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[All rights reserved.]
LIVES OF THE
ENGLISH MARTYRS
DECLARED BLESSED BY POPE
LEO XIII. IN 1886 AND 1895
WRITTEN
BY FATHERS OF THE ORATORY, OF THE
SECULAR CLERGY AND OF THE SOCIETY
OF JESUS.
COMPLETED AND EDITED BY
DOM BEDE CAMM, O.S.B.
OF ERDINGTON ABBEY
VOLUME II.
MARTYRS UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH
IN SERVIS SUJS
CONSOLABITUR DEUS
Reissue
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA
1914
All rights reserved
fUbtl
FR. JOANNES CHAPMAN, O.S.B.,
CENSOR DEPUTATUS.
Imprimatur :
GULIELMUS PRAEPOSITUS JOHNSON,
VICARIUS GENERALIS
IVestmonasterii,
Dit 22 Aprilis,
First published by Messrs. Burns and Oates, 1905.
Transferred to Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co., Jan., 1914.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
Page
§ I. Elizabeth's Settlement of Religion . . ix
§ II. Resistance to the Settlement of Religion by the
Crown is considered Treason . . xii
§ III. The Northern Rising . . . . xiv
§ IV. The Excommunication . . . . xv
§ V. The Martyrs of 1570 to 1572 . . . xvii
§ VI. Increase of Missionary Zeal and of Persecution
in 1580 ..... xxii
§ VII. Reasons for the Increase of Persecution . . xxiii
(a) Sir Francis Walsingham .
(b) Errors of Catholic Politicians
(c) The Fictitious Papal League .
(d) Other Reasons ....
§ VIII. Persecution at its height . . . . xxvii
§ IX. The Procedure of Martyrdom . . . xxviii
§ X. Authorities ...... xxxix
§ XI. Writers of the Present Volume . xli
2033039
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIVES OF THE MARTYRS.
Page
I. B. John Felton, Layman.
St. Paul's Churchyard, August 8, 1570 ... i
II. B. John Storey, Layman.
Tyburn, June i, 1571 ... 14
III. BB. Thomas Percy and Thomas Plumtree.
Durham, January 4, 1571, and
York, August 22, 1572 ... in
IV. B. Thomas Woodhouse, Secular Priest.
London, June 13, 1573 ... 186
V. B. Cuthbert Mayne, Proto - Martyr of the
Seminary Priests.
Launceston, November 29, 1577 ... 204
VI. B. John Nelson, Jesuit.
Tyburn, February 3, 1577-8 ... 223
VII. B. Thomas Sherwood, Layman.
Tyburn, February 7, 1577-8 ... 234
VIII. B. Everard Hanse, Secular Priest.
Tyburn, July 31, 1581 ... 249
IX. B. Edmund Campion, Jesuit.
Tyburn, December i, 1581 ... 266
X. B. Ralph Sherwin, Secular Priest.
Tyburn, December i, 1581 ... 358
XI. B. Alexander Briant, Jesuit.
Tyburn, December i, 1581 ... 397
XII. B. John Payne, Secular Priest.
Chelmsford, April 2, 1582 ... 424
XIII. B. Thomas Ford, Secular Priest.
Tyburn, May 28, 1582 ... 443
XIV. B. John Shert, Secular Priest.
Tyburn, May 28, 1582 ... 460
XV. B. Robert Johnson, Secular Priest.
Tyburn, May 28, 1582 ... 474
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
XVI. B. William Filby, Secular Priest.
Tyburn, May 30, 1582 ... 491
XVII. B. Luke Kirby, Secular Priest.
Tyburn, May 30, 1582 ... 500
XVIII. B. Lawrence Richardson (vere Johnson), Secular
Priest.
Tyburn, May 30, 1582 ... 523
XIX. B. Thomas Cottam, Jesuit.
Tyburn, May 30, 1582 ... 536
XX. B. William Lacey, Secular Priest.
York, August 22, 1582 ... 564
XXI. B. Richard Kirkman, Secular Priest.
York, August 22, 1582 ... 578
XXII. B. James Thompson (alias Hudson), Secular
Priest.
York, November 28, 1582 ... 589
XXIII. B. William Hart, Secular Priest.
York, March 15, 1583 ... 600
XXIV. B. Richard Thirkeld, Secular Priest.
York, May 29, 1583 ... 635
WRITERS IN THIS VOLUME.
ED Dom BedeCamm, O.S.B. Nos. I., II., VII.,
VIII., X., XIII.,
XXL, XXII.,
XXIII., XXIV.
H. S. B. ... Father Henry Sebastian Bowden, No. IX.
Cong. Orat.
E. S. K. ... Father Edward S. Keogh, Cong. Nos. I., IV, V., VI.,
Orat VIII., X., XL,
XII., XIII., XIV.,
XV., XVI., XVII..
XVIII., XIX., XX.
G. E. P. ... Father George E. Phillips, of ... No. III.
Ushaw College.
J. H. P. ... Father John H. Pollen, SJ Introduction, Nos. IV,
IX., XI., XVII.,
XIX.
INTRODUCTION.
THOUGH the Lives of the martyrs which will be
found in the ensuing pages are told with a fulness
not attempted hitherto, none of them illustrate the
whole period of the struggle. None of them, therefore,
explain with sufficient clearness the origin, nature,
and tendency of the quarrel in which the martyrs
lost their lives. A few words of introduction will
therefore be required to elucidate these points, and
others of a like nature. Why. for instance, in a
religious persecution were the victims indicted for
treason ? Why were such absurd charges preferred
against the martyrs, and why were they believed
and brought forward again and again ? Before we
can appreciate the heroism of the martyrs' deaths,
we must find a solution of these problems.
Section I. Elizabeth's Settlement of Religion.
In the previous volume it was shown that the Wars
of the Roses and other causes had led to a very
great increase in the power of the Crown at the cost
of the other estates of the realm. The resolution of
INTRODUCTION
King Henry to marry Anne Boleyn in spite of all
obstacles, caused a violent breach with the Church,
in consequence of which the country as a whole
tamely lapsed into schism. Under King Edward a
further step downward was taken. Heresy was
introduced into the Court, and took a strong hold
on the large towns and the eastern counties. The
Puritans, to use a name which came into use later,
thus acquired considerable, though not a command-
ing power. We shall find them the prime movers of
the persecution, influencing the legislature, deter-
mining the administration of the law, and clamouring
round the gallows for the blood of the martyrs.
Mary's restoration of Catholicism,1 though
popular, and carried out with more respect for
the Constitution than had been shown by her
predecessors, was nevertheless rather her work than
her people's. Popular liberty was not known in
those days. The actual government was in the
hands of a bureaucracy, as it had been under her
brother Edward, as it was to be again under her
sister. Thus the old religion was restored by the
very power that had plucked it down, but was not
ensured against a second overthrow similar to the
first. Nor was the second fall long in coining.
The Catholic revival lasted for less than four
years, from the time when it was fully sanctioned
by Parliament. Elizabeth succeeded on the i7th
of November, 1558. She at once entrusted her
fortunes to a small clique of Protestant advisers, of
whom William Cecil was the leader and type, and
1 Pp. 23 — 37, 116 — 118.
INTRODUCTION
by so doing decided, once and for all, the future
of her reign, of herself, and of her realm.
Some account of the steps by which England was
severed from the unity of the Church, will be found
below.1 The great measures were the Supremacy
Bill and the Act of Uniformity, which received royal
assent on the 28th of May, 1559. These were rein-
forced on the 3rd of March, 1563, by the so-called
" Act of Assurance." 2 But it must be repeated that
the character of the religious policy was decided far
more by the personal feelings of the Ministers than
by the legislature. Sure of their positions, and with
nothing serious to fear, Cecil and his companions
had many reasons for tempering tyranny with
mercy. When the fanatical party, to whom we
have already alluded, raised the cry of "kill the
caged wolves ! " (i.e. the imprisoned Bishops), they
wisely adopted a milder course, thus advancing their
cause and strengthening their mistress's position
far more than any violence would have done.
Though much constancy was displayed up and
down the country,3 though England would never
have changed at all if force had not been applied,
still, the resistance was, it must be confessed, small.
