William Shakespeare and Robert Southwell

Brad Miner writes at The Catholic Thing about a new TV series, Will:

Would that I were such a booster of our Faith that I might recommend Willunreservedly just for being respectful of Catholicism, but faith here is mostly a veneer, even though it lacquers everything. And although Will goes further than any previous dramatic presentation in emphasizing Shakespeare’s faith, it goes too far. It takes threads of true history and weaves them into an absurd tapestry of fantasy. Of Shakespeare’s Catholicism, scholars have no doubt. Of his devotion or crypto-activism, however, there is little evidence.

So, then, in fair London where we set our scene: In 1592, actor Richard Burbage (Mattias Inwood) will star in Richard III by Shakespeare (Laurie Davidson) but actually be portraying Richard Topcliffe (Ewen Bremmer), Elizabeth I’s Catholic hunter and torturer: a sort of embarrassment of Richards.

Topcliffe’s main obsession is capturing a cousin of Shakespeare, the Jesuit priest/poet Robert Southwell (Max Bennett). Topcliffe, unaware of Shakespeare’s relationship to Southwell, has actually commissioned the play from Will, thinking it will be a paean to Topcliffe himself.

So the series adapts the "Secret Catholic Code in Shakespeare Plays" theory! It is true that Topcliffe was obsessed with Southwell: he seems to have hated him, to have enjoyed torturing him, and to have continued to attack him through Southwell's trial as Father Henry Garnet described it:

“The Chief Justice asked how old he was, seeming to scorn his youth. He answered that he was near about the age of our Saviour, Who lived upon the earth thirty-three years; and he himself was as he thought near about thirty-four years. Hereat Topcliffe seemed to make great acclamation, saying that he compared himself to Christ. Mr. Southwell answered, ‘No he was a humble worm created by Christ.’ ‘Yes,’ said Topcliffe, ‘you are Christ’s fellow.'”

What vitriol! And this exchange on Southwell's torture:

Southwell: I am decayed in memory with long and close imprisonment, and I have been tortured ten times. I had rather have endured ten executions. I speak not this for myself, but for others; that they may not be handled so inhumanely, to drive men to desperation, if it were possible.

Topcliffe: If he were racked, let me die for it.
Southwell: No; but it was as evil a torture, or late device.
Topcliffe: I did but set him against a wall.
Southwell: Thou art a bad man.
Topcliffe: I would blow you all to dust if I could.
Southwell: What, all?
Topcliffe: Ay, all.
Southwell: What, soul and body too?

This blog notes the salutation to the printed edition of Southwell's Saint Peter's Complaint, published on the Continent after the martyr had suffered, "To My Worthy Good Cosen Master W.S." and the conjecture that the W.S. is indeed William Shakespeare. Southwell remonstrates with his good cousin about the abuse of poetry: "Worthy cosen, Poets, by abusing their talent, and making the follies, and faygnings of love the customary subject of their base endeavours, have so discredited this facultie, that a Poet, a Lover and a Lyar, are by many reckoned but three words of one signification."

America magazine also highlights the series and Southwell's prominent role in it, but errs in one statement: "Among the victims of Elizabeth’s Protestant zeal are the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, canonized by Paul VI in 1970." Not all of the Forty Martyrs suffered under Elizabeth I!

Blessed Francis Ingleby and His Brother "The Fox"

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Blessed Francis Ingleby was an English martyr, born about 1551; suffered at York on Friday, 3 June, 1586 (old style).

According to an early but inaccurate calendar he suffered 1 June (Cath. Rec.Soc. V, 192). Fourth son of Sir William Ingleby, knight, of Ripley, Yorkshire, by Anne, daughter of Sir William Malory, knight, of Studley, he was probably a scholar of Brasenose College, Oxford, in and before 1565, and was a student of the Inner Temple in 1576.

On 18 August, 1582 he arrived at the English College, Reims, where he lived at his own expense. He was ordained subdeacon at Laon on Saturday, 28 May, deacon at Reims, Saturday, 24 September, and priest at Laon, Saturday 24 December, 1583 and left for England Thursday, 5 April 1584. (These four dates are all new style).

He laboured with great zeal in the neighbourhood of York, where he was arrested in the spring of 1586, and lodged in the castle. He was the one of the priests for harbouring whom the St. Margaret Clitherow was arraigned. At the prison door, while fetters were being fastened on his legs he smilingly said, "I fear me I shall be overproud of my boots." He was condemned under 27 Eliz. c. 2 for being a priest. When sentence was pronounced he exclaimed, "Credo videre bona Domini in terra viventium". [From Psalm 26: "I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living", one of the Psalms in the Office of the Dead.]

Fr. Warford says he was short but well-made, fair-complexioned, with a chestnut beard, and a slight cast in his eyes.

Blessed Francis is one of the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Saint John Paul II in 1987. The Portal, the magazine published by the Ordinariate of Our Lady in Walsingham in England, has more about the martyr in their May 2012 issue.

Francis' brother David, with whom he joined the Northern Rebellion, was also devoutly Catholic and just as Francis risked death by returning to England as a Catholic priest, David risked death by aiding Catholic priests. According to the Ingleby family history website:

His brother David (1547-1600) became known as ‘the Fox’ for his ability to outrun his pursuers. He was the man who guided the seminary priests around the North of England, leading them from one safe house to another. He married Lady Ann Neville, daughter of the exiled earl of Westmoreland – and another staunch Catholic [Charles Neville, who led the Northern Rebellion with Thomas Percy, the Earl of Northumberland]. David was heavily implicated as a co-conspirator of John Ballard in the Babington treason, a conspiracy to remove Elizabeth I from the throne and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. He and Francis were described as ‘the most dangerous papists in the North’. A huge manhunt was launched to find them: a secret priest’s hiding hole, built to conceal them and other visiting priests while they were at Ripley, was only discovered by accident in 1964. A set of instructions written out for a spy being sent to the royal court in Scotland listed numerous things that the spy should and should not do: it ended with a very simple warning ‘ beware of David Ingleby’. David died in exile in Belgium: Elizabeth I, taking pity on his by now impoverished widow, awarded her a pension provided she behaved herself. 

I presume that behaving herself meant not hiding priests or corresponding with other recusant families, and keeping quiet about being a Catholic!

Illustration: Ripley Castle from Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Cardinal William Allen, Vatican Librarian

Cardinal William Allen, founder of colleges and seminaries for English Catholics on the Continent in the 16th century, died on October 16, 1594. He was also responsible for the English translation of the Holy Bible, the Douai-Rheims version.

He attended Oriel College at Oxford and became a Fellow there. With the accession of Elizabeth I, he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy. Therefore he had to leave England and went into exile on the Continent, joining other Catholics in Leuven in present-day Belgium.

Allen returned to England before ordination and began to work with Catholics, recognizing that the religious changes legislated by Parliament were not the will of the people. So he returned to the Continent and went to another town in Flanders, Mechelen. (When I visited Belgium many years ago, I had no idea of these connections!) There he was ordained in 1565--and never returned to England.

Allen founded the college and seminary in Douai for the training of English Catholic priests to return to their native land to serve the Catholic people. Allen also founded the English College in Rome for the same purpose.

He had to move the college at Douai to Rheims--all the while working on an English translation of the Holy Bible. First the New Testament was produced at Rheims in 1582; the Old Testament was delayed until 1609--published two years before King James's Authorized Version.

