September 9, 1587: A Catholic Martyr from Scotland

Blessed George Douglas is one of the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales, executed on September 9, 1587. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and according to Volume 1 of the Lives of the English Martyrs, 1583-1588, edited by Edwin H. Burton, D.D. and J.H. Pollen, SJ, he was aided in his exile in France by Mary, Queen of Scots:

George Douglas was of the house of Douglas of Bongedward now Bonjedburgh, of which family the Earl of Angus was the head. He was born in Edinburgh somewhere about 1540, his father John Douglas being a burgess of that city. Archibald Douglas, "the Parson of Glasgow," was his kinsman and coeval ; they were companions as scholars under John Douglas, sometime Archbishop of St. Andrews.

From the earlier examination [in 1570-1571] we learn that George Douglas ''was sometime a 'graye Freer' [sic: Friar] in Edinborough [sic]". About the year 1556 he betook himself to France where he tarried six years, and was maintained upon the exhibition (or pension) of the Queen of Scots as long as he tarried there. He was meantime made priest at Notre Dame ''by the testimonial of the Queen of Scots."

Then, when Father Douglas had gone to England as a missionary priest, he wrote to his patron in 1570-1571 (she had been in Elizabeth I's "care" since 1568) and his letter brought him to the attention of the authorities (he had been serving as tutor in a couple of households):

This he did, and his Latin letter, which is not signed, is still preserved. The letter is little more than an expression of his gratitude to Mary 'because you nourished me in the bountiful academy of Paris," and of sympathetic consolation in her trials, "with the assistance of the divine grace, your sorrow will be turned into joy". But the letter was seized and brought to Francis Cave, a Justice, in whose judgment its writer "seemeth to myselyke the usage of the quene's majestic towardes the quene of Scottes, & also of our relligion used here in Inglond contrary to the honour of the quene's majestic & the laws of her realm". He accordingly examined Douglas, and sent the examination with the letter up to London to the Earl of Huntingdon, Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire, with the suggestion that if he "confer with Mr. Secretary or some other of the Council, & peruse his letters, I think you will find that he deserves punishment". Meanwhile Cave detained Douglas in the jail.

Mary was held in South Yorkshire in 1570-1571. Evidently, Douglas was released. Burton and Pollen believe that the Father George Douglas described above with his connection to Mary, Queen of Scots, was the same Father George Douglas executed on September 9, 1587 in York:

This martyr's name is found in Wilson's Catalogue, the appendix to his English Martyrologe, published at St. Omer's in 1608, and is included in nearly all subsequent lists of the martyrs. What is known for certain concerning him is found in the Collectanea of Father Christopher Grene, S.J., who tells that he suffered at York on 9 September, 1587. The substance of what Father Grene had ascertained is as follows. At Ripon George Douglas fell into a discussion in which he asserted that the offspring of priests are illegitimate, and denied that the State bishops were real bishops. For this he was denounced, examined and imprisoned for about the space of a year. He was put in the stocks and then kept in irons in a dark dungeon. . . .

Finally tried, and refusing to accept Queen Elizabeth I as the supreme governor of the Church in England, he was condemned to death. Blessed George Douglas endured a horrific execution:

Commending himself unto God, he was cast off the ladder, and the sheriff commanded to cut the rope. The topman not being hasty, one of the bailiffs with his halbert burst the rope asunder, and the martyr fell on his back, and quickly sat up. Then came two butcherly slaves, the one took hold of his feet, and the other of the rope, and so strangling him, and trailing him to the fire, ripped him. He offered to put his hand to the place, and to rise up, but was held down for all his struggling. His tongue was heard to go. Thus cruelly this holy martyr died, and was executed for the profession of the Catholic faith, September 9, 1587. He is described as "a learned man, sharp in speech ; a stout champion, who handled Catholic controversy with much force. Marvellous stout, and zealous to suffer anything for Christ's sake."

His Faith Was His Crime: St. John Southworth

The Archdiocese of Westminster celebrates its martyr saint today, St. John Southworth, executed for the crime of being a priest in 1654. He had been arrested and protected by Queen Henrietta Maria and suffered imprisonment several times. Southworth assisted St. Henry Morse, SJ, during an attack of the plague. Finally, he was arrested and executed during Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate.