Unconstitutional pressure brought to bear by the
Crown on a people so childlike in the trust they
reposed in their rulers, so childish in their incapacity
for self-help, had all the evil effect that might have
been expected. The practice of the faith was laid
aside with lamentable rapidity, considering the
tenacity with which it should have been maintained.
1 Pp. 38, 118. * Pp. 126, 127. * Pp. 129, 132, 565.
INTRODUCTION
Section II. Resistance to the Settlement of Religion by
the Crown is considered Treason.
This brings us to the solution of one of the
problems which was indicated at the commence-
ment of this Introduction. Why was it that our
martyrs were falsely accused of treason and dis-
loyalty ? Why were they not charged with having
offended, as they certainly had, against the religion
by law established ? The persecutors had no doubt
many reasons. Some of the most efficacious were
not peculiar to England. It is an ordinary thing
for one who has done, or is about to do an injury
to another, to overwhelm his victim with reproaches,
and ages ago holy Job lamented that the sinner,
even " when there is peace, suspecteth treason."
Religious persecutors, moreover, even in ages much
simpler than the sixteenth century, have generally
been ashamed of alleging the real motives of their
cruelty, and almost always pretend that those
whom they oppress have been guilty of sedition.
" We find this man stirring up the people, and
refusing tribute to Caesar." The Elizabethan
persecutors in particular were especially averse to
confessing the truth in this matter, for none had
decried the persecutions of Mary, or of Alva, or of
Spain, more loudly than they. Their pharasaical
minds were therefore wholly bent on proving that
they were now, not aggressors, but defenders of the
course of justice.
The progress of events, too, naturally led to the
INTRODUCTION
charge of disloyalty being brought against the
Catholics. The schism had grown out of the blind
devotion to the Crown, then so prevalent. In the
case of the greater number at least, fidelity, principle,
even conscience, had been at the sovereign's disposal.
The sovereign could, and did, alter the objects to
which her loyal subjects had previously adhered.
But the change could only be made out of deference,
not out of loyalty. Those who were truly loyal
stood firm to the old objects of allegiance. They
refused to be drawn into schismatical and heretical
excesses, but remained as conservative and sub-
servient as ever. They scorned revolutionary ideas
as proper to Zwinglians and new religionists. In
the previous volume we heard Blessed Edward
Powell in the dialogue defying the heretic Barnes,
What doest thou know
of bate or sedition
of grudge or rebellion
within English region
that the old sort did sow ? 1
Similarly in this volume we hear Father Campion
cry, " The day shall come, O Queen, the day that
shall make it clear as noontide which of the two did
love thee best — the Company of Jesus, or the brood
of Luther." And Persons was not less emphatic in
declaring in a book dedicated to the Queen herself,
that "the Catholique faythe teachethe obedience
more than other religions." 2
But, alas ! Elizabeth and her Ministers had
hardened their hearts. Those only who followed
1 Vol. I. p. 501. « Pp. 339, 343, 344.
her in her revolutionary course were to be styled
loyal, whilst those who were loyal in the true and
unvarying sense of the word, were branded with
the designation of traitors.
Section III. The Northern Rising.
We have noted the comparative mildness with
which the persecuting laws were administered at
the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. This lasted
about ten years, until the flight of Mary Queen
of Scots into England on the i6th of May, 1568.
She was by blood heir to the throne, the " second
person in the kingdom,"1 and it is through her,
not through Elizabeth, that our present reigning
house traces its hereditary right. That Mary's
presence in England did something to animate
the English Catholics cannot be doubted, even
though we know so little about the details. The
conservative party among the Protestants, how-
ever, headed by the Duke of Norfolk, were now
encouraged to attempt the overthrow of Cecil and
the advanced reformers, and the Catholics were in
sympathy with these plans. But whilst they did
nothing, Cecil put the laws in force against the
Catholics with greater and greater stringency, until
on the i4th of November, 1569, the Northern earls
rose in rebellion. Their motives were no doubt
many, but religion predominated, and the Spanish
Ambassador, than whom no one was at that time
more capable of arriving at a broad and true judg-
ment on the matter, declared that they rose because
1 P. 134-
INTRODUCTION
of the enforcement of the laws enjoining attendance
at the Protestant churches.1 For a week the tide of
success flowed with them. Then fortune changed,
and three weeks later not one of the Northerners
maintained the field.
Section IV. The Excommunication.
Three months after the Rising came the excom-
munication of the Queen. Pope Pius V. had not
been unaware of the discontent which had been
fermenting in England, but, — and this is a point
very much to be remembered, — he was far removed
from regular and reliable sources of information.
Letters from the English Catholics to him, and his
answers, might take two, three, or even four months
on their way,2 and thus it was very difficult for him
to know exactly what to do, still more so to choose
the right moment for action. In the year 1568 he
had sent Doctor Nicholas Morton, once prebendary
of York, to report on the state of affairs in England,
and Morton had started back a few months before
the actual outbreak, with the news that an insurrec-
tion was not impossible. But while he was on his
way Sir William Cecil had brought the discontent
prematurely to a head, and the Rising was over and
crushed, before the Pope had so much as heard of
the likelihood of its breaking out.
When he did hear of that probability, he took a
step characteristic of the man and the time. Those
were days in which a wonderful renewal of fervour
was taking place in Rome. The utmost zeal was
1 Spanish Calendar, 1568 — 1579, p. 212. 2 P. 156
INTRODUCTION
being evinced for restoring ancient observance, and
the greatest benefits were resulting from the return
to pristine severity and mediaeval practices. Hence
the idea that the remedy for England was a drastic
measure of primitive discipline. The previous Pope,
Pius IV., had taken the advice of the Catholic powers
as to the excommunication of Elizabeth, and finding
them most hostile to any such measure, had decided
to proceed no further. But Pius V., far less cautious
than Popes usually are, was also, alas ! far too sanguine
in trusting the few English exiles who happened to
be in Rome. He summoned these men to a court
held to inquire into Elizabeth's offences, which were
of course as plain and as grave as they could
possibly be. He thereupon issued his Bull, Regnans
in excelsis, on the 25th of February, 1570, by which
he both excommunicated her and deprived her of
her realm, believing that the sentence would at once
be put into execution. Only after this was done
did he hear of the collapse of the Rising. Thus the
clauses which concerned the deprivation, resulted in
complete failure1 and did actual harm. The excom-
munication in itself, however, did no little good
to the Church at large, and to the Catholics in this
country in particular. For whereas we have seen
that the greatest of all snares for the English
Catholics had been their blind obedience to their
sovereign, even in matters of faith and conscience,
the excommunication of that sovereign did much
1 There were indeed complications in England for a couple of
years after the excommunication, but they had no influence on the
general course of our history. (See The Month, February, 1902.)
INTRODUCTION
to remove the veil from their eyes. It is no mere
coincidence then that soon after the excommunica-
tion Mayne,1 Campion,2 Ford,3 Robert Johnson,4
and Lawrence Johnson5 — to confine ourselves to
those martyrs only of whom we shall treat below —
left all that England could offer to hold them in
Anglicanism, and went abroad to follow their con-
sciences in suffering and poverty.
Section V. The Martyrs of 1570 to 1572.
Coming now to Felton, Storey, Woodhouse,
Percy, whose deaths were connected in one way
or another with the Rising or the excommunica-
tion, we see that their causes involve many more
problems than the lives of the other martyrs do.
One might, for instance, discuss their patriotism
in so far as they championed the old order, which
was being subverted by a monstrous exercise of
royal tyranny. One might draw out parallels
between them and others, such as Hampden, who
are commonly belauded as champions of popular
resistance to the encroachments of the Crown, and
the comparison would be greatly in favour of the
Catholics. But here we are only concerned with
the precise question of their martyrdom. Were
they executed out of the motive of hatred of the
Faith ? Were they persecuted for professing the
Faith, or for performing some act intimately con-
nected with that profession ? On these points, too,
this group of martyrs is somewhat exceptional.
1 P. 209. 2 P. 282. 3 P. 444.
« P. 474- 5 P. 524-
b
INTRODUCTION
For, whereas all the other martyrs were conspicuous
for their inoffensiveness, these four had annoyed
the Queen or opposed her titles or temporal claims.