According to the website for the seminary of the diocese of Westminster, named Allen Hall in honor of the Cardinal:

In the consistory of August 7, 1587 Allen was created a Cardinal and by the end of that month he received the red hat and the title of Ss Silvestro e Martino ai Monti. He also received the title of Cardinal of England and was the first English cardinal after the protestant Reformation. On November 10, 1589, King Felipe II of Spain nominated him archbishop of Mechlin but he was never recognized apparently because of the state of destitution of the See and the unwillingness of the king to provide the archbishop with a fitting revenue. Cardinal Allen also participated in the conclave of 1590, and the newly elected Pope, Gregory XIV (1590-1591) named him prefect of the Vatican library and entrusted him, together with Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, with the revision of the Latin Vulgate. As Cardinal, Allen also later participated in the conclaves of 1591 and 1592.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Cardinal Allen wrote many works, theological and controversial:

The following is a list of his printed works: "Certain Brief Reasons concerning the Catholick Faith" (Douay, 1564); "A Defense and Declaration of the Catholike Churches Doctrine touching Purgatory, and Prayers of the Soules Departed" (Antwerp, 1565), re-edited by Father Bridgett in 1886; "A Treatise made in defense of the Lawful Power and Authoritie of the Preesthoode to remitte sinnes &c." (1578); "De Sacramentis" (Antwerp, 1565; Douay, 1603); "An Apology for the English Seminaries" (1581); "Apologia Martyrum" (1583); "Martyrium R. P. Edmundi Campiani, S.J." (1583); "An Answer to the Libel of English Justice" (Mons, 1584); "The Copie of a Letter written by M. Doctor Allen concerning the Yeelding up of the Citie of Daventrie, unto his Catholike Majestie, by Sir William Stanley Knight" (Antwerp, 1587), reprinted by the Chetham Society, 1851; "An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland, concerning the present Warres made for the Execution of his Holines Sentence, by the highe and mightie Kinge Catholike of Spain, by the Cardinal of Englande" (1588); "A Declaration of the sentence and deposition of Elizabeth, the usurper and pretended Queene of England" (1588; reprinted London, 1842).

Those are Allen's uncontrovertible achievements; however, he also dabbled in political and diplomatic efforts--and as Blessed John Henry Newman opined, "to touch politics is to touch pitch". There his record is more controversial as he encouraged the excommunication of Elizabeth I, attempts to remove her from the throne, and the Spanish Armada. It was planned that he would follow the victorious Armada and become the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury! When all these plans came to naught, Allen became a Librarian at the Vatican and helped found another English college in Spain. He died in Rome at the Venerable English College.

Blessed Richard Hurst, Executed on the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist

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.


More on the Lancashire Martyrs here.

Execution of Anne Line and Companions, February 27, 1601

I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning (7:45 a.m. EST/6:45 a.m. CST) to discuss today's martyrs and the scene at Tyburn on Feburary 27, 1601, when St. Anne Line was hung and then Blessed Mark Barkworth, OSB and Blessed Roger Filcock were hung, drawn, and quartered. You can listen live here online if you don't have an EWTN radio station in your area.

Anne Heigham Line was a convert to Catholicism; she and her brother William Heigham were disinherited and disowned by their Calvinist father. In 1586 she married Roger Line, another disinherited convert. Not long after Anne and Roger married, he and William were arrested for attending Mass and were exiled from England. Roger lived in Flanders and died in 1594.

Father John Gerard SJ, author of the famous book Autobiography of an Elizabethan Priest, asked Anne to manage two different safe houses for Jesuits, even though she was ill, but because she was destitute, surviving on teaching and sewing. She was arrested on the Feast of the Presentation, February 2, 1601, when Father Francis Page was celebrating Mass; he escaped with her help. She was tried on February 26, carried to court in a chair, where she admitted joyfully that she had helped Father Page escape and only regretted that she had not been able to help even more priests escape!

She was hung at Tyburn in London on February 27 and repeated her statement from court before her execution: "I am sentenced to die for harboring a Catholic priest, and so far I am from repenting for having so done, that I wish, with all my soul, that where I have entertained one, I could have entertained a thousand." Two priests, Father Roger Filcock and Father Mark Barkworth, paid tribute to her before their own executions, drawn, hung, and quartered. Father Filcock kissed her dead hand and the hem of her dress as she still hung from the gibbet and proclaimed, “You have gotten the start of us, sister, but we will follow you as quickly as we may.”

Blessed Mark Barkworth OSB was born about 1572 at Searby in Lincolnshire. He studied for a time at Oxford, though no record remains of his stay there. He was received into the Catholic Church at Douai in 1593, by Father George, a Flemish Jesuit and entered the College there with a view to the priesthood. He matriculated at Douai University on 5 October 1594.

On account of an outbreak of the plague, in 1596 Barkworth was sent to Rome and thence to Valladolid in Spain, where he entered the English College on 28 December 1596. On his way to Spain he is said to have had a vision of St Benedict, who told him he would die a martyr, in the Benedictine habit. While at Valladolid he make firmer contact with to the Benedictine Order. The "Catholic Encyclopedia" notes that there are accounts that his interest in the Benedictines resulted in suffering at the hands of the College superiors, but the Encyclopedia expresses scepticism, suggesting anti-Jesuit bias.

Barkworth was ordained priest at the English College some time before July 1599, when he set out for the English Mission together with Father Thomas Garnet. On his way he stayed at the Benedictine Monastery of Hyrache in Navarre, where his wish to join the order was granted by his being made an Oblate with the privilege of making profession at the hour of death.

After having escaped from the hands of the Huguenots of La Rochelle, he was arrested on reaching England and thrown into Newgate, where he was imprisoned for six months, and was then transferred to Bridewell. There he wrote an appeal to Robert Cecil, signed "George Barkworth". At his examinations he was reported to behave with fearlessness and frank gaiety. Having been condemned with a formal jury verdict, he was thrown into "Limbo", the horrible underground dungeon at Newgate, where he is said to have remained "very cheerful" till his death.

Barkworth was executed at Tyburn with Jesuit Roger Filcock and Anne Line, on 27 February 1601. He sang, on the way to Tyburn, the Paschal Anthem: "Hæc dies quam, fecit Dominus exultemus et lætemur in ea", and Father Filcock joined him in the chant:

Hæc dies quam fecit Dominus; [This is the day which the Lord has made:]
exsultemus, et lætemur in ea. [let us be glad and rejoice in it.]

At Tyburn he told the people: "I am come here to die, being a Catholic, a priest, and a religious man, belonging to the Order of St Benedict; it was by this same order that England was converted."

He was said to be "a man of stature tall and well proportioned showing strength, the hair of his head brown, his beard yellow, somewhat heavy eyed". He was of a cheerful disposition. He suffered in the Benedictine habit, under which he wore a hair-shirt. It was noticed that his knees were, like St. James', hardened by constant kneeling, and an apprentice in the crowd picking up his legs, after the quartering, called out: "Which of you Gospellers can show such a knee?" Contrary to usual practice, the quarters of the priests were not exposed but buried near the scaffold. They were later retrieved by Catholics. Barkworth was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.

Blessed Roger Filcock (1570-1601) was arrested in England while he was fulfilling a probationary period prior to entering the Jesuits. He had studied at the English College in Rheims, France and then in Valladolid, Spain, but when he asked to join the Society he was encouraged to apply again after ministering for awhile in England.

His journey into England was difficult enough. The ship he was traveling on from Bilbao, Spain to Calais, France, was becalmed just outside the port and fell pray to a Dutch ship blockading the harbor. Filcock was captured, but managed to escape and land surreptitiously on the shore in Kent in 1598. Soon after he began his ministry, he contacted Father Henry Garnet, the Jesuit superior, asking to become a Jesuit. He was accepted into the Society in 1600, but then was betrayed by someone he had studied with in Spain. He was arrested and committed to Newgate Prison in London. His trial did not last long, despite the fact that there was no evidence against him and that the names in the indictment were not names he had used. Together with Father Mark Barkworth, a Benedictine, he was tied to a hurdle and dragged through the streets to Tyburn. Barkworth was first to be hung, disembowelled and quartered. Filcock had to watch his companion suffer, knowing that he would immediately follow. Pope John Paul II beatified him, on the 22nd of November 1987.

