July 4 Martyrs: Priests and Laymen

Eight martyrs suffered on July 4: four each in 1594 and 1597. These executions are examples of a pattern that only existed during Elizabeth I's reign, when laymen were executed because of the assistance they offered to priests. (James I did not follow this policy of punishing the laity, even though the laws that made such assistance a felony were still "on the books".)

Blessed John Cornelius, SJ priest and martyr
Blessed Thomas Bosgrave, martyr
Blessed John Carey, martyr
Blessed Patrick Salmon, martyr 

John, Thomas, John and Patrick were executed together at Dorchester on July 4, 1594. All of them were from Ireland:

John Cornelius (1557-1594) pronounced Jesuit vows in prison days before he was hanged, drawn and quartered. He met Jesuits while he was studying theology in Rome in 1580 and had asked to enter the Society of Jesus, but was not able to leave the people he served to go to Flanders for the novitiate, which was the normal policy at the time. Before he was able to get to the novitiate, he was arrested in the Dorsetshire castle of the family who had sheltered him for years and sentenced to die for high treason- celebrating Mass and converting people back to Catholicism.

The son of Irish parents living in Cornwall, the priest's true name was John Conor O'Mahony, but used his middle name in a Latinized form. He was expelled from Exeter College, Oxford, for being Catholic and left for the Continent to study. After he was ordained a priest in Rome, he returned to England and made the home of Sir John Arundell his base of operations. He placed himself under the direction of Father Henry Garnet, the superior of the English mission, while he waited for permission to make his novitiate, but was captured before he received an answer. One of the family servants betrayed him to the authorities, and he was arrested April 14, 1594, while hiding in a priest-hole in the Arundell family castle in Dorset. Prison officials in London tortured him in a vain attempt to learn the identities of the families who had sheltered him or those who had attended the Catholic services. Aware that his death was near, he pronounced the vows of the Society before a Jesuit and two lay people as witnesses. 

Bosgrave, Carey and Salmon were pronounced guilty of the felony of aiding and abetting Father John. All that Bosgrave had done was lend Father Cornelius his hat after he'd been arrested! The sentence was the same for all: hanging, drawing, and quartering. 

After the court had published its judgment, it offered all four men a reprieve if they would give up their Catholic faith. All four refused. 

The execution took place at Dorchester two days later. The three laymen were hanged first. Each made a Catholic profession of faith before the trap was sprung. Carey kissed the noose and called it a “precious collar”. Father John then kissed the feet of his hanging companions.  He prayed St. Andrew's prayer, "O good Cross, made beautiful by the body of the Lord: long have I desired you, ardently have I loved you, unceasingly have I sought you out; and now you are ready for my eager soul. Receive me from among men and restore me to my Master, so that he, who, by means of you, in dying redeemed me, may receive me. Amen."

He was not allowed to make any formal statement; but he did manage to state that he had been lately admitted into the Jesuits, and would have been en route to the Jesuit novitiate in Flanders had he not been arrested. After praying for his executioners and for the welfare of the queen, John Cornelius also was executed. The body was taken down and quartered, his head was nailed to the gibbet, but soon removed. These martyrs are honored at the Catholic parish in Chideock.

Note that Sir John Arundell of Lanherne also suffered for his Catholicism:

In 1569 he refused to subscribe to the Act of Uniformity and in the following year he was obliged to enter a recognizance for his ‘good behaviour’, but it was not until 1577 that his Catholicism came to be looked upon as a source of danger to the realm. On 29 Nov. in that year Cuthbert Maine [St. Cuthbert Mayne], the seminary priest, was hanged at Launceston; in his speech from the scaffold he described Arundell as a ‘good and godly’ gentleman with the result that two weeks later Arundell, whose refusal to attend church had been noted, was placed under arrest. On his release he was required to live near London and took up residence in Clerkenwell. During his absence from Cornwall his house was searched and subsequently charges against him were laid before the Council in September 1579. In 1585 Arundell was lodged in the Tower, allegedly because of his association with his wife’s cousin, Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel. At the same time he was fined 1,000 marks in the Star Chamber for contempt of the proclamation regarding recusants. Released from the Tower in 1586, he went to live at Muswell Hill and remained there until the early months of 1590, when he was imprisoned at Ely. He was set free in the summer and settled in Isleworth, where he died on the following 17 Nov. His body was carried with great pomp to Cornwall and buried beside those of his ancestors at St. Columb Major, where a monument was later erected to his memory.