If we take a partial view of their cases, and fix our
eyes exclusively on their abnormal features, we
may feel a doubt about their claim to the honours
of martyrdom. But it is needless to say that such
a way of looking at them would not only be quite
unfair, it would misrepresent the facts. We cannot
arrive at the truth without considering the cases in
their surroundings ; we must consider these execu-
tions as parts of a cruel persecution.
Let us, for instance, first consider the case of
the Blessed Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumber-
land. He rose in defence of the ancient Faith,
but it is not on that account that he has been
venerated as a martyr. His claim depends on the
courage with which he held to his belief in the hour
of weakness and defeat, and on the animus with
which his life was taken. When so many other
offenders were pardoned on conformity ; when
even clerics who recanted were received again into
favour,1 when offers of life were made to him, if he
too would conform,2 the conclusion becomes ever
clearer and clearer that he should be reckoned
with the sufferers for religion, of whom there were
many at that time.
In Felton's case, if we regard nothing but the
fact of his having set up the Bull of Deposition, we
might remain uncertain about his claim to martyr-
dom. It is not everyone who meets his death while
1 P. 149. a Pp. 172 — 176.
INTRODUCTION xix
executing the sentences of an ecclesiastical court
who is a martyr, for such sentences may and do
provoke many passions besides hatred of the Faith.
Even Catholic princes who would on no account
have tampered with the faith or discipline of the
Church, have been known to execute Papal mes-
sengers who brought them notice of excommunica-
tion, and yet no one pretends that such messengers
deserve to be canonized as martyrs.
But if we enlarge our view, and regard the whole
of the circumstances of Felton's case, we at once
see how different his was from that just described.
He was not executed by a Catholic unwilling to
tamper with the liberties of the Church, but by a
persecutor of the Church eager to extinguish every
single one of its liberties. Nor did either side
regard the exercise of Papal authority in question
as an issue unconnected with the continuance of the
old Faith in this country. It seemed to be the only
remedy in that desperate struggle. Felton took
what seemed the last chance " to secure that the
Pope's Apostolic voice should be heard, and his
Apostolic judgment made known among his
English flock. Death endured for that cause was
true martyrdom."
Elizabeth's Government took a similar view of
the situation. Felton's indictment 2 shows us that
1 P- 13-
2 In the Life of Felton, mention should have been made of the
record of his trial, which is preserved. The chief clauses in the
indictment are that he conspired on the iyth of May, 1570, with one
Cornelius, an Irish cleric, and that on the 24th, "about eleven
xx INTRODUCTION
he was charged with aiding and assisting the
Pope " to assume and usurp power and authority
within this realm of England." " Assume and
usurp," what else do these strong words convey,
except that Papal authority was extinct, and that
Felton meant to restore it ? If this was the point
of view of the Government, they were doing all
that was necessary on their part to provide Felton
with the martyr's palm.
The case of Woodhouse l is liable to an exception
similar to that which was just noticed, though
rather more subtle. He accepted and acted rigidly
upon the mediaeval theories concerning the deposition
of princes by Popes. But, as was said just now,
not every one who may be put to death because he
accepts and acts upon a sentence of deprivation is
necessarily a martyr. Indeed it may be doubted
whether Rome, so considerate of the usual prejudices
of temporal rulers, ever has declared, or ever would
declare such a one to be a martyr upon this ground
only, unless there be many other causes making for
o'clock at night, he affixed to the gate of the Bishop of London's
Palace a copy, printed on paper, of a Bull of Pius the Fifth, Bishop
of Rome, which Bull contained the impious and most wicked decla-
ratory sentence, in which he assumes and usurps power and
authority within this Kingdom of England, &c., and declares that
the Queen has been lawfully deprived," &c. And " further, on the
27th of June, by a writing signed with his own hand, he affirmed
all the matters contained in the Bull, &c., and declared the Queen
ought not to be Queen of England," &c. " Friday, 4 August, at
Guildhall, Felton pleaded Not guilty. Verdict, Guilty. Sentence as
usual in cases of High Treason." (Fourth Report of the Deputy Keeper
of the Rolls, 1843, p. 265.)
1 Pp. 187 — 203.
INTRODUCTION
martyrdom. In Woodhouse's case there are many
additional reasons. The persecutor's animus was
shown beforehand by having confined him to prison
indefinitely for the exercise of spiritual functions
only. Nor could an unprejudiced statesman have
taken mortal offence at the very gentle way in
which Woodhouse uttered his warnings.1 Moreover,
when one reads the whole story, one perceives that
it was not so much the lengths to which Woodhouse
went, which gave offence, as the constancy with
which he " defended the Pope's authority " and
maintained that "the Pope hath to do in this realm."2
It was this profession, not the amiable eccentricity
with which he urged it, which was the true cause
of his death, and death for that cause is surely
martyrdom.3
Storey's case is clearer still. It might indeed be
alleged that he had irritated the Protestants in
Mary's time, and that he was executed because of
his personal unpopularity. But this is a very inade-
quate account of the matter. His execution of the
law in Mary's time was neither unconstitutional4
nor gratuitously cruel, indeed his refutation of the
charge of cruelty is a very strong one,5 and in his
trial no legal hold could be taken of him in this
matter. It does not appear that he ever denied
1 Pp. 191—194.
2 Pp. 194, 195.
3 I have searched the Coram Rege Rolls for the record of
Woodhouse's trial, but hitherto in vain. We do not yet seem to
know his indictment.
4 P. 33-
5 Pp. 89—91.
INTRODUCTION
the Queen's power,1 or ever positively offended her.
But he was a representative of the old order, and a
conspicuous man among the Catholic refugees.
He was brought home by fraud and violence, and
then immolated by exalte fanatics to spread terror
among his co-religionists, to show how strong
Elizabeth was to punish, how powerless Spain to pro-
tect. The moment was one of Protestant triumph,
twelve years had passed since the occasion of offence.
The charge now alleged was trumpery, even if it had
been true. If the rest of the persecution was due to
odium fidei, what reason is there for doubting that
this act was inspired by the same motive ? 2
Finally, with regard to these four martyrs it is
well to remember that, as has been explained in the
previous volume,3 the decree, by which their cultus
is permitted, is still liable to amendment and is not
final, and that Bishop Challoner for prudential
reasons omitted them from his lists.
Section VI. Increase of Missionary Zeal and
of Persecution in 1580.
The excommunication was one of the chief
means of staying the tide of defection in England,
1 Sander, indeed, interpreted his refusal to plead before
Elizabeth's judges, as evidence that he rejected the authority of
one who was excommunicated. This may be a good inference, or it
may not, but at all events it is only an inference. Storey's own
explanation (p. 88) is different, and sufficient in itself. This should
be borne in mind while reading Sander's resume on p. 82.
2 Besides the copy of Storey's indictment mentioned on p. 77, a
reference may be added to the complete record of his trial, on the
Coram Rege Roll, 13 Elizabeth, Easter, pt. ii. rot. vii.
3 Vol. I. p. xix.
INTRODUCTION xxiii
but until a new fervour was breathed into the
persecuted, terror-stricken Catholics their persever-
ance was still insecure. The first step towards a
reorganization was the foundation of the English
Seminary at Douay in 1568, and the sending of
missionaries in I574-1 The next year, 1575, the year
of Jubilee, was marked by an awakening of fervour
in all classes. The pilgrim spirit becomes wonder-
fully strong from this time,2 and also zeal for the
missions, which reached its height with the change
of the old English hospice in Rome into a
Seminary under the direction of the Jesuits, for
training priests for England.3 This was accom-
plished in 1578. A year later, Dr. Allen obtained
the mission of the Jesuits to England, and Fathers
Persons and Campion set out for England about
the I7th of April, 1580. Their party had increased
to thirteen, and included, besides alumni from
the English College, Rome, several grey-headed
chaplains who had belonged to the former hospice,
and even old Bishop Goldwell. At the same time
the Douay College (now at Rheims) was sending in
missionaries at a rate which under the circum-
stances well deserves to be called rapid. Thus
we may consider this period as the golden age of
missionary effort.