As the Westminster Cathedral website explains:

In 1618, John Southworth was ordained a priest at the English College, Douai (Douay) in Northern France. After returning to England, he was arrested and condemned to death in Lancashire in 1626, and imprisoned first in Lancaster Castle, and afterwards in the Clink Prison, London. On 11 April, 1630, he and some other priests were delivered to the French Ambassador for transportation abroad, but, in 1636, he was reported to have been released from the Gatehouse, Westminster, and was living at Clerkenwell. From there it seems he frequently visited the plague-stricken dwellings of Westminster to administer the sacraments and comfort the sick and the dying. In 1637, he appears to have been based in Westminster, where he was arrested on 28 November, before being again sent to the Gatehouse. From there he was transferred to the Clink and, in 1640, was brought before the Commissioners for Causes Ecclesiastical, who sent him back there.

On 16 July, John Southworth was again freed, but by 2 December he was once more imprisoned in the Gatehouse. After his final apprehension on 19 June 1654, he was tried at the Old Bailey, where he insisted on pleading guilty to being a priest. He was reluctantly condemned to be hung, drawn and quartered. On the day of his martyrdom, he was allowed to make a long speech at the gallows.

Among his last words:

“My faith and obedience to my superiors is all the treason charged against me; nay, I die for Christ’s law, which no human law, by whomsoever made, ought to withstand or contradict… To follow His holy doctrine and imitate His holy death, I willingly suffer at present; this gallows I look on as His Cross, which I gladly take to follow my Dear Saviour…I plead not for myself…but for you poor persecuted Catholics whom I leave behind me.

"My faith is my crime, the performance of my duty the occasion of my condemnation. I confess I am a great sinner; against God I have offended, but am innocent of any sin against man, I mean the Commonwealth, and the present Government."

The Venetian Secretary reported on his execution: he was hanged, and was not dead when the executioner "cut out his heart and entrails and threw them into a fire kindled for the purpose, the body being quartered . . . Such is the inhuman cruelty used towards the English Catholic religious."

The Spanish ambassador returned his corpse to Douai for burial. His corpse was sewn together and parboiled, to preserve it. Following the French Revolution, his body was buried in an unmarked grave for its protection. The grave was discovered in 1927 and his remains were returned to England. They are now kept in Westminster Cathedral in London. He was beatified in 1929. In 1970, he was canonized by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. The Cathedral honors him with a guild and the diocese celebrates his feast today.

Last year, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, highlighted St. John Southworth in a pastoral letter asking everyone to pray for their priests, including those who were being ordained that year:

St John Southworth is a key patron saint of the priests of this diocese. He is an inspiration and an intercessor for us. We bring his body into the central aisle of the cathedral not only for his feast day but so that he is there among the candidates for the priesthood on the day of their ordination. Next Saturday, in the cathedral, six men will be ordained priests for service in our parishes. During the singing of the Litany of the Saints, they will prostrate themselves, face down on the floor. In their midst will be the prostrate body of the Martyr. But he lies face up, reflecting the glory of God shining in him as he now enjoys the fullness of God's grace in heaven. He is indeed our special patron. 

Today I ask you to pray for all our priests. Pray particularly for the six new priests and the priest(s) serving in your parish. Our lives may not be as dramatic nor as full of public conflict as the life of St John Southworth. Yet we priests strive to express in our daily ministry exactly the same dedication to the mission of Jesus Our Lord as he did. Like him, we depend on the support and love of faithful people. For St John Southworth that was literally a matter of life and death. While that deadly drama has ended, over the centuries a marvellous tradition has remained of genuine love for priests and a readiness to support them, through thick and thin. I ask you, today, to continue that tradition and share it with your families.

St. John Southworth, pray for us! St, John Southworth, pray for good, holy priests!

Fourteen Years in Northumberland

The Royal English College of Valladolid has this brief notice on today's martyr:

BLESSED William SOUTHERNE was born in Ketton, near Darlington, in the County of Durham; he was seminarian in Douai, and after later the College of St. Alban in VALLADOLID, where he was ordained a priest. For fourteen years he worked for the re-conversion of the English, mainly in Northumberland. Condemned for being a priest, he was stripped, hung (sic), drawn and quartered in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on the 30th of April 1618. Pope John Paul II beatified him, on the 22nd of November 1987.

The Catholic Encyclopedia adds this detail: 

He was arrested while saying Mass, and committed by a neighboring justice to Stafford gaol. He was immediately sentenced to death for being a priest and refusing to take the oath of allegiance; he remained in prison for six days after condemnation, no hangman being forthcoming.

