L'arbre de Tyburn où furent exécutés la plupart des martyrs
Quarante martyrs d'Angleterre et du Pays de Galles
Catholiques martyrisés en Angleterre et au Pays de
Galles entre 1535 et 1679
Groupe de quarante martyrs canonisés le 25 octobre 1970 par le pape Paul VI pour représenter les catholiques martyrisés en Angleterre et au Pays de Galles entre 1535 et 1679.
Anglais et gallois, qui entre 1535 et 1679, ont été martyrs de leur fidélité à l'Église catholique romaine. Ils sont fêtés le jour de leur canonisation commune, parce que l'unité de leur foi les a réunis malgré des dates éloignées... Durant ces années de persécutions, parce qu'ils refusaient l'adhésion au schisme du roi d'Angleterre, chacun à sa manière a souscrit à cette parole de saint John Plessington: "Que Dieu bénisse le roi et sa famille et daigne accorder à sa Majesté un règne prospère en cette vie et une couronne de gloire en l'autre. Que Dieu accorde la paix à ses sujets en leur donnant de vivre dans la vraie foi, dans l'espérance et dans la charité."
Alexandre Bryant,
David Lewis,
Jean Lloyd,
Luc Kirby
Philippe Evans,
Philippe Howard,
Polydore Plasden,
Swithun Wells (Catholic Parish of St Swithun Wells - site en anglais.)
Prêtres missionnaires et autres catholiques ayant été martyrisés en Angleterre
à cause de leur religion entre 1577 et 1684.
Extraits de l'homélie de Paul VI:
Les martyrs ont offert à Dieu le sacrifice de leur vie, poussés par le plus
haut et le plus grand amour.
L'Église continue à croître et à grandir par l'amour héroïque qui anime les
martyrs... Notre siècle a besoin de saints! Il a surtout besoin de l'exemple de
ceux qui ont donné le témoignage suprême de leur amour pour le Christ et pour
son Église: «Il n'y a pas de plus grand amour que de donner sa vie pour ceux
qu'on aime.»
Paul VI Homélies 28050
25 octobre 1970
L'ÉGLISE
ET LE MONDE D'AUJOURD'HUI ONT SURTOUT BESOIN DE SAINTS
25100
La canonisation solennelle des Quarante martyrs de l'Angleterre et du Pays de Galles que nous venons d'accomplir nous offre l'heureuse occasion de vous parler, bien que brièvement, du sens de leur existence et de l'importance que leur vie et leur mort ont eus et continuent d'avoir non seulement pour l'Eglise d'Angleterre et du Pays de Galles, mais aussi pour l'Eglise Universelle et pour tout homme de bonne volonté.
Notre temps a besoin de saints et, d'une manière spéciale, de l'exemple de ceux qui ont donné le suprême témoignage de leur amour pour le Christ et pour l'Eglise : « Personne n'a un amour plus grand que celui qui donne sa vie pour ses amis » (Jn 15,13). Ces paroles du divin Maître, qui se rapportent en premier lieu au sacrifice que Lui-même accomplit sur la croix en s'offrant pour le salut de toute l'humanité valent aussi pour la grande foule choisie des martyrs de tous les temps, depuis les premières persécutions jusqu'à celles de nos jours, peut-être plus cachées mais pas moins cruelles. L'Eglise du Christ est née du sacrifice du Christ sur la croix et elle continue à croître et à se développer en vertu de l'amour héroïque de ses fils les plus authentiques. « Semen est sanguis christianorum » (tertullianus, Apologeticus, 50 ; PL 1, 534). De même que l'effusion du sang du Christ, l'oblation que les martyrs font de leur vie devient, en vertu de leur union avec le sacrifice du Christ, une source de vie et de fécondité spirituelle pour l'Eglise et pour le monde tout entier. « C'est pourquoi, nous rappelle la Constitution Lumen gentium, 42, le martyre dans lequel le disciple est assimilé au Maître acceptant librement la mort pour le salut du monde et dans lequel il devient semblable à Lui dans l'effusion de son sang, est considéré par l'Eglise comme une grâce éminente et la preuve suprême de la charité ».
Beaucoup de choses ont été dites et écrites sur cet être mystérieux qu'est l'homme : sur les ressources de son esprit, capable de pénétrer dans les secrets de l'univers et de soumettre les choses matérielles en les utilisant pour arriver à leurs buts ; sur la grandeur de l'esprit humain qui se manifeste dans les oeuvres admirables de la science et de l'art ; sur sa noblesse et sur sa faiblesse, sur ses triomphes et sur ses misères. Mais ce qui caractérise l'homme, ce qu'il y a de plus intime dans son être et dans sa personnalité, c'est la capacité d'aimer, d'aimer jusqu'au fond, de se donner avec cet amour qui est plus fort que la mort et qui se prolonge dans l'éternité.
Le martyre des chrétiens est l'expression et le signe le plus sublime de cet amour, non seulement parce que le martyr reste fidèle à son amour jusqu'à l'effusion de son propre sang, mais aussi parce que ce sacrifice est accompli pour l'amour le plus haut et le plus noble qui puisse exister, à savoir pour l'amour de Celui qui nous a créés et rachetés, qui nous a aimés comme Lui seul sait aimer, et qui attend de nous une réponse de don total et sans conditions, c'est-à-dire un amour digne de notre Dieu.
La canonisation solennelle des Quarante martyrs de l'Angleterre et du Pays de Galles que nous venons d'accomplir nous offre l'heureuse occasion de vous parler, bien que brièvement, du sens de leur existence et de l'importance que leur vie et leur mort ont eus et continuent d'avoir non seulement pour l'Eglise d'Angleterre et du Pays de Galles, mais aussi pour l'Eglise Universelle et pour tout homme de bonne volonté.
Notre temps a besoin de saints et, d'une manière spéciale, de l'exemple de ceux qui ont donné le suprême témoignage de leur amour pour le Christ et pour l'Eglise : « Personne n'a un amour plus grand que celui qui donne sa vie pour ses amis » (Jn 15,13). Ces paroles du divin Maître, qui se rapportent en premier lieu au sacrifice que Lui-même accomplit sur la croix en s'offrant pour le salut de toute l'humanité valent aussi pour la grande foule choisie des martyrs de tous les temps, depuis les premières persécutions jusqu'à celles de nos jours, peut-être plus cachées mais pas moins cruelles. L'Eglise du Christ est née du sacrifice du Christ sur la croix et elle continue à croître et à se développer en vertu de l'amour héroïque de ses fils les plus authentiques. « Semen est sanguis christianorum » (tertullianus, Apologeticus, 50 ; PL 1, 534). De même que l'effusion du sang du Christ, l'oblation que les martyrs font de leur vie devient, en vertu de leur union avec le sacrifice du Christ, une source de vie et de fécondité spirituelle pour l'Eglise et pour le monde tout entier. « C'est pourquoi, nous rappelle la Constitution Lumen gentium, 42, le martyre dans lequel le disciple est assimilé au Maître acceptant librement la mort pour le salut du monde et dans lequel il devient semblable à Lui dans l'effusion de son sang, est considéré par l'Eglise comme une grâce éminente et la preuve suprême de la charité ».
Beaucoup de choses ont été dites et écrites sur cet être mystérieux qu'est l'homme : sur les ressources de son esprit, capable de pénétrer dans les secrets de l'univers et de soumettre les choses matérielles en les utilisant pour arriver à leurs buts ; sur la grandeur de l'esprit humain qui se manifeste dans les oeuvres admirables de la science et de l'art ; sur sa noblesse et sur sa faiblesse, sur ses triomphes et sur ses misères. Mais ce qui caractérise l'homme, ce qu'il y a de plus intime dans son être et dans sa personnalité, c'est la capacité d'aimer, d'aimer jusqu'au fond, de se donner avec cet amour qui est plus fort que la mort et qui se prolonge dans l'éternité.
Le martyre des chrétiens est l'expression et le signe le plus sublime de cet amour, non seulement parce que le martyr reste fidèle à son amour jusqu'à l'effusion de son propre sang, mais aussi parce que ce sacrifice est accompli pour l'amour le plus haut et le plus noble qui puisse exister, à savoir pour l'amour de Celui qui nous a créés et rachetés, qui nous a aimés comme Lui seul sait aimer, et qui attend de nous une réponse de don total et sans conditions, c'est-à-dire un amour digne de notre Dieu.
Signe
d'amour
Dans sa longue et glorieuse histoire, la Grande Bretagne, île des saints, a donné au monde beaucoup d'hommes et de femmes qui ont aimé Dieu de cet amour pur et loyal : c'est pour cela que nous sommes heureux d'avoir pu aujourd'hui compter quarante autres fils de cette noble terre parmi ceux que l'Eglise reconnaît publiquement comme saints, les proposant ainsi à la vénération de ses fidèles, et parce que ces saints représentent par leurs existences un exemple vivant.
A celui, qui, ému et saisi d'admiration, lit les actes de leur martyre, il est clair, nous voudrions dire évident, qu'ils sont les dignes émules des plus grands martyrs des temps passés, en raison de la grande humilité, de l'intrépidité, de la simplicité et de la sérénité avec lesquelles ils ont accepté leur sentence et leur mort et même plus encore avec une joie spirituelle et une charité admirable et radieuse.
C'est justement cette attitude profonde et spirituelle qui groupe et unit ces hommes et ces femmes qui, par ailleurs, étaient très différents entre eux par tout ce qui peut différencier un ensemble nombreux de personnes, à savoir l'âge et le sexe, la culture et l'éducation, l'état de vie et la condition sociale, le caractère et le tempérament, les dispositions naturelles et surnaturelles, les circonstances extérieures de leur existence. Nous avons en effet, parmi les quarante saints martyrs, des prêtres séculiers et réguliers, nous avons des religieuses de divers ordres et de rangs divers, nous avons des laïcs, des hommes de très noble descendance et aussi de condition modeste, nous avons des femmes qui étaient mariées et mères de famille : ce qui les unissait tous, c'est cette attitude intérieure de fidélité inébranlable à l'appel de Dieu qui leur demanda, comme réponse d'amour, le sacrifice même de leur vie.
Et la réponse des martyrs fut unanime : « Je ne peux pas m'empêcher de vous répéter que je meurs pour Dieu et à cause de ma religion — c'est ce que disait saint Philip Evans — et je me sens si heureux que si jamais je pouvais avoir beaucoup d'autres vies, je serais très disposé à les sacrifier toutes pour une cause aussi noble ».
Loyauté
et fidélité
Et, comme par ailleurs de nombreux autres, saint Philip Howard, comte d'Arundel, affirmait aussi : « Je regrette de n'avoir qu'une vie à offrir pour cette noble cause ». Et sainte Margaret Clitherow exprimait synthétiquement, avec une simplicité émouvante, le sens de sa vie et de sa mort : « Je meurs pour l'amour de mon Seigneur Jésus ». « Quelle petite chose, en comparaison de la mort bien plus cruelle que le Christ a soufferte pour moi », s'écriait saint Alban Roe.
Comme beaucoup de leurs compatriotes qui moururent dans des circonstances analogues, ces quarante hommes et femmes de l'Angleterre et du Pays de Galles voulaient être et le furent à fond, loyaux, envers leur patrie qu'ils aimaient de tout leur coeur. Ils voulaient être et ils furent en fait de fidèles sujets du pouvoir royal que tous, sans aucune exception, reconnurent jusqu'à leur mort comme légitime en tout ce qui appartenait à l'ordre civil et politique. Mais ce fut là justement le drame de l'existence de ces martyrs, à savoir que leur honnête et sincère loyauté envers l'autorité civile se trouva en désaccord avec la fidélité envers Dieu et qu'ainsi, suivant les préceptes de leur conscience éclairée par la foi catholique, ils surent conserver les vérités révélées, spécialement sur la sainte Eucharistie et sur les prérogatives inaliénables du successeur de Pierre qui, par la volonté de Dieu, est le pasteur universel de l'Eglise du Christ. Placés devant le choix de rester fermes dans leur foi et donc de mourir pour elle ou d'avoir la vie sauve en reniant la foi, sans une minute d'hésitation et avec une force vraiment surnaturelle, ils se rangèrent du côté de Dieu et affrontèrent le martyre avec joie. Mais leur esprit était si grand, si nobles étaient leurs sentiments, si chrétienne était l'inspiration de leur existence que beaucoup d'entre eux moururent en priant pour leur patrie tant aimée, pour le roi et pour la reine et même pour ceux qui avaient été les responsables directs de leur arrestation, de leurs tortures et des circonstances ignominieuses de leur mort atroce.
Les dernières paroles et la dernière prière de saint John Plessington furent précisément celles-ci : « Que Dieu bénisse le roi et sa famille et daigne accorder à Sa Majesté un règne prospère en cette vie et une couronne de gloire en l'autre. Que Dieu accorde la paix à ses sujets en leur donnant de vivre et de mourir dans la vraie foi, dans l'espérance et dans la charité ».
Activité
et sacrifice
Voici comment pria saint Alban Roe peu de temps avant d'être pendu : « Pardonnez-moi, ô mon Dieu, mes innombrables offenses comme je pardonne à mes persécuteurs » et, comme lui, saint Thomas Garnet qui, après avoir nommé particulièrement ceux qui l'avaient livré, arrêté et condamné, supplia Dieu en disant : « Puissent-ils tous obtenir le salut et avec moi atteindre le ciel ».
En lisant les actes de leur martyre et en méditant la riche matière qui a été recueillie avec tant de soin sur les circonstances historiques de leurs vies et de leur martyre, nous restons frappés surtout par ce qui brille sans équivoque dans leur existence. Cela, par sa nature même, peut traverser les siècles et par conséquent rester toujours pleinement actuel et, spécialement de nos jours, d'une importance capitale. Nous nous rapportons au fait que ces héros, fils et filles de l'Angleterre et du Pays de Galles, ont pris leur foi vraiment au sérieux : cela veut dire qu'ils l'acceptèrent comme l'unique règle de leur vie et de toute leur conduite, en retirant une grande sérénité et une profonde joie spirituelle. Avec une fraîcheur et une spontanéité non séparées de ce don précieux de l'humour, typiquement particulier à leur peuple, avec un attachement à leur devoir fuyant toute ostentation et avec la pureté typique de ceux qui vivent avec des convictions profondes et bien enracinées, ces saints martyrs sont un exemple rayonnant du chrétien qui vit vraiment sa consécration baptismale, croît en cette vie qui lui a été donnée par le sacrement de l'initiation et que celui de la confirmation a renforcée de telle manière que la religion n'est pas pour lui un facteur marginal mais bien l'essence même de tout son être et de son action, faisant en sorte que la charité divine devient la force inspiratrice, active et agissante d'une existence toute tendue vers l'union d'amour avec Dieu et avec tous les hommes de bonne volonté, qui trouvera sa plénitude dans l'éternité.
L'Eglise et le monde d'aujourd'hui ont extrêmement besoin de tels hommes et de telles femmes, de toutes conditions et de tous états de vie, prêtres, religieux et laïcs, parce que seules les personnes de cette stature et de cette sainteté seront capables de changer notre monde tourmenté et de lui rendre, en même temps que la paix, cette orientation spirituelle et vraiment chrétienne à laquelle tout homme aspire intimement — même parfois sans s'en rendre compte — et dont nous avons tous tant besoin.
Que notre gratitude monte vers Dieu qui a voulu dans sa prévoyante bonté susciter ces saints martyrs dont l'action et le sacrifice ont contribué à la conservation de la foi catholique en Angleterre et dans le Pays de Galles.
Que le Seigneur continue à susciter dans l'Eglise, des laïcs, des religieux et des prêtres qui soient de dignes émules de ces hérauts de la foi.
Dieu veuille dans son amour que fleurissent et se développent même aujourd'hui des centres d'étude, de formation et de prière, aptes à préparer, dans les conditions modernes, de saints prêtres et des saints missionnaires tels que furent en ces temps les vénérables collèges de Rome et de Valladolid et les glorieux séminaires de Saint-Omer et de Douai, des rangs desquels sortirent justement beaucoup des quarante martyrs. Ainsi, comme le disait l'un d'entre eux, saint Edmond Campion, une grande personnalité : « Cette Eglise ne s'affaiblira jamais tant qu'il y aura des prêtres et des pasteurs à veiller sur leur troupeau ». Que le Seigneur veuille nous accorder la grâce qu'en ces temps d'indifférentisme religieux et de matérialisme théorique et pratique qui sévit toujours davantage, l'exemple et l'intercession des saints quarante martyrs nous réconfortent dans la foi et raffermissent notre amour authentique pour Dieu, pour son Eglise et pour tous les hommes.
SOURCE : http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/fr/itx.htm
Forty Martyrs of England
and Wales (RM)
Died 16th and 17th centuries; canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. Each of the
individual saints has his own feast day in addition to the corporate one today.
The dates vary in the diocesan calendars of England and Wales. The forty are
only a small portion of the many martyrs of the period whose causes have been
promoted. All suffered for continuing to profess the Catholic faith following
King Henry VIII's promulgation of the Act of Supremacy, which declared that the
king of England was the head of the Church of England.
Most of them were
hanged, drawn, and quartered--a barbaric execution, which meant that the
individual was hanged upon a gallows, but cut down before losing consciousness.
While still alive--and conscious, they were then ripped up, eviscerated, and
the hangman groped about among the entrails until he found the heart--which he
tore out and showed to the people before throwing it on a fire (Undset).
The list below
gives very basic details. More information is given on the individual feast day
listed.
Alban Bartholomew
Roe--Benedictine priest (born in Suffolk; died at Tyburn, 1642) (f.d. January
21).
Alexander
Briant--priest (born in Somerset, England; died at Tyburn, 1851) (f.d. December
1).
Ambrose Edward
Barlow--Benedictine priest (born in Manchester, England, 1585; died at
Lancaster, 1641) (f.d. September 10).
Anne Higham
Line--widow, for harboring priests (born at Dunmow, Essex, England; died at
Tyburn, 1601) (f.d. February 27).
Augustine
Webster--Carthusian priest (died at Tyburn, 1535) (f.d. May 4).
Cuthbert
Mayne--Priest (born in Youlston, Devonshire, England, 1544; died at Launceston,
1577) (f.d. November 30).
David Lewis--Jesuit
priest, (born at Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales, in 1616; died at Usk 1679)
(f.d. August 27).
(Brian) Edmund
Arrowsmith--Jesuit priest (born Haydock, England, 1584; died at Lancaster in
1628) (f.d. August 28).