Section VII. Reasons for the Increase of Persecution.
(a) Sir Francis Walsingham.
These efforts were met by a notable increase in
the persecution. It has been already stated that
1 Pp. 204—207. 2 Pp. 475, 539, 569. 3 Pp. 360—362.
INTRODUCTION
the persecution was decided more by the Ministers
than by the laws. The Machiavelli of the period
now under discussion was Sir Francis Walsingham.
He was not indeed so original nor so powerful a man
as Sir William Cecil, but he accepted Cecil's policy,
and exceeded him in fanatical earnestness, an
earnestness which hardened him against scruple
and pity. His object was to keep the Queen and
the realm in a state of alarm, until the " bosom
serpent," as he called Queen Mary, had been killed
and the Catholics were utterly crushed. He, the
Earl of Leicester, and others of their party, were
labouring for this end during the period covered by
our volume, and a year or two later they succeeded
in accomplishing their purpose.
(b) Errors of Catholic Politicians.
Walsingham's plans were assisted by various
errors on the part of the Catholic politicians. The
gravest of these was the expedition to Ireland of 1579,
in which Pope Gregory himself was compromised.
Elizabeth's pirates and her policy in Flanders had
enraged public feeling against her on the Continent,
and when two adventurers, Thomas Stukely, an
Englishman, and James Fitzgerald, an Irishman,
asked for a small force of ships and men, with
which to vex her in Ireland, they were received
with friendly neutrality both in France and Spain,
and the good-natured, but impolitic Gregory furnished
them with vessels and munitions of war. Stukely
perished without achieving anything, but Fitzgerald
succeeded in landing in Ireland, where he lit up a
INTRODUCTION
civil war which lasted for some time. He was
accompanied by a notable English churchman,
Dr. Nicholas Sander, who went, not exactly as a
Papal Nuncio, but at least as some sort of Papal
representative. This expedition caused Elizabeth
much annoyance, and some passing fears, but no
serious alarm, and, as we see from the French
Ambassador's despatches, she affected to despise the
whole enterprise.
The excuse for the Pope's adviser, the Cardinal
of Como, who was chiefly responsible for the under-
taking, is this — that when it was decided upon, in
1577, there seemed to be no chance of its injuring
missionary efforts in England. Nobody then fore-
saw the great good that the Seminary priests would
soon achieve. On the other hand the expedi-
tion was carried out so slowly that, as Father
Persons tells us, he and Campion did not hear of
Sander's doings in Ireland till they were at Rheims,
in June, 1580, and the news caused so much dismay
that many persons advised that the Jesuit mission
to England should be given up. From all this it
follows that Mr. Simpson and other writers who
believed that the Papal Government sent warships
to Ireland simultaneously with missionaries to
England, were under a misapprehension. The
warships were sent, because there seemed no
opening for messengers of peace. It was a grave
mistake, however, even then ; and a worse mistake
still not to have recalled them when the spiritual
ambassadors were sent forth. The result of per-
severing with both enterprises was to give plausibility
INTRODUCTION
to Walsingham's contention that the preaching of
the old Faith was a political propaganda.
(c) The Fictitious Papal League.
The Irish expedition, however, was at most a
very small affair, and did not impress the public
very much. Walsingham therefore endeavoured to
excite the Queen and the public by more stirring
news. There was a great league, he declared,
between the Pope, the King of Spain, and the
Grand Duke of Florence, for the destruction of
English Protestantism.1 Rumours of Papal Leagues
had been frequently raised among German Pro-
testants, in order to induce the reforming princes
to co-operate more closely, but they had been rare in
England. Owing to the Irish expedition the Papal
League rumour now won some credit, and had its
effect in deepening the suspicion against the Catholic
priests. The first proclamation against Persons and
Campion, that of the I5th of July, 1580, denounced
the missioners as engaged in its support. It is also
objected against the martyrs as evidence justifying
their execution.2
(d) Other Reasons.
The Irish Expedition and the Papal League
were, if one may say so, Walsingham's trumps, but
he also had in his hand a number of useful small
cards of the same suit. He could recall the
cruelties of Alva, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew,
1 See The Month, March, 1901, and March, 1902.
2 P. 508.
INTRODUCTION
and the attempts on the life of the Prince of Orange,
and he drew the unjustifiable conclusion that Eliza-
beth's life was never safe from her faithful and
inoffensive Catholic subjects.
After 1581 the young King of Scotland showed
signs of restiveness under the galling yoke which
Protestantism had placed on his shoulders. Once
or twice it really seemed as if he might have drawn
the forces of Scotland into opposition to England,
and if he had succeeded in this, considerable changes
might indeed have followed. But these moments of
danger were but few, and they ceased altogether in
1584. The vacillations, however, had only made
Walsingham's party more eager than ever to get
their work over and settled.
Even Elizabeth's flirtations with the Due
d'Alencon were made to assist the projects of the
Puritan politicians. The further the marriage
negotiations were carried, the more irritated did
the fanatics become, and the more ready were
Elizabeth's Ministers to sacrifice Catholics in order
to propitiate them. The resolution to execute
Campion seems to have been finally taken for this
reason.
Section VIII. Persecution at its height.
Thus from the year 1580, a change is perceptible.
Hitherto the persecutors had not done their worst.
They had so fashioned their laws, that Catholicism,
as they thought, would be sure to be extinguished
sooner or later. Now the intention was to crush
out the Church at once. The Statute of 23 Elizabeth
INTRODUCTION
imposed on Recusants the ruinous fine of twenty
pounds per lunar month ; it made reconciliation with
the Church high treason, with grave penalties for
all who aided the conversion ; it also put the severest
penalties upon keeping Catholic tutors or school-
masters. Proclamations were published against the
entertainers of Jesuits and Seminarists, and all
students in foreign colleges were summoned home.
Worst of all was the pest of spies, informers, and
pursuivants, who were now turned loose on the
unfortunate Catholics, for whom there was nowhere
rest, or safety, or escape. Their misfortunes had
entered on a new phase. A war of utter extermina-
tion had been commenced against them, at the
very time they were beginning to hope that they
might regain some of the ground they had lost.
The increase in cruelty was partly intended as a
counter-move to the revival of missionary zeal, and
was partly due to political occurrences, which were
used or abused in order to represent the missionaries
as political traitors. As the persecutors had already
perverted the popular conception of loyalty, it was
now no longer impossible to take the lives of some
of the holiest and noblest of their fellow-countrymen
on pretences as absurd as that of the plot of Rome
and Rheims.
Section IX. The Procedure of Martyrdom.
The reader will notice that the martyrdoms of
the missionary priests, owing to the uniformity of
the laws under which they suffered, were in many
INTRODUCTION
things similar one to another. It will be worth
while to enumerate these points of likeness, for they
will show us how the different lives may be profitably
compared and contrasted one with another.
Of the life previous to the arrest we know too
often very little beyond the entries in the college
registers, which give us the dates of arrival,
departure, and the receipt of Holy Orders. The
life on the mission was in those days passed in
secrecy. It is rare that we know any details what-
ever about it. The martyr does not generally come
under observation until his arrest. This might take
place in a great variety of ways. Frequently, in
later times generally, it was the result of a syste-
matic search, which might be carried out by a
considerable force,1 and might sometimes last for
several days.2 Other arrests were due to the merest
chance. Hanse was suspected because he was
wearing French boots.3 Briant was taken during
a search made for Father Persons.4 The identity
of Lawrence Richardson was mistaken until his
death.5 Others were captured at posts of special
danger. Kirby and Cottam (the latter under
peculiarly interesting circumstances) at landing ; 6
Sherwin while preaching ; 7 Hanse, Lacey, and
Kirkman while visiting prisoners.8 When arrested
the victim was searched, often to the very skin,9
robbed of all he possessed,10 and led off to prison
1 Pp. 5, 212. ! P. 338.
3 P. 249. * P. 402. 5 P. 532.
6 Pp. 502, 542. 7 p. 380. 8 Pp. 252, 570, 637.
9 P. 213. " Pp. 242, 436, 638.
INTRODUCTION
with some demonstration of triumph. Campion
and his companions had their faces to their horses'
tails, and on his hat was the placard, " Campion,
the seditious Jesuit." l
After committal the prisoners were fettered,
sometimes amongst the felons in the common gaol.2
It is recorded in several instances that the martyrs
welcomed these insignia of Christ with notable pride
and contentment.3 The chains were sometimes
doubled, sometimes fastened down, sometimes so
galling that the hand had to be used to relieve the
weight, sometimes used as means by which the poor
sufferer might be " tugged and lugged " from one
place to another.4 Amongst the miseries of prison
are mentioned thirst, nakedness, starvation, depriva-
tion of beds, confinement in darkness, in underground
dungeons, amongst rats, and over stinking drains.5
For " refusing to uncover when heretics said grace
at table, Woodhouse was set in the stocks."6
Under Henry VIII. the treatment had been more
cruel still. Blessed Edward Powell complained
that his keeper " was not content to set me in the
chain, but now he hath taken from me my own bed,
and hath tied me so that I cannot lie down on the
boards, but am hanged in the collar, and do lie in
the stocks with gyves on my legs."7
1 Pp- 339. 356- n- 5-
2 PP- 217, 539, 593-
J Pp. 196, 383, 384, 572.