St. Anne Line was among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. She, St. Margaret Clitherow and St. Margaret Ward share a separate Feast on August 30 (the date of St. Margaret Ward's martyrdom in 1588) in the dioceses of England.

The Catholic Martyrs of England Pilgrimage will visit Tyburn and the Tyburn Convent the day before we return to the USA.

Burning Books and Remembering

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is often read as a story about censorship--yet censorship usually means that certain ideas may not be expressed. The Firemen in Bradbury's dystopia burn ALL books--it's the media that's marked for destruction, not necessarily the message. Books symbolize a way of thinking, trying to understand, wanting to communicate, publishing to preserve knowledge that those in control could not allow. They replaced books with mindless entertainment--big screen walls and faux-interactive "reality shows". As Bradbury said, "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." Behind Bradbury's book is a whole idea of culture--the kind of culture represented by books and education but also by the world Clarisse tells Montag about. She and her family are trying to hold on to a life of thinking and talking about ideas and loving nature--sitting on front porches in rocking chairs enjoying a garden. Montag doesn't recognize that world at all. His wife Mildred is totally absorbed in the meaningless imagery of The Family--yet she cannot even tell him what happens during a day of sitting in a room with three wall screens (which is not enough for her--she demands the fourth wall be covered with a screen). There is nothing permanent in this entertainment; it numbs the brain as much as Mildred's sleeping pills numb her body. And then the war comes and the city is pulverized.

There are two passages in the novel that, not surprisingly, reminded me of the issues of the English Reformation. One is very obvious: Mrs. Hudson, immolating herself among her books, quoting the famous statement of Bishop Latimer to Bishop Ridley: "Be of good comfort, and play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." (Our source for this is Foxe's Acts and Monuments, in a later edition, after the first edition indicated that no one knew about either man's last words before being burned to death in Oxford on October 16, 1555).[Timing, eh?]

The other is more indirect: the situation of the men in the woods who describe to Montag how they have memorized books and are holding on to the memory of primarily western culture to pass it on to their children. This underground memory culture reminds me of Catholic recusants, passing on memories of their English Catholic heritage: "We'll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. . . ." Those underground Catholics of the 16th and 17th and 18th centuries prepared for the revival of Catholicism in England during the 19th and 20th, maintaining their knowledge and practice of the Faith the best they could, even with some losses, until public worship, and buildings, and schools and colleges, the structures of education and culture could be restored and rebuilt.

I suppose a rather troublesome sequel to Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 would come with the restoration of libraries, schools, and institutions of higher learning--then the dispersed unity of those who have memorized the books would have to come together. They would have to organize and accept their places in a hierarchy and a system to rebuild and restore. Perhaps a little like the Catholic community in England during the 19th century?

Derbyshire Martyrs

Blessed Nicholas Garlick, Blessed Robert Ludlam, and Blessed Richard Simpson, three priests, suffered martyrdom on July 24, 1588 in Derby.
It's neat when one can find a parish website commemorating the English martyrs, Blessed NIcholas Garlick and Blessed Robert Ludlam are featured on this site from the Catholic Church at Glossop in Derbyshire:

Who is Blessed Nicholas? None other than one of the martyrs of what is called the English Reformation. Nicholas was a local boy, from Dinting, about a half hour’s walk west from Old Glossop. The Catholic Encyclopaedia tells us that Nicholas was born in about 1555 and met his end at Derby in 1588, following his capture with his brother priest Robert Ludlum at Padley, also in the Peak District and to the south-east of Glossop.

A charismatic man, Nicholas seems to have had great influence, for example, during his time as school-master at Tideswell in the Peak, enough indeed that some of his pupils followed him to the seminary at Rheims in France, where men were being prepared for the missionary priesthood in protestant England, men who expected to meet a grisly end if they were arrested by the authorities (at a time when being a priest was considered in England to be an act of treason). Nicholas went there in 1581, was ordained and returned to Englandin 1583. He was arrested soon afterwards and exiled in 1585 with a warning.

The Catholic Encyclopedia tells more about the second and third priests who suffered that day:

With Garlick was arrested another priest, Robert Ludlam, or Ludham, who had, like Garlick, been at Oxford and had engaged in teaching before his ordination in May, 1581. In Derby Gaol, a small and pestiferous prison, they found a third priest, Robert Sympson, who was of Garlick's college at Oxford. There he had taken Protestant orders, but was soon after reconciled to the Church, for which he suffered long imprisonment in York Castle. In this trial his faith had grown stronger, but having been ordained and passed through many labours, including exile, he was again in durance and in danger of his life, and this time he was wavering. Garlick and Ludlam cheered, reconciled, and comforted their fellow-captive, and all three were tried and suffered together.

These martyrs are remembered annually with a pilgrimage and Mass at Padley Chapel; it was a Padley, the home of John Fitzherbert, that Fathers Garlick and Ludlam were captured. The Catholic Fitzherberts suffered much for their faith, including the invasion of their home on July 12, 1588 when these priests were captured, according to this site:

The special events which led up to the execution, and subsequent martyrdom of the two Catholic priests who were captured at Padley have been recorded many times, but briefly the main protagonists in the saga were:-

Sir Thomas FITZHERBERT, who married Anne, daughter of Sir Arthur EYRE. Inherited Padley through his marriage to Anne. Lived at Norbury, having handed over the tenancy of Padley to John, his younger brother. A staunch Catholic, he had been imprisoned in 1559 at Derby for his recusancy. Although he was later released, he was ultimately denounced by his nephew, imprisoned again and died in the Tower of London on 2nd October 1591.

John FITZHERBERT, Thomas's brother. Captured by George, Earl of Shrewsbury at Padley on 12th July 1588, with his son Anthony, three of his daughters, Matilda, Jane and Mary (married respectively to - Thomas BARLOW, Thomas EYRE and - DRAYCOTT), and ten serving men from the estate. Jane and Mary were placed in the custody of the Anglican Rectors of Aston, and Weston upon Trent. The others were taken to the county Gaol at Derby. John was reprieved of the death sentence, by an alleged payment of £10,000 in bribes; kept 2 years in Derby Gaol and then sent to Fleet Prison in London where he died on 8th November 1590.

Thomas FITZHERBERT, John's traitorous son, who betrayed his uncle Thomas. Had Norbury estate after his uncle died, but was refused Padley by arch-villain Richard TOPCLIFFE.

Richard TOPCLIFFE, a spy for the Privy Council, who persuaded Thomas to betray his uncle. Sir Thomas made a will whilst he was in the Tower, disinheriting his nephew, but Topcliffe managed to get hold of it, and destroyed it. He obtained Padley for himself after Sir Thomas and John's deaths, but lost it again after 1603 (when Elizabeth I died) to Anthony FITZHERBERT, Thomas's brother (who although captured in 1588 apparently survived!).

Oscott College

How I would love to spend a day at St. Mary's College Oscott, specifically in "The Recusant Library and Rare Books Collection"!

The Recusant Library at Oscott College, with over 12,000 books and pamphlets, and 400 manuscripts, holds works of Catholic interest published between c.1470 and c.1850. There are, additionally, a number of historical, scientific and medical works.

The collection developed initially from two sources. First, the Harvington Secular Clergy Library which was assembled at the recusancy centre of Harvington Hall, Worcestershire. Founded in 1696 by Lady Mary Yate for the use of her family chaplains, it became a library for the use of priests of the Midland District.

