Preview: Three More Venerable Catholic Martyrs on the Son Rise Morning Show

On Monday, August 23, Matt Swaim and I will talk about three Venerable English Catholic Martyrs on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate.

Two of these three martyrs are brothers from a resolutely Recusant family, Father Thomas Tichborne and the layman Nicholas Tichborne. The third Venerable martyr is also a layman, Thomas Hackshot, who led Nicholas in the dangerous rescue of Father Tichborne. The laymen Thomas Hackshot and  Nicholas Tichborne suffered martyrdom first, on August 24, 1601:

As the Catholic Encyclopedia tells their story, Nicholas Tichborne was

b. at Hartley Mauditt, Hampshire; suffered at Tyburn, London, 24 Aug., 1601. He was a recusant at large in 1592, but by 14 March, 1597, had been imprisoned. On that date he gave evidence against various members of his family. Before 3 Nov., 1598, he had obtained his liberty and had effected the release of his brother, Venerable Thomas Tichborne, a prisoner in the Gatehouse, Westminster, by assaulting his keeper. He is to be distinguished from the Nicholas Tichborne who died in Winchester Gaol in 1587. [His father, who has not been declared Venerable, nor beatified or canonized.]

The Catholic Encyclopedia has less detail about Thomas Hackshot:

With him suffered Venerable Thomas Hackshot (b. at Mursley, Buckinghamshire), who was condemned on the same charge, viz. that of effecting the escape of the priest Thomas Tichborne. During his long imprisonment in the Gatehouse he was "afflicted with divers torments, which he endured with great courage and fortitude."

So Nicholas had been in prison from the middle of March in 1597 to the first November in 1598--about a year and seven months--and had given enough information about his recusant family to satisfy the authorities to release him, thus enabling him to help free his brother! 

From reading Bishop Richard Challoner's comments in Memoirs of Missionary Priests and Other Catholics (etc), however, Venerable Thomas Hackshot took the lead in the rescue of Nicholas' brother. According to Challoner, Hackshot was "a stout young man" and he knew that a jailer would escort Father Thomas Tichborne down a certain street near the Gatehouse prison near Westminster Abbey, so Hackshot and Nicholas Tichborne waited for them and then Hackshot knocked the jailer down so the priest could escape. But the two laymen were captured. From Challoner's telling, Hackshot is really the hero of this rescue! (pp. 235-236)

(The Gatehouse prison was demolished in 1776.)
Image Credit (Public Domain) 

Also from the Catholic Encyclopedia, we know that  Venerable Thomas Tichborne suffered martyrdom nearly eight months after his brother and Hackshot:

Born at Hartley, Hampshire, 1567; martyred at Tyburn, London, 20 April, 1602. He was educated at Rheims (1584-87) and Rome, where he was ordained on Ascension Day, 17 May, 1592. Returning to England on 10 March, 1594, he laboured in his native county, where he escaped apprehension till the early part of 1597. He was sent a prisoner to the Gatehouse in London, but in the autumn of 1598 was helped to escape by his brother, Ven. Nicholas Tichborne, and Ven. Thomas Hackshot, who were both martyred shortly afterwards. Betrayed by Atkinson, an apostate priest, he was re-arrested and on 17 April, 1602, was brought to trial with Ven. Robert Watkinson (a young Yorkshire man who had been educated at Rome and ordained priest at Douai a month before) and Ven. James Duckett, a London bookseller. On 20 April he was executed with Ven. Robert Watkinson and Ven. Francis Page, S.J. The last named was a convert, of a Middlesex family though born in Antwerp. He had been ordained at Douai in 1600 and received into the Society of Jesus while a prisoner in Newgate. Ven. Thomas Tichborne was in the last stages of consumption when he was martyred.