4 Pp. 197, 257, 406, 612.
5 Pp. 240, 242, 243, 403, 404, 406, 409, 483, 531, 587, Gil.
6 P. 190.
7 Vol. I. p. 493. Cases of death while in prison occur pp. 159,
176, 646.
INTRODUCTION
Then came the examinations. Though chiefly
directed to the inculpation of others, it was also a
primary object to draw from the prisoner evidence
tending to his own incrimination. Examinations
were generally repeated more than once, and torture
was frequently applied to "bolt out"1 evidence,
which the victim wished to withhold, or was
suspected of withholding. The torture generally
consisted of the rack,2 sometimes of Skevington's
irons, popularly called "The Scavenger's Daughter."3
The only rack we read of was that in the Tower of
London, and it does not seem to have been used
without the order of the Privy Council.4 The
torture of Briant by needles5 is a solitary case;
perhaps the idea was borrowed from the procedure
against witches. Blows are not often mentioned.6
Hanse is reported to have been hung up by the feet.
Whilst on this topic it may not be amiss to add
that, atrocious as these tortures were, we must not
be too superlative in our denunciations of the
persecutor for using them. It must be remembered
that the manners of the times were very hard and
very rough, that torture was in use in most, if not
in all other countries, and that it was here employed
seldom, except during certain outbursts of savagery.
What aggravated the abuse was that the English
law clearly forbade it altogether ; and that English-
men were even then naturally inclined to humanity,
and not liable to fits of violent anger, to scares, to
1 Pp. 6, 404. J Pp. 6, 242, 385, 404, 433, 447, 467, 483.
3 Pp. 385. 386, 507, 550. * Pp. 5, 75, 340, 343, 404, 433, 483.
5 P. 406. 6 Pp. 198, 254, 550.
INTRODUCTION
morbid fanaticism, which have general!)' occasioned
the application of torture abroad. Nor had public
feeling been brutalized by prolonged war or any
pressing danger of it. The tortures were applied
calmly by the Privy Council warrant, in order to
win evidence that would bolster up the monstrous
fiction that the Catholics were traitors by reason of
their religion. The worst crime of the Elizabethan
persecutors was their hypocrisy.
After the examination by the civil magistrates
came the disputations with the Protestant ministers.
In the cases here recorded the victory remained with
the priests, but the harsh treatment of the martyrs
was sometimes aggravated through their successes.1
In one case the meeting leads to an increase of
humanity, in another to a conversion.2 From time
to time the martyrs were dragged to Protestant
sermons, or had to be present at prayers, to which
they offered such opposition as they could.3
In ordinary course the trial would then follow.
Up to the end of the time covered by this volume
there was no statute under which missionaries as
such could be executed,4 and in order to put them
to death it was necessary to concoct some bogus
plot, as for Hanse, Payne, Campion, and his
companions, or else to maintain that acceptance of
Orders and Jurisdiction from the Pope and still
more the reconciling of others to the Church was
equivalent to a renunciation of fealty to the Queen,
and the seduction of her subjects from their
i P. 515. 2 Pp. 341, 612. 3 Pp. 189, 386, 508, 551.
4 Pp. 438, 574, 641.
INTRODUCTION
allegiance.1 The latter point was legalized by the
statute of 23 Elizabeth, 1581, but the former did not
become the law until 1585.
As to the use of evidence the fuller account we
have of Campion's trial is interesting. It seems that
more than usual pains were taken in this case to
produce proofs of guilt, but the futility of the
testimony adduced is remarkable.2
Another noteworthy point is the use of con-
fessions or self-accusations. Sherwood, for instance,
was questioned by his judges, whether, if the excom-
munication of Elizabeth was valid, she was deposed;
and — being forced to speak by every means that
tyranny could employ, including the rack, — had
uttered an affirmative answer, which, however, he
immediately begged to retract. It was not pretended
that he was in the habit of uttering or disseminating
these opinions, but the solitary fact of his having
uttered them at that definite time and place before
the Commissioners was objected to him as treason,
a capital offence, and for it he was executed.3 This
case, with that of Nelson and Hanse,* seem to
stand by themselves. As a rule the confession was
treated not as treason in itself, but as evidence for
something else (say for priesthood, or reconciling to
the Church), which was accounted a mortal offence.
After condemnation the severities of imprison-
ment were often increased,5 and it seems to have been
1 Pp- 254. 574. 585. 592, 616.
2 Pp. 389, 437, 484, 509, and especially the case of Cottarn,
551—554-
3 P. 246, compared with Acts of English Martyrs, pp. 14, 17.
4 Pp. 226, 254, 257. 5 Pp. 419, 454, 493, 510.
C II.
INTRODUCTION
a common thing for the prisoners to be thrown into
the low and foul dungeon called " Limbo " before
they were executed.1 Catholic friends occasionally
managed to send in letters, and even the means to
say Mass.2 It was rare that such things were done
in the Tower, or even in Newgate, but Elizabeth's
officials were almost always open to bribes, and
in the smaller and less severe prisons, e.g., the Fleet
or the Clink, some alleviation seems to have been
generally obtainable. Only in the case of Storey
do we read of a priest being admitted to prepare
a dying man to meet his doom.3
We now come to a matter somewhat difficult to
explain, a method of defaming victims which was
afterwards regularly knowTn as that of "the bloody
question." To understand it one must bear in mind
that, while our martyrs were freely accused of being
traitors, when they were tried for such charges,
however slight and one-sided the inquiry might be,
their innocence of treason was always more manifest
than before. An attempt was therefore made to
draw from them some expression of opinion which
would cause an outcry against them, and under its
cover to proceed to their actual execution. They
were plied with catch questions, the first of which
would be more or less in this form : " Would you
not accept freedom for yourself and your Church if
you could ? " The examinee was bound to answer
this in the affirmative, under pain of condemning
himself as irrational. Then came the insidious
1 Pp. 229, 587. A " pit " is described pp. 408, 409, and n.
2 Pp. 415, 422. 3 Pp. 83, 8C.
INTRODUCTION
sequel, " Would you accept it from a Papal
force ? "
Then there was no escape from offending the
prejudices both of the Queen and of the Puritan
mob. It was no use to say that you would fight
against the Pope when he was the unjust aggressor,
for the Puritans considered him as Antichrist,
always to be resisted, and Elizabeth held that
neither the Church nor conscience had any liberties
which could be justly defended against her.