As might be expected, this collection is particularly strong in controversial, catechetical and devotional works relating to the Church in England. The pamphlet wars of the 1670s and 1680s are well-represented. Bishop Milner acquired the collection in 1810 for the use of the College.

Oscott, of course, is where Blessed John Henry Newman preached at the first Catholic synod after the restoration of the hierarchy, so I would want to visit the Pugin-designed chapel too:

The pulpit is associated with the most significant occasion at Oscott in its early decades, the first synod of the restored Catholic hierarchy in 1852. This occasion was marked by the striking sermon preached from this pulpit by John Henry Newman. Later published as 'The Second Spring', the sermon was a moving account of the recovery of English Catholicism from the dark days of penal times to its Victorian splendour. It came to characterise the expression of the restoration of Catholicism, and the very title 'The Second Spring' passed into common usage to describe Catholic life in Victorian England.

Honesty Under Oath: Saint John Rigby, layman

From the Catholic Encyclopedia comes this story of today's martyr:

b. about 1570 at Harrocks Hall, Eccleston, Lancashire; executed at St. Thomas Waterings, 21 June, 1600. He was the fifth or sixth son of Nicholas Rigby, by Mary, daughter of Oliver Breres of Preston. In the service of Sir Edmund Huddleston, at a time when his daughter, Mrs. Fortescue, being then ill, was cited to the Old Bailey for recusancy, Rigby appeared on her behalf; compelled to confess himself a Catholic, he was sent to Newgate. The next day, 14 February, 1599 or 1600, he signed a confession, that, since he had been reconciled by the martyr, John Jones the Franciscan, in the Clink some two or three years previously, he had declined to go to church. He was then chained and remitted to Newgate, till, on 19 February, he was transferred to the White Lion. On the first Wednesday in March (which was the 4th and not, as the martyr himself supposes, the 3rd) he was brought to the bar, and in the afternoon given a private opportunity to conform. The next day he was sentenced for having been reconciled; but was reprieved till the next sessions. On 19 June he was again brought to the bar, and as he again refused to conform, he was told that his sentence must be carried out. On his way to execution, the hurdle was stopped by a Captain Whitlock, who wished him to conform and asked him if he were married, to which the martyr replied, "I am a bachelor; and more than that I am a maid", and the captain thereupon desired his prayers. The priest, who reconciled him, had suffered on the same spot 12 July, 1598.

[Note: Both John Rigby and the Franciscan priest, John Jones, were canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.]

Blessed James Duckett, Layman Martyred for His Faith

James Duckett was an English Catholic layman and martyr (died 1601).

Born at Gilfortrigs in the parish of Skelsmergh in Westmorland at an unknown date, he became a bookseller and publisher in London. Brought up a Protestant, he was lent a Catholic book by a friend when serving his apprenticeship in London and decided to become a Catholic. Earlier he had twice been imprisoned for not attending the Protestant services, and was obliged to compound for his apprenticeship and leave his master.

He was received into the Catholic Church by an old priest named Weekes who was imprisoned in the Gatehouse at Westminster. Two or three years later, about 1590, he married a Catholic widow, but out of his twelve years of married life, nine were spent in prison for his new faith.

He was active in propagating Catholic literature. He was finally betrayed by Peter Bullock, a bookbinder, who acted in order to obtain his own release from prison. Duckett's house was searched on 4 March 1601 and Catholic books found. For this he was at once thrown into Newgate.

At the trial, Bullock testified that he had bound various Catholic books for Duckett and he admitted this, but denied other false accusations in a self-possessed manner. The jury found him not guilty; but the judge, Sir John Popham, the Lord Chief Justice, browbeat the jury, which reversed its verdict and Duckett was found guilty of felony. Despite the betrayal of Duckett, Bullock was taken to his death at Tyburn in the same cart as Duckett on 19 April 1601.

James Duckett's son was the John Duckett who later became Prior of the English Carthusians at Nieuwpoort in Flanders. He related that on the way to Tyburn his father was handed a cup of wine, which he drank, and told his wife to drink to Peter Bullock and to forgive him. When she declined, he chided her gently until she did. On arrival at Tyburn Tree James kissed and embraced Bullock, beseeching him to die in the Catholic faith, without success.

At the same trial three priests, Thomas Tichborne, Robert Watkinson, and Francis Page, were condemned to death. For some reason their execution was remanded to the following day.

James Duckett was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.

From the accounts I've read, it's not completely clear what he was charged with and found guilty of--was it his conversion (which was an act of treason)? did he have some Papal documents? Catholic books were not in themselves illegal, but pointed to his being Catholic, probably attending Mass illegally, especially since he did not attend Church of England services. He was hung because he was a Catholic, not because of anything he did, at least anything produced as evidence in a court of law. That's why the judge had to browbeat the jury to find Blessed James Duckett guilty of a felony. What happened to Duckett's Catholic wife? She was now twice-widowed and might have been rounded up for recusancy. At least two other lay martyr's I've posted about (St. Swithun Wells, for example) left wives who endured grave troubles with the law because of their recusany. Mrs. Wells (her first name is unknown) died in prison after her death sentence was commuted.

More on the three priests--and several others--tomorrow. April 20 is a big day for executions and martyrs in Tudor England.

Blessed John Amias and Blessed Robert Dalby

On March 16, 1589, these two priests suffered being hung, drawn and quartered in York.

Robert Dalby was from Hemingbrough in the East Riding of Yorkshire and lived at first as a Protestant minister. Becoming a Catholic, he entered the English College at Rheims on 30 September 1586 to study for the priesthood. He was ordained a priest at Châlons on 16 April 1588. It was on 25 August that year that he set out for England. He was arrested almost immediately upon landing at Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast and imprisoned in York Castle.

There is some doubt about the early life of Blessed John Amias. One story is that he was indeed John Amias or Amyas, born at Wakefield in Yorkshire, England, where he married and raised a family, exercising the trade of cloth-merchant. On the death of his wife, he divided his property among his children and left for the Continent to become a priest. There is also a possibility that he was really William Anne (surname), youngest son of John and Katherine Anne, of Frickley near Wakefield.

Regardless of his actual name, on 22 June 1580, a widower calling himself "John Amias" entered the English College at Rheims to study for the priesthood. He was ordained a priest in Rheim Cathedral on 25 March 1581. On 5 June of that year Amias set out for Paris and then England, as a missionary, in the company of another priest, Edmund Sykes. Of his missionary life we know little. Towards the end of 1588 he was seized at the house of a Mr. Murton at Melling in Lancashire and imprisoned in York Castle.

Yorkshire, as I've commented before on this blog and in Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation, was one of those districts of England where recusancy and Catholicism was particularly strong. This History of York describes the Catholic Resistance during Elizabeth I's reign, providing some details of the trouble the queen had in asserting her authority.

The Martyrs of 1588, Part III

This is the third group of martyrs executed in retaliation for the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada.

Four of them are called "The Oaten Hill Martyrs" because they were executed on Oaten Hill in Canterbury. According to this website:

BLESSED EDWARD CAMPION
Edward Campion was the alias used by Father Gerard Edwards. He was born at Ludlow in Shropshire and studied at Oxford where he obtained a degree. This would indicate that he had subscribed to the new religion, since only those prepared to take the Oath of Supremacy, swearing on the Bible that the king was the rightful governor of the Church in England and so denying the authority of the Pope, could come down with a degree. He then became a servant to Gregory Fiennes, 8th Baron Dacres of the South. Baron Dacres was married to Anne Sackville, a member of a family with strong Catholic leanings. Gerard was reconciled to the Church at this time, and in February 1586 went to the English Seminary at Rheims. Here he adopted the name of Campion in order to associate himself more closely with St Edmund Campion, who had been martyred some years earlier. Because of his good education, his priestly training was shortened, and he was ordained in March 1587. A few days later he set sail for England, but after only a few weeks was arrested at Sittingbourne. He confessed he was a priest and boldly avowed that the religion now professed in England was heretical. He was then taken to London and imprisoned in the Marshalsea Prison in South London. Father Campion was examined again on 14th August,1588, and at the end of September he was sent to Canterbury for execution.