Blessed William Southerne served the underground Catholic community for fourteen (14) years! That means 14 years of hiding, walking or riding from safe house to safe house, saying Mass, hearing Confessions, baptizing newborns, always on the run, and finally captured.

The fact that he was mostly in Northumberland makes sense, since it was, during Elizabeth I's reign and well into James I's, a strongly recusant area. According to this history, published by the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, the Catholic community did not suffer as much as could be expected after the Gunpowder Plot was discovered and the penal/recusant laws strengthened  :

However, in the rural heartland of the north it would seem that the laws were rarely enforced. None of the 33 Northumbrian Catholics, many of them well‐known, summonsed between 1614 and 1617 to the court of the Ecclesiastical High Commission sitting at Durham ever bothered to present themselves. Indeed, we can go further and say that a biblical astuteness (which included the right marriage alliances) along with remoteness from central government and a closeness to those who counted in local government, allowed the Catholic gentry to live in a style to which they long had been accustomed, not only possessing vast estates, but also having the means to improve them. 

Of the then leading 18 Northumberland families 12 were Catholic, including the Radcliffes at Dilston and their relatives the Widdringtons of Cartington. Both incurred considerable expense improving their properties during these years, Francis Radcliffe audaciously providing even a separate (and therefore public) chapel in 1615/6. It is said that half of the Northumbrian recusants during James' reign lived in this southern part of Tynedale. 

But James' reign also witnessed a falling away of many wealthy Catholics, some of them certainly to prevent the loss of their property. Nevertheless, many remained Catholic at heart, despite their return to politics at national and local level. Sometimes they took steps to see that their children were brought up in the Faith. The pro‐Catholic Howard’s though mainly courtiers, acquired estates in Northumberland where the number of recusants increased from 150 to 358 during the years 1600‐ 1620. Similar increases were observed in Durham.

However, despite this resurgence, Catholics remained a tiny minority, less than 2% of the total population of the two counties. Demographically they tended to group into pockets away from the towns, where the gentry could provide not only protection but also, in the absence of bishops, spiritual leadership. From Cleveland to Northumberland Catholic gentlemen helped to organise Mass centres. The priests themselves, tired of constant harassment as they moved from place to place, also gravitated to the rural retreats of the gentry to act as their chaplains. By way of exception the more populated region of Tyneside also possessed Mass centres about this time. Dorothy Lawson's new house of 1632 at St Anthony's was built to accommodate more than one priest. Some years later Gateshead House, the new home of the Riddells on the site of the medieval chapel of St Edmund in Gateshead High Street also housed priests. The same can be said of the area around and including Durham city. 

Though King James must take some responsibility for the on‐going persecution of Catholics, he continued to stop short of the death penalty, if only to further his plans for marriage alliances with the two great Catholic countries of Spain and France. When in 1618 the priest William Southerne who had been working in Newcastle from a room (which doubled up as a chapel) on the upper floor of a house on the quayside was tried and summarily executed, it was done on the orders of the anti‐ Catholic Lord Sheffield, president of the council of the North whom the king swiftly dismissed from this high office.

According to his DNB entry, Lord Edmund Sheffield did indeed James I's displeasure, who was in the midst of negotiations with Spain:

On 21 April 1593 Sheffield was elected a knight of the Garter (Doyle). About 1594 he was a candidate for the wardenship of the west marches, and in 1595 he applied to Cecil for the post of lord president of the north. Suspicions of his religion caused by the fact that he had married a catholic were said to be the cause of his ill-success (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1581–90 p. 145, 1595–7 p. 140, 1580–1625 p. 365). Yet he seems to have been suspected very unjustly, and a letter from the north in 1599 praises his zeal in apprehending priests. ‘He will undertake any service against the papists, for God hath called him to a very zealous profession of religion’ (Cartwright, Chapters of Yorkshire History, p. 174; cf. Laughton, i. 66). On 13 Jan. 1598–9 Sheffield was appointed governor of Brill (Collins, Sidney Papers, ii. 71–80; Egerton Papers, p. 270).

Under James I he obtained the object of his ambition, and became lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire (1 Aug. 1603) and president of the council of the north (19 Sept. 1603). These two posts he held till 1619, when he resigned his presidency to Lord Scrope. This resignation was probably not a voluntary one, for Sheffield having executed a catholic priest without the king's leave, James promised the Spanish ambassador that he should be removed (Doyle, ii. 541; Gardiner, History of England, iii. 137; Court and Times of James I, ii. 136). An accusation of arbitrary conduct was also brought against him, but without result (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–10, pp. 24, 531, 577).