This insidious test was applied to seven of our
martyrs under the form of the six questions.1 The
last of these was, " If the Pope, or any other, by his
authoritie doe invade this realme, which part ought
a good subject of England to take ? " The martyrs
answered, that when the circumstances should
occur, they would do what should be right, or what
other good Catholics did, &c., and their execution was
proceeded with. The iniquity lay, not in putting an
awkward question to a religious opponent, but in
putting it with a murderous intent. That one con-
troversialist intent on victory should ask another
the most invidious questions he can think of, will
cause no one any wonder. But to compel your
controversial adversary to give an answer satisfactory
to yourself, and to kill him if he fails, this is gross
tyranny. The course of the Elizabethan perse-
cutors was hardly a whit less iniquitous. They
condemned their victims to death without reason,
but spared those whose replies on an irrelevant
controversial question seemed satisfactory to them-
1 Pp. 449—452.
INTRODUCTION
selves. That such irrelevant matters should have
been raised at all, was an obvious violation of the
course of justice, and was, as such, eloquently
denounced by Campion.1
For, whereas the martyrs were put to death on
a definite charge of treason, these questions were
intended, not to test their fealty, but to obscure it,
and to ensure that the fanatical crowd, who heard
the answers read from the gallows, should mis-
understand their case and drown the voices of
sympathizers by clamours for their blood.2
The martyrs' last chance of life being lost by
their answers to "the bloody question," they were
in time led out to die. The warrant for those
confined in the Tower had to be signed, it is said,
by the Queen, and a singular rumour connected
with this is recorded at p. 449. They were drawn
to the gallows upon a hurdle or a sledge,3 to which
they were pinioned, two on one hurdle when there
were several to be executed at the same time.4
A prominent feature in the cortege was the Pro-
testant parson, whose rude disputativeness was
doubtless intended to prevent the dying priests from
speaking or praying with peace.5 Friends, however,
could also now approach, and during the via dolorosa
sometimes tried to speak or make signs to them.6
1 P. 452.
2 For further discussion of these topics, see pp: 342 — 344, 449,
450.
3 Pp. 9 (hurdle or dray), 85 (sledge), 219, 231, 351, 454, 459,
576- 587. 594. 628, 645.
4 Pp. 393- 597-
5 Pp. 8, 471, 590, 614, 630, &c.
6 Pp. 351, 454 (mutual confession), 576.
INTRODUCTION
Arrived at the gallows they were stripped to their
shirts, in order that the quartering might be pro-
ceeded with more easily afterwards.
They then ascended the cart, when the execu-
tions were at the London Tyburn. Here there
were not one but three cross-pieces, fastened in a
triangle, each angle supported on an upright about
twelve feet high. This " pair of gallows made in
triangular manner " had been put up new to give
solemnity to the execution of Storey.1 Nooses were
tied to the cross-beams, and the person to be
hanged was driven in the cart under the noose
intended for him. When it had been fastened
round his throat, the cart was driven away.2 After
the Assizes in those brutal times sixteen to twenty
corpses were often left hanging on the same day
from " Tyburn tree." At the smaller places of
execution, away from London, the martyr mounted
a ladder, while the rope was being fastened, then
the ladder was turned, or he thrown off it.
A good deal of speaking generally took place
between the fastening of the rope, and the drive off
of the cart. On occasion of the martyrdoms of
the 3Oth of May, 1582, Sheriff Martin offered pardon
to any who would conform, but this was rarely
done in explicit terms. These offers, however, were
inspired not by clemency, but by the desire to throw
upon the sufferers the responsibility for their own
deaths. In the same spirit, they were regularly
asked "at least" to beg the Queen's forgiveness.
This the martyrs ever refused to do,3 and the refusal
i P. 85. 2 Pp. 93, 472, &c. J Pp. 10, 198, 440, 469, &c.
INTRODUCTION
was held by the worshippers of royalty to be in
itself arrant treason, though the dying men, even
with their last breath, made striking declarations of
their loyalty to the Queen.1 Then the martyr would
be expected by the people to make a speech. Some-
times he did so, sometimes the officials interfered.
At last he was generally left some minutes to pray,
but if he used the Latin prayers so familiar to
Catholic priests, the ministers and people would cry
to him to pray in English.2 The last words used
by the martyrs are wonderfully devout and full of
significance. In later times, they more frequently
murmured the Jesu Psalter, and the custom is obser-
vable also in the Lives now under consideration.3
The final butchery was too hideous to describe. In
one case the quartering was dispensed with,4 but in
others the last tortures even exceeded the severity
of the sentence.5
After the martyrdom, the quarters were set on
the city gates and the heads on London Bridge, or
other conspicuous places. The Catholics generally
succeeded in securing some of the precious relics,
often at great risk to themselves.
1 Pp. 260, 488, 496, 519, 617, &c.
2 Pp. 198, 352, 441, 457 »., 521. In the (Protestant) account
of Storey, he appears to have prayed with Protestants, p. 91.
Otherwise the martyrs were careful to pray with Catholics only,
pp. 198, 231, 232, 260, 265, 457 »., 560, 631.
3 Pp. 10, 395.
4 P. 597-
5 P. 85.
INTRODUCTION
Section X. Authorities.
Besides the ordinary references to the provenance
of quotations, there will be found at the end of each
Life a description of the authorities which especially
concern it. It will therefore only be necessary to
speak here about those general sources, a knowledge
of which has been elsewhere presumed.
The most important records for the history of
the martyrs were those originally preserved in the
Seminaries of Douay and Rome, but which are now
in great measure printed, or dispersed, or lost. The
archives of the Archbishop of Westminster and
those of Stonyhurst College contain most of the
manuscripts v/hich survive, but there are others at
Oscott, the English College, Rome, and elsewhere.
The above-mentioned records were used by
Cardinal Allen when drawing up the first martyr-
ology, which was published anonymously, under
the title Briefe Historic of twelve Reverend Priests
[Rheims, I582].1 This was translated into Latin,
somewhat amplified, and continued till 1585, by
Father John Bridgwater and his fellow-workers,2
under the title Concertatio Ecclesice Anglicancz, of
which there were editions in 1583, 1588, and 1594.
This work was translated into Spanish and again
amplified and brought up to date by Fray Diego
Yepes, Jeronimite, and afterwards Bishop of Tarra-
cona, in his Historia Particular de la persecucion de
Inglaterra, 1599. 3
1 There is a copy in the British Museum (catalogued under
" Catholic Faith "), 4707, aa. 6.
2 P. 634. 3 Cf. p. 597.
xl INTRODUCTION
In the next century we have the catalogues of
Dr. Thomas Worthington (1614), and of Richard
Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon (still unpublished).
Though important for some subsequent martyrs, they
add little to our knowledge of the earlier sufferers
now under consideration. The most important of
all later writers is Bishop Challoner, whose Memoirs
of Missionary Priests [1741], is still deservedly popular
amongst us. Challoner continued the martyrology
to the end of the persecution period, and made use
of all the then known material, both printed and
manuscript, with singular accuracy and sobriety of
judgment.
Since Challoner's time a very important source
of information has become available, the Public
Record Office, which contains many original pieces
referring to our martyrs. These have been " calen-
dared," but are not yet published in full. The
Calendars for this period (in unfortunate contrast to
those for the reign of Henry VIII.) are very meagre,
and presume that the reader has access to the
original manuscripts.
Coming now to general printed sources, we have
Anthony aWood's A thence Oxonienses, not only learned,
but also noteworthy as the first attempt of a non-
Catholic to write the Lives of the Martyrs without
prejudice. Dodd's Church History is rich in material,
though its accuracy is not to be implicitly trusted.
In modern times we have the works of Mr. Richard
Simpson, who was the first to make extensive use
of the Record Office papers.1 Mr. Joseph Gillow's
1 P. 354-
INTRODUCTION xli
Dictionary of English Catholics is indispensable to
students, and Father Richard Stanton's Menology of
England and Wales contains in brief a great deal
of information and many useful references. The
Dictionary of National Biography, notwithstanding
certain defects, is for the history of our martyrs, as
for the rest of English History, one of the most
important works of the nineteenth century. Brother
Henry Foley's voluminous Records of the English
Province of the Society of Jesus is valuable for the
large number of papers quoted and persons men-
tioned. The Records concern not Jesuits only, but
Catholics of every class.
Section XI. Writers of the Present Volume.
As the table of contents will show, the majority
of these Lives has been written by the late Father
Edward S. Keogh. The task of revising and bringing
them up to date has, as the reader will see, been
most ably discharged by the Editor, Dom Bede
Camm. His ill-health somewhat retarded the publi-
cation of the volume, and the mere fact of my having
written this Introduction in his stead — (I should
add that I am also responsible for a share in the
correction of the proofs and some other collabora-
tion)— is in itself an indication that his unfitness
for work was serious and prolonged. Happily a
change for the better has at last taken place, and
I may now congratulate him on his recovery.