BLESSED CHRISTOPHER BUXTON
Christopher Buxton, a Derbyshire man, was born in 1562, and was educated at Tidewell Grammar School where one of his masters was Nicholas Garlick who was himself martyred for the Faith. In July 1582 Christopher arrived with two school-friends at Rheims. In 1584 he was sent to the English College in Rome where he was ordained on 26th October 1586. He had a lengthy and difficult journey across Europe, calling in at Rheims on his way to Dieppe. In September 1587 he crossed over to Kent, but was arrested there in November and taken to the Marshalsea prison. On 15th August 1588 Father Buxton was examined and then taken to Canterbury for trial and execution at the end of September. At his examination he admitted he was a priest.

BLESSED ROBERT WILCOX
Robert Wilcox was born in Chester in 1558 and entered the seminary at Rheims when he was twenty-five years old. He was ordained on 20th April 1585 and arrived in England on 7th june 1586. He was arrested almost immediately at Lydd in Kent, presumably where he landed. He, too, was sent to the Marshalsea where he was examined on 15th August 1588. Here he admitted he was a priest and was sent for trial with the others to Canterbury.

BLESSED ROBERT WIDMERPOOL
Robert Widmerpool was born in Nottinghamshire in 1560 and was at Oxford in 1578. There is no record that he graduated, an indication that he had remained a Catholic. A little later he obtained a post as a tutor with the Countess of Northumberland. In 1588 he was charged with hospitality towards priests and specifically with having introduced a priest into the house of the Countess. He was imprisoned in the Marshalsea, and was sent down with the others for trial and execution at Canterbury. It would seem that it was decided that the executions of Catholics should take place in significant local centres around London so that the example made by them would be felt as widely as possible.

The other locations that day were Chicester and Ipswich. The story of the Chicester martyrs is here. According to this blog, Blessed John Robinson was an older man:

BORN at Fernsby, Yorkshire, he lived for some time in the world in the married state, but on becoming a widower he went over to Rheims, was ordained, and sent on the Mission. He was a man of great simplicity and sincerity, and he used to say that " if he could not dispute for the faith as well as some of the others, he could die for it as well as the best." He was apprehended in the very port where he landed, and cast into the Clink prison. His fellow-prisoners, in respect to his age and probity, called him "Father," and he in return styled them his "bairns," and when they were sent off to be executed in different parts of the Kingdom, the good old man lamented for days exceedingly, until at last the warrant for his own execution arrived. To the bearer of the warrant he gave all his money, and on his knees gave God thanks. He was sent to suffer at Ipswich, a long journey taken on foot, but he refused to put on boots, as he said, " These feet of mine have never worn them, and they can well travel now without them, for they will be well repaid."

The Martyrs of 1588, Part II (and the August 30 Memorial)

There are really two events to remember today. One is the execution of six Catholics--one laywoman, four laymen and one priest--in London as part of the English government's reaction to the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada. The other is the memorial of three female English Catholic martyrs, who were canonized among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970, but have this special day all to themselves on the liturgical calendar of the Dioceses of England and Wales.

On this memorial of Saints Margaret Clitherow (or Clitheroe), Anne Line and Margaret Ward, I invite you to read my article posted on Associated Content, telling their stories and describing their deaths.

They share the date of St. Margaret Ward's execution on August 30, 1588--she was part of a second group of martyrs after the failure of the Spanish Armada. She is a virgin martyr: she helped Father William Watson escape from Bridewell Prison. She visited him often enough that the jailer finally allowed her to enter without searching her, so she was able to smuggle in a rope. Father Watson injured himself unfortunately while escaping and was unable to retrieve the rope. Margaret found John Roche to help the injured priest once out of prison and both she and John were arrested; John because he had exchanged clothing with the priest and Margaret because the jailer figured out that she was the last person to visit Father Watson before he escaped. She was held in chains, hung up her hands and scourged as the authorities attempted to force her to tell them where Father Watson went after escaping Bridewell prison. She refused, even though she acknowledged that she helped him. Offered a pardon for attending Church of England services, she again refused. The torture inflicted upon her left her partially paralysed and she had to be carried to Tyburn for hanging.

Also martyred that day were Blessed John Roche (who had assisted Margaret Ward in the escape of Father William Watson), three other laymen who had assisted priests, Blesseds Richard Lloyd, Richard Martin, and Edward Shelley, and one priest, Blessed Richard Leigh. The regime was certainly sending a message about laity who assisted Catholic priests.

I have also told the stories of St. Anne Line and St. Margaret Clitherow on this blog on the dates of their executions, here and here. As soon as the podcast from my discussion with Barbara McGuigan from Saturday's "The Good Fight" is available, I will post it!

Picture credit: this blog for the image of St. Margaret Ward with the rope she smuggled into Father William Watson--or the rope by which she was hung. I am not sure if the Father Watson she saved is the same priest executed early in James I's reign for treason for his role in the Bye Plot.

A Freeman in Warwickshire

Blessed William Freeman was executed in Warwick on August 13, 1595.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

A priest and martyr, b. at Manthorp near York, c. 1558; d. at Warwick, 13 August, 1595. His parents were recusants, though he conformed outwardly for some time to the religion of the country. Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he took his degree as B.A. in 1581, then lived for some years in London, where he witnessed the martyrdom of Edward Stransham in 1586. Strongly impressed with this example, he left England and was ordained priest in 1587 at Reims. Returning to England in 1589, he worked for six years on the borders of Warwickshire, and in his interesting life many persons are mentioned who were contemporaries or friends of Shakespeare. In January, 1595, a special commission was sent down to Stratford-on-Avon to search the house of Mrs. Heaths who had engaged his services as tutor to her son. William Freeman was arrested, and spent seven months in prison. He denied his priesthood, but also refused all friendly offers to escape, not wishing to lose his opportunity of martyrdom. Owing to the treachery of a fellow-prisoner, William Gregory, he was at last sentenced as a seminary priest and in spite of a touching protest of loyalty, suffered the death of a traitor at Warwick.

Two Great Collections Edited by Philip Caraman

Philip Caraman, SJ was one of the great Catholic historians of the 20th century. He specialized in the study of the Reformation era, producing many books about the martyrs. He served a vice-postulator for the cause of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. He also edited two collections of primary sources (and seems to have planned a third, according to the introduction to the second).

The Other Face: Catholic Life under Elizabeth I and The Years of Siege: Catholic Life from James I to Cromwell are goldmines of eyewitness accounts, letters, court reports, poetry and saints' lives. In the first book, 30 chapters contain excerpts on topics ranging from "The English Nuns", "The New Priests", "Practice and Belief", "At Prayer", and chilling depictions of Prison, Torture, Trial, and The Gallows. Caraman also provides excellent indexes, biographical notes, and sources.

The second book is shorter: 18 chapters contain details about "The Mood of Catholics", "The Catholic Household", Martyrs, Priests, "The Popes and England" and other topics. The same excellent resources are very helpful.

I am very sorry that Father Caraman (evidently) did not complete the next volume, in which he proposed to cover the reigns of Charles II and James II, including the Popish Plot, which he calls "the Oates Conspiracy". I highly recommend them both if you can find used copies or find them in a library.