Sheffield's first wife was Ursula Tyrwhitt, daughter of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Kettleby, whom the History of Parliament describes as a "lifelong Catholic":

Under Elizabeth, although adjudged a ‘hinderer of the true religion’, Tyrwhitt was retained on the bench at least until 1579. Whether it was he or his uncle who led 237 followers against the northern rebels of 1569 is not known. It was only towards the end of his life that he and his children were harried for their recusancy. He himself had a spell in the Fleet, where in September 1580 he was allowed his wife’s company and access to the gardens for his health, and when he died on 16 Nov. 1581 two of his sons were released from prison to attend the funeral. Yet the will which he made five days before his death shows that recusancy had not impoverished him.

Ursula received a bequest from her father, knowing that he had suffered for the faith while her husband was prosecuting Catholics!

 

Blessed William Southerne, pray for us!

Blessed Richard Langley, Executed in York

John Hungerford Pollen, SJ writes about today's martyr in his Acts of the English Martyrs:

Richard Longley [Langley], Esq., was taken about the 21st of September in his own house by officers and a large band of soldiers, who had invested it. Among them was a certain Archdeacon (after the manner of the heretics) named Ramesdell, with some magistrates, Gayes, Vaughan, and Bethel, and there were taken with him two priests, who afterwards escaped out of prison. Mr. Longley was of such pleasant manners that he won the friendship of the gaoler, who in spite of his being a malicious heretic could scarcely refrain from tears when he was led out to execution. He was moreover of good family and fortune, yet he despised all these things, and declared before the Judges, that if he had greater riches and a hundred lives, he would willingly spend them all in that cause. 

The accusation against him was that he had relieved the enemies of the Queen (for so they styled God’s priests), whereupon he was urged to beg pardon for his crime of God and of the Queen. He answered with constancy that he had received them as messengers sent by God, and that therefore while he considered he had done an action pleasing to God, he could not admit that he had thereby done any injury to the Queen. This answer so irritated the Judges that they thought him unworthy of any grace, not even was the favour of an honourable burial allowed him, however much his friends begged for it. Permission was even refused for his corpse to be wrapped in the linen shroud he had prepared, and after his body had been thrown into the pit, the bodies of ten thieves were cast in over him. He died by hanging. 

During the whole time of his imprisonment, he was so merry that many wondered at him, for he had always been shy at home, yet when brought out for execution he showed such alacrity of mind as to go to the scaffold even before the Sheriff, as if he were a bridegroom going to his nuptials. He suffered on December the 1st, 1586.

John Hungerford Pollen, SJ was also known as John Hungerford Pollen, Jr. because he was the son of John Hungerford Pollen, Sr.! Pollen, Sr. was a Catholic convert and associate of Blessed John Henry Newman. Pollen, Sr. worked on the church for the Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin and on the Birmingham Oratory. Father Pollen was one of ten children and was ordained in 1891; he wrote several books about the English martyrs, including A Jesuit Challenge: Edmund Campion's Debates at the Tower of London in 1581 and The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and died in 1925. He also wrote for the Catholic Encyclopedia, including this substantial article on the Counter-Reformation. More about Father Pollen here from the Jesuits in Britain.

Pope Pius XI beatified Richard Langley among many others in 1929.

Blessed Richard Herst

This martyr, a farmer with a family, was a public recusant in Lancashire. He was executed on August 29 in 1628 after a rigged trial. 

According to this blog: 

A CONVICTED recusant, he was ploughing his field when one Dewhurst came to serve him with a warrant. Herst fled, and Dewhurst, following in pursuit, received a blow from Herst's maid, and afterwards in the heat of the pursuit fell and broke his leg. From that wound in the leg he died, yet Herst, who had never been within thirty yards of him, was charged with his death. Herst's pardon was offered him if he would take the oath, but he refused, and he declined also to go to church, so he was trailed there by his legs and much hurt. In the church he stopped his ears, not to hear false doctrine, and, on returning, said, "They have tortured my body, but, thank God, they have not hurt my soul." At his trial at Lancaster, though his innocence of Dewhurst's death was evident, the judge told the jury that he was a recusant, had resisted the Bishop's authority, and that they must find it murder for an example, which was done. At the gallows he said to the hangman, who was bungling with the rope, "Tom, I think I must come and help you." Then, after repeating the holy names of Jesus and Mary, he passed to immortality, Lancaster, August 29. 