Edmund
Campion--Jesuit priest (born in London, England, c. 1540; died at Tyburn, 1581)
(f.d. December 1).
Edmund Jennings
(Genings, Gennings)-- priest (born at Lichfield, England, in 1567; died at
Tyburn 1591) (f.d. December 10).
Eustace
White--priest (born at Louth, Lincolnshire, England; died at Tyburn, 1591)
(f.d. December 10).
Henry Morse--Jesuit
priest (born at Broome, Suffolk, England, in 1595; died at Tyburn, 1645) (f.d.
February 1).
Henry
Walpole--Jesuit priest (born at Docking, Norfolk, England, 1558; died at York
in 1595) (f.d. April 7).
John Almond--priest
(born at Allerton, near Liverpool, England, 1577; died at Tyburn, 1612) (f.d.
December 5).
John Boste--priest
(born in Dufton, Westmorland, England, c. 1544; died at Dryburn near Durham,
1594) (f.d. July 24).
John
Houghton--Carthusian priest (born in Essex, England, in 1487; died at Tyburn,
1535) (f.d. May 4).
John Jones (alias
Buckley)--Friar Observant (born in Clynog Fawr, Carnavonshire, Wales; died at
Southwark, London, in 1598) (f.d. July 12).
John Kemble--priest
(born at Saint Weonard's, Herefordshire, England, in 1599; died at Hereford in
1679) (f.d. August 22).
John Lloyd--priest,
Welshman (born in Brecknockshire, Wales; died in Cardiff, Wales, in 1679) (f.d.
July 22).
John Paine
(Payne)--priest (born at Peterborough, England; died at Chelmsford, 1582) (f.d.
April 2).
John Plessington
(a.k.a. William Pleasington)--priest (born at Dimples Hall, Lancashire,
England; died at Barrowshill, Boughton outside Chester, England, 1679) (f.d.
July 19).
John
Rigby--household retainer of the Huddleston family (born near Wigan, Lancashire,
England, c. 1570; died at Southwark in 1601) (f.d. June 21).
John
Roberts--Benedictine priest, Welshman (born near Trawsfynydd Merionethshire,
Wales, in 1577; died at Tyburn, 1610) (f.d. December 10).
John
Southworth--priest (born in Lancashire, England, in 1592; died at Tyburn 1654)
(f.d. June 28).
John
Stone--Augustinian friar (born in Canterbury, England; died at Canterbury, c.
1539) (f.d. December 27).
John
Wall--Franciscan priest (born in Lancashire, England, 1620; died at Redhill,
Worcester, in 1679) (f.d. August 22).
Luke Kirby--priest
(born at Bedale, Yorkshire, England; died at Tyburn, 1582) (f.d. May 30).
Margaret Middleton
Clitherow--wife, mother, and school mistress (born in York, England, c. 1555;
died at York in 1586) (f.d. March 25).
Margaret
Ward--gentlewoman who engineered a priest's escape from jail (born in
Congleton, Cheshire, England; died at Tyburn in 1588) (f.d. August 30).
Nicholas
Owen--Jesuit laybrother (born at Oxford, England; died in the Tower of London
in 1606) (f.d. March 2).
Philip
Evans--Jesuit priest, (born in Monmouthshire, Wales, in 1645; died in Cardiff,
Wales, in 1679) (f.d. July 22).
Philip Howard--Earl
of Arundel and Surrey (born in 1557; died in the Tower of London, believed to
have been poisoned, 1595) (f.d. October 19).
Polydore
Plasden--priest (born in London, England; died at Tyburn, in 1591) (f.d.
December 10).
Ralph Sherwin--priest
(born at Rodsley, Derbyshire, England; died at Tyburn, 1851) (f.d. December 1).
Richard Gwyn--poet
and schoolmaster; protomartyr of Wales (born at Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire,
Wales, in 1537; died at Wrexham, Wales, in 1584) (f.d. October 17).
Richard
Reynolds--Brigittine priest (born in Devon, England, c. 1490; died Tyburn in
1535) (f.d. May 4).
Robert
Lawrence--Carthusian priest (died at Tyburn in 1535) (f.d. May 4).
Robert
Southwell--Jesuit priest (born at Horsham Saint, Norfolk, England, c. 1561;
died at Tyburn in 1595) (f.d. February 21).
Swithun
Wells--schoolmaster (born at Bambridge, Hampshire, England, in 1536; died at
Gray's Inn Fields, London, 1591) (f.d. December 10). Mrs. Wells was also
condemned to death, but was reprieved and died in prison, 1600).
Thomas
Garnet--Jesuit priest (born at Southwark, England; died at Tyburn, in 1608)
(f.d. June 23).
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/1025.shtm
John Houghton, O Cart. M (RM)
Born in Essex, England, in 1487; died at Tyburn on May 4, 1535; beatified in 1886; canonized by Pius VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Saint John served as a parish priest for four years after his graduation from Cambridge. Then he joined the Carthusians, where he was named prior of Beauvale Charterhouse in Northampton and, just a few months later, prior of London Charterhouse.
Richard Reynolds, Priest M (RM)
Born in Devon, England, c. 1490; died at Tyburn on May 4, 1535; beatified in 1886; canonized by Pius VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Robert Lawrence, Priest
M (RM)
Died at Tyburn on May 4, 1535; beatified in 1886; canonized by Pius VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Saint Robert was prior of the charterhouse of Beauvale, Nottinghamshire, England. He was on a visit to the London charterhouse, as was Saint Augustine Webster, when they accompanied its prior, Saint John Houghton, to see Thomas Cromwell, who had them seized and imprisoned in the Tower of London. When they refused to sign the Act of Supremacy, which placed Henry VIII as head of the Church of England, they were savagely treated and hanged (Benedictines, Delaney).
Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
John Houghton, O Cart. M (RM)
Born in Essex, England, in 1487; died at Tyburn on May 4, 1535; beatified in 1886; canonized by Pius VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Saint John served as a parish priest for four years after his graduation from Cambridge. Then he joined the Carthusians, where he was named prior of Beauvale Charterhouse in Northampton and, just a few months later, prior of London Charterhouse.
In 1534, he and his
procurator, Blessed Humphrey Middlemore, were arrested for refusing to accept
the Act of Succession, which proclaimed the legitimacy of Anne Boleyn's
children by Henry VIII. They were soon released when the accepted the act with
the proviso "as far as the law of God allows."
The following year
Father Houghton was again arrested when he, Saint Robert Lawrence, and Saint
Augustine Webster went to Thomas Cromwell to seek an exemption from taking the
oath required in the Act of Supremacy. He, as the first of hundreds to refuse
to apostatize in favor of the crowned heads of England, gave a magnificent
example to his monks and the whole of Britain of fidelity to the Catholic
faith.
As the sentence of
drawing and quartering was read to Father Houghton, he said, "And what
wilt thou do with my heart, O Christ?" The three were dragged through the streets
of London, treated savagely, and then hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn.
After his death, John Houghton's body was chopped into pieces and hung in
various parts of London (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney).
John Houghton is
depicted as a Carthusian with a rope around his neck, holding up his heart
(Roeder).
Richard Reynolds, Priest M (RM)
Born in Devon, England, c. 1490; died at Tyburn on May 4, 1535; beatified in 1886; canonized by Pius VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Richard studied at Cambridge, was
elected a fellow of Corpus Christi College in 1510, and took the degree of B.D.
and was appointed university preachers in 1513. That same year, he professed
himself as a Bridgettine monk at Syon Abbey, Isleworth, and became known for
his sanctity and erudition. He was imprisoned when he refused to subscribe to
the Act of Supremacy issued by Henry VIII and was one of the first martyrs
hanged at Tyburn, after being forced to witness the butchering of four other
martyrs (Benedictines, Delaney).
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0504.shtml
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0504.shtml
Died at Tyburn on May 4, 1535; beatified in 1886; canonized by Pius VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Saint Robert was prior of the charterhouse of Beauvale, Nottinghamshire, England. He was on a visit to the London charterhouse, as was Saint Augustine Webster, when they accompanied its prior, Saint John Houghton, to see Thomas Cromwell, who had them seized and imprisoned in the Tower of London. When they refused to sign the Act of Supremacy, which placed Henry VIII as head of the Church of England, they were savagely treated and hanged (Benedictines, Delaney).
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0504.shtml
Died May 4, 1535; canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. After studying at Cambridge, Father Augustine became a Carthusian and then in 1531 prior of the charterhouse at Axholme, England. While on a visit to the London charterhouse, he accompanied Saint John Houghton and Saint Robert Lawrence to a meeting with Thomas Cromwell, who had the three arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. When they refused to accept the Act of Supremacy of Henry VIII, they were dragged through the streets of London, savagely treated, and executed at Tyburn outside London (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney).
Richard Gwyn M (RM)
Born at Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire, Wales, in 1537; died at Wrexham, Wales, on October 15, 1584; canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Born at Congleton, Cheshire, England; died August 30, 1588; beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. The gentlewoman Margaret was serving as a companion in the home of the Whittle family in London when she was arrested together with her servant, Blessed John Roche, for helping Father Richard (William?) Watson to escape from Bridewell Prison. She had smuggled a rope into the priest's cell so that he might climb down from the roof. He was injured, but did escape with the help of John Roche. The rope was traced back to Margaret, who was severely tortured. They were tried at the Old Bailey on August 29, and offered their freedom if they would reveal the whereabouts of Watson and convert to the Protestant faith. Upon refusing, they were hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, together with a priest and three other laymen (Benedictines, Delaney, Farmer, Kalberer).
Born at Southwark; died 1608; beatified 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Born into a distinguished Catholic family, Thomas Garnet was the nephew of the famous Jesuit, Father Henry Garnet, and the son of Richard Garnet, a faithful Catholic who had been a distinguished fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. His early education was at Horsham Grammar School, but at the age of 16 or 17, he was sent to the newly opened College of Saint Omer in France. In January 1595, he and several of the other students set sail for Spain, but not until 14 months later, after many adventures which included a term of imprisonment in England, did he succeed in reaching Spain and the English Jesuit College at Valladolid. There, at the close of his theological course, he was ordained a priest. He was then sent on the English mission with Blessed Mark Barkworth in 1599. His manner of life for the next six years he described in a few words in his evidence when on trial: "I wandered from place to place to recover souls which had gone astray and were in error as to the knowledge of the true Catholic Church."
Augustine Webster, O. Cart.
M (RM)
Died May 4, 1535; canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. After studying at Cambridge, Father Augustine became a Carthusian and then in 1531 prior of the charterhouse at Axholme, England. While on a visit to the London charterhouse, he accompanied Saint John Houghton and Saint Robert Lawrence to a meeting with Thomas Cromwell, who had the three arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. When they refused to accept the Act of Supremacy of Henry VIII, they were dragged through the streets of London, savagely treated, and executed at Tyburn outside London (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney).
Richard Gwyn M (RM)
Born at Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire, Wales, in 1537; died at Wrexham, Wales, on October 15, 1584; canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Richard Gwyn was
raised a Protestant, studied briefly at Saint John's College, Cambridge. He
returned to Wales in 1562, opened a school at Overton, Flintshire, married, and
had six children. He left Overton after becoming a Catholic, when his absence
from Anglican services was noticed, but was arrested in 1579 at Wrexham, Wales.
He escaped but was
again arrested in 1580 and imprisoned at Ruthin. He was brought up before eight
assizes, tortured, and fined in between, and four years later, in 1584, he was
convicted of treason on charges by perjuring witnesses and sentenced to death.
During his time in
prison, he wrote numerous religious poems in Welsh. He was hanged, drawn, and
quartered at Wrexham--the first Welsh martyr of Queen Elizabeth I's reign. He
is the protomartyr of Wales (Benedictines, Delaney).
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/1017.shtml
Born in Canterbury, England; died there 1538-1539; canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales; feast day formerly May 12. John was an Augustinian friar of the Canterbury community. He held a doctorate in Divinity and was highly respected for his erudition. He served as a professor and prior at Droitwich for a time but was back at Canterbury when Henry VIII began his divorce proceedings. John denounced the claims of Henry to ecclesiastical supremacy from the pulpit, was arrested in December 1538, imprisoned at Westgate, and when he reiterated his condemnation of the Act of Supremacy, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Canterbury before December 1539 (Benedictines, Delaney).
John Stone, OSA
Priest M (RM)
Born in Canterbury, England; died there 1538-1539; canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales; feast day formerly May 12. John was an Augustinian friar of the Canterbury community. He held a doctorate in Divinity and was highly respected for his erudition. He served as a professor and prior at Droitwich for a time but was back at Canterbury when Henry VIII began his divorce proceedings. John denounced the claims of Henry to ecclesiastical supremacy from the pulpit, was arrested in December 1538, imprisoned at Westgate, and when he reiterated his condemnation of the Act of Supremacy, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Canterbury before December 1539 (Benedictines, Delaney).
Margaret Ward M (RM)
Born at Congleton, Cheshire, England; died August 30, 1588; beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. The gentlewoman Margaret was serving as a companion in the home of the Whittle family in London when she was arrested together with her servant, Blessed John Roche, for helping Father Richard (William?) Watson to escape from Bridewell Prison. She had smuggled a rope into the priest's cell so that he might climb down from the roof. He was injured, but did escape with the help of John Roche. The rope was traced back to Margaret, who was severely tortured. They were tried at the Old Bailey on August 29, and offered their freedom if they would reveal the whereabouts of Watson and convert to the Protestant faith. Upon refusing, they were hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, together with a priest and three other laymen (Benedictines, Delaney, Farmer, Kalberer).
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0830.shtml
Philip Howard M (RM)
Born in 1557; died October 19, 1595; beatified in 1929; canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Thomas Garnet, SJ Priest
M (AC)Philip Howard M (RM)
Born in 1557; died October 19, 1595; beatified in 1929; canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Philip was the
eldest son of Thomas Howard, fourth duke of Norfolk, who had been beheaded
under Queen Elizabeth I in 1572. Philip's godfather was Philip II of Spain. On
his mother's side, Philip was earl of Arundel and Surrey. His life's story is
not so surprising given this heritage of high-birth and martyrdom.
Although Philip was
baptized as a Catholic, he was raised as a Protestant. For years he was an
indifferent Christian, neglectful of his faith. At the tender age of 12 or 14,
he was married to Anne Dacre, his foster sister. He studied at Cambridge for
two years. Although Queen Elizabeth had executed his father, she made Philip
one of her favorites. The son was dazzingly handsome, witty, and a good dancer.
Philip became a wastrel at Elizabeth's court, involved in many love affairs,
refusing to set eyes on his young wife who waited patiently at Arundel House.
Even during this
period of dissipation, Philip was extravagant in helping the poor and sick. He
servants worshipped him because he treated every individual courteously. About
this time his grandfather died and he inherited the title and estates of the
earl of Arundel. Deeply impressed by Saint Edmund Campion when he debated
theology with the deans of Windsor at London, Philip reformed his life, was
reconciled to his neglected wife, and eventually fell deeply in love with her.
About the same time
as Campion's defense of the faith, Anne Dacre and Philip's favorite sister,
Lady Margaret Sackville, were reconciled to the Catholic Church. Elizabeth immediately
banished Anne Dacre and placed her under house arrest in Surrey, where she gave
birth to their first daughter. Philip was imprisoned in the Tower of London for
a short time. Upon his release, he, too, returned to the Catholic Church in
1584 with fervor and conscientiousness.
In late April 1585,
Philip tried to escape across the English Channel to Flanders with his family
and brother William as so many Catholics of his country had done before. But
the captain of the ship he had hired betrayed him. Again, he was thrown into
the Tower, where he was severely beaten and accused of treason for working with
Mary, Queen of Scots. The charge was not provable, but he was fined 10,000
pounds. His pleas for mercy and to be allowed to see his wife, daughter, and
newborn son went unanswered by the queen.
On various
occasions it was reported to his wife that the earl was drinking in prison,
that he had affairs with all kinds of loose women, and was entirely indifferent
to religious concerns. Even where he was at the point of death in 1596, it was
made a condition that he must renounce his faith if he wanted to see Anne and
the children before he died.
At the time of the
Spanish Armada, he was again accused of treason (though he was in the Tower of
London at the time) and ordered executed--a sentence that was never carried
out. He was kept imprisoned in the Tower and died there six years later, on
October 19, perhaps poisoned (Benedictines, Delaney, Undset).
SOURCE
: http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/1019.shtml
John Jones, OFM Priest M (AC)
Born at Clynog Fawr, Carnarvonshire, Wales; died July 12, 1598; beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Born of a Catholic family, John Jones was ordained at Rheims and in 1587 was working among the Catholic prisoners in Marshalsea Prison in London. He was discovered, imprisoned at Wisbech Castle, but managed to escape to the Continent.
John Jones, OFM Priest M (AC)
Born at Clynog Fawr, Carnarvonshire, Wales; died July 12, 1598; beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Born of a Catholic family, John Jones was ordained at Rheims and in 1587 was working among the Catholic prisoners in Marshalsea Prison in London. He was discovered, imprisoned at Wisbech Castle, but managed to escape to the Continent.
He joined the
Franciscans of the Observants, probably at Pontoise, France, and was professed
at Ara Coeli Convent in Rome. He received permission to return to England in
1592, using the alias John Buckley, worked in London and other parts of
England, and was arrested again in 1596.
He was imprisoned
for two years (he brought Blessed John Rigby back to the faith while in
prison), and when convicted of being a Catholic priest guilty of treason for
having been ordained abroad and returned to England, he was hanged, drawn, and
quartered at Southwark in London (Benedictines, Delaney).
Born at Southwark; died 1608; beatified 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Born into a distinguished Catholic family, Thomas Garnet was the nephew of the famous Jesuit, Father Henry Garnet, and the son of Richard Garnet, a faithful Catholic who had been a distinguished fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. His early education was at Horsham Grammar School, but at the age of 16 or 17, he was sent to the newly opened College of Saint Omer in France. In January 1595, he and several of the other students set sail for Spain, but not until 14 months later, after many adventures which included a term of imprisonment in England, did he succeed in reaching Spain and the English Jesuit College at Valladolid. There, at the close of his theological course, he was ordained a priest. He was then sent on the English mission with Blessed Mark Barkworth in 1599. His manner of life for the next six years he described in a few words in his evidence when on trial: "I wandered from place to place to recover souls which had gone astray and were in error as to the knowledge of the true Catholic Church."