More Franciscan Martyrs of the Recusant And Popish Plot Era

The blesseds honored on the Franciscan calendar today are:

Blessed Arthur (Francis) Bell (1590 – 1643): Arthur Bell was born at Temple Broughton in Worcestershire on 13th August 1590 and brought up in a Catholic family. After beginning his education at his mother Dorothy's knee, he was sent for its continuation to his maternal uncle, a gentleman in Suffolk. At the age of 24 he went to Saint Omer to study with the Jesuits who then sent him on to Valladolid in Spain. There he was ordained a priest on 14th April 1618.
He discovered the Franciscans through a friend from Oxford who had joined the friars. Inspired by his life of penitence and simplicity, Arthur sought entry to the Franciscans and on 9th August 1618 was vested with the Franciscan habit, given the name Francis and sent to the newly erected College of St. Bonaventure in Douai to join his compatriots. There he became Guardian and later a Provincial Definitor. In 1632 he became Minister Provincial and attended the Toledo General Chapter in 1633, where the German and Belgian Provinces, including the newly restored Province of England, passed the strict General Constitutions that would govern them until the late 19th Century.
He returned to England in 1634 and spent nine years working to consolidate the presence of the friars and sustain the faith of his fellow Catholics. He was captured on 7th November 1643 in Hertford. He was tried before Parliament in a trial that lasted from 22nd November to the 8th December. Condemned, he was imprisoned in Newgate prison from where he was taken for execution at Tyburn just three days later. The serenity with which Arthur faced his death convinced his executioner to abjure his Anglicanism and reconcile to the Catholic Church.
Arthur Bell was beatified along with 129 other martyrs of England and Wales on 22nd November 1987 by Pope John Paul II.

Blessed John (Martin) Woodcock (1603 – 1646): John Woodcock was born to a “Church Papist” Anglican Father in 1603 at Woodcock Hall in Lancashire. He was sent to Saint Omer to study with the Jesuits there and after finishing his humanities studies he was sent to Rome to complete his theological formation. There he no doubt met the Irish Franciscans who took over at the College of St. Isidore in the same year. He asked to enter the Capuchins but was dismissed from their novitiate after a few months, perhaps because of precarious health. He wandered around Europe aimlessly for three years until he arrived in Douai. There his desire to be a Franciscan was realised when he entered the novitiate of the Friars Minor in 1631. He was given the name Martin of St. Felix and made great progress both in his studies and in sanctity. He was ordained a priest just four years later in 1635. he went to England on the mission but, after a few years, was forced to return on account of his ill health.
His medics sent him to the baths at Spa to recuperate and he there met the Observant General Commissary. He begged permission to return to England where his co-religionists were suffering renewed persecution in the Puritan-led Commonwealth. The Commissary gave him permission and John set out, landing in Newcastle in 1644. He went to his paternal home, but his father, scared for the safety of his son since many would have known that he had spent years abroad and studied for the priesthood, sent him away. The soldiers of the local garrison had, however, already been informed of his arrival and he was arrested immediately and imprisoned in Lancaster Castle, where he lived for two years. He was martyred on 7th August 1646, hanged at Bomber-Bridge while he exhorted the crowd to understand why he had been condemned. John Woodcock was beatified along with 129 other martyrs of England and Wales on 22nd November 1987 by Pope John Paul II.

Blessed Charles Meehan-Mahoney (1639 – 1679): Charles was born in Ireland between 1639 and 1640. It is not known when he joined the Irish Province but, like several other Irish friars of the time, he completed his formation with the English friars in their college at Douai. In 1679 he was aboard a ship bound for Ireland which was forced to put into port in Wales. He came ashore at precisely the wrong time, since England and Wales were engulfed in the anti-Catholic hysteria aroused by Titus Oates's invented Papist Plot. Charles searched for a passage to Ireland, but, suspected of being a Catholic and a priest, he was arrested and in June 1678, imprisoned in Denbigh gaol. He was tried in Spring 1679 and was condemned to be killed at Ruthin. The sentence was carried out on 12th August. He died saying: “Since God has pleased to give me the grace of martyrdom, blessed be his Holy Name.”
Charles Meehan was beatified along with 129 other martyrs of England and Wales on 22nd November 1987 by Pope John Paul II.

The Franciscan Martyrs of the Recusant and Popish Plot Eras

Often when we consider the priest-martyrs of the English Reformation era, we think of the Jesuits: Saints Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell, Henry Walpole, etc. But the Franciscans, who had been the major mendicant order in England before Henry VIII's break from Rome, also had a group of martyrs. This site provides detail about the two martyrs canonized by Pope Paul VI:

Saint John (Godfrey) Jones 1530? - 1598: John Jones was born to a Catholic family in Clymag Faur in the county of Canaervon in Wales around the year 1530. In his youth Queen Mary Tudor accomplished the restoration of the Catholic Church after the brief reign of Edward VI had taken the Church of England into the Calvinist fold. Mary's accession had allowed the English friars who had fled into exile to Flanders and Scotland to return and in April 1555 the friary at Greenwich, in which Mary and Elizabeth had been baptised, was reopened. John joined the friary and took the name Godfrey Maurice, becoming known for his piety. At Mary's untimely death in 1558, however, her half-sister Elizabeth assumed the throne and it was not long before Catholics were once more persecuted in England. John Jones, although still a novice was forced to flee to France. The English Observant Franciscans fled to a friary in Pontoise where John was professed and trained. He was probably ordained a priest at Rheims, where there was another friary of the exiled English Province.

Towards 1590 John was sent to the friary of Ara Coeli in Rome, the General headquarters of the Order. From there he wished to return to England to take part in the mission to care for faithful Catholics, who risked their livelihoods and often their lives to sustain their missionary priests. The priests themselves were subject to the dreadful death of hanging, drawing and quartering as traitors for the simple fact of exercising their priesthood. John begged an audience with the Pope and Clement VIII embraced him, gave him a solemn blessing and told him: “Go, because I believe you to be a true son of Saint Francis. Pray to God for me and for his holy Church."

In England John Jones exercised an heroic hidden ministry, animating the Catholic faith among recusants and prudently seeking to reconcile those who had submitted to Elizabeth's Church of England. The existence of a missionary priest in England was one of frequent moves, constant vigilance and continued flight from Elizabeth's vigilant secret services, supervised by William Cecil and Francis Walsingham.

Despite his care, John Jones was caught in late 1595 or early 1596 by Richard Topcliffe, who nurtured a cruel hatred for the Catholic faith and was sanctioned by the Queen to maintain a private torture chamber in his house for the Catholic priests he apprehended. John Jones was accused of being a spy and sent to the notorious Clink prison, from which we derive the expression “being in clink”. There he languished for nigh on two years awaiting trial. In prison Jones continued his ministry and converted many, including Saint John Rigby, who was himself martyred two years after John Jones (on 21st June 1600). On 3rd July 1598 John Jones was finally brought to trial for having exercised his ministry as a Catholic priest in England. He was sentenced to hanging, drawing and quartering at Saint Thomas Watering, but was meanwhile imprisoned at Marshalsea prison. The Jesuit Henry Garnet recounts in a letter that on 12th July 1598 John was tied to a trellis and dragged to the place of his torment. He was held there for an hour before execution during which time Topcliffe harangued the crowd with his supposed crimes. Garnet recounts that the crowd was touched more by John's prayers than by the calumnies of his torturer and executioner. His remains were hung up on the road between Newington and Lambeth.

With John Wall and 38 other English martyrs, John Jones was beatified by Pius XI on 15th December 1929 and canonised by Paul VI on 25th October 1970.