The thoroughness of the work speaks for itself,
and will, I trust, enable it to rank as a standard
xlii INTRODUCTION
authority on the Lives of our Martyrs. When we
compare this edition of the Lives with the last
standard edition of them, that of Dr. Challoner, we
find not only that the bulk has increased five-fold,
but also that the information contained is multiplied
an even greater number of times. Every effort,
moreover, has been made to give or to indicate all
that is known about each martyr, except in the case
of Campion, where omissions were inevitable. This
task was the more difficult seeing that so much of
the material was still inedited. I will conclude by
expressing the hope in the name of all cultores
martyrum that our recently formed " Catholic Record
Society " will ere long undertake the task of bringing
out a complete collection of these valuable but
inedited papers, to which might well be added the
extremely rare and indispensable printed tracts, such
as the often quoted Brief e Historic of twelve Reverend
Priests, of which there is perhaps not a single copy
in any Catholic library.
The work is concluded by an Index the fulness
and lucidity of which will be welcome to all
readers, and especially to those who know best
what good index-work is. In their names I heartily
thank Miss Gunning, who has spent an infinity of
labour and skill in its compilation.
J. H. POLLEN, S.J.
I.
THE BLESSED JOHN FELTON.
London, St. Paul's Churchyard, 8 August, 1570.
DURING the latter part of 1569 formal proceedings
were carried on at Rome against Elizabeth. She
had undoubtedly deserved the censures of the Holy
See by her tyranny and persecution, and above
all because she had forced her realm into heresy
and had refused all communication with the
Supreme Pastor. Evidence was given against her
by Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph, Maurice Clenock,
Bishop-Elect of Bangor, Dr. Nicholas Morton, pre-
bendary of York, and a number of other ecclesiastics,
and at length sentence of excommunication and
deposition was pronounced against her by the holy
Pontiff St. Pius V., and published in a Bull dated
the 25th of February, 1569-70.
Elizabeth and her ministers affected indifference
to the Pope's sentence. There is, however, quite
sufficient evidence that whatever she may have
thought of its spiritual effects, she was by no means
indifferent to its political results. In the Europe of
the sixteenth century there were still Catholic
powers who might be ready to execute the sentence
B II.
BLESSED JOHN FELTON
of deposition which was in those days the corollary
of the excommunication, and the insurrection which
she had just quenched in blood was proof that a
Protestant and persecuting Government did not as
yet rest on a secure basis in England.
It is easy then to understand the sensation
created in London when, with the morning light
of Thursday, May the 25th (the feast of Corpus
Christi),1 the Bull of Excommunication was found
fastened to the gates of the Bishop of London's
palace beside St. Paul's Cathedral. There for several
hours it was seen and read and even copied by a
great many persons.
Vigorous steps were at once taken to find out
the doer of this daring deed. A general search of
known Catholic houses in and near London was
soon rewarded by the discovery of a copy of the
Bull in the chambers of a lawyer in Lincoln's Inn,
a well-known Catholic. He was absent at the time,
but was soon secured. The methods of Elizabeth's
reign were unceremonious. He was racked without
any tedious forms of law, and under the agony
confessed that he had received the copy from his
friend, Mr. Felton.2
1 Dixon points out that "it is curious that three dates have been
given for Felton's exploit." Strype gives March 2 ; Stow gives
May 25, and Catholic writers give June 2, Corpus Christi day.
Dixon adds, " Undoubtedly it was June," and refers to the letter of
de Guaras quoted below. (Vol. vi. p. 270.) Lingard gives May 15
as the date. Corpus Christi day in 1570 fell on May 25.
2 A Spanish agent, Don Antonio de Guaras, wrote as
follows, June 17, 1570 (Spanish Calendar, 1568 — 1579, p. 251) : "The
declaration of the Pope against the Queen has been posted on the
Bishop of London's gate, which has caused great sorrow to the bad
BLESSED JOHN F ELTON
The Blessed John Felton was a well-known and
wealthy Catholic. He was of a Norfolk family, but
he lived at Bermondsey Abbey, near Southwark, a
mansion built a generation before on the site and
out of the materials of a great Cluniac monastery.1
His wife had been the playmate of the Queen, when
they were both children, and afterwards a maid of
honour to Queen Mary. He is described as a man
of short stature, dark complexion ; and an ardent
excitable temperament, — stirred chiefly, as friend
and foe alike declare, by whatever touched the
interests of religion. His courage and zeal were so
well known that when it was thought desirable
that the excommunication should be published in
England he was asked to undertake the dangerous
people and much delight to the godly, who are convinced that as a
consequence of it, a redress for their evils will follow by the arms
of Christian Princes, since this declaration can only have been made
by the consent of such Princes, and especially of his Majesty. The
first results of the declaration had been the persecution and
imprisonment of Catholics ; but the Council finding them constant,
and that some people of position were passing over to Spain and
Flanders to escape the ban of His Holiness, the Queen had ordered
that the Catholics should not be persecuted for their religion. This
however was only the result of fear, as her heart is much corrupted,
and she herself had answered the Pope's declaration in Latin verse,
scoffing at the apostolic authority, saying that the boat of St. Peter
should never enter a port of hers, and other heresies of a like
nature."
1 The monastery was granted by Henry VIII. to Sir Robert
Southwell in 1541. He sold it to Sir Thomas Pope, who threw
down the church and part of the monastery and built the mansion,
and then re-sold it to Sir Robert Southwell in 1555. It does not
appear whether it had become Blessed John Felton's property. But
later it belonged to the Earl of Sussex, who was living there in 1578
and died there in 1583. (Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. v. p. 93.)
BLESSED JOHN FELTON
task. His daughter, in a MS. relation1 still extant,
declares that "the danger of such an employment
which he took for an act of virtue, daunted him not
a whit. Whereupon promising his best endeavours
in that behalf, he had the Bull delivered him at
Calais, and after the receipt thereof came presently
to London, where being assisted with one Lawrence
Webb,2 doctor of the civil and Canon Laws, the five
and twentieth day of May, 1570, betwixt two and
three of the clock in the morning he set it upon the
gate of the Bishop of London his palace." Sander3
tells us that his companion — he does not name him,
for he wrote in the following year, and it would not
have been prudent — entreated him at once to fly
from the country as he was about to do himself;
but Felton refused ; the grace of martyrdom was
stirring within him, and he declared that by God's
grace he was ready for whatever might happen.
The trial of his constancy was not long delayed.
At an early hour, on the morning after his friend's
racking, the neighbourhood was roused by the clang
of arms and the tramp of soldiers. The abbey was
1 This MS. is preserved in the Archives of the see of West-
minster, vol. ii. p. 3. It is headed, Ex relatione D. Francisco Salisburiz
filia ipsius Martyris, accepta ab ejus ore per G. Ferrarum, Presb. an. 1627.
An English translation of the document has been printed in
Pollen's Acts of English Martyrs, pp. 208 — 212.
2 Dr. Webb was ordained priest in Queen Mary's reign. On
Elizabeth's accession he went abroad and was one of the most
respected of the exiles. He was for many years professor of Moral
Theology and Sacred Ceremonies at Douay and Rheims, and after
keeping his full jubilee of priesthood, died at Douay, January 14,
1608. (Dodd, ii. p. 382.)
3 De Visibili Monarchia, p. 734. (ist Edition.)
BLESSED JOHN F ELTON
quickly surrounded by five hundred halberdiers,
with their officers, headed by the Lord Chief
Justice, the Lord Mayor, and the two Sheriffs.
The martyr and his wife, drawn to a window by
the noise of the armed men, saw them preparing
to break in the gate. Mrs. Felton fell down in a
swoon, but the brave and courteous gentleman
called to them from the window " to have patience,
saying he knew they came for him, and he would
come down unto them," which he did, himself
opening the door, and bidding them welcome. He
was immediately arrested, and remained a prisoner
nearly three months. Both at his apprehension
and at his trial1 he said he would save all further
trouble by acknowledging that it was he who had
posted up the Bull, and also that as he held the
Pope to be the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, if
it really came from him it ought to be duly
venerated. But in spite of his open acknowledg-
ment of the act, he was three times racked with the
vain hope of extracting from him admissions which
might compromise others.