Blessed William Andleby, priest and martyr 
Blessed Henry Abbot, martyr
Blessed Thomas Warcop, martyr
Blessed Edward Fulthorp, martyr

Fr Andleby served in Yorkshire, and Henry, Thomas and Edward were three laymen who assisted and sheltered him; they were executed together at York on July 4 in 1597 under Elizabeth I. Blessed William Andleby was a convert--he had thought to argue Doctor William Allen out of his Catholic faith and instead found himself argued into it:

He was born at Etton in Yorkshire of a well-known gentle family. At twenty-five he went abroad to take part in the religious wars in the Spanish Netherlands, and called at Douai to interview Dr. Allen, whom he attempted to confute in argument. Next day he recognized that Allen was right, was converted, and eventually became a priest. Mention is found of his having served at Mr. Tyrwhitt's, in Lincolnshire, and also of his having succoured the Catholic prisoners in Hull blockhouse. "His zeal for souls was such as to spare no pains and to fear no dangers. For the first four years of his mission he travelled always on foot, meanly attired, and carrying with him usually in a bag his vestments and other things for saying Mass; for his labours lay chiefly among the poor, who were not shocked with such things. Afterwards, humbly yielding to the advice of his brethren, he used a horse and went somewhat better clad. Wonderful was the austerity of his life in frequent watchings, fastings, and continual prayer, his soul so absorbed in God that he often took no notice of those he met; by which means he was sometimes exposed to suspicions and dangers from the enemies of his faith, into whose hands he at last fell after twenty years' labour in the vineyard of the Lord." (Challoner). He was condemned for his priestly character, and suffered with three laymen, John Abbot, Thomas Warcop, and Edward Fulthrop--Abbot and Fulthrop were also converts to Catholicism from the Church of England.

All of these martyrs were beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI. Blessed martyrs of England, pray for us!

Blesseds Pilchard, Pike, and Flathers at Dorchester and York

Both of these priestly martyrs had been arrested and banished, but returned to England and suffered martyrdom when arrested again, one during the reign of Elizabeth I and the other during the reign of James I.

The Catholic Encyclopedia describes the life and death of Blessed Thomas Pilchard or Pilcher, incuding among the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Blessed John Paul II in 1987:

He was born at Battle, Sussex, 1557; died at Dorchester, 21 March 1586-7. He became a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1576, and took the degree of M.A., in 1579, resigning his fellowship the following year. He arrived at Reims 20 November, 1581, and was ordained priest at Laon, March, 1583, and was sent on the mission. He was arrested soon after, and banished; but returned almost immediately. He was again arrested early in March, 1586-7, and imprisoned in Dorchester Gaol, and in the fortnight between committal to prison and condemnation converted thirty persons. He was so cruelly drawn upon the hurdle that he was fainting when he came to the place of execution. When the rope was cut, being still alive he stood erect under the scaffold. The executioner, a cook, carried out the sentence so clumsily that the victim, turning to the sheriff, exclaimed "Is this then your justice, Mr. Sheriff?" According to another account "the priest raised himself and putting out his hands cast forward his own bowels, crying 'Miserere mei'". Father William Warford, a contemporary of Blessed Thomas Pilchard, says: "There was not a priest in the whole West of England, who, to my knowledge, was his equal in virtue."

He is honored at the Dorset Martyrs Memorial on Gallows Hill, Dorchester, which includes Blessed William Pyke or Pike, a layman reconciled to the Catholic Church by Blessed Thomas Pilchard. Some sources give his date of execution at December 22, 1591 but others say that the date is uncertain and so he is remembered with his confessor. He was also hanged, drawn, and quartered because he had converted to Catholicism, which was an act of treason. He also answered the Bloody Question incorrectly according to authorities, denying Elizabeth I's ecclesiastical authority. He was a joiner, or carpenter, and was resolute.