He corresponded with his confessor while in prison awaiting his execution: 

THIS is his last letter to his confessor when about to suffer : "Now I take my last leave; now I am dying, and am as willing to die as ever I was to live, I thank my Lord and Saviour, who I trust will never fail me. I have comfort in Christ Jesus and His Blessed Mother, my good angel, and all the blessed Saints, and in the valiant and triumphant martyr, B. Arrowsmith, who is gone before me. How I have been used you will hear, and likewise what I had offered me if I would have taken the oath. I hope my friends will truly understand that my greatest desire is to suffer, and I would I had as many lives to offer as I have committed sins. Now, dear Sir, prepare yourself also to suffer, and animate your ghostly children in suffering. Once again, I desire you to say and to procure some Masses for my sinful soul, and if it please God to receive me into His kingdom, I shall not be unmindful of you and of all my good friends. I pray you remember my poor children, and encourage my friends about my debts which my chief worldly care is to satisfy. Once again, adieu. I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ Jesus." 

The B. Arrowsmith he refers to is, of course, St. Edmund (Bryan) Arrowsmith, SJ who had been executed the day before. 

According to this blog, Blessed Richard Hurst reflected on the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist before his execution:

He kissed the gallows on reaching the place of execution, and disregarding the ministers present, recommended himself to God, and begged the prayers of the Blessed Virgin, his angel guardian, and all the saints, especially St. John the Baptist, it being the day of his decollation. Ascending the ladder, he repeated the names of Jesus and Mary, and so was put to death.

Image: The Beheading of St John the Baptist by Jan Rombouts. You might note that St. John is baptizing Jesus in the Jordan in the upper right hand corner with the Holy Spirit pictured as a dove above them.

Blessed Edward Osbaldeston

Another November martyr, Blessed Edward Osbaldeston; according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he was born

about 1560; hanged, drawn, and quartered at York, 16 November, 1594. Son of Thomas Osbaldeston, and nephew of Edward Osbaldeston, of Osbaldeston Hall, Blackburn, Lancashire, he went to the English College of Douai, then at Reims, where he was ordained deacon in December, 1583, and priest 21 September, 1585. He was sent on the mission 27 April, 1589, and was apprehended at night through the instrumentality of an apostate priest named Thomas Clark at an inn at Tollerton, Yorkshire, upon St. Jerome's day, 30 September, 1594. He had said his first Mass on the feast day of St. Jerome, and in consequence had a great devotion to the saint. The day following his arrest he was taken to York, where he was tried at the next assizes and attainted of high treason for being a priest. Bishop Challoner prints the greater part of a letter addressed by the martyr to his fellow-prisoners in York Castle, the full text of which is still extant, and which reveals the great humility and serene trust in God with which he anticipated his death.

In that letter cited by Bishop Challoner, Osbaldeston notes that he knew the former priest Thomas Clark when he saw him the night before his arrest. He hoped that Mr. Clark did not recognize him but soon found out that Clark had. Since he was arrested on the feast of St. Jerome, his patron, he rejoiced!

Edward Osbaldeston was among the eighty-five martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Pope John Paul II on 22 November 1987.

Tomorrow, On the Son Rise Morning Show

Anna Mitchell and I will discuss the martyrdom in chains of St. Philip Howard tomorrow morning on the Son Rise Morning Show a little after 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central. Please listen live or find the podcast in due time here.

It's so appropriate that we call St. Philip a martyr in chains, meaning that he died in prison, held there for his Catholic faith, because he was part of a chain--a link in a chain of martyrs. It was because of the example of St. Edmund Campion, the great Jesuit martyr that St. Philip became a Catholic; it was through the solace of St. Robert Southwell, the great Jesuit poet and martyr, that he was able to endure his imprisonment, as I explain in this post on my blog at the National Catholic Register:

The story of St. Philip Howard’s sanctification and martyrdom is inextricably linked with the mission and death of two Jesuit martyrs of the English Reformation era: St. Edmund Campion and St. Robert Southwell. . . .

Philip Howard, Edmund Campion, and Robert Southwell were all canonized together in 1970 by Pope Paul VI among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. After enduring affliction in this life, they are experiencing glory with Christ in Heaven.

Read the rest there, please.

St. Philip Howard, pray for us.
St. Edmund Campion, pray for us.
St. Henry Walpole, pray for us.
St. Robert Southwell, pray for us.