In 1606, the year
he uncle was executed, Father Thomas Garnet was arrested near Warwick shortly
after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. First he was imprisoned in the
Gatehouse and then moved to Newgate. Because he had been staying in the house
of Mr. Ambrose Rookwood, who was implicated in the conspiracy, and because he
was so closely connected to Father Henry Garnet, it was hoped that important
information could be extracted from him, but neither threats nor the strictest
cross-examination could elicit any incriminating admission. After eight or nine
months spent in a damp cell with no better bed than the bare ground, he was deported
to Flanders with 46 other priests. While still in England Saint Thomas had been
admitted to the Society of Jesus by his uncle, who was superior of the Jesuits
in England, and he now proceeded to Louvain for his novitiate. The following
year, in September, he returned to England. Six weeks later he was betrayed by
an apostate priest and arrested again.
At the Old Bailey
he was charged with high treason on the grounds that he had been made a priest
by authority derived from Rome and that he had returned to England in defiance
of the law. His priesthood he neither admitted nor denied, but he firmly
refused to take the Oath of Supremacy. On the evidence of three witnesses who
declared that when he was in the Tower he had signed himself Thomas Garnet, Priest,
he was declared guilty and was condemned to death.
On the scaffold he
proclaimed himself a priest and a Jesuit, explaining that he had not
acknowledged this at his trial lest he should be his own accuser or oblige the
judges to condemn him against their consciences. The Earl of Essex and others
tried up to the last moment to persuade him to save his life by taking the
oath, and when the end came and the cart was drawn away they would not allow
him to be cut down until it was certain he was quite dead (Benedictines,
Delaney, Walsh).
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0623.shtml
John Kemble, Priest MM (RM)
Born at Saint Weonard's, Herefordshire, England, in 1599; died at Hereford, in 1679; beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Born near Preston, Lancashire, England; died at Redhill, Worcester on August 22, 1679; beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. John had his early education at Douai, France, then completed his studies for the priesthood at the Roman college and was ordained in Rome in 1645. He served as a missionary for a time. When Father John Wall entered the Friars Minor in 1651 at Saint Bonaventure's in Douai, he took the new name of Father Joachim of Saint Anne. He joined the English mission at Worcester in 1656, where he labored under the aliases of Francis Johnson, Dormer, and Webb until his arrest 22 years later in December 1678 at Bromsgrove. After being imprisoned for five months, he was acquitted of any complicity in the Titus Oates Plot. Nevertheless, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered for refusing to deny the faith and his priesthood (Benedictines,Delaney).
John Kemble, Priest MM (RM)
Born at Saint Weonard's, Herefordshire, England, in 1599; died at Hereford, in 1679; beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
John Kemble was born to Catholic
parents, studied for the priesthood at Douai, and was ordained in 1625. He then
labored in the English mission in Herefordshire and Monmouthshire for 53 years.
During the hysteria, in 1678, surrounding the Titus Oates Plot, Father Kemble
was arrested at Pembridge Castle, his brother's home, which he had used as his
headquarters. He was charged with complicity in the fraudulent plot to
assassinate King Charles II. When no evidence could be found of his
involvement, he was examined by the Privy Council in London and found guilty of
being a Catholic priest. The 80-year-old Father Kemble was so respected that he
was allowed to die upon the gallows before the other grisly rituals of the
drawing and quartering were carried out. Thus, he was thus spared much of the
agonies that others suffered. One of his hands was cut off and is kept as a
relic in the Catholic Church in Monmouth (Benedictines, Delaney).
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0822.shtml
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0822.shtml
John
Wall, OFM Priests M (RM)
Born near Preston, Lancashire, England; died at Redhill, Worcester on August 22, 1679; beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. John had his early education at Douai, France, then completed his studies for the priesthood at the Roman college and was ordained in Rome in 1645. He served as a missionary for a time. When Father John Wall entered the Friars Minor in 1651 at Saint Bonaventure's in Douai, he took the new name of Father Joachim of Saint Anne. He joined the English mission at Worcester in 1656, where he labored under the aliases of Francis Johnson, Dormer, and Webb until his arrest 22 years later in December 1678 at Bromsgrove. After being imprisoned for five months, he was acquitted of any complicity in the Titus Oates Plot. Nevertheless, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered for refusing to deny the faith and his priesthood (Benedictines,Delaney).
Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
§
formerly
4 May
Profile
Following the dispute between the Pope and King Henry VIII in the 16th century, faith questions in the British Isles became
entangled with political questions, with both often being settled by torture and murder of loyal Catholics. In 1970, the Vatican selected 40 martyrs, men and women, lay and religious, to represent the full group of perhaps 300
known to have died for their faith and allegiance to the Church between 1535 and 1679. They each have their own day of memorial, but are remembered as a group on 25 October. They are
§ Polydore Plasden
§ Swithun Wells
§
25 October 1970 by Pope Paul VI
SOURCE : http://catholicsaints.info/forty-martyrs-of-england-and-wales/
CANONIZATION OF 40 ENGLISH AND WELSH MARTYRS
Paolo Molinari, S.J.
Who the Forty Martyrs
are
The forty Martyrs
are among the best known of the many Catholics who gave their lives in England
and Wales during the 16th and 17th centuries owing to the fact that their
religious convictions clashed with the laws of the State at that time.
As is known, King
Henry VIII had proclaimed himself supreme head of the Church in England and
Wales, claiming for himself and his successors power over his subjects also in
spiritual questions. According to our Catholic faith, this spiritual supremacy
is due only to the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff. The Blessed Martyrs, and
with them many other Catholics, though they wished to be, and actually were,
loyal subjects of the Crown in everything belonging to it legitimately
according to the ideas of that time, refused for reasons of conscience to
recognize the "spiritual supremacy" of the King and to obey the laws
issued by the political power on purely spiritual questions such as Holy Mass,
Eucharistic Communion and similar matters. This was what led many people to
face and meet death courageously rather than act against their conscience and
deny their Catholic faith as regards the spiritual Primacy of the Vicar of Christ
and the dogma of the Blessed Sacrament. From the ecumenical point of view, it
is extremely important to realize the fact, proved historical, that the Martyrs
were not put to death as a result of internal struggles between Catholics and
Anglicans, but precisely because they were not willing to submit to a claim of
the State which is commonly recognized today as being illegitimate and
unacceptable.
If—as has always
been clearly recognized in the case of St. Thomas More—it would be a serious
error to consider him a leading figure in the opposition between Catholics and
Anglicans, whereas he must be considered a person who rose in defence of the
rights of conscience against State usurpation, the same can be said of the 40
Martyrs, who died for exactly the same reasons.
And this is just
what the Church intends to stress with their Canonization. It was and is her
intention to hold up to the admiration not only of Catholics, but of all men,
the example of persons unconditionally loyal to Christ and to their conscience
to the extent of being ready to shed their blood for that reason. Owing to
their living faith in Christ, their personal attachment to Him, their deep
sharing of His life and principles, these persons gave a clear demonstration of
their authentically Christian charity for men, also when—on the scaffold—they
prayed not only for those who shared their religious convictions, but also for
all their fellow-countrymen it; and in particular for the Head of the State and
even for their executioners.
This firm attitude
in defence of their own freedom of conscience and of their faith in the truth
of the Primacy of Christ and of the Holy Eucharist is identical in all the 40
Martyrs. In every other respect, however, they are different as for example in their
state in life, social position, education, culture, age, character and
temperament, and in fact in everything that makes up the most typically
personal qualities of such a large group of men and women. The group is
composed, in fact, of 13 priests of the secular clergy, 3
Benedictines, 3 Carthusians, 1 Brigittine, 2 Franciscans, 1 Augustinian, 10
Jesuits and 7 members of the laity, including 3 mothers.
The history of their
martyrdom makes varied and stimulating reading as the different characters are
revealed, not without a touch of typically English humour.
The torments they
underwent give an idea of their fortitude. The priests—for example—were hanged,
and shortly after the noose had tightened round their neck they were drawn and
quartered. In most cases the second operation took place when they were still
alive, for they were not left hanging long enough to bring about their death,
sometimes only for a very few seconds.
For the others—that
is, those who were not priests—death by hanging was the normal procedure. But
before their execution the Martyrs were usually cruelly tortured, to make them
reveal the names of any accomplices in their "crime", which was
having celebrated Holy Mass, having attended it or having given shelter to
priests. In the course of the trial, and during the tortures, they were offered
their life and freedom on condition they recognized the king (or the queen,
according to the period), as head of the Church of England.
And here are some
particular features that drive home to us the spirituality of these Martyrs and
how they faced death.
Cuthbert
Mayne, a secular
priest, replied to a gaoler who came to tell him he would be executed three
days later: "I wish I had something valuable to give you, for the good
news you bring me...".
Edmund Campion, a Jesuit, was so pleased when taken to the place of execution that the people said about him and his companions: "But they're laughing! He doesn't care at all about dying...'.
Edmund Campion, a Jesuit, was so pleased when taken to the place of execution that the people said about him and his companions: "But they're laughing! He doesn't care at all about dying...'.
Ralph Sherwin, the first of the martyrs from the English College in Rome had heavy chains round his ankles that rattled at every step he took. "I have on my feet—he wrote wittily to a friend of his—some bells that remind me, when I walk, who I am and to whom I belong. I have never heard sweeter music than this..." He was executed immediately after Campion; he piously kissed the executioner's hands, still stained with the blood of his fellow martyr.
Alexander Briant—the diocesan priest who entered the Society of Jesus shortly before his death—had made himself a little wooden cross during his imprisonment, and held it clasped tightly between his hands all the time, even during the trial. It was then, however that they snatched it away from him But he replied to the judge: "You can take it out of my hands, but not out of my heart". The cross was later bought by some Catholics and is now in the English College in Rome.
John Paine (a secular priest, whose death was long mourned in the whole of Chelmsford) kissed the gallows before dying; and Richard Gwyn, a layman helped the hangman, overcome with emotion, to put the rope round his neck Some strange and extremely revealing episodes are told about Gwyn. Once for example, when he was in prison he was taken in chains to a chapel and obliged to stand right under the pulpit where an Anglican preacher was giving a sermon. The prisoner then began to rattle his chains, making such a din that no one could hear a word of what was being said. Taken back again to his cell, he was approached by various Protestant ministers. One of them, who had a purple nose, wanted to dispute about the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and asserted that God had given them also to him, not just to St. Peter. "There is a difference", Richard Gwyn retorted "St. Peter was entrusted with the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, while the keys entrusted to you are obviously those of the beer cellar".
Cultured Elizabethan
society has its representatives among the martyrs Swithun Wells
was one of them. He had travelled a great deal; he had also been in Rome, and
knew Italian well. He was a sportsman, particularly fond of hunting. On his way
to the gallows, he caught sight of an old friend among the crowd and said to
him: 'Farewell, my dear! And farewell too, to our fine hunting-parties. Now
I've something far better to do...". It was December 10th, 1591, and
bitterly cold. When they stripped him, he turned to his main persecutor,
Topcliffe, and said in a joking tone: "Hurry up, please Mr. Topcliffe. Are
you not ashamed to make a poor old man suffer in his shirt in this cold?"
Catholic priests
managed to exercise the ministry thanks to the precious collaboration of the
faithful. who welcomed them and kept them hidden in their homes and facilitated
the celebration of Holy Mass. As can well be understood, now and again some one
would betray them. The Jesuit laybrother, Nicholas Owen, was
famous for the many hiding-places he built in numerous houses all over England.
Arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London, he died while being brutally
tortured.
Of the forty
Martyrs, the one who underwent the most torture was Henry Walpole,
a Jesuit priest. His exceptional physique resisted the most atrocious forms of
torture for as many as 14 times, until the gallows put an end to his
sufferings.
The following
inscription can still be read in the Tower of London, in one of the cells in
which the Martyrs were detained: "Quanto plus afflictionis pro Christo in
hoc saeculo, tanto plus gloriae in futuro" (the more suffering for Christ
in this life, the more glory in heaven). The words were carved by Philip
Howard, Earl of Arundell. He was the queen's favourite when he made his
appearance at court, at the age of 18, leading a dissolute life. At the age of
24, he happened to be present at a discussion between Campion and some
Protestant ministers. The holy Jesuit's words made a deep impression on him; as
a result he was converted to Catholicism. As he was about to flee to the
continent. he was captured and thrown into prison. He spent eleven long years
there, reading, praying and meditating. He was condemned to death, but the
sentence was postponed by the Queen's intervention. He fell seriously ill and
died in prison.
A curious fact
happened to the Franciscan John Jones. At the time of his
execution, the hangman found he had forgotten the rope. The martyr took
advantage of the hour's wait to speak to the crowd and to pray.
What is most
striking is the serenity with which they all met death. Some of them even made
witty, humorous remarks.
Thus, for example
the Benedictine; John Roberts, seeing that a fire was being lit
to burn his entrails—after hanging and quartering—made the sally: "I see
you are preparing us a hot breakfast!".
When someone shouted
at the Jesuit Edmund Arrowsmith: "You've got to die, do you
realize?", he replied calmly: "So have you, so have you, my good
man...". It is testified that Alban Roe a Benedictine
religious, was a very entertaining fellow. In spite of the torture that was
inflicted on him in prison he found the courage to invite the wardens to play
cards with him, telling funny stories. He gave all the money he had to the
executioner to drink to his health, warning him not to get drunk, however.
Philip
Evans, having found
a particularly kind judge, was treated somewhat indulgently in prison, so much
so that he could even play tennis. Well, it was just during a game that the
news of his condemnation to death arrived. He continued to play, as if nothing
had happened. Then he picked up his harp and began to play.
John
Kemple, a secular
priest, was the only one who always refused to go into biding. "I'm too
old now—he would say—and it is better for me to spend the rest of my life
suffering for my religion". Of course he was caught and arrested. Before
he was hanged, he asked to be allowed to smoke his inseparable pipe. The
executioner, who happened to be an old friend of his, was overcome with emotion
when the moment came to carry out his task and showed his hesitation. Then it
was the martyr who urged him on, saying: "My good Anthony, do what you
have to do. I forgive you with all my heart...".
The martyrdom of Margaret Clitherow is particularly moving. She was accused "of
having sheltered the Jesuits and priests of the secular clergy, traitors to Her
Majesty the Queen"; but she retorted: "I have only helped the Queen's
friends". Margaret knew that the court had decided to condemn her to death
and, not wanting to make the jury accomplices in her condemnation, she refused
the trial. The alternative was to be crushed to death. When the terrible
sentence was passed, Margaret said: "I will accept willingly everything
that God wills".
On Friday March
25th, 1588, at eight o'clock in the morning, Margaret, just thirty-three years
old, left Ouse Bridge prison, barefooted, bound for Toll Booth, accompanied by
two police superintendents, four executioners and four women friends; she
carried on her arm a white linen garment. When she arrived at the dungeon, she
knelt in front of the officials, begging that she should not be stripped, but
her prayer was not granted. While the men looked away, the four pious women
gathered round her and before Margaret lay down on the ground they spread over
her body the white garment that the prisoner had brought with her for that
purpose. Then her martyrdom began.
Her arms were
stretched out in the shape of a cross, and her hands tightly bound to two
stakes in the ground. The executioners put a sharp stone the size of a fist
under her back and placed on her body a large slab onto which weights were
gradually loaded up to over 800 pounds. Margaret whispered: "Jesus, have
mercy on me". Her death agony lasted for fifteen minutes, then the moaning
ceased, and all was quiet.
These brief remarks
on some outstanding episodes of the martyrdom of the 40 Martyrs, and the
quoting of some of the words they uttered at the gallows, are sufficient to
show what was the ultimate reasons for their death and, at the same time, the
sublimely Christian state of mind of these heroes of the faith.
The history of the Cause
The history of the
Beatification and Canonization Cause of our forty blessed Martyrs is part of.
the wider history of a host of Martyrs who shed their blood in defence of the
Catholic religion in England, from the schism that began in the reign of Henry
VIII down to the end of the 17th century.
As early as the end
of 1642 the first steps were taken to initiate the canonical process, but owing
to the persecutions that were still rife, this initiative had soon to be
suspended Nevertheless the victims of the persecution continued to be
considered and venerated as martyrs. The Cause to prove their martyrdom and the
existence of their cult was presented in Rome only in the second half of the
last century, that is, following upon the reconstitution of the Catholic
hierarchy in England and Wales, which took place in 1850.
The Cause of 254
martyrs was introduced on December 9th, 1886, by Leo XIII. Shortly afterwards,
on December 29th 1886, the cult of 54 martyrs was confirmed by special decree,
then on May 13th, 1895, 9 others. Finally, with the Apostolic Letter Atrocissima
tormenta passi on December 15th, 1929, Pius XI beatified 136 victims of
this persecution, and on May 19th 1935 he solemnly canonized Cardinal John
Fisher and Chancellor Thomas More.
In still more recent
times, the Hierarchy of England and Wales, conscious of the deep devotion to
the martyrs who on different occasions had been declared blessed by the
apostolic See, and aware that this devotion was addressed especially to some of
the most popular of them was induced by the requests of the faithful and the
multiplicity of favours obtained, to promote the canonization not of the whole
host of these martyrs, but of a limited group of them. Right from the beginning
of the negotiations, the Canonization Cause of these Martyrs was entrusted by
the Hierarchy of England and Wales to Fr. Paolo Molinari, Postulator General of
the Society of Jesus and President of the College of Postulators. He in turn
nominated as Assistant Postulators Father Philip Caraman and James Walsh of the
English Province of the Society. When the former was put for some years at the
disposal of the Bishop of Oslo for certain important tasks, Father Clement
Tigar, S.J. took his place.
After patient and
laborious work, the list of the 40 martyrs chosen was presented by Fr. Molinari
to the Holy See on December 1st, 1960. After the usual practices the latter
proceeded, on May 24th 1961, with the so-called re-opening of the Cause by
means of the Decree <Sanctorum Insula>, issued by order of Pope John
XXIII.
Eleven of these
forty martyrs had been included among the blessed solely by a decree confirming
their cult. It was now necessary, in view of the hoped-for canonization, to
make a thorough historical re-examination of their martyrdom, which had not
been done ex professo when the Positio super
introductione causue was prepared last century. As is customary, this task
was entrusted to the Historical Section of the Sacred Congregation of Rites.