Saint John (Joachim) Wall (1620 – 1679): John Wall was born in 1620, probably at Chingle Hall, near Preston in Lancashire. As a young man he entered the English College in Douai where he was taught by the famous Dr. Kellison. In 1641 he transferred to the English College in Rome, where he was ordained a priest in 1645. After a brief spell as a missionary in England he returned to Douai and asked to enter the Franciscan College of St. Bonaventure which John Gennings had erected there in his restoration of the Franciscan Province of England. In January 1651 he was accepted into the Order and took the name Joachim of St. Anne. Five friars from that friary had already been martyred.

John Joachim, although only 6 months professed was appointed Guardian of the college and later Master of Novices. In 1656 he assumed the false name Francis Webb and re-entered England as a missionary in Worcestershire. He remained there for 22 years ministering to the Catholics of the area. In 1678 he went to London to meet the Jesuit Claude de la Colombière, and the two spoke together of their desire for martyrdom. The context of this meeting was the renewed persecution that was unleashed in the wake of the murderous lies of Titus Oates and his invented Catholic plot against King Charles II.

Returning from this encounter, John was staying with a friend in Rushock Court. There he was mistaken for one of the so-called plotters, Francis Johnson, and arrested. When he refused to swear to the religious supremacy of the King, he was imprisoned for five months of dreadful suffering. At the end of this time, on 25th April 1679, he was condemned to death for high treason, since he was a priest who had been ordained abroad and returned to exercise his ministry in contravention to the Elizabethan anti-Catholic laws. He argued in vain that Charles II's amnesty of 1660 should have covered him, as indeed it should. Instead he was sent to London to be interrogated by Oates, Bedloe, Dugdale and Pranse. He was found innocent of the accusation of complicity in the “Papist Plot” but because of his priestly ordination and ministry, his death sentence was nevertheless confirmed and he was sent back to Worcester, where he was hanged on 22nd August 1679.

His fellow friar William Leveson, whose own brother Francis Leveson would himself be martyred at the age of 34 in 1680, looked after John Wall in his last days in prison. He recounted the condemnation and death of the martyr in a letter. John Wall's body was buried in the cemetery of the church of St. Oswald in Worcester, and his head returned to Douai, where it was venerated as a holy relic.

Along with John Jones and 38 other English martyrs John Wall was beatified by Pius XI on 15th December 1929 and canonised by Paul VI on 25th October 1970.

Note that St. John Wall had been able to work for 22 years in England before the Popish Plot's anti-Catholic hysteria. Worcestershire authorities had not been diligent about finding the Franciscan, or the Providence of God and his Guardian Angel had been protecting him--or a little of both. See the next post for details on the beati honored on this day.

The Catholic Oxford Martyrs

While Blessed John Henry Newman was the Anglican vicar of St. Mary's and Fellow at Oriel in Oxford, he was embroiled in a controversy over the publication of the "Remains" of his late friend Richard Hurrell Froude. Froude's journals and essays contained statements regretting that the Reformation ever happened and extolling certain Catholic devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints. One upshot of this controversy was the campaign to erect a memorial to the Protestant martyrs burned at the stake during the reign of Queen Mary I: Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, in 1555 and 1556.

Subscribing to the memorial was a way of rejecting the "Popish" elements of the Oxford Movement. The neo-gothic (?) style Martyrs Memorial stands in the center of St. Giles Street, with a pointed reference to doctrinal and theological disputes between the Church of England and "the Church of Rome":

To the Glory of God, and in grateful commemoration of His servants, Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, Prelates of the Church of England, who near this spot yielded their bodies to be burned, bearing witness to the sacred truths which they had affirmed and maintained against the errors of the Church of Rome, and rejoicing that to them it was given not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for His sake; this monument was erected by public subscription in the year of our Lord God, MDCCCXLI.

In 1589, Catholic martyrs were executed in Oxford, charged with violating Elizabethan statutes that made it an act of treason to be a Catholic priest in England and a felony to assist a Catholic priest present in England. But it has taken a long time for those martyrs to receive any attention, according to this article:

OXFORD, England (CNS)—At 100 Holywell St., not far from Oxford University's fabled Bodleian Library, a melancholy black plaque maintains a solitary vigil against the elements.

When officials at the university's Merton College agreed in October 2008 to allow the house to be used to commemorate four Catholics executed under Queen Elizabeth I, the move was resisted by some city council members. After more than four centuries, the story of Oxford's martyrs still provokes unease.

"There's no doubting we're in a more ecumenical frame of mind now, and can acknowledge the heroism of those who, whether Protestant or Catholic, died for their beliefs," explained Benedictine Father Bernard Green, an expert on Christian persecution in England and director of studies at Oxford's St. Benet's Hall.

"But there's still, even today, a reluctance here to accept that Catholics like these were genuine martyrs. Although many have been beatified for their witness, the vast majority are still completely unknown," Father Green said.

The reluctance stems from thinking that the Catholic martyrs died because they were breaking the laws that declared them traitors and felons. Those laws were passed because the Elizabethan government 1) wanted uniformity in matter of religion and 2) feared Catholics as plotters against the regime. But not all Catholics plotted against the queen and her rule; most wanted to be loyal to her and practice their Catholic faith peace. So this label of traitor prevents acknowledgement of the martyr's witness, because they were breaking the law. Yet the Marian martyrs were also breaking the heresy laws passed by Parliament during the reign of Mary I, which were a revival of those enforced by Henry VIII, Henry VII, and the Plantagenet kings of York and Lancaster. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were breaking a law passed by the Parliament of England just as much as Southwell, Campion and Walpole, three of the famous Jesuit Recusant martyrs.

During the Elizabethan era, a series of Statutes were passed aimed at getting rid of any priests in England by naming all Catholic priests in England traitors and all Catholic laity who aided Catholic priests in England felons. It did not matter whether or not they were involved in any attempt to overthrow the government; their very presence, acting upon their vocation and availing themselves of the Church's Sacraments, were in the eyes of the state, heinous acts, worthy of torture and agonizing death.

More about the four martyrs who suffered on July 5, 1589 here and here. These four martyrs, Bl. George Nichols and Bl. Richard Yaxley, priests, and Bl. Thomas Belson and Bl.Humphrey Pritchard, laymen, suffered during the English reaction to the threat of the Spanish Armada. English Catholics on the whole were not supportive of a Spanish invasion of England, even though it would have meant greater religious freedom. Nonetheless, the English government really cracked down on Catholics in 1588 and 1589--many who had been held in prison were executed, and throughout London new scaffolds and gibbets were set up to demonstrate the treason of Catholics (who had committed no treason except fulfilling their vocations and receiving the Catholic Sacraments).

One more link: to the LMS Chairman blogpost describing the news reports about the dedication of the memorial to these saints and another Catholic martyr. I took the photo above on a 2009 sojourn in The Oxford Experience; it depicts the memorial to ALL the Oxford martyrs in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. Update: I've added a picture of the memorial to the Catholic martyrs, thanks to Once I Was a Clever Boy.

Book Review: The Trials of Margaret Clitherow

Subtitle: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England
by Peter Lake and Michael Questier
New York: Continuum, 2011

Book Description from Continuum:

The story of Margaret Clitherow represents one of the most important yet troubling events in post-Reformation history. Her trial, execution and subsequent legend have provoked controversy ever since she became a cause celebre in the time of Elizabeth I. Through extensive new research into the contemporary accounts of her arrest and trial the authors have pieced together a new reading of the surrounding events. The result is a work which considers the question of religious sainthood and martyrdom as well as the relationship between society, the state and the Church in Britain during the sixteenth century. They establish the full ideological significance of the trial and demonstrate that the politics of post-Reformation British society cannot be understood without the wider local, national and international contexts in which they occurred. This is a major contribution to our understanding of both English Catholicism and the Protestant regime of the Elizabethan period.