The Catholic Encyclopedia records another brutal execution on March 21, in 1607, of Blessed Matthew Flathers in York:

An English priest and martyr; b. probably c. 1580 at Weston, Yorkshire, England; d. at York, 21 March, 1607. He was educated at Douai, and ordained at Arras, 25 March, 1606. Three months later he was sent to English mission, but was discovered almost immediately by the emissaries of the Government, who, after the Gunpowder Plot, had redoubled their vigilance in hunting down the priests of the proscribed religion. He was brought to trial, under the statute of 27 Elizabeth, on the charge of receiving orders abroad, and condemned to death. By an act of unusual clemency, this sentence was commuted to banishment for life; but after a brief exile, the undaunted priest returned to England in order to fulfil his mission, and, after ministering for a short time to his oppressed coreligionists in Yorkshire was again apprehended. Brought to trial at York on the charge of being ordained abroad and exercising priestly functions in England, Flathers was offered his life on condition that he take the recently enacted Oath of Allegiance. On his refusal, he was condemned to death and taken to the common place of execution outside Micklegate Bar, York. The usual punishment of hanging, drawing, and quartering seems to have been carried out in a peculiarly brutal manner, and eyewitnesses relate how the tragic spectacle excited the commiseration of the crowds of Protestant spectators.

He was also included among the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales beatified in 1987. Our Lady and All Saints Catholic Church in Otley honors him as a local martyr.

Remember that hanging, drawing and quartering was live vivisection: a fumbling, inept executioner could prolong the suffering. It was a mercy if the hangman allowed the victim to die while hanging, or at least be unconscious.

Image credit: © Copyright Becky Williamson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence. Martyrs' Memorial, Gallows Hill, Dorchester, taken 2 years ago
This memorial was erected in 1986 to commemorate all Dorset men and women who were martyred for their faith, particularly during the religious troubles of the 16th and 17th centuries. 

The artist who created the sculptures was Elizabeth Frink.

July 4, 1594 in Dorchester; July 4, 1597 in York

While we in the USA celebrate our Declaration of Independence, I bring to your notice two sets of Catholic martyrs from the reign of Elizabeth I.

On July 4, 1594, Father John Cornelius, SJ, Mr. John Carey, Mr. Patrick Salmon, and Mr. Thomas Bosgrave were executed in Dorchester, England. Father Cornelius had found a patron in Sir Thomas Arundell of Cornwall when a young man. Arundell arranged for him to attend the University of Oxford, but Cornelius traveled in 1580 to the Continent to study for the priesthood first at Rheims and then at the English College in Rome. Then he returned to England and served as chaplain to Lady Arundell. He was arrested at Chideock Castle by the sheriff of Dorsetshire, as were John Carey and Patrick Salmon, Irish servants of the castle. Thomas Bosgrave was arrested when he offered Father Cornelius a hat on his way to gaol--that constituted aiding and abetting a Catholic priest in Elizabethan England!

Father Cornelius was taken to London, questioned and tortured by authorities to find out who else had helped him and other priests he knew and then returned to Dorchester to stand trial with the three laymen on July 2, 1594. All were found guilty and were brought to the scaffold. Carey, Salmon and Bosgrave were hung as felons before Father Cornelius was hung, drawn and quartered as traitor. More about the Chideock Martyrs here, including the painting above at the Church of Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs, and St. Ignatius. The Church is celebrating Chideock Martyrs Day today with Prayers at the Martyrs Cross, Ruins Field and Mass for the Chideock Martyrs.

On July 4, 1597, one priest and three laymen were executed in York: Father William Andleby, Mr. Thomas Warcop, Edward Fulthrop, and Henry Abbott. Father Andleby was a convert--he had been born in Yorkshire, studied at St. John's College in Cambridge and had traveled to the Spanish Netherlands to fight for the Protestants there against the Catholic King of Spain. He visited William Allen at Douai to debate the exiled founder of the Catholics schools for English exiles. He ended up convinced that Dr. Allen was right, that the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Jesus Christ and studied at Douai to become a priest! After ordination in 1577 he returned to England as a missionary priest--he left as a soldier and came back as a priest! For twenty years he served Catholics in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire until his arrest, trial and execution.

Two of the three laymen received the same sentence of being hung, drawn, and quartered because they were judged guilty of treason: Edward Fulthrop, a Yorkshire gentleman had reconciled to the Catholic Church and Henry Abbot of Holden had persuaded another to join the Catholic Church--although it was an act of entrapment by an Anglican minister. Thomas Warcop was hanged for sheltering Father William Andleby. It's a brave man who becomes a Catholic in England after almost 30 years of recusancy laws that have increased in penalty and enforcement.

All eight were beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929. Their stories offer us great examples of holiness and fidelity to Jesus Christ and His Church. Thinking of their martyrdoms as we celebrate our Declaration of Independence in 1776 reminds us that the freedom of the exercise of religion documented in the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights thirteen years later was hard won and a long time coming as an idea applied in modern culture. (Another topic for another blog: why don't we celebrate Constitution Day as an important secular holiday?)