Availing itself essentially of the studies carried out under its direction by
the General Postulation of the Society of Jesus and by the office of the
English Vice-Postulation, it made a very favourable pronouncement on the
material and formal martyrdom of the eleven Blessed in question. The other
studies prescribed by law having been completed, His Holiness Paul VI signed
the special Decree of the Declaratio Martyrii of these eleven
Blessed Martyrs, on May 4th 1970. In preparing for this Decree, two volumes
were published in English and in Italian respectively of the Positio
super Martyrii et cultu ex officio concinnata (Official Presentation of
Documents on Martyrdom and Cult) (Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis,
1968, pp. XLIV, 375 in folio) which in the judgment of international critics is
a real model of scientific editing of old texts.
Miracles attributed to
the Forty Blessed Martyrs
Even before the
rehearing of the Cause, many reports of favours and apparently miraculous cures
attributed to the intercession of our Blessed Martyrs, had come to the
knowledge of the Catholic Hierarchy of England and Wales, which hastened to
inform the competent Roman Authorities.
From the time when
the Cause of the 40 Blessed Martyrs was reopened, the ecclesiastical Hierarchy
called for a prayer campaign in all English dioceses. Its most outstanding
manifestations were various pilgrimages to the shrines of the Martyrs, diocesan
and interdiocesan rallies, and particularly "<Martyrs'
Sunday>", the yearly celebration of the memory of these Martyrs by all
dioceses and parishes.
As a result of the
intensification of the devotion of the faithful and their prayers, a good many
events took place which looked like miracles. Sufficient data were collected
about them to induce the Archbishop of Westminster, then Cardinal William
Godfrey, to send a description of 24 seemingly miraculous cases to the Sacred
Congregation.
The most striking
of these and of the others that continued to be notified to the Postulation
were first examined with special care by doctors of high repute. On the basis
of their answers, two cases were chosen and the usual Apostolic Proceedings
were instituted, and the acts were sent to the Sacred Congregation of Rites in
Rome.
In the meantime
requests and pleas continued to arrive for the canonization of the 40 blessed
Martyrs of England and Wales as soon as possible. His Holiness Paul VI, duly
informed about the extremely favourable outcome of the discussion of the
Medical Council regarding one of the two above-mentioned cases, and keeping in
mind the fact that the blessed Thomas More and John Fisher, belonging to the
same group of Martyrs, had been canonized with a dispensation from miracles,
considered that it was possible to proceed with the Canonization on the basis
of this one miracle, after further discussions at the S. Congregation for the
Causes of Saints had taken place.
The same S.
Congregation, having issued the special Decree on July 30th, 1969, proceeded
with the examination of the miracle, that is, the cure of a young mother
affected with a malignant tumour (fibrosarcoma) in the left scapula, a cure
which the Medical Council had judged gradual, perfect, constant and
unaccountable on the natural plane.
After due
assessment of the case and the usual discussions within the S. Congregation for
the Causes of Saints, which concluded with an extremely favourable result on
May 4th, 1970, his Holiness Paul VI confirmed the preternatural character of
this cure brought about by God at the intercession of the 40 blessed Martyrs of
England and Wales.
From the point of
view of canonical procedure, the way was now open for solemn Canonization if
the Sovereign Pontiff so decided.
There still
remained another problem, however, which had been carefully taken into account
by the Postulation right from the beginning, but which now had to be solved on
the basis of another thorough study, that is, the problem of the opportuneness
of this Canonization. While in fact the vast majority of English
Catholics—Bishops, clergy and laity—thorough study, that is, the problem of
faith to be raised to the honours of the altar, some voices had been raised in
repeated circumstances to say that canonization of these Martyrs might be
inopportune for ecumenical reasons.
Opportuneness of the
Canonization
In more recent
times—November 1969—the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Ramsey, had expressed his
apprehension that this Canonization might rekindle animosity and polemics
detriment to the ecumenical spirit that has characterized the efforts of the
Churches recently. But the reaction of the press, lay, Anglican and Catholic,
showed clearly that this concern—though shared by some Anglicans and
Catholics—did not correspond to the view of the vast majority. Many people, in
fact, both Anglicans and Catholics, were aware of the fact that, right from the
beginning of the re-opening of the Cause, the policy of its Promoters had been
characterized by an extremely serene and ecumenical note; what is more, they
realized the positive repercussions it offers just in this field if it is
presented in this very spirit.
Right from the
first announcement of the Re-opening of the Cause of the 40 Martyrs, decreed by
Pope John XXIII on 24 May 1961, the Hierarchy of England and Wales let it be
clearly under stood that nothing was further from the intentions of the Bishops
than to stir up bad feelings and quarrels of the past.
The aim of the
Postulator General Paolo Molinari S.J. and his collaborators, James Walsh S.J.,
Philip Caraman S.J. and Clement Tigar S.J., while they were carrying out the
historical research and investigation, was to ensure that the Cause would be
presented in an authentically ecumenical way.
For this reason the
Postulator General, always working in close contact with the authorities of the
S. Congregation that deals with the Causes of Saints and in agreement with the
Hierarchy of England and Wales, asked Cardinal Agostino Bea, then President of
the Secretariat for the Union of Christians, to act as the Cardinal Ponens of
the Cause Aware of its ecumenical significance, he sustained, promoted and
encouraged its course until he died. After his death the Secretariat itself
continued to follow attentively the individual phases of the Cause and not only
did not find any contrary motive but collaborated skillfully to ensure that the
approach would benefit the ecumenical cause, instead of hampering it. (See in
this connection the address that the present President of the Secretariat,
Card. Willebrands, delivered in the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool during his
recent visit to England).
The vast majority
of people understood all this. The most authoritative voice in this sense was
that of the British Council of Churches, which made a public declaration on the
matter on December 17th, 1969. Not only does it recognize the importance for
the Catholic Church to venerate its Martyrs, to whom the survival of the
Catholic Church in England and Wales is essentially due, but it also expressed
satisfaction that the various Christian denominations are united today in
recognizing the tradition of the Martyrs as a common element from which we must
all draw strength disregarding denominational frontiers.
Quite a few
authoritative persons—including several Anglican Bishops—keeping in mind and
appreciating the actions of considerable ecumenical value of Pope Paul VI on
various occasion—expressed the view and the hope that the Canonization of the
40 Martyrs might be an opportunity for the members of other Christian
denominations to make a positive gesture that would funkier the cause of union,
by joining in the admiration of Catholics for these Martyrs.
Ecumenical exchanges
Some months before
the Consistory the General Postulation, as well as the Vice-Postulation, had
charged specialized agencies with following the whole national and provincial
press of England and Wales, together with the European and American press, and
sending it constantly everything that was published in connection with the
Cause. At the same time it redoubled its efforts to obtain the widest and most
accurate information not only on the attitude of English and Welsh Catholics,
but above all on that of the Anglicans, with many of whose best qualified
representatives there had long existed relations marked by sincere and
brotherly frankness and a genuine spirit of mutual understanding and
collaboration. The Hierarchy of England and Wales, in its turn, and in the
first place Card. Godfrey's successor, His Eminence Card. Heenan,
Vice-President of the Secretariat for the Union of Christians, made a point of
establishing and maintaining exchanges of views with the competent authorities
of the various Christian denominations in their country.
On the basis of
this huge mass of material, it was established beyond al] shadow of doubt that
at least 85 per cent of what had been printed in England and Wales, both on the
Catholic and the non-Catholic side, far from being unfavourable to the Cause,
was clearly in favour of it or at least showed great understanding for the opportuneness
of the canonization. This applies to publications such as "Church
Times", or the "Church of England Newspaper." and the most
widely read English national papers such as "The Times", "The
Guardian", "The Economist", "The Spectator" "The
Daily Telegraph", "The Sunday Times" and many others.
On the other hand
some foreign publications—including some well-known papers of protest—raised
difficulties. It was at once clear, however, that these were based on
insufficient knowledge of the complicated historical situation in which the
Martyrs sacrificed their lives, and, to an even greater degree, of the present
ecumenical situation in England. The latter calls for at least a minimum of
concrete knowledge and cannot easily be understood by those who do not take the
trouble to study it thoroughly Of course, everything possible has been done, by
means of press conferences and other opportune methods, to eliminate this type
of misunderstanding, generally most successfully.
A serious, serene
and objective study of the whole situation led to the conclusion, therefore,
that besides the numerous reasons clearly in favour of the canonization of the
40 blessed Martyrs, there were no real ecumenical objections to it, on the
contrary the canonization offered considerable advantages also from the
genuinely ecumenical point of view.
It was precisely
these ideas that His Holiness Paul VI expressed and explained in a masterly
fashion in the address he delivered on the occasion of the Consistory on May
18th, 1970, in which he announced his intention to proceed with the solemn
canonization of the 40 blessed Martyrs of England and Wales on October 25th,
1970. In this address the Holy Father, besides pointing out, with serene
frankness and great charity, the ecumenical value of this Cause, also laid
particular stress on the fact that we need the example of these Martyrs
particularly today not only because the Christian religion is still exposed to
violent persecution in various parts of the world, but also because at a time
when the theories of materialism and naturalism are constantly gaining ground
and threatening to destroy the spiritual heritage of our civilization, the
forty Martyrs—men and women from all walks of life—who did not hesitate to
sacrifice their lives in obedience to the dictates of conscience and the divine
will, stand out as noble witnesses to human dignity and freedom.
This declaration of
the Sovereign Pontiff was received with practically unanimous approval, which
showed how right the decision had been to proceed with the canonization. His
address was given a great deal of attention and certainly contributed
effectively to dispelling any doubts that may still have existed in certain
quarters.
At the same time
the Pope's words drive home to us unmistakably why the Church continues to
propose new Saints. The formal recognition of the holiness of some of her
members has the aim of presenting to the faithful and to all men the unshaken
loyalty with which they followed Christ and his law. It aims at letting us
have, in a living and existential way, the message that God addressed to us in
his Son, who came on earth to make us share his life and his love. It aims at
making us understand that, by welcoming his teaching and receiving Christ our
Lord with sincere hearts we already become participants in that life that will
be granted to us in its fullness when, having finished the course of our
earthly existence after being faithful to Him, we are admitted to his presence
(cfr. Lumen Gentium, 48).
Through these
Saints it is God himself who is speaking to us and helping us to understand how,
in the shifting circumstances of life, we must live our union with Him more and
more intensely and thus grow in holiness:
"For when we
look at the lives of those who have faithfully followed Christ, we are inspired
with a new reason for seeking the city which is to come (Heb. 13:14; 11:10). At
the same time we are shown a most safe path by which among the vicissitudes of
this world and in keeping with the state in life and condition proper to each
of us, we will be able to arrive at perfect union with Christ, that is,
holiness. In the lives of those who shared in our humanity and yet were
transformed into especially successful images of Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18), God
vividly manifests to men His presence and His face. He speaks to us in them,
and gives us a sign of His kingdom, to which we are powerfully drawn,
surrounded as we are by so many witnesses (cf. Heb. 12:1), and having such an
argument for the truth of the gospel" (Lumen Gentium, No.
50).
The
situations in which we live may vary, but in the last analysis they have a deep
element in common which transcends time and circumstances. At the root of our
existence there is God's invitation, his offer to open our hearts to his love
and respond in our lives with authentic responsibility and consistency, to the
claims of the love of Him who gave his life for us
Taken from:
L'Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
29 October 1970
L'Osservatore Romano is the newspaper of the Holy See.
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May 4 – The Forty Martyrs of England
and Wales (16th-17th centuries: details)
The
image here is of St
Margaret Clitherow, the “pearl of York”, a married
woman who held Masses in her house and sheltered priests. She suffered a
horrific death. For details of her life and death, see 26th March. Here Patrick Duffy gives the
details of the lives and deaths of each of the Forty Martyrs of England and
Wales.
3 Carthusians:
The Carthusians were all priors of different Charterhouses houses of the
Carthusian Order). Summoned in 1535 by Secretary of State Thomas Cromwell
to sign the Oath of Supremacy, they declined and by virtue of their Carthusian vow
of silence refused to speak in their own defence.
Augustine Webster was educated at Cambridge and was
prior of the Carthusian house of Our Lady of Melwood at Epworth, on the Isle of
Axholme, North Lincolnshire in 1531.
John Houghton was born c.
1486 and educated at Cambridge. He joined the London Charterhouse in 1515. In
1531, he became abbot of the Charterhouse of Beauvale in Nottinghamshire but
was then elected Prior of the London house, to which he returned.
Robert Lawrence served as prior of the Charterhouse at
Beauvale, Nottinghamshire.
The three were cruelly tortured and executed at Tyburn, making them among the
first martyrs from the order in England. They were beatified in 1886.
1 Augustinian friar: John Stone d. 1538
John Stone was a doctor of theology living in the Augustinian friary at
Canterbury. He publicly denounced the behaviour of King Henry VIII from the
pulpit of the Austin Friars and publicly stated his approval of the status of
monarch’s first marriage – clearly opposing the monarch’s wish to gain a divorce.
In 1538, in consequence of the Act of Supremacy, Bishop Richard Ingworth (a
former Dominican, and by then Bishop of Dover) visited the Canterbury friary as
part of the process of the dissolution of monasteries in England. Ingworth
commanded all of the friars to sign a deed of surrender by which the King
should gain possession of the friary and its surrounding property. Most did,
but John Stone refused and even further denounced bishop Ingworth for his
compliance with the King’s desires. He was executed at the Dane John (Dungeon
Hill), Canterbury, for his opposition to the King’s wishes.
1 Brigittine: Richard Reynolds 1492-1535
The Brigittines were an order of monks founded by St Bridget of Sweden.
Richard was born in
Devon in 1492 and educated at Cambridge. In 1513, he entered the Brigettines at
Syon Abbey, Isleworth. When Henry VIII demanded royal oaths, Richard was along
with the Carthusian priors who were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn Tree
in London after being dragged through the streets in 1535.
Two Franciscans
John Jones
(Friar Observant – also known as John Buckley, John Griffith, or Godfrey
Maurice)
John Jones was from a good Welsh and strongly Catholic family. As
a youth, he entered the Observant Franciscan convent at Greenwich; at its
dissolution in 1559 he went to the Continent, and took his vows at Pontoise,
France. After many years, he journeyed to Rome, where he stayed at the Ara
Coeli convent of the Observants (A branch of the Franciscan Order of Friars
Minor that followed the Franciscan Rule literally) . There he joined the Roman
province of the Reformati (a stricter observance branch of the Order of Friars
Minor). In 1591, he requested to return on mission to England. His superiors,
aware that such a mission usually ended in death, consented and John also
received a special blessing and commendation from Pope Clement VIII.
Reaching London at
the end of 1592, he stayed temporarily at the house which Father John Gerard SJ
had provided for missionary priests; he then laboured in different parts of the
country. His brother Franciscans in England elected him their provincial. In
1596 a notorious priest catcher called Topcliffe had him arrested and
imprisoned for nearly two years. During this time he met, and helped sustain in
his faith, John Rigby. On 3 July 1598 Father Jones was tried on the charge of
“going over the seas in the first year of Her majesty’s reign (1558) and there
being made a priest by the authority from Rome and then returning to England
contrary to statute” . He was convicted of high treason and sentenced to being
hanged, drawn, and quartered.
The execution was
to take place in the early morning at St. Thomas’ Watering, in what is now the
Old Kent Road, at the site of the junction of the old Roman road to London with
the main line of Watling Street. Such ancient landmarks had been immemorially
used as places of execution, Tyburn itself being merely the point where Watling
Street crossed the Roman road to Silchester. The executioner had
forgotten his ropes! In the delay while the forgetful man went to collect his
necessary ropes John Jones took the opportunity to talk to the assembled crowd.
He explained the important distinction – that he was dying for his faith alone
and had no political interest. His dismembered remains were exposed, but were
removed by some young Catholic gentlemen, one of whom suffered a long
imprisonment for this offence. One of the relics eventually reached Pontoise,
where the martyr had taken his religious vows.
John Wall 1620-79
Franciscan (known at Douay and Rome as John Marsh, and other aliases while on
the mission in England)
Born in Preston,
Lancashire, 1620, the son of wealthy and staunch Catholics, he was sent at a
young age to Douai College. He entered the Roman College in 1641 and was
ordained in 1645. Sent on mission in 1648, he received the habit of St. Francis
at St. Bonaventure’s Friary, Douai in 1651 and a year later was professed,
taking the name of Joachim of St. Anne. He filled the offices of vicar and
novice master at Douai until 1656, when he returned to the Mission, and for
twenty years ministered in Worcestershire. Captured in December 1678 at Rushock
Court near Bromsgrove, where the sheriff’s man came to seek a debtor.
When it was discovered he was a priest, he was asked to take the Oath of
Supremacy and when he refused was put in Worcester Gaol
Sent on to London,
he was four times examined by Oates, Bedloe, and others in the hope of
implicating him in the pretended plot; but was declared innocent of all
plotting and could have saved his life if he would abjure his religion. Brought
back to Worcester, he was executed at Redhill on 22 August 1679. The day
previous, William Levison was enabled to confess and communicate him, and at
the moment of execution the same priest gave him the last absolution. His
quartered body was given to his friends, and was buried in St. Oswald’s
churchyard.
3 Benedictines
Alban Roe 1582-1642
Born Bartholemew Roe 1583 in Bury, St Edmunds, Suffolk. After meeting an
imprisoned Catholic recusant, he converted to Catholicism. He spent some time
at the English College at Douai in northern France, but was expelled for insubordination.
He spent the rest of his novitiate at the Abbey of St. Lawrence, Dieulouard, a
newly opened Benedictine house near Nancy – the home of Benedictine monks
fleeing persecution in England. He was ordained priest there in 1612. Sent back
to England, he was banished in 1615 but returned in 1618 and was imprisoned
until 1623, when his release and re-exile was organised by the Spanish
Ambassador. He returned two years later for the last time and was imprisoned
for seventeen years. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on the
21st of January 1642.
Ambrose Barlow 1585-1641
Born Edward Barlow at Handforth Hall, Cheshire. Until 1607 he belonged to
the Anglican church, but then turned to the Catholic church. He was
educated at the Benedictine monastery of St. Gregory in Douai, France, and
entered the English College in Valladolid, Spain, in 1610. He later returned to
Douai where his elder brother (William) Rudesind Barlow was a professed monk.