Blessed Thomas Atkinson and His Rosary

Blessed Thomas Atkinson had returned to England as a missionary priest in 1588 and was executed in York on March 11, 1616 (four hundred years ago today) when he was 70 years old: 

Thomas Atkinson, of Yorkshire, England, studied for the priesthood in Reims, France, where he was subsequently ordained in 1588 around the age of forty-two. Returning to England, he traveled about on foot to minister to his fellow Catholics, becoming a special friend of the poor among them. It was only after breaking a leg that the indefatigable priest resorted to traveling by horse instead. His labors in the service of persecuted Catholics became so well known that, to escape arrest by the Protestant authorities, he could only journey safely by night. In the end, he was betrayed by an informer and captured while staying at the home of a Catholic family. Then about seventy, Father Atkinson was led to prison together with the couple that had hosted him, and their children. The “incriminating evidence” found by the government officials in the priest’s possession consisted of Rosary beads and the text of an indulgence. Condemned to death by drawing and quartering, Father Atkinson is said to have faced death “with wonderful patience, courage, and constancy, and signs of great comfort.”

He was beatified by Blessed John Paul II in 1987 as one of the Eight-five Martyrs of England and Wales. Obviously, as he had served his Catholic flock for decades, quietly and unnoticed, he was no danger to the state. But he was captured during a period of James I's reign when fear of Catholicism was heightened and the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, was much in favor of persecuting Catholics.

Blessed Thomas Holland, SJ: "Sacrifice Them All"

From The Jesuit Curia in Rome:

Thomas Holland (1600-1642) suffered from poor health during the whole of the seven years he spent in active ministry in his native England. Despite his suffering he fearlessly moved around London to bring the sacraments to Catholics during a period of oppression.

He was born in Lancashire and attended the English College at Saint-Omer in Flanders for six years. He moved to Valladolid, Spain, in August 1621, to attend the English College there and then returned to Flanders in 1624 so that he could enter the Jesuits. He did his novitiate and theological study in Flanders and was ordained there before being assigned to be the spiritual director of the scholastics at Saint-Omer. In 1635 he was assigned to the English mission in the hope that his native air would meliorate the poor health he had begun to suffer.

The conditions in which he had to live in England made his health worse, not better. He had to stay indoors all day and travel only at night because of the danger of arrest by priest-hunters. The hardships he endured caused a loss of appetite, which only worsened his condition. Ill health, however, did not keep from ministry; and he continued until his arrest on Oct. 4, 1642 on suspicion of being a priest. He was detained at New Prison in London for two weeks and then taken to Newgate at the time of his trial. No evidence could be put forth proving that he was a priest, and he had been very careful in prison not to be caught praying, but when the court asked him to swear that he was not a priest, he refused; the jury found him guilty and condemned him to die. The French ambassador offered to intervene to try to win his freedom, but Holland said he preferred martyrdom. Some Capuchin friends smuggled Mass supplies into prison so he could celebrate the Eucharist one last time. On the morning of Dec. 12 he was dragged to Tyburn to be executed. He prayed for those who had condemned him and for King Charles I, the royal family, parliament and the nation. He gave the hangman the little money he had, forgave him for what he was about to do and then was hanged until he was dead. His body was then beheaded and quartered and exposed on London bridge.

This Jesuit site provides more details about his execution and his beatification:

Fr Holland was dragged to Tyburn at mid-morning of the 12th and seeing a crowd had gathered in silence, he spoke: “I have been brought here to die a traitor, a priest and a Jesuit; but in truth none of these things has been proved.” Then mounting the cart, he placed the noose about his neck and told the people that he was truly a priest and a Jesuit and that he pardoned the judge and jury that had condemned him.. He recited his acts of faith, hope, charity and contrition and then prayed for King Charles I and the nation “for whose prosperity and conversion to the Catholic faith, if I had as many lives as there are hairs on my head, drops of water in the ocean, or stars in the firmament, I would most willingly sacrifice them all.” These words brought cheers from the crowd. He then forgave his executioner for what he is about to do and gave him the few coins he still had in his pocket.

With eyes closed in prayer, Fr Holland looked at a priest in the crowd and received absolution. After he was hanged, his body was beheaded and quartered and exposed on London Bridge. Fr Holland was only forty-two years of age and a Jesuit for eighteen years. Pope Pius XI beatified him on December 15, 1929.

Blessed Thomas Holland, pray for us!