According to Challoner in the same source quoted above, Venerable Father Thomas Tichborne (or Tichburn as he spells his name) would have died from natural causes soon anyway, "so that his apprehension and condemnation at this time was a more particular favour of divine providence, which had chosen for him, this more glorious and happy death." (p. 239)

James Duckett was hanged the day before (April 19, 1601) the priests Watkinson, Page and Tichborne. 

Note that Watkinson, Page and Duckett have been beatified (in 1929 by Pope Pius XI). Why not Thomas Tichborne? Why not the two lay martyrs who rescued Father Tichborne?

I have not been able to find any source to answer this question. 

There is, however,  another Tichborne who suffered execution during the reign of Elizabeth I: Chideock Tichborne, the brother's Tichborne cousin (his father Peter was their uncle, Nicholas pere's brother). Chideock was hanged, drawn, and quartered because he was one of the Babington Plot conspirators, wanting to remove Elizabeth I from the throne (by assassination) and replace her with the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots.

Venerable Thomas Hackshot, pray for us!

Venerable Nicholas Tichborne, pray for us!

Venerable Thomas Tichborne, pray for us!

Chidiock Tichborne to His Wife

Margaret Bowen collected Some Famous Love Letters, published in 1937 and included Chidiock Tichborne's to his wife, written the night before his execution on September 20, 1586. She describes him as:

A Roman Catholic gentleman who joined the Babington Conspirators in their desperate attempt to free Mary Queen of Scots and set her on the English Throne; these men were mostly high-minded fanatics, and though Tichborne and five others undertook to assassinate Elizabeth, they were influenced by the Papal Ban on a woman considered by the Catholics as a heretic usurper and believed that they were acting under Heavenly guidance. It would be difficult to believe evil of the writer of the following letter penned in prison shortly before facing a barbarously cruel death.

The letter:

To the most loving wife alive, I commend me unto her, and desire God to bless her with all happiness, pray for her dead husband, and be of good comfort, for I hope in Jesus Christ this morning to see the face of my Maker and Redeemer in the most joyful throne of His glorious kingdom. Commend me to all my friends, and desire them to pray for me, and in all charity to pardon me, if I have offended them. Commend me to my six sisters, poor desolate souls, advise them to serve God, for without Him no goodness is to be expected. Were it possible, my little sister Bab, the darling of my race, might be bred by her, God would reward her; but I do her wrong I confess, that hath by my desolate negligence too little for herself, to add a further charge unto her. Dear wife forgive me, that have by these means so much impoverished her fortunes; patience and pardon, good wife I crave—make of these our necessities a virtue, and lay no further burthen on my neck than hath already been. There be certain debts that I owe, and because I know not the order of the law, piteous it hath taken from me all, forfeited by my course of offence to Her Majesty, I cannot advise thee to benefit me herein, but if there fall out wherewithal, let them be discharged for God's sake. I will not that you trouble yourself with the performance of these matters, my own heart, but make it known to my uncles, and desire them, for the honour of God and ease of their soul, to take care of them as they may, and especially care of my sisters' bringing up the burthen is now laid on them. Now, Sweet-cheek, what is left to bestow on thee? A small jointure, a small recompense for thy deserving, these legacies following to be thine own. God of His infinite goodness give thee grace always to remain His true and faithful servant, that through the merits of His bitter and blessed passion thou mayst become in good time of His kingdom with the blessed women in heaven. May the Holy Ghost comfort thee with all necessaries for the wealth of thy soul in the world to come, where until it shall please Almighty God I meet thee, farewell loving wife, farewell the dearest to me on all the earth, farewell!

By the hand from the heart of thy most faithful loving husband.

This Elegy was enclosed with the letter:

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

More about the poem here.

The Tichborne family was solidly, adamantly, recusantly Catholic: Chidiock's cousins Father Thomas Tichborne and his brother Nicholas were executed (because Thomas was a Catholic priest and his brother helped him to escape, in 1602 and 1601, respectively). They have both been declared Venerable but have not been included among those beatified. More about the Chidiock family here and more about the Babington family, including the family's chantry chapel, here.