Barlow also professed in 1614 and was ordained a priest in 1617. Sent to
England on mission in South Lancashire, he lived with protecting families near
Manchester. But he was pursued for proselytising, imprisoned five times
and released, but was finally arrested on Easter Sunday 1641. Paraded at
the head of his parishoners, dressed in his surplice, and was followed by some
400 men armed with clubs and swords, he could have escaped in the
confusion, but he voluntarily gave himself up. Imprisoned in Lancaster
Castle for four months, he was sentenced after confessing to being a
Catholic priest. On Friday September 10 he was hanged, drawn and quartered at
Lancaster on 10th September 1641. Many of his relics are preserved, a
hand being at Stanbrook Abbey near Worcester and his skull in Wardley Hall.
John Roberts 1575-1606
John was born in 1575 the son of John and Anna Roberts of Trawsfynydd,
Merionethshire, Wales. He matriculated at St. John’s College, Oxford, in
February 1595 but left after two years without taking a degree and went as a
law student at one of the Inns of Court. In 1598 he travelled on the continent
and in Paris. Through the influence of a Catholic fellow-countryman he was
converted and on the advice of John Cecil, an English priest who afterwards
became a Government spy, he decided to enter the English College at Valladolid
in 1598.
The following year
he went to the Abbey of St Benedict, Valladolid, and from there he was sent for
his novitiate to the Abbey of St. Martin at Compostella where he was professed
in 1600. After completing his studies he was ordained and set out for England on
the 26 December 1602. Arriving in April 1603, he was arrested and banished on
13th May. He reached Douai on 24 May and soon returned to England where he
ministered among the plague-stricken people in London. In 1604, while embarking
for Spain with four postulants, he was again arrested. Not being
recognised as a priest, he was soon released and banished, but he returned to
England at once. On 5 November, 1605, while the house of Mrs. Percy, first wife
of the Thomas Percy who was involved in the Gunpowder Plot was being searched,
he found Roberts there and arrested him. Though acquitted of any complicity in
the plot itself, Roberts was imprisoned in the Gatehouse at Westminster for
seven months and then exiled anew in July 1606.
He now founded and
became the first prior of the English Benedictine house at Douai for monks who
had entered various Spanish monasteries. This was the beginning of the
monastery of St. Gregory at Douai and this community of St. Gregory’s still
exists at Downside Abbey, near Bath, England, having settled in England in the
19th century.
In October 1607,
Roberts returned to England and in December was yet again arrested and again
contrived to escape after some months and lived for about a year in London,
again travelling to Spain and Douai in 1608. Returning to England within a
year, knowing that his death was certain if he were again captured, he was in
fact captured on 2nd December 1610 just as he was concluding Mass. Taken to
Newgate in his vestments, he was tried and found guilty under the Act
forbidding priests to minister in England, and on 10th December was hanged,
drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. His body was taken and buried in St.
Gregory’s, Douai, but disappeared during the French Revolution. Two fingers are
still preserved as relics at Downside and Erdington Abbeys respectively and a
few minor relics exist.
10 Jesuits
Alexander Briant 1556-81
Alexander was born in Somerset about 1556 and at an early age entered Hart
Hall, Oxford, where he met a Jesuit priest and became a Catholic. He then went
to the English college at Reims and was ordained priest there in 1578. He
returned to England and ministered in in his home county of Somersetshire.
Arrested in 1581, he was taken to London and seriously tortured, though in a
letter to his Jesuit companions he said he felt no pain and wondered if this
were miraculous. He was barely twenty five when he was executed at Tyburn.
Edmund Campion 1540-81
Son of a Catholic bookseller named Edmund whose family converted to
Anglicanism, he planned to enter his father’s trade, but was awarded a
scholarship to Saint John’s College, Oxford under the patronage of Queen
Elizabeth I’s court favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. A much
sought-after speaker, he was being spoken as a possible Archbishop of
Canterbury. Queen Elizabeth offered him a deaconate in the Church of
England, but he declined the offer. Instead he went to Ireland to take
part in the proposed establishment of the University of Dublin. Here he enjoyed
the protection of of Lord Deputy Sir Henry Sidney and the friendship of Sir
Patrick Barnewell at Turvey. While in Ireland he wrote a history of
Ireland (first published in Holinshead’s Chronicles).
In 1571 he left
Ireland secretly and went to Douai where he was reconciled to the Catholic
Church and received the Eucharist that he had denied himself for the previous
12 years. He entered the English College founded by William Allen, another
Oxford religious refugee. After obtaining his degree in divinity, he
walked as a pilgrim to Rome and joined the Jesuits. Ordained in 1578, he spent
some time working in Prague and Vienna. He returned to London as part of
a Jesuit mission, crossing the Channel disguised as a jewel merchant, and
worked with Jesuit brother Nicholas Owen. He led a hunted life, preaching and
ministering to Catholics in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, and
Lancashire. At this time also he wrote his Decem Rationes (“Ten Reasons”)
against the Anglican Church, 400 copies of which found their way to the benches
of St Mary’s, Oxford, at the Commencement, on June 27, 1581.
Captured by a spy,
Campion was taken to London and committed to the Tower. Charged with
conspiring to raise a sedition in the realm and dethrone the Queen he was found
guilty. Campion replied: “If our religion do make traitors we are worthy
to be condemned; but otherwise are and have been true subjects as ever the
queen had. In condemning us, you condemn your own ancestors, you condemn all
the ancient Bishops and Kings, you condemn all that was once the glory of
England….” After spending his last days in prayer, was led with two companions
to Tyburn and hanged, drawn and quartered on December 1, 1581.
Robert Southwell 1561-95
Robert was brought up in a family of Catholic aristocrats in Norfolk and educated
at Douai. Moving to Paris, he was placed under a Jesuit priest, Thomas
Darbyshire and after a two-year novitiate spent mostly at Tournai, in 1580 he
joined the Society of Jesus. In spite of his youth he was made prefect of
studies in the Venerable English College at Rome and was ordained priest in
1584.
It was in that year
that an act was passed forbidding any English-born subjects of Queen Elizabeth,
who had entered into priests’ orders in the Roman Catholic Church since her
accession, to remain in England longer than forty days on pain of death. But
Southwell, at his own request, was sent to England in 1586 as a Jesuit
missionary with Henry Garnett. He went from one Catholic family to another,
administering the sacraments and in 1589 became domestic chaplain to Ann
Howard, whose husband, the first earl of Arundel, was in prison convicted of
treason. It was to him that Southwell addressed his Epistle of Comfort. This
and his other religious tracts, A Short Rule of Good Life, Triumphs over Death,
Mary Magdalen’s Tears and a Humble Supplication to Queen Elizabeth, were widely
circulated.
After ministering
successfully for six years, Southwell was arrested. He was repeatedly tortured
and badly treated so that he might give evidence about other priests. His
father petitioned Queen Elizabeth that he either be brought to trial and put to
death, if found guilty, or removed in any case from the filthy hole he was in.
Southwell was then lodged in the Tower of London, and allowed clothes and a
bible and the works of St Bernard. His imprisonment lasted for 3 years, during
which period he was tortured on ten occasions. In 1595 he was charged
with treason, and removed from the Tower to Newgate prison, where he was put in
to a hole called Limbo.
A few days later he
was indicted as a traitor under the law prohibiting the presence within the
kingdom of priests ordained by Rome. Southwell admitted the facts but denied
“entertaining any designs or plots against the queen or kingdom”. His only
purpose, he said, had been to administer the sacraments according to the rite
of the Catholic Church to such as desired them. When asked to enter a plea, he
declared himself, “not guilty of any treason whatsoever”. However, he was
found guilty and next day, February 20, 1595, he was drawn in a cart to Tyburn.
A notorious highwayman was being executed at the same time, at a different
place – perhaps to draw the crowds away – but many people came to witness the
priest’s death. He was allowed to address them at some length. He confessed
that he was a Jesuit priest and prayed for the salvation of the queen and his
country. He commended then his soul to God with the words of the psalm in manus
tuas. He hung in the noose for some time, making the sign of the cross as best
he could. Some of the onlookers tugged at his legs to hasten his death, and his
body was then bowelled and quartered.
As well as the
religious tracts mentioned above, he left a number of poems written in prison
which are considered of high literary merit.
Henry Walpole 1558-95
Henry was born at Docking, Norfolk, in 1558 and was educated at Norwich School,
Peterhouse, Cambridge, and Gray’s Inn. Converted to Roman Catholicism by
the death of Saint Edmund Campion, he went by way of Rouen and Paris to Reims,
where he arrived in 1582. In 1583 he was admitted into the English College,
Rome. On 2 February 1584, he became a probationer of the Society of Jesus and
soon after went to France, where he continued his studies, chiefly at
Pont-à-Mousson. He was ordained priest at Paris, 17 December 1588.
After acting as
chaplain to the Spanish forces in the Netherlands, suffering imprisonment by
the English at Flushing in 1589, and being moved about to Brussels, Tournai,
Bruges and Spain, he was at last sent on mission to England in 1590. He was
arrested shortly after landing at Flamborough for the crime of Catholic
priesthood, and imprisoned at York. The following February he was sent to the
Tower, where he was frequently and severely racked. He remained there until, in
the spring of 1595, he was sent back to York for trial, where he was hanged,
drawn and quartered on 7 April 1595.
Nicholas Owen 1550-1606
Born around 1550 into a devout Catholic family, Nicholas became a carpenter by
trade, and for several years during the reign of Elizabeth I built
hiding-places for priests in the homes of Catholic families. He frequently
travelled from house to house under the name of “Little John”, accepting food
as payment before starting off for a new project. Only slightly taller than a
dwarf and suffering from a hernia, his work often involved breaking through
stone, and, to minimize the chances of betrayal, he always worked alone. For
some years, Owen worked in the service of Jesuit priests John Gerard and Henry
Garnet. Through them he was admitted into the Society of Jesus as a lay
brother.
He was first
arrested in 1582 after the execution of Edmund Campion, for declaring Campion’s
innocence, but later released. He was arrested again in 1594, and was tortured,
but revealed nothing. He was released when a wealthy Catholic paid a fine on
his behalf, the jailers believing that he was merely an insignificant friend of
some priests. Early in 1606, Owen was arrested again in Worcestershire,
giving himself up voluntarily in order to distract attention from priests who
were hiding nearby. Under English law, he was exempt from torture, as he had
been maimed a few years previously, when a horse fell on him. Nevertheless, he
was racked until he died, having betrayed nothing.
Thomas Garnet 1575-1608
Thomas Garnet was born at Southwark 1575 into a prominent family. His uncle,
Henry Garnet, was the Superior of all the Jesuits in England. His father
Richard was at Balliol College, Oxford, at the time when greater severity
began to be used against Catholics and his example and spirituality provided
leadership to a generation of Oxford men who produced many other inspirational
English Catholics. Thomas attended school at Horsham and at 17 was among the
first students of Saint Omer’s Jesuit College in 1592. In 1595 he was on his
way to study theology at Saint Albans, Valladolid, when he and five companions
accompanied by Fr Tomas Baldwin were discovered in the hold of their ship by
English soldiers and taken prisoner to London. After many escapades Thomas
eventually reached Saint Omer again and eventually went on to Valladolid.
Ordained at 24 in
1599 he returned to England. “I wandered from place to place, to reduce souls
which went astray and were in error as to the knowledge of the true Catholic
Church”. During the confusion caused by the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 he was
arrested near Warwick, going under the name Thomas Rokewood, which he had no
doubt assumed from Ambrose Rokewood of Coldham Hall, whose chaplain he then
was, and who had, unfortunately, been implicated in the plot. Imprisoned first
in the Gatehouse, then in the Tower, where he was tortured in order to make him
give evidence against Henry Garnet, his famous uncle, Superior of the English
Jesuits, who had recently admitted him into the Society of Jesus. Henry Garnet
had known of the plot and had tried to dissuade the conspirators who had
confided in him. Though no connection with the conspiracy could be proved
against Thomas, he was kept in the Tower of London for seven months, at the end
of which he was suddenly put on board ship with forty-six other priests, and a
royal proclamation, dated 10 July 1606, was read to them, threatening death if
they returned. They were carried across the Channel and set ashore in Flanders.
Thomas now went to
Saint Omer and then to Brussels to see the Superior of the Jesuits, Father
Baldwin, his companion in the adventures of 1595. Father Baldwin sent him to
the English Jesuit novitiate, Saint John’s, Louvain, where he was the first
novice to be received. In September 1607 he was sent back to England, but was
arrested six weeks later by an apostate priest called Rouse. This was the time
of King James’ controversy with Cardinal Bellarmine about the Oath of
Allegiance. Garnet was offered his life if he would take the oath, but he
refused, and was executed at 32 at Tyburn, protesting that he was “the happiest
man this day alive”.
Edmund Arrowsmith 1585–1628
The son of Robert Arrowsmith, a farmer, he was born at Haydock in 1585 and was
baptised Brian, but always used his Confirmation name of Edmund. The family was
constantly harassed for its adherence to Catholicism, and in 1605 Edmund left
England and went to Douai to study for the priesthood. He was forced to quit
due to ill health. He was ordained in 1611 and sent on the English mission the
following year. He ministered to the Catholics of Lancashire without incident
until about 1622, when he was arrested and questioned by the Protestant bishop
of Chester. Edmund was released when King James I ordered all arrested priests
be freed, joined the Jesuits in 1624 and in 1628 was arrested when betrayed by
a young man, the son of the landlord of the Blue Anchor Inn in south
Lancashire, whom he had censured for an incestuous marriage. He was convicted
of being a Catholic priest, sentenced to death, and hanged, drawn and quartered
at Lancaster on August 28th 1628.
Henry Morse 1595-1644
Born in Norfolk. He began studies at Cambridge and took up the study of law at
Barnard’s Inn, London; at the same time he became increasingly dissatisfied
with the established religion and more convinced of the truth of the Catholic
faith. He went to Douai where he was received into the Catholic church in 1614.
After various journeys reached Rome where he was ordained in 1623. Before
leaving Rome he met the Superior General of the Jesuits with a view to
joiningthe order and left for England in 1624. He was admitted to the Society
of Jesus at Heaton shortly arriving in England, but almost immediately was
arrested and imprisoned for three years in York Castle, where he made his
novitiate under his fellow prisoner, Father John Robinson SJ, and took simple
vows. Afterwards he was chaplain to the English soldiers serving in the Spanish
army in the Low Countries.
Returning to
England at the end of 1633 he worked in London, and in 1636 is reported to have
received about ninety Protestant families into the Church. He himself
contracted the plague but recovered. Arrested in 1636, he was imprisoned in
Newgate and charged with being a priest and having withdrawn the king’s
subjects from their faith and allegiance. He was found guilty on the first
count, not guilty on the second, and sentence was deferred. While in prison he
made his solemn profession to Father Edward Lusher. He was released on bail for
10,000 florins in June 1637 at the insistence of Queen Henriette Maria, wife of
King Charles I. In order to free his sureties he voluntarily went into exile
when the royal proclamation was issued ordering all priests to leave the
country before 7 April, 1641, and again became chaplain to English regiment in
the service of Spain in Flanders.
In 1643 he returned
to England but was arrested after about a year and a half and imprisoned at
Durham and Newcastle, and sent by sea to London. On 30th January he was again
brought to the bar and condemned on his previous conviction. On the day of his
execution his cart was drawn by four horses and the French ambassador attended
with all his suite, as did the Count of Egmont and the Portuguese Ambassador.
The martyr was allowed to hang until he was dead. At the quartering the footmen
of the French Ambassador and of the Count of Egmont dipped their handkerchiefs
into the martyr’s blood. In 1647 many persons possessed by evil spirits were
relieved through the application of his relics.
David Lewis 1616-79
David was a Welshman of good family, born in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, in
1616. His father Morgan Lewis belonged to an old Catholic family, but he had
become a Protestant. His mother, Margaret Prichard, was Catholic, however, and
all but one of their nine children were raised Catholics except David himself.
After attending the Royal Grammar School at Abergavenny, David, then aged 16,
was sent to London to study law at the Middle Temple. Three years later he lost
interest in the legal profession and went to France as tutor of the son of one
Count Savage. Probably he was reconciled to the Catholic Church while living in
Paris. He then went back to Wales for a couple of years, but in 1638 he set out
for Rome to study for the priesthood at the Venerable English College. Ordained
a secular priest in 1642, he entered the Jesuits two years later. The Jesuit
superiors sent him as a missionary to Wales in 1646 but recalled him soon
afterward to be spiritual director of the English College.
In 1648 he was sent
back to Wales, and there he was to remain for the next thirty years. Assigned
to a remote farmhouse at the Cwm, a hideout of Jesuits and other hunted priests
from miles around, David worked the Welsh-English borderlands where there were
many Catholics refusing to conform to Anglicanism (recusants). For the care he
gave to both their spiritual and bodily needs, they called him “Father of the
Poor”. In 1678 the infamous Titus Oates claimed to have discovered an
international plot to kill King Charles II and force England back into the
Roman fold. Oates was a total rascal, but the very rumor of such a plot was
enough to stir up a new persecution of Catholics. “Royal officials pounced on
Cwm College, and the Jesuits there barely escaped. Father Lewis went into
hiding elsewhere in Wales, but he was not safe for long.
The wife of a
former servant set soldiers on his trail. and he was imprisoned in Monmouth for
two months. Tried in March 1679 he was condemned but was then sent to
London to be examined by the Privy Council on the Titus Oates Plot.
Offered his freedom if he became an Anglican, he declined. He was brought back
to Usk in Monmouthshire where he was hanged on August 27, 1679. The hangman
fled the scene, fearing the crowd would stone him. While they were searching
someone to do the job, Lewis gave such a moving speech at the gallows that it
was later published. “I believe you are here met not only to see a
fellow-native die, but also with expectation to hear a dying fellow native
speak. I suffer not as a murderer, thief, or such like malefactor, but as a
Christian, and therefore am not ashamed. My religion is the Roman Catholic one;
in it I have lived above these many years; in it I now die, and so fixedly die,
that if all the good things in this world were offered me to renounce my faith,
all should not move me one hair’s breath from my Roman Catholic faith. A Roman
Catholic I am; a Roman Catholic priest I am; a Roman Catholic priest of that
religious order called the Society of Jesus I am, and I bless God who first
called me. A blacksmith was found who was bribed to do the job. Lewis was so
well thought of in the neighborhood that nobody gave his executioner any
business ever after.