Contents:

Acknowledgements \ Preface \ Abbreviations \ Part I \ 1. The Controversial Mrs Clitherow \ 2. The Radicalisation of the mid-Elizabethan Catholics \ 3. Mrs Clitherow, her Catholic household and her (both Protestant and Catholic) enemies \ 4. The Quarrels of the Catholic Community \ Recusancy and its Discontents \ Thomas Bell and his Enemies \ Christianity sans Eglise: the Religion of the Heart among Catholics and Puritans \ Fainthearted Catholics and Real Catholics: Mrs Clitherow and the Local Politics of Conformity \ 5. The Reckoning: Arrest, Trial and Execution \ Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know? \ Arrest \ Trial \ Awaiting Death in the Prison \ Appealing to the Court of Public Opinion \ Endgame: from Life to Death \ Part II \ 6. Mrs Clitherow and the Catholic Community after 1586 \ After the Execution \ The Tyrant and the Quisling \ Between Resistance and Compromise? \ 7. Thomas Bell’s Revenge and the 1591 Proclamation \ Thomas Bell changes Sides \ Acting on Information received \ Reading against the Grain; or what Thomas Bell had really been doing in Lancashire \ 8. Mrs. Clitherow Vindicated? \ The Church under the Cross and the Resort to the Public \ Thomas Bell and the Politics of Failure \ Mrs Clitherow entirely vindicated as the Epitome of Catholic Order \ 9. Aftermath: The English Catholic Community Tears Itself Apart in the Archpriest Controversy \ Epilogue: Margaret Clitherow and the English Reformation \Notes \ Index

About the Authors:

Peter Lake, Peter Lake is University Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of the History of Christianity, Divinity School at Vanderbilt University, USA. From 1993-2009 he was Professor of History at Princeton University, USA. He is the author of many books including The Boxmaker’s Revenge and a forthcoming volume on Shakespeare’s history plays.

Michael Questier, Michael Questier is Professor of Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. He is the author of Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England (CUP), Conversion, Politics and Religion in England 1580-1625 (CUP), and co-authored with Peter Lake The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (Yale).

My review:

I began with some misgivings as I wondered if the authors were to engage in a major deconstruction of the martyrdom of St. Margaret Clitherow, the position of Catholics in England, and the entire idea of martyrdom in England after the Reformation--and they do come close, although they recognize her independence, devotion and fortitude. This is not a work of hagiography. Instead Lake and Questier have presented the great complexity of the position of Catholics in England after the Reformation as they either negotiated some measure of conformity with their Protestant society and their rulers or maintained an absolute stance of Catholic separatism, risking imprisonment, torture and death. The whole notion of the Church Papist who offered a veneer of conformity to the established church was anathema to the group stressing absolute recusancy. Mostly represented by the Jesuits, the recusants believed that any compromise with the Church of England was a betrayal of the Catholic Church. The Church Papists argued that if they did not demonstrate some conformity with their neighbors and their rulers Catholics' loyalty as friends and subjects would always be suspect. If they did not attend their parish services they would not able to participate in community life and they would have no Christian fellowship at all. This debate divided Catholics and some Anglicans emphasized this division and used it as a weakness in the already suppressed Catholic community.

The plural form of "trial" in the title is important: Margaret Clitherow endured more than one trial and more than one type of trial. Once she became a Catholic just a few years after marrying John Clitherow, she wanted to practice her faith almost as a cloistered religious with devotions at certain hours, regular reception of the Sacraments, spiritual reading and formation, and contact with priests for spiritual counsel. Yet she was married to a Protestant tradesman, with a household and business to support, and she was adamantly opposed to any conformity with the Church of England. Clitherow organized her household and her daily activities around her devotions and her ascetism, but this brought her into conflict with her husband. In her zeal for recusancy and contact with priests, she added conflict with her neighbors, her family and her fellow Catholics in York.

In addition to those trials, her recusancy brought her legal troubles, questioning, and imprisonment. Her husband paid her fines and endured her sojourns in gaol, but he was out of the household and urged to be out of York when she was arrested the last time, tried, and executed for refusing to plead either guilty or not guilty. Although she was crushed to death on Good Friday, March 25, 1586, Margaret Clitherow's martyrdom did not put to death these debates about recusancy or conformity or questions about her behavior and reputation. The division between the Recusants and the Appellants over separatism and compromise only intensified into the conflict between the Jesuits and the secular priests in the Archpriest crisis from 1598 to 1602. Doubts about St. Margaret Clitherow's contacts with priests, which were often cast as scandalous and salacious, and whether her martyrdom was a suicide also continued--although the authors do pull back from the latter issue by acknowledging her stated rationale that because her children and neighbors would be called upon to testify and judge her case she chose not to plead at all. Clitherow is also accused of being a bad and disobedient wife and therefore Catholicism is implicated in encouraging her disobedience.

Throughout the retelling of St. Margaret Clitherow's story and its aftermath, Lake and Questier trace the career of Father Thomas Bell, a priest who had argued for a certain level of conformity. He eventually abandoned the Catholic faith and his priesthood, becoming an informer for the state to help them discover Catholic households and capture Jesuits in Lancashire and writing anti-Catholic pamphlets. Bell's betrayal demonstrated what Father Robert Persons, SJ and others had warned: any step toward conformity will lead to further steps toward betrayal.

I regret the absence of a full bibliography: Questier and Lake reference several contemporary documents including Father John Mush's "True Report of the Life and Martyrdom of Mrs. Margaret Clitherow", Father Henry Garnet's "An Apology against the Defense of Schism", Father Robert Person's "A Brief Discourse containing certain reasons why Catholics refuse to go to [Anglican] church" and "A Christian Directory", Edmund Bunny's Protestant version of the latter, "A Book of Christian Exercise", and Father Robert Southwell's "An Humble Supplication" written in response to Elizabeth I's proclamation of October 18, 1591 denouncing the treason of her Catholic subjects. Secondary studies include Alexandra Walsham's Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England, Anne Dillon's The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, and K. J. Kesserling's work on the Northern Rebellion, previously reviewed here. The volume is well designed and very well illustrated.

A Gathering of Recusant Houses

The Berkshire Family Historian Society provides this survey of Catholic recusant households in that area:
During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, those who refused to attend Anglican church services were known as recusants. Most were Roman Catholics. Despite draconian legislation, Roman Catholicism survived in England because of a deliberate strategy. In July 1586, a secret conference at Harleyford Manor, across the river from Hurley, determined that priests would be based in the homes of the recusant gentry. Harbouring a priest could incur the death penalty and merely being a priest constituted high treason. Nonetheless, the Harleyford strategy worked well in many parts of Berkshire. Various factors contributed to this:

~~Recusancy among the gentry was relatively strong in neighbouring Hampshire and south Oxfordshire.
~~Most conforming gentry did not invoke anti-Catholic legislation against their recusant neighbours.
~~The Thames provided an efficient link with London, with recusant manor houses every few miles along the Oxfordshire bank of the river.
~~Catholic priests returning via the Hampshire coast from the Continent often passed through Berkshire.
~~Berkshire was far away enough from London to make casual raids unlikely.
~~Until the reign of Charles I, there was a steady supply of local martyrs to provide spiritual inspiration.

Hence, after two centuries of repression, there were still nearly 600 Roman Catholics in Berkshire. The Catholic Relief Act of 1778 put a formal end to the prosecution of priests by informers and allowed Roman Catholics legally to purchase and inherit land. Thirteen years later, a second act re-opened the professions to Roman Catholics and permitted the legalisation of Catholic chapels.

One of the houses listed is Milton Manor in Abingdon near Oxford which was designed by Inigo Jones. Among the others are Englefield House near Reading and Hyde or Purley Hall.