ask the right questions? respond forcefully enough to tell Catesby and Digby et al not to pursue whatever plot they had in mind? Those were questions he asked himself while in prison and even during his questioning. Although he did not instigate the plot or encourage the plot--he knew [something] about the Gunpowder Plot and he did not report it to the authorities, citing the seal of the confessional.

The aftermath of the Plot meant that Catholics were more restricted than before under the Popish Recusants Act of 1605 (finally repealed in 1829) with higher fines and a new oath, etc. And the government continued to search for any Jesuit priests in the country who might--because of their connection to Father Henry Garnet--have been involved in the conspiracy. Antonia Fraser wrote a book about Gunpowder Plot.

The two martyrs who suffered because of the fallout from the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 that I selected were Saint Thomas Garnet, SJ, and Saint Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit lay brother and the great designer and builder of Priest Holes in Catholic homes. They were arrested after hiding in Priest Holes in Hindlip Hall which Owen had built! 

Background for the Popish Plot:

Titus Oates, one of the perjurers behind the Popish Plot was not trustworthy: the Church of England didn't trust him. But once he started talking about a plot he'd discovered among Catholics to assassinate Charles II, who'd returned to the throne in 1660 after the English Civil War and Interregnum, and replace him with his brother James, the Duke of York, a Catholic convert, he found a willing audience.

He and William Bedloe developed the story for the plot, convinced authorities of its reality, and testified against several Jesuits and other Catholics. The way the Courts tried defendants--namely, the assumption that the accused was guilty and had to prove he wasn't-- and the established prejudice against Catholics (especially Jesuits; remember the Gunpowder Plot) meant it took a long time for the judges to catch on to the web of lies Oates and Bedloe got tangled up in. 

After numerous trials and executions Oates' perjury was finally recognized and he was convicted of sedition, imprisoned, and fined. During the reign of James II, he was convicted of perjury, imprisoned for life, and pilloried. William and Mary pardoned him and he died in obscurity in 1705. The most recent book about the Popish Plot is from Yale University Press, Hoax: The Popish Plot that Never Was by Victor Slater.

The two martyrs I selected for the Popish Plot or the Titus Oates Conspiracy of 1678/1679, are Blessed Richard Langhorne, a lay lawyer accused of aiding the conspirators and Saint John Kemble, an 80-year old priest who'd served in the west of England and Wales for 54 years. 

The hour-long segment will air during Church and Culture on Saturday, February 1 (3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern/2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central) and Sunday, February 2 (7:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern/6:00 to 8:00 a.m. Central). Listen live here. When the program has been added to the archive for Church and Culture I'll update my Facebook page.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He is buried in the Gap Road Cemetery in Wimbledon.

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

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

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

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

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us!

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