Philip Evans 1645-79
Born in Monmouth 1645 and educated at St Omer where he joined the Society of
Jesus in 1665. He was ordained at Liege in 1675 and sent to South Wales
where he ministered until in 1678 he was caught up in the collective that
surrounded the so-called Titus Oates Plot. In that year a certain John
Arnold, of Llanvihangel Court near Abergavenny, a justice of the peace and hunter
of priests, offered a reward of £200 (an enormous sum then) for his arrest.
Despite the manifest dangers Father Evans steadfastly refused to leave his
flock. He was arrested at Sker in Glamorganshire, 4 December 1678.
He refused the oath and was confined alone in an underground dungeon in Cardiff
Castle.
Two or three weeks
afterwards he was joined by John Lloyd, a secular priest, who had been taken at
Penlline in Glamorgan (See under 13 Priests of the Secular Clergy). He was a
Breconshire man, who had taken the missionary oath at Valladolid in 1649 and been
sent to minister in his own country. After five months the two prisoners were
brought up for trial at the shire-hall in Cardiff, charged not with complicity
in the plot but as priests who had come unlawfully into the realm. It had been
difficult to collect witnesses against them, and they were condemned and
sentenced by Mr Justice Owen Wynne principally on the evidence of two poor
women who were suborned to say that they had seen Father Evans celebrating
Mass. On their return to prison they were better treated and allowed a good
deal of liberty, so that when the under-sheriff came on July 21 to announce
that their execution was fixed for the morrow, Father Evans was playing a game
of tennis and would not return to his cell till he had finished it. Part of his
few remaining hours of life he spent playing on the harp and talking to the
numerous people who came to say farewell to himself and Mr Lloyd when the news
got around. The execution took place on Gallows Field, Cardiff). Philip died
first, after having addressed the people in Welsh and English, and saying
‘Adieu, Mr Lloyd, though for a little time, for we shall shortly meet
again. John made only a very brief speech: he said, ‘I never was a good
speaker in my life.’
13 Priests of the Secular Clergy
Cuthbert Mayne 1543–77
Cuthbert was born at Yorkston, near Barnstaple in Devon and baptized on St
Cuthbert’s day. He grew up in the early days of the boy King Edward VI
with an overtly Protestant government installed. Cuthbert’s uncle was a
priest who favoured the new doctrines and it was expected that Mayne, a
good-natured and pleasant young man, but with no great thought of principles of
any kind, would inherit his uncle’s benefice. Educated at Barnstaple
Grammar School and ordained a Protestant minister at the age of eighteen
or nineteen he was installed as rector of Huntshaw, near his birthplace. There
followed university studies, first at St Alban’s Hall, then at St John’s
College, Oxford, where he was made chaplain. taking his BA in 1566 and MA 1570.
It was at this time
that Mayne made the acquaintance of Edmund Campion and became became a
Catholic. Late in 1570, a letter addressed to him from a Catholic Gregory
Martin fell into the hands of the Anglican Bishop of London and officers were
sent at once to arrest him and others mentioned in the letter. Mayne
evaded arrest by going to Cornwall and from there went in 1573 to the English
College at Douai. Ordained a Catholic priest at Douai in 1575 he left for
the English mission with another priest, John Paine and took up residence with
Francis Tregian, a gentleman, of Golden, in St Probus’s parish, Cornwall.
Tregian’s house was raided and the searchers found a Catholic devotional
article (an Agnus Dei) round Mayne’s neck and took him into custody along with
his books and papers. Imprisoned in Launceston gaol, the authorities sought a
death sentence but had difficulty in framing a treason indictment, but five
differrent charges were brought aginst him
The trial judge
directed the jury to return a verdict of guilty and he was sentenced to be
hanged, drawn and quartered. Mayne responded, “Deo gratias”. Francis Tregian
was also sentenced to die, but in fact he spent 26 years in prison. Two
nights before his execution Mayne’s cell was reported by his fellow prisoners
to have become full of a “great light”. Before his execution, some Protestant
ministers came to offer him his life if he would acknowledge the supremacy of
the queen as head of the church, but he declined. Mayne was executed in the
market place at Launceston on November 29, 1577. He was not allowed to speak to
the crowd, but only to say his prayers quietly. He was the first martyr
not to be a member of a religious order. He was the first “seminary priest”,
the group of priests who were trained not in England but in houses of studies
on the continent.
Ralph Sherwin 1550–81
Ralph was born at Rodsley, Derbyshire, and was educated at Eton College. In
1568, he was nominated by Sir William Petre to one of the eight fellowships
which he had founded at Exeter College, Oxford, probably influenced by
Sherwin’s uncle, John Woodward, who from 1556 to 1566 had been rector of
Ingatestone, Essex, where Petre lived. A talented classical scholar, Sherwin
graduated with MA in July 1574. The following year he converted to Roman
Catholicism and fled abroad to the English College at Douai, where he was
ordained a priest by the Bishop of Cambrai 1577 and left for Rome and stayed at
the English College, Rome for nearly three years.
On 18 April 1580,
Sherwin and thirteen companions left Rome for England. On 9 November 1580, he
was arrested while preaching in the house of Nicholas Roscarrock in London and
imprisoned in the Marshalsea, where he converted many fellow prisoners, and on
4 December was transferred to the Tower of London, where he was tortured on the
rack and then laid out in the snow. He is said to have been personally offered
a bishopric by Elizabeth I if he apostasised, but refused. After spending a
year in prison he was finally brought to trial with Edmund Campion on a trumped
up charge of treasonable conspiracy. He was convicted in Westminster Hall on 20
November 1581. Eleven days later he was drawn to Tyburn on a hurdle along with
Alexander Briant, where he was hanged, drawn and quartered. His last words were
“Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus!”
Luke Kirby (1549-82)
Kirby received his MA probably at Cambridge, before being reconciled
at Louvain and entering Douai College in 1576. He was ordained a priest at
Cambrai in September 1577 and left Rheims for England on May 3, 1578; however,
he returned on July 15th and went to Rome. There he took the college oath at
the English College, Rome in 1579. In June 1580, he was arrested on landing at
Dover, and committed to the Gatehouse, Westminster. On December 4th, he was
transferred to the Tower, where he was subjected to torture. He died in
chains in 1582.
John Paine d. 1582
Paine was born at Peterborough, England, and was possibly a convert. In 1574,
he departed England for Douai, where he was ordained in 1576. Immediately
afterwards he was sent back to England with Cuthbert Mayne. Arrested within a
year and then released he departed the island but came back in 1579. While
staying in Warwickshire he was arrested once more after being denounced by John
Eliot, a known murderer who made a career out of denouncing Catholics and
priests for bounty. Imprisoned and tortured in the Tower of London for nine
months, he was finally condemned to death and hanged, drawn, and quartered at
Chelmsford.
Eustace White 1560-91
Born at Louth in Lincolnshire, his parents were Protestants, and his conversion
resulted in a curse from his father. Educated at Reims (1584) and at Rome
(1586), where he was ordained, he came on the mission in November, 1588,
working in the west of England. Betrayed at Blandford, Dorset, by a lawyer with
whom he had conversed about religion. For two days he held public discussion
with a minister and greatly impressed the Protestants present. He was then sent
to London, where for forty-six days he was kept lying on straw with his hands
closely manacled. On 25 October the Privy Council gave orders for his
examination under torture, and on seven occasions he was kept hanging by his
manacled hands for hours together; he also suffered deprivation of food and
clothing. On 6 December together with Edmund Gennings and Polydore Plasden,
priests, and Swithin Wells and other laymen, he was tried before the King’s
Bench, and condemned for coming into England contrary to law. With him suffered
Polydore Plasden and three laymen.
Edmund G(J)ennings 1567-91
Edmund was a thoughtful, serious boy from Lichfield, Staffordshire, naturally
inclined to matters of faith. At around sixteen years of age he converted to
Catholicism. He went immediately to the English College at Rheims where he was
ordained a priest in 1590, being then only twenty-three years of age. He
immediately returned to the dangers of England under the assumed name of
Ironmonger. His missionary career was brief. He was seized by the notorious
priest catcher Richard Topcliffe and his officers whilst in the act of saying
Mass in the house of Swithun Wells at Gray’s Inn in London on 7 November 1591
and was hanged, drawn and quartered outside the same house on 10 December.
Polydore Plasden 1563-91 alias Oliver Palmer
He was born in 1563, the son of a London horner. Educated at Reims and at Rome,
where he was ordained priest on 7 December, 1586. He remained at Rome for more
than a year and then was at Reims from 8 April till 2 September, 1588, when he
was sent on the mission. While at Rome he had signed a petition for the
retention of the Jesuits as superiors of the English College, but in England he
was considered to have suffered injury through their agency. Captured on 8th
November 1591 in London, at Swithin Wells’s house in Gray’s Inn Fields, where
Edmund G(J)ennings was celebrating Mass. At his execution he acknowledged
Elizabeth as his lawful queen, whom he would defend to the best of his power
against all her enemies, and he prayed for her and the whole realm, but said that
he would rather forfeit a thousand lives than deny or fight against his
religion. By the orders of Sir Walter Raleigh, he was allowed to hang till he
was dead, and the sentence was carried out upon his body.
John Boste 1544-94
John Boste was born in Westmoreland around 1544. He studied at Queen’s College,
Oxford where he became a Fellow. He converted to Catholicism in 1576. He left
England and was ordained a priest at Reims in 1581, before returning as an
active missionary priest to Northern England. He was betrayed to the
authorities near Durham in 1593. Following his arrest he was taken to the Tower
of London for interrogation. Returned to Durham he was condemned and executed
at nearby Dryburn on 24 July 1594. Boste denied that he was a traitor saying
“My function is to invade souls, not to meddle with temporal invasions”.
John Almond d. 1612
A native of Allerton, England, he was educated in Ireland and then at Reims and
in Rome. After his ordination in 1598, he returned to England as a missionary,
and was arrested in 1602. John was imprisoned in 1608 for a time and arrested
again in 1612. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn.
John Southworth 1592-1654
John Southworth studied at the English College in Douai, northern France, and
was ordained priest before he returned to England. Imprisoned and sentenced to
death for professing the Catholic faith, he was later deported to France. Once
more he returned to England and lived in Clerkenwell, London, during a plague
epidemic. He assisted and converted the sick in Westminster and was arrested
again. Finally arrested and brought to the Old Bailey, he was condemned for
exercising the priesthood and executed at Tyburn Gallows (hanged, drawn and
quartered). His remains are now kept at Westminster Cathedral in London.
John Plesington d. 1679
Born at Dimples Hall near Garstang, Lancashire, the son of a Royalist Catholic,
John was educated at Saint Omer’s in France and the English college at
Valladolid, Spain. He was ordained in Segovia in 1662. Returning to England the
following year, he worked in the area of Cheshire, using the aliases
Scarisbrick and William Pleasington. In 1670, Father John became the tutor of
the children of a Mr. Massey at Puddington Hall near Chester. He was arrested
and charged with participating in the “Popish Plot” to murder King Charles II,
a fabrication of Titus Oates. Despite the evidence that Oates perjured himself
during the trial, Father John was found guilty and hanged at Boughton near
Chester on July 19, 1679.
John Kemble 1599-1679
Born in 1599, in Herefordshire into a prominent local Catholic family. He had
four brothers priests. Kemble was ordained a priest at Douai College, on 23
February 1625. He returned to England on 4 June 1625 as a missioner in
Monmouthshire and Herefordshire. Little is known of his work for the next
fifty three years, but his later treatment shows the esteem and affection he
was held in locally. Arrested during the Titus Oates Plot confusion at his
brother’s home, Pembridge Castle, near Welsh Newton. He was warned about the
impending arrest but declined to leave his flock, saying, “According to the
course of nature, I have but a few years to live. It will be an advantage to
suffer for my religion and, therefore, I will not abscond.” He was arrested
by a Captain John Scudamore of Kentchurch. It is a comment on the tangled
loyalties of the age that Scudamore’s own wife and children were parishioners
of Father Kemble.
Father Kemble, now
80, was taken on the arduous journey to London to be interviewed about the
plot. He was found to have had no connection with it, but was found guilty of
the treasonous crime of being a priest. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn
and quartered. He was returned to Hereford for the sentence to be carried out.
Before he was led out for his execution Father Kemble insisted on saying his
prayers and finishing his drink. The assembled party joined the elderly
priest in a smoke and a drink. To this day the sayings, “Kemble pipe”, and
“Kemble cup”, meaning a parting pipe or cup, are used in Herefordshire.
Addressing the assembled crowd before his death, the old priest said: “The
failure of the authorities in London to connect me to the plot makes it evident
that I die only for profession the Roman Catholic religion, which was the
religion that first made this Kingdom Christian.”
He was allowed to
die on the gallows before the butchery was carried out on his body. Thus he was
spared the agonies suffered by so many of the Catholic martyrs. One of
the martyr’s hands is preserved at St. Francis Xavier, Hereford. His body rests
in the (Church of England) churchyard of St Mary’s, Welsh Newton, and local
Roman Catholics make an annual pilgrimage to his grave. Miracles were
soon attributed to the saintly priest. Scudamore’s daughter was cured of throat
cancer, while Scudamore’s wife recovered her hearing whilst praying at the
Kemble’s grave.
John Lloyd d. 1679
He was a Breconshire man who had taken the missionary oath at Valladolid in
1649 and was sent to minister in his own country and was arrested during the
Oates’ scare at Penlline in Glamorgan. Along with Philip Evans he was
brought to trial in Cardiff on Monday, 5 May 1679. Neither was charged with
being associated with the ‘plot’ concocted by Oates but they were charged with being
priests and coming into the principality of Wales contrary to the provisions of
the law. There was no sensible evidence produced against either man;
nevertheless both were found guilty. The executions took place in Gallows
Field, Cardiff on 22nd July 1679. Philip Evans was the first to
die. He addressed the gathering in both Welsh and English saying, “Adieu, Mr
Lloyd, though for a little time, for we shall shortly meet again. ” John
Lloyd spoke very briefly saying, ‘I never was a good speaker in my life’.
Laymen
John Rigby 1570-1600
John was born at Chorley, Lancashire, the fifth or sixth son of Nicholas and
Mary Rigby. Working for Sir Edmund Huddleston, whose daughter Mrs.
Fortescue was summoned to the Old Bailey for recusancy, because she was ill, he
decided to appear himself for her; he was compelled to confess his own
Catholicism and was sent to Newgate.
The next day,
February 14, 1600, he signed a confession saying that since he had been
reconciled by John Jones, a Franciscan, he had not attended church. He was
chained and sent back to Newgate, until he was transferred to the White Lion.
Twice he was given the chance to repent; twice he refused. His sentence was
therefore ordered to 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”. The captain then asked Rigby for his prayers. Rigby was executed
by hanging at St. Thomas Waterings on June 21, 1600. John Jones, the
priest who had reconciled Rigby, had suffered on the same spot July 12, 1598.
Philip Howard 1557-95
Eldest son of the fourth Duke of Norfolk (himself executed for treason in 1572)
who led a dissolute existence and left behind an unhappy wife in Arundel Castle
until he was converted by the preaching of St. Edmund Campion.
Born in Strand,
London, Philip was the eldest son of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk
and Lady Mary FitzAlan, daughter of Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel. He
was baptized at Whitehall Palace with the Royal Family in attendance, and was
named after his godfather, King Philip II of Spain.
At the age of 14,
he was married to his foster sister, Anne Dacre. After years of estrangement,
they were reunited and built a very strong marriage. His father was
attainted and executed in 1572, but Philip Howard succeeded to his mother’s
heritage upon the death of his grandfather, becoming Earl of Arundel in
1580. Arundel, and much of his family, became Catholic at a time during
the reign of Queen Elizabeth when it was very dangerous to do so. They also
attempted to leave England without permission. While some might be able to do
this quietly, Arundel was second cousin of the Queen. He was committed to the
Tower of London on 25 April 1585. While charges of high treason were never
proved, he was to spend ten years in the Tower, until his death of dysentery.
He had petitioned the Queen as he lay dying to allow him to see his beloved
wife and his son, who had been born after his imprisonment. The Queen responded
that if he would return to Protestantism his request would be granted. He
refused and died alone in the Tower. He was immediately acclaimed as a Catholic
Martyr.
He was buried
without ceremony beneath the floor of the church of St. Peter ad Vincula,
inside the walls of the Tower. Twenty nine years later, his widow and son
obtained permission from King James I of England to move the body to the chapel
of Arundel Castle. His tomb remains a site of pilgrimage. He was
attainted in 1589, but his son Thomas eventually was restored in blood and
succeeded as Earl of Arundel, and to the lesser titles of his grandfather.
Richard Gwyn 1537–84 Also known by his
anglicised name, Richard White
He was born in Montgomeryshire, Wales. At the age of 20 he matriculated at
Oxford University, but did not complete a degree. He then went to Cambridge
University, where he lived on the charity of St John’s College and its master,
the Roman Catholic Dr. George Bulloch. However, at the beginning of the reign
of Elizabeth I in 1558, Bullock was forced to resign the mastership; this
forced the end of the university career of Richard Gwyn, after just two years.
He returned to
Wales and became a teacher, continuing his studies on his own. He married
Catherine; they had six children, three of whom survived him. His adherence to
the old faith was noted by the Bishop of Chester, who brought pressure on him
to conform to the Anglican faith. It is recorded in an early account of his
life that after some troubles, he yielded to their desires, although greatly
against his stomach… But he had no sooner come out of the church but a fearful
company of crows and kites so persecuted him to his home that they put him in
great fear of his life, the conceit whereof made him also sick in body as he
was already in soul diseased; in which sickness he resolved himself (if God
would spare him life) to become a Catholic.
Gwyn often had to
change his home and his school to avoid fines and imprisonment. Finally in 1579
he was arrested by the Vicar of Wrexham, a former Catholic who had converted to
the new faith. He escaped and remained a fugitive for a year and a half, was recaptured,
and spent the next four years in one prison after another until his execution.
In May 1581 Gwyn
was taken to church in Wrexham, carried around the font on the shoulders of six
men and laid in heavy shackles in front of the pulpit. However, he “so stirred
his legs that with the noise of his irons that the preacher’s voice could not
be heard.” He was placed in the stocks for this incident, and was taunted by a
local priest who claimed that the keys of the church were given no less to him
than to St. Peter. “There is this difference,” Gwyn replied, “namely, that
whereas Peter received the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, the keys you received
were obviously those of the beer cellar.”
Gwyn was fined £280
for refusing to attend Anglican church services, and another £140 for
“brawling” when they took him there. When asked what payment he could make
toward these huge sums, he answered, “Six-pence.” Gwyn and two other Catholic
prisoners, John Hughes and Robert Morris, were ordered into court in the spring
of 1582 where, instead of being tried for an offence, they were given a sermon
by a Protestant minister. However, they started to heckle (one in Welsh, one in
Latin and one in English) to the extent that the exercise had to be abandoned.
Gwyn was tortured
often in prison, largely with the use of manacles. However, his adherence to
the Catholic faith never wavered.
Richard Gwyn, John
Hughes and Robert Morris were indicted for high treason in 1583 and were
brought to trial. Witnesses gave evidence that they retained their allegiance
to the Catholic Church, including that Gwyn composed “certain rhymes of his own
making against married priests and ministers” and “That he had heard him
complain of this world; and secondly, that it would not last long, thirdly, that
he hoped to see a better world [this was often construed as plotting a
revolution]; and, fourthly, that he confessed the Pope’s supremacy.” The three
were also accused of trying to make converts.
Gwyn and Hughes
were found guilty. At the sentencing Hughes was reprieved and Gwyn condemned to
death by hanging, drawing and quartering. This sentence was carried out in the
Beast Market in Wrexham on 15 October 1584.
Just before Gwyn
was hanged he turned to the crowd and said, “I have been a jesting fellow, and if
I have offended any that way, or by my songs, I beseech them for God’s sake to
forgive me.” His friend the hangman pulled on his leg irons hoping to put him
out of his pain. When he appeared dead they cut him down, but he revived and
remained conscious through the disembowelling, until his head was severed. His
last words, in Welsh, were “Iesu, trugarha wrthyf” (Jesus, have mercy on me).
Relics of Richard
Gwyn are to be found in the Cathedral Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, Wrexham.
In addition, St Richard Gwyn RC High School, Flint founded in 1954 was named
after him Gwyn. There is also a school of the same name in Barry, Wales.
Swithun Wells d. 1591
Wells was born at Brambridge, Hampshire, around 1536, and was for many years
schoolteacher at Monkton Farleigh in Wiltshire. During this period, he attended
Protestant services, but in 1583, was reconciled to the Catholic Church. In
1585 he went to London, where he took a house in Gray’s Inn Lane.
In 1591, Saint
Edmund Gennings was saying Mass at Wells’s house, when the well-known
priest-hunter Richard Topcliffe burst in with his officers. The congregation,
not wishing the Mass to be interrupted, held the door and beat back the
officers until the Mass was finished, after which they all surrendered quietly.
Wells was not present at the time, but his wife was, and was arrested along
with Gennings, another priest, Saint Polydore Plasden, and three laymen, John
Mason, Sidney Hodgson, and Brian Lacey. Wells was immediately arrested and
imprisoned on his return. At his trial, he said that he had not been present at
the Mass, but wished he had been.
He was sentenced to
die by hanging, and was executed outside his own house on 10 December 1591,
just after Saint Edmund Gennings. On the scaffold, he said to Topcliffe, “I
pray God make you of a Saul a Paul, of a bloody persecutor one of the Catholic
Church’s children. His wife, Alice, was reprieved, and died in prison in 1602.
3 Laywomen – all of them mothers
Margaret
Clitherow (1556–86) “the Pearl of York”
Margaret was born the daughter of a Sheriff of York in Middleton after
Henry VIII of England split the Church of England from the Roman Catholic
Church. She married John Clitherow, a butcher, in 1571 (at the age of 15) and
bore him two children. She converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 18, in
1574. She then became a friend of the persecuted Roman Catholic population in
the north of England. Her son, Henry, went to Reims to train as a Catholic
priest. She regularly held Masses in her home in the Shambles in York. There
was a secret tunnel between her house and the house next door, so that a priest
could escape if there was a raid. A house once thought to have been her home,
now called the Shrine of the Saint Margaret Clitherow, is open to the public;
her actual house (10, The Shambles) is further down the street.
In 1586 she was
arrested and called before the York assizes for the crime of harbouring Roman
Catholic priests. She refused to plead to the case so as to prevent a trial
that would entail her children being asked to testify, and she was executed by
being crushed to death – the standard punishment for refusal to plead. On Good
Friday of 1586, she was laid out upon a sharp rock, and a door was put on top
of her and loaded with immense weight. Death occurred within fifteen minutes.
Margaret Ward d. 1588
Nothing is known of Margaret Ward’s early life except that she was born in
Cheshire of good family and for a time dwelt in the house of a lady of
distinction named Whitall in London. Hearing that the priest William Watson,
was confined at Bridewell Prison, she obtained permission to visit him. She was
thoroughly searched before and after early visits, but gradually the
authorities became less cautious, and she managed to smuggle a rope into the
prison.
Fr Watson escaped,
but hurt himself in so doing, and left the rope hanging from the window. The
boatman whom Margaret Ward had engaged to take him down the river then refused
to carry out the bargain. Ward, in her distress, confided in another boatman,
John Roche, who undertook to assist her. He provided a boat, and exchanged
clothes with the priest. Fr. Watson got away, but Roche was captured in his
place, and Ward, having been Fr Watson’s only visitor, was also arrested.
Margaret Ward was
kept in irons for eight days, was hung up by the hands, and scourged, but
absolutely refused to disclose the priest’s whereabouts. At her trial, she
admitted to having helped Fr. Watson to escape, and rejoiced in “having
delivered an innocent lamb from the hands of those bloody wolves.” She was
offered a pardon if she would attend a Protestant service, but refused. She was
hanged at Tyburn on 30 August 1588, along with John Roche and others.
Anne Line d.1601
Anne Line’s date of birth is unknown, but she was the second daughter of Willam
Heigham of Essex, a strict Calvinist, and was, together with her brother
William, disinherited for converting to Catholicism. Some time before 1586, she
married Roger Line, a young Catholic who had been disinherited for the same
reason. Roger Line and young William Heigham were arrested together while
attending Mass, and were imprisoned, fined, and finally banished. Roger Line
went to Flanders, where he recived a small allowance from the King of Spain,
part of which he sent regularly to his wife until his death around 1594.
Around that time Fr
John Gerard opened a house of refuge for hiding priests and put the
newly-widowed Anne Line in charge of it, despite her ill-health and frequent
headaches. By 1597 this house had become insecure, so another was opened, and
Anne Line was, again, placed in charge. On 2 February 1601, Fr Francis Page was
saying Mass in the house managed by Anne Line, when men arrived to arrest him.
The priest managed to slip into a special hiding place, prepared by Anne, and
afterwards to escape, but she was arrested, along with two other laypeople.
Tried at the Old
Bailey on 26 February, she was so weak that she was carried to the trial in a
chair. She told the court that so far from regretting having concealed a
priest, she only grieved that she “could not receive a thousand more.” Sir John
Popham, the judge, sentenced her to hang the next day at Tyburn.
Anne Line was
hanged on 27 February 1601. She was executed immediately before two priests,
Fr. Roger Filcock, and Fr. Mark Barkworth, though, as a woman, she was spared
the disembowelling that they endured. At the scaffold she repeated what she had
said at her trial, declaring loudly to the bystanders: “I am sentenced to die
for harbouring 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.” Fr. Barkworth kissed her hand, while her body was
still hanging, saying, “Oh blessed Mrs. Line, who has now happily received thy
reward, thou art gone before us, but we shall quickly follow thee to bliss, if
it please the Almighty.”
SOURCE : http://www.catholicireland.net/saintoftheday/the-forty-martyrs-of-england-and-wales-16th-17th-centuries-details/
Artefici più o meno cruenti furono oltre Enrico VIII, i suoi successori Edoardo VI (1547-1553), la terribile Elisabetta I, la “regina vergine” († 1603), Giacomo I Stuart, Carlo I, Oliviero Cromwell, Carlo II Stuart.
Morirono in 150 anni di persecuzione, migliaia di cattolici inglesi appartenenti ad ogni ramo sociale, testimoniando il loro attaccamento alla fede cattolica e al papa e rifiutando i giuramenti di fedeltà al re, nuovo capo della religione di Stato.
Primi a morire come gloriosi martiri, il 4 maggio e il 15 giugno 1535, furono 19 monaci Certosini, impiccati nel tristemente famoso Tyburn di Londra, l’ultima vittima fu l’arcivescovo di Armagh e primate d’Irlanda Oliviero Plunkett, giustiziato a Londra l’11 luglio 1681.
L’odio dei vari nemici del cattolicesimo, dai re ai puritani, dagli avventurieri agli spregevoli ecclesiastici eretici e scismatici, ai calvinisti, portò ad inventare efferati sistemi di tortura e sofferenze per i cattolici arrestati.
In particolare per tutti quei sacerdoti e gesuiti, che dalla Francia e da Roma, arrivavano clandestinamente come missionari in Inghilterra per cercare di riconvertire gli scismatici, per lo più essi erano considerati traditori dello Stato, in quanto inglesi rifugiatosi all’estero e preparati in opportuni Seminari per il loro ritorno.
Tranne rarissime eccezioni, come i funzionari di alto rango (Tommaso Moro, Giovanni Fisher, Margherita Pole) decapitati o uccisi velocemente, tutti gli altri subirono prima della morte, indicibili sofferenze, con interrogatori estenuanti, carcere duro, torture raffinate come “l’eculeo”, la “figlia dello Scavinger”, i “guanti di ferro” e dove alla fine li attendeva una morte orribile; infatti essi venivano tutti impiccati, ma qualche attimo prima del soffocamento venivano liberati dal cappio e ancora semicoscienti venivano sventrati.
Dopo di ciò con una bestialità che superava ogni limite umano, i loro corpi venivano squartati ed i poveri tronconi cosparsi di pece, erano appesi alle porte e nelle zone principali della città.
Solo nel 1850 con la restaurazione della Gerarchia Cattolica in Inghilterra e Galles, si poté affrontare la possibilità di una beatificazione dei martiri, perlomeno di quelli il cui martirio era comprovato, nonostante i due - tre secoli trascorsi.
Nel 1874 l’arcivescovo di Westminster inviò a Roma un elenco di 360 nomi con le prove per ognuno di loro. A partire dal 1886, i martiri a gruppi più o meno numerosi, furono beatificati dai Sommi Pontefici, una quarantina sono stati anche canonizzati nel 1970.
Per altri 85 nel 1987, si sono conclusi gli adempimenti necessari e così il 22 novembre 1987 papa Giovanni Polo II li ha beatificati a Roma, con il capofila Giorgio Haydock, confermando il giorno della loro celebrazione al 4 maggio.
Di essi 63 sono sacerdoti, di cui 2 gesuiti, 1 domenicano, 5 francescani e 55 diocesani; gli altri 22 sono laici, fra cui il tipografo William Carter.
Autore: Antonio Borrelli
Beati Martiri della Gran Bretagna
85
martiri dal 1535 al 1681 - † Inghilterra, Galles, Scozia
La storia
delle persecuzioni anticattoliche in Inghilterra, Scozia, Galles, parte dal
1535 e arriva al 1681; il primo a scatenarla fu come è noto il re Enrico VIII,
che provocò lo Scisma d’Inghilterra con il distacco della Chiesa Anglicana da
Roma.
Artefici più o meno cruenti furono oltre Enrico VIII, i suoi successori Edoardo VI (1547-1553), la terribile Elisabetta I, la “regina vergine” († 1603), Giacomo I Stuart, Carlo I, Oliviero Cromwell, Carlo II Stuart.
Morirono in 150 anni di persecuzione, migliaia di cattolici inglesi appartenenti ad ogni ramo sociale, testimoniando il loro attaccamento alla fede cattolica e al papa e rifiutando i giuramenti di fedeltà al re, nuovo capo della religione di Stato.
Primi a morire come gloriosi martiri, il 4 maggio e il 15 giugno 1535, furono 19 monaci Certosini, impiccati nel tristemente famoso Tyburn di Londra, l’ultima vittima fu l’arcivescovo di Armagh e primate d’Irlanda Oliviero Plunkett, giustiziato a Londra l’11 luglio 1681.
L’odio dei vari nemici del cattolicesimo, dai re ai puritani, dagli avventurieri agli spregevoli ecclesiastici eretici e scismatici, ai calvinisti, portò ad inventare efferati sistemi di tortura e sofferenze per i cattolici arrestati.
In particolare per tutti quei sacerdoti e gesuiti, che dalla Francia e da Roma, arrivavano clandestinamente come missionari in Inghilterra per cercare di riconvertire gli scismatici, per lo più essi erano considerati traditori dello Stato, in quanto inglesi rifugiatosi all’estero e preparati in opportuni Seminari per il loro ritorno.
Tranne rarissime eccezioni, come i funzionari di alto rango (Tommaso Moro, Giovanni Fisher, Margherita Pole) decapitati o uccisi velocemente, tutti gli altri subirono prima della morte, indicibili sofferenze, con interrogatori estenuanti, carcere duro, torture raffinate come “l’eculeo”, la “figlia dello Scavinger”, i “guanti di ferro” e dove alla fine li attendeva una morte orribile; infatti essi venivano tutti impiccati, ma qualche attimo prima del soffocamento venivano liberati dal cappio e ancora semicoscienti venivano sventrati.
Dopo di ciò con una bestialità che superava ogni limite umano, i loro corpi venivano squartati ed i poveri tronconi cosparsi di pece, erano appesi alle porte e nelle zone principali della città.
Solo nel 1850 con la restaurazione della Gerarchia Cattolica in Inghilterra e Galles, si poté affrontare la possibilità di una beatificazione dei martiri, perlomeno di quelli il cui martirio era comprovato, nonostante i due - tre secoli trascorsi.
Nel 1874 l’arcivescovo di Westminster inviò a Roma un elenco di 360 nomi con le prove per ognuno di loro. A partire dal 1886, i martiri a gruppi più o meno numerosi, furono beatificati dai Sommi Pontefici, una quarantina sono stati anche canonizzati nel 1970.
Per altri 85 nel 1987, si sono conclusi gli adempimenti necessari e così il 22 novembre 1987 papa Giovanni Polo II li ha beatificati a Roma, con il capofila Giorgio Haydock, confermando il giorno della loro celebrazione al 4 maggio.
Di essi 63 sono sacerdoti, di cui 2 gesuiti, 1 domenicano, 5 francescani e 55 diocesani; gli altri 22 sono laici, fra cui il tipografo William Carter.
Autore: Antonio Borrelli
CANONIZZAZIONE DI QUARANTA MARTIRI DELL’INGHILTERRA E DEL GALLES
OMELIA DEL SANTO PADRE PAOLO VI
Domenica, 25 ottobre l970
We extend Our greeting first of all to Our venerable brother Cardinal John Carmel Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, who is present here today. Together with him We greet Our brother bishops of England and Wales and of all the other countries, those who have come here for this great ceremony. We extend Our greeting also to the English priests, religious, students and faithful. We are filled with joy and happiness to have them near Us today; for us-they represent all English Catholics scattered throughout the world. Thanks to them we are celebrating Christ’s glory made manifest in the holy Martyrs, whom We have just canonized, with such keen and brotherly feelings that We are able to experience in a very special spiritual way the mystery of the oneness and love of .the Church. We offer you our greetings, brothers, sons and daughters; We thank you and We bless you.
While We are particularly pleased to note the presence of the official representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Reverend Doctor Harry Smythe, We also extend Our respectful and affectionate greeting to all the members of the Anglican Church who have likewise come to take part in this ceremony. We indeed feel very close to them. We would like them to read in Our heart the humility, the gratitude and the hope with which We welcome them. We wish also to greet the authorities and those personages who have come here to represent Great Britain, and together with them all the other representatives of other countries and other religions. With all Our heart We welcome them, as we celebrate the freedom and the fortitude of men who had, at the same time, spiritual faith and loyal respect for the sovereignty of civil society.
STORICO EVENTO PER LA CHIESA UNIVERSALE
La solenne canonizzazione dei 40 Martiri dell’Inghilterra e del Galles da Noi or ora compiuta, ci offre la gradita opportunità di parlarvi, seppur brevemente, sul significato della loro esistenza e sulla importanza the la loro vita e la loro morte hanno avuto e continuano ad avere non solo per la Chiesa in Inghilterra e nel Galles, ma anche per la Chiesa Universale, per ciascuno di noi, e per ogni uomo di buona volontà.
Il nostro tempo ha bisogno di Santi, e in special modo dell’esempio di coloro che hanno dato il supremo testimonio del loro amore per Cristo e la sua Chiesa: «nessuno ha un amore più grande di colui che dà la vita per i propri amici» (Io. l5, l3). Queste parole del Divino Maestro, che si riferiscono in prima istanza al sacrificio che Egli stesso compì sulla croce offrendosi per la salvezza di tutta l’umanità, valgono pure per la grande ed eletta schiera dei martiri di tutti i tempi, dalle prime persecuzioni della Chiesa nascente fino a quelle – forse più nascoste ma non meno crudeli - dei nostri giorni. La Chiesa di Cristo è nata dal sacrificio di Cristo sulla Croce ed essa continua a crescere e svilupparsi in virtù dell’amore eroico dei suoi figli più autentici. «Semen est sanguis christianorum» (TERTULL., Apologet., 50; PL l, 534). Come l’effusione del sangue di Cristo, così l’oblazione che i martiri fanno della loro vita diventa in virtù della loro unione col Sacrificio di Cristo una sorgente di vita e di fertilità spirituale per la Chiesa e per il mondo intero. «Perciò - ci ricorda la Costituzione Lumen gentium (Lumen gentium, 42) – il martirio, col quale il discepolo è reso simile al Maestro che liberamente accetta la morte per la salute del mondo, e a Lui si conforma nell’effusione del sangue, è stimato dalla Chiesa dono insigne e suprema prova di carità».
Molto si è detto e si è scritto su quell’essere misterioso che è l’uomo : sulle risorse del suo ingegno, capace di penetrare nei segreti dell’universo e di assoggettare le cose materiali utilizzandole ai suoi scopi; sulla grandezza dello spirito umano che si manifesta nelle ammirevoli opere della scienza e dell’arte; sulla sua nobiltà e la sua debolezza; sui suoi trionfi e le sue miserie. Ma ciò che caratterizza l’uomo, ciò che vi è di più intimo nel suo essere e nella sua personalità, è la capacità di amare, di amare fino in fondo, di donarsi con quell’amore che è più forte della morte e che si prolunga nell’eternità.
IL SACRIFICIO NELL’AMORE PIÙ ALTO
Il martirio dei cristiani è l’espressione ed il segno più sublime di questo amore, non solo perché il martire rimane fedele al suo amore fino all’effusione del proprio sangue, ma anche perché questo sacrificio viene compiuto per l’amore più alto e nobile che possa esistere, ossia per amore di Colui che ci ha creati e redenti, che ci ama come Egli solo sa amare, e attende da noi una risposta di totale e incondizionata donazione, cioè un amore degno del nostro Dio.
Nella sua lunga e gloriosa storia, la Gran Bretagna, isola di santi, ha dato al mondo molti uomini e donne che hanno amato Dio con questo amore schietto e leale: per questo siamo lieti di aver potuto annoverare oggi 40 altri figli di questa nobile terra fra coloro che la Chiesa pubblicamente riconosce come Santi, proponendoli con ciò alla venerazione dei suoi fedeli, e perché questi ritraggano dalle loro esistenze un vivido esempio.
A chi legge commosso ed ammirato gli atti del loro martirio, risulta chiaro, vorremmo dire evidente, che essi sono i degni emuli dei più grandi martiri dei tempi passati, a motivo della grande umiltà, intrepidità, semplicità e serenità, con le quali essi accettarono la loro sentenza e la loro morte, anzi, più ancora con un gaudio spirituale e con una carità ammirevole e radiosa.
È proprio questo atteggiamento profondo e spirituale che accomuna ed unisce questi uomini e donne, i quali d’altronde erano molto diversi fra loro per tutto ciò che può differenziare un gruppo così folto di persone, ossia l’età e il sesso, la cultura e l’educazione, lo stato e condizione sociale di vita, il carattere e il temperamento, le disposizioni naturali e soprannaturali, le esterne circostanze della loro esistenza. Abbiamo infatti fra i 40 Santi Martiri dei sacerdoti secolari e regolari, abbiamo dei religiosi di vari Ordini e di rango diverso, abbiamo dei laici, uomini di nobilissima discendenza come pure di condizione modesta, abbiamo delle donne che erano sposate e madri di famiglia: ciò che li unisce tutti è quell’atteggiamento interiore di fedeltà inconcussa alla chiamata di Dio che chiese a loro, come risposta di amore, il sacrificio della vita stessa.
E la risposta dei martiri fu unanime: «Non posso fare a meno di ripetervi che muoio per Dio e a motivo della mia religione; - così diceva il Santo Philip Evans - e mi ritengo così felice che se mai potessi avere molte altre vite, sarei dispostissimo a sacrificarle tutte per una causa tanto nobile».
LEALTÀ E FEDELTÀ
E, come d’altronde numerosi altri, il Santo Philip Howard conte di Arundel asseriva egli pure: «Mi rincresce di avere soltanto una vita da offrire per questa nobile causa». E la Santa Margaret Clitherow con una commovente semplicità espresse sinteticamente il senso della sua vita e della sua morte: «Muoio per amore del mio Signore Gesù». « Che piccola cosa è questa, se confrontata con la morte ben più crudele che Cristo ha sofferto per me », così esclamava il Santo Alban Roe.
Come molti loro connazionali che morirono in circostanze analoghe, questi quaranta uomini e donne dell’Inghilterra e del Galles volevano essere e furono fino in fondo leali verso la loro patria che essi amavano con tutto il cuore; essi volevano essere e furono di fatto fedeli sudditi del potere reale che tutti - senza eccezione alcuna - riconobbero, fino alla loro morte, come legittimo in tutto ciò che appartiene all’ordine civile e politico. Ma fu proprio questo il dramma dell’esistenza di questi Martiri, e cioè che la loro onesta e sincera lealtà verso l’autorità civile venne a trovarsi in contrasto con la fedeltà verso Dio e con ciò che, secondo i dettami della loro coscienza illuminata dalla fede cattolica, sapevano coinvolgere le verità rivelate, specialmente sulla S. Eucaristia e sulle inalienabili prerogative del successore di Pietro, che, per volere di Dio, è il Pastore universale della Chiesa di Cristo. Posti dinanzi alla scelta di rimanere saldi nella loro fede e quindi di morire per essa, ovvero di aver salva la vita rinnegando la prima, essi, senza un attimo di esitazione, e con una forza veramente soprannaturale, si schierarono dalla parte di Dio e gioiosamente affrontarono il martirio. Ma talmente grande era il loro spirito, talmente nobili erano i loro sentimenti, talmente cristiana era l’ispirazione della loro esistenza, che molti di essi morirono pregando per la loro patria tanto amata, per il Re o per la Regina, e persino per coloro che erano stati i diretti responsabili della loro cattura, dei loro tormenti, e delle circostanze ignominiose della loro morte atroce.
Le ultime parole e l’ultima preghiera del Santo John Plessington furono appunto queste: «Dio benedica il Re e la sua famiglia e voglia concedere a Sua Maestà un prospero regno in questa vita e una corona di gloria nell’altra. Dio conceda pace ai suoi sudditi consentendo loro di vivere e di morire nella vera fede, nella speranza e nella carità».
«POSSANO TUTTI OTTENERE LA SALVEZZA»
Così il Santo Alban Roe, poco prima dell’impiccagione, pregò: «Perdona, o mio Dio, le mie innumerevoli offese, come io perdono i miei persecutori», e, come lui, il Santo Thomas Garnet che - dopo aver singolarmente nominato e perdonato coloro che lo avevano tradito, arrestato e condannato - supplicò Dio dicendo: «Possano tutti ottenere la salvezza e con me raggiungere il cielo».
Leggendo gli atti del loro martirio e meditando il ricco materiale raccolto con tanta cura sulle circostanze storiche della loro vita e del loro martirio, rimaniamo colpiti soprattutto da ciò che inequivocabilmente e luminosamente rifulge nella loro esistenza; esso, per la sua stessa natura, è tale da trascendere i secoli, e quindi da rimanere sempre pienamente attuale e, specie ai nostri giorni, di importanza capitale. Ci riferiamo al fatto che questi eroici figli e figlie dell’Inghilterra e del Galles presero la loro fede veramente sul serio: ciò significa che essi l’accettarono come l’unica norma della loro vita e di tutta la loro condotta, ritraendone una grande serenità ed una profonda gioia spirituale. Con una freschezza e spontaneità non priva di quel prezioso dono che è l’umore tipicamente proprio della loro gente, con un attaccamento al loro dovere schivo da ogni ostentazione, e con la schiettezza tipica di coloro che vivono con convinzioni profonde e ben radicate, questi Santi Martiri sono un esempio raggiante del cristiano che veramente vive la sua consacrazione battesimale, cresce in quella vita che nel sacramento dell’iniziazione gli è stata data e che quello della confermazione ha rinvigorito, in modo tale che la religione non è per lui un fattore marginale, bensì l’essenza stessa di tutto il suo essere ed agire, facendo sì che la carità divina diviene la forza ispiratrice, fattiva ed operante di una esistenza, tutta protesa verso l’unione di amore con Dio e con tutti gli uomini di buona volontà, che troverà la sua pienezza nell’eternità.
La Chiesa e il mondo di oggi hanno sommamente bisogno di tali uomini e donne, di ogni condizione me stato di vita, sacerdoti, religiosi e laici, perché solo persone di tale statura e di tale santità saranno capaci di cambiare il nostro mondo tormentato e di ridargli, insieme alla pace, quell’orientamento spirituale e veramente cristiano a cui ogni uomo intimamente anela - anche talvolta senza esserne conscio - e di cui tutti abbiamo tanto bisogno.
Salga a Dio la nostra gratitudine per aver voluto, nella sua provvida bontà, suscitare questi Santi Martiri, l’operosità e il sacrificio dei quali hanno contribuito alla conservazione della fede cattolica nell’Inghilterra e nel Galles.
Continui il Signore a suscitare nella Chiesa dei laici, religiosi e sacerdoti che siano degni emuli di questi araldi della fede.
Voglia Dio, nel suo amore, che anche oggi fioriscano e si sviluppino dei centri di studio, di formazione e di preghiera, atti, nelle condizioni di oggi, a preparare dei santi sacerdoti e missionari quali furono, in quei tempi, i Venerabili Collegi di Roma e Valladolid e i gloriosi Seminari di St. Omer e Douai, dalle file dei quali uscirono appunto molti dei Quaranta Martiri, perché come uno di essi, una grande personalità, il Santo Edmondo Campion, diceva: «Questa Chiesa non si indebolirà mai fino a quando vi saranno sacerdoti e pastori ad attendere al loro gregge».
Voglia il Signore concederci la grazia che in questi tempi di indifferentismo religioso e di materialismo teorico e pratico sempre più imperversante, l’esempio e la intercessione dei Santi Quaranta Martiri ci confortino nella fede, rinsaldino il nostro autentico amore per Dio, per la sua Chiesa e per gli uomini tutti.
PER L’UNITA DEI CRISTIANI
May the blood of these Martyrs be able to heal the great wound inflicted upon God’s Church by reason of the separation of the Anglican Church from the Catholic Church. Is it not one-these Martyrs say to us-the Church founded by Christ? Is not this their witness? Their devotion to their nation gives us the assurance that on the day when-God willing-the unity of the faith and of Christian life is restored, no offence will be inflicted on the honour and sovereignty of a great country such as England. There will be no seeking to lessen the legitimate prestige and the worthy patrimony of piety and usage proper to the Anglican Church when the Roman Catholic Church-this humble “Servant of the Servants of God”- is able to embrace her ever beloved Sister in the one authentic communion of the family of Christ: a communion of origin and of faith, a communion of priesthood and of rule, a communion of the Saints in the freedom and love of the Spirit of Jesus.
Perhaps We shall have to go on, waiting and watching
in prayer, in order to deserve that blessed day. But already We are
strengthened in this hope by the heavenly friendship of the Forty Martyrs of
England and Wales who are canonized today. Amen.
© Copyright - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
SOURCE : http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/it/homilies/1970/documents/hf_p-vi_hom_19701025.html
San Luca Kirby Sacerdote e martire
>>> Visualizza la Scheda del Gruppo cui appartiene
Richmond, Inghilterra, 1549 – Tyburn, Inghilterra, 30 maggio 1582
Martirologio Romano: A Londra in Inghilterra, san Luca Kirby, sacerdote e martire, che, durante la persecuzione della regina Elisabetta I, dopo molti supplizi, fu appeso alla triplice forca di Tyburn. Insieme a lui patirono sul medesimo patibolo i beati sacerdoti e martiri Guglielmo Filby, Lorenzo Johnson e anche Tommaso Cottam, della Compagnia di Gesù.
San Luca Kirby appartiene alla folta schiera di martiri inglesi uccisi in odio alla fede cattolica in seguito allo scisma anglicano, causato dal divorzio del re Enrico VIII e dall’imposizione di un giuramento di fedeltà al sovrano medesimo quale nuovo capo della Chiesa d’Inghilterra.
Luca nacque nel 1549 probabilmente a Richmond, nella contea di York, da un’antica e nobile famiglia originaria del Lancashire. Conseguì il dottorato in lettere presso l’università di Cambridge, poi a Lovanio si riconciliò con la Chiesa cattolica e, desideroso di spendere la sua vita per cristo nel ministero sacerdotale, nel 1576 entrò nel Collegio inglese di Douai. Nel settembre 1577 poté finalmente ricevere l’ordinazione presbiterale a Cambrai, ma solo il 18 ottobre successivo officiò la sua prima Messa. L’anno seguente, nel mese di maggio, fu destinato alla missione inglese, ma già nell’agosto si trasferì a Roma per perfezionare i suoi studi. Nella primavera del 1579 il Kirby fu incluso tra il gruppo di studenti che seguirono Padre Edmondo Campion nelle missioni inglesi: partì dunque da Roma il 18 aprile 1580, giunse a Reims il 27 maggio, finché il 16 giugno insieme a Matteo Fox e Guglielmo Hartley proseguì a piedi sino a Dunkerque, ove si imbarcò per l’Inghilterra.
Nell’isola tuttavia non gli fu possibile svolvegere alcuna attività missionaria, poiché a Dover venne arrestato e rinchiuso per qualche tempo a Westminster nelle prigioni di Gatehouse, per essere poi trasferito insieme ad altri sacerdoti, il 5 dicembre 1580, alla Torre di Londra, ove fu sottoposto a torture atroci. Il 14 novembre 1581 Luca Kirby fu processato insieme al Padre Campion ed altri compagni di prigionia, imputato per un presunto complotto contro la regina. Riconosciuto colpevole da una discutibile giuria, fu inevitabile la sua condanna a morte. Per ragioni a noi ignote, venne però rinviata per mese l’esecuzione e solo il 30 maggio 1582 Luca Kirby affrontò il patibolo dichiarando sino all’ultimo la sua innocenza, ma anche la sua ferma contrarietà alla supremazia della regina in ambito spirituale. Insieme a lui affrontarono il martirio quel giorno anche Guglielmo Filby, Lorenzo Johnson e Tommaso Cottam.
Alcuni documenti hanno tramandato ai posteri la vicenda di questo eroico testimone della fede cattolica, nonché una sua lettera inviata ad alcuni amici il 10 gennaio 1582. A Stonyhurst sono conservate ancora oggi le sue reliquie. La Chiesa, che mai dimenticò la sua fedeltà alla sede di Roma, ha glorificato in terra il suo servo: Papa Leone XIII lo ha beatificato il 29 dicembre 1886 insieme a numerose altre vittime della medesima persecuzione, mentre Paolo VI infine lo dichiarò “santo” insieme ai 40 Martiri d’Inghilterrra e Galles.
Autore: Fabio Arduino
SOURCE : http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/93303
San Giovanni Jones Sacerdote e martire
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† Saint Thomas Waterings, Inghilterra, 12 luglio 1598
Nato in Inghilterra e costretto ad esulare in Francia, entrò nell’ordine Francescano a Pontoise. Fu ordinato sacerdote probabilmente a Reims. Dopo un breve soggiorno a Roma, ritornò in patria ed esercitò clandestinamente il ministero a Londra. Arrestato e rinchiuso in carcere, sopportò spietate torture e fu condannato a morte. La sentenza fu eseguita a Saint Thomas Waterings il 12 luglio 1598.
Martirologio Romano: Sempre a Londra, san Giovanni Jones, sacerdote dell’Ordine dei Frati Minori e martire, che, originario del Galles, fattosi religioso in Francia, fu condannato a morte sotto la regina Elisabetta I per essere entrato da sacerdote in Inghilterra e compì il suo martirio appeso a un laccio fino alla morte.
Appartenente ad una buona famiglia gallese rimasta fedele alla religione cattolica, il Jones nacque a Clynag Fawr, nella contea di Carnarvon ed abbracciò ben presto la vita religiosa, entrando tra i Francescani del convento di Grecnwich, che dovette tuttavia lasciare nel 1559, allorché l'ordine di soppressione, emanato dalla regina Elisabetta. colpì il convento. Riparalo in Francia, il Jones passò ai Conventuali di Fontoise, dove ricevette la sacra ordinazione; ma da questo momento si perdono completamente le sue tracce, che si ritrovano oltre trent''anni più tardi a Roma, dove nel 1591, attratto da una maggiore perfezione di vira, chiese ed ottenne di essere accolto tra gli Osservanti del convento dell'Ara Coeli. Dopo un anno di soggiorno romano, egli fece istanza presso i suoi superiori perché gli permettessero di tornare in Inghilterra a svolgervi attività missionaria. Ottenuta la desiderata autorizzazione di rimpatriare, prima di lasciare Roma volle essere ricevuto in udienza dal papa Clemente VIII, al quale espose i morivi delia sua missione, implorando altresì l'apostolica benedizione, che il pontefice gli impartì volentieri accompagnandola con parole di elogio e d'incoraggiamento.
Giunto in Inghilterra, con molta probabilità verso la fine del 1592, si fermò dapprima per qualche tempo a Londra, ospite del gesuita p. Gerard, quindi allargò il campo del suo apostolato missionario, prodigandosi attivamente per il bene e la salvezza delle anime sino al 1596, allorché venne arrestato dal feroce persecutore RiccardoTopcliffc. Gettato in prigione, fu sottoposto alle più crudeli e spieiate torture nel tentativo di fargli rivelare i nomi dei suoi benefattori e dei suoi assistiti, ma sempre invano, perche non fu mai possibile fargli pronunciare una sola parola che avrebbe potuto compromettere l'incolumità di qualcuno, suscitando lo stupore e l'ammirazione degli stessi carnefici per la sua forza d'animo e la serena resistenza ai tormenti. Durante tutto il periodo della sua cattività, il ]ones potè continuare a prodigarsi per i cattolici che sempre più numerosi si recavano a visitarlo, riuscendo persino a ricondurre alla Chiesa il beato G. Righy, un laico che per un certo tempo si era conformato al protestantesimo e che per il suo pentimento sarà martirizzato nel 1600. Processato, infine, dopo due anni di detenzione il 3 lugl. 1598, e condannato a morte perche sacerdote, venne giustiziato il 12 seguente a St. Thomas Waterings (Souihwark).
Un'esatta e circostanziata relazione del suo martirio ci è stata conservata in una lettera del gesuita H. Garnet (1555-1606) al generale dell'Ordine Claudio Acquaviva, scritta tre giorni dopo l'esecuzione del Jones, il quale vi è sempre chiamato con il suo nome di religione Godfrey Maurice (pubblicata da Diego de Yepes, llisloria particular de la perse-cuciati de Ingldtcrra, Madrid 1599, pp. 710-13).
Il Chulloner ed altri autori posteriori confondono il martire francescano con il benedettino Robert Buckley, che fu rinchiuso nelle prigioni di Marshalsea(1582-15S4)edi Wisbach (1587), tratti in inganno dallo stesso nome di Buckley usato dal Jones insieme con gli altri due dì Herberd e di Freer. negli anni della sua attività missionaria, per sfuggire alle insidie dei persecutori.
Beatificato da Pio XI il 15 die. 1929 (cf. AAS, XXII [1930], p. 15, n. LXXIX), il martire viene commemoralo il 12 lug!.; le sue reliquie si venerano nel convento dei Conventuali di Pontoise.
SOURCE : http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/90375
Voir aussi : HTTP://NEWSAINTS.FAITHWEB.COM/MARTYRS/ENGLAND01.HTM