The entry of the Council Order for his torture
is as follows : 2
" 25th Jun>s, 1570.
" A letter to Sir Thomas Wroth and others, her
Majesty's Commissioners for the examination of
the Bull. Where by their letters it appeareth that
John Felton being charged by William Mellowes
both for the having of the printed Bull and speech
1 Sander, ibid. 2 Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, vol. vii. p. 373.
BLESSED JOHN FELTON
also with the Spanish Ambassador he utterly denieth
it and will in no wise confess the truth. For the
boulting out of the truth thereof their Lordships
think it convenient that he be delivered to the
Lieutenant of the Tower,1 whereby he may be
brought to the place of torture and so put in fear
thereof. And if they shall perceive him to be
obstinate and will in no wise confess that which is
to be demanded of him, that then to spare not to
lay him upon it, to the end he may feel such smart
and pains thereof as to their discretion shall be
thought convenient."2
A period of over two months followed, during
which every effort was made to " boult out " the
truth about his communications with the Spanish
Ambassador, Don Guerau de Spes.3
But it is clear that nothing was discovered which
would enable Elizabeth's Government to treat our
martyr as a merely political offender. We can
see this from the pamphlets published under their
inspiration, which show that the motives for con-
1 From this it appears that at first he was confined in some
other prison, probably Newgate, as it was there he was taken after
his trial.
2 Yet Dixon (vol. vi. p. 273) says that the story of his racking
"seems improbable. Felton owned the fact, then why should he
have been put on the rack to extort a further confession ?" &c. It is
strange that the historian should have overlooked this letter.
3 He must not be confounded with the agent Antonio de Guaras.
The latter was a banker or merchant living in England, who
corresponded with the Duke of Alba, and after the expulsion of the
Ambassador in December, 1571, was instructed to look after Spanish
interests informally. See Hume's Introduction to Spanish Calendar
(1568 — 1579), p. xxxviii.
BLESSED JOHN FELTON
demning him to death were mainly religious.
Moreover, we have now access to a considerable
number of the Spanish Ambassador's papers, and
from these it is clear that Felton had nothing to do
with the procuring of the Bull, or with any con-
spiracy against the Government.
It is evident too that he was not animated by
any personal ill-will to the Queen, but solely with
the desire that justice should be done against the
fautors of heresy. His motives and his action were
in accordance with the ideas that had so long been
current in Europe, and which were still held, even
in England, by men who did not dare to confess
tljeir opinions.
It is pretty certain that Felton received the
Bull from Ridolfi. This man was subsequently
involved in intrigues of a secret and not very com-
mendable character, but it is clear that these
intrigues were the result of Elizabeth's cruel perse-
cution of the Catholics, and not in any sense the
occasion, and still less the justification of her
repressive measures. Nor is there the least ground
for supposing that Felton was implicated in any
blame which Ridolfi may really deserve. The nego-
tiations which have brought discredit on the latter
took place in Spain, a year after our martyr's death.1
1 See Father Pollen's article in The Month, February, 1902.
Dixon says that the Bull was received or brought from abroad by
Peter Berga, the chaplain of Don Guerau de Spes, the Spanish
Ambassador, who was by birth a Catalan and prebendary of
Tarragona. Gabutio (Vita Pii Quinti, p. 104) says that it got into
England through Ridolfi, from whom Felton, among others, got
a copy, and that many were put to death for making copies of it.
(Dixon, vi. pp. 270 and 272, note.)
BLESSED JOHN FELTON
His trial took place on Friday, August the 4th,
at the Guildhall. There could be no doubt about
the result, for he openly acknowledged the act with
which he was charged. But he took advantage of
the occasion to make public declaration of his faith
in the Supremacy of the Holy See, or in the
language of the persecutors, " most traitorously
denied the Queen's Supremacy with other heinous
and traitorous words against the Queen's Majesty,
not worthy to be rehearsed."1
His martyrdom was consummated on the
following Tuesday, August the 8th.2 The peace
of his last hours was invaded by." two or three godly
and learned preachers," who tormented him to the
best of their power with "divers good and learned
arguments as well out of divers and sundry places
of the Scriptures, as also out of the ancient
Fathers, the doctors of the Church." Remem-
bering his natural character, we can imagine what
an ordeal this must have been for his patience. The
preachers reported that " he answered arrogantly,"
and when, no doubt, wearied out, he gave over
answering them, they, or the author of the pamphlet
from which we are quoting, say that " being over-
1 " The End and Confession of John Felton, the rank traitor, u-ho set
up the traitorous Bull on the Bishop of London's gate. Who suffered,
before the same gate, for High Treason against the Queen's Majesty, the
8th day of August, 1570. By J. Partridge, Imprinted at London,
by Rd. Johnes and Tho. Colwill, 1570." Reprinted in Cobbett's
State Trials, vol. i. 1086.
2 " The day and the hour of the execution were unusual ones
for fear of the people," wrote Antonio de Guaras. (Spanish Calendar,
p. 267.)
BLESSED JOHN FELTON
come, he could say no more." Then they took him
to task for his "treasons," and then came another
preacher or disputant, who " willed him to remember
himself and put his trust in Christ's death, and
thereby only hope to be saved." And again he
" answered arrogantly that he believed the ancient
and Catholic faith, which the Sovereign Pontiff hath
ever defended, and that whosoever believed any
other faith or held any other opinion it was most
wicked and erroneous."
At length the hour appointed for his martyrdom
freed him from the persecution of the preachers.
As he came down the steps of his prison to the
hurdle on which he was to be laid, he found a crowd
of people assembled. Imprisonment and racking
had not cowed his manly courage, nor cooled his
zeal for God's cause, and no one who saw him come
out in his satin doublet, and with his bold step,
would have imagined he was going to a cruel death.
Before lying down upon the hurdle, he took off his
doublet, and then, addressing the people, told them
" he was going to die for the Catholic faith and
because he acknowledged the Primacy of the
Sovereign Pontiff and denied the pretended Queen
to be the supreme head of the Church." Then he
was bound upon the hurdle or dray, on which, with
many a rude bump, and covered with the thick dust
and mud of the bad roads, he was drawn to the
place of execution. On the way he recited aloud
the Penitential Psalms. As they turned into
St. Paul's Churchyard, they came in view of the
scaffold which had been erected for the martyrdom.
BLESSED JOHN FELTON
It was placed facing the Bishop of London's gates,
on which Blessed John had posted the Apostolic
sentence, not out of party spirit or reckless bravado,
but as an act of religious and filial devotion to the
Church of Christ and His Vicar, and clearly fore-
seeing the peril of the forfeit he was now about to
pay. On the scaffold were arrayed all the instru-
ments of the butchery that was to be done : the
grim gallows, the fire into which his bowels were to
be cast before his eyes, the butcher's knife that was
to do its cruel work upon his body, the cauldron in
which his limbs were to be half-boiled, and the
quartering-block.
At the sight of these ghastly preparations there
came over the blessed martyr a trial specially
humiliating and grievous to a brave man, the
unwonted sense of fear and quailing of the heart.
Our Blessed Lord was pleased to endure it for the
encouragement and consolation of His servants —
ccepit pavere et tcedere,1 He began to fear and to be
heavy, — and perhaps He allowed Blessed John to
experience it in order that his sacrifice might not
be lessened by his natural fearlessness. At any rate,
he was able quickly to shake it off, and crying
to himself, " What is this, — art thou afraid of
death ? " he pointed to the Bishop's gate, and said
aloud as if contented that his work was done, " The
Sovereign Pontiff's letters against the pretended
Queen were duly exhibited there, and now I am
prepared to die for the Catholic Faith." Some of
the bystanders called upon him to ask the Queen's
1 St. Mark xiv. 33.
BLESSED JOHN FELTON
forgiveness. " I have done her no injury," he
answered, "but if I have injured any one, I ask
for forgiveness of him, and for the matter of that
of the whole world." And then to show that no
bitterness lurked in his heart against her, he took
from his fingers a precious diamond which he was
accustomed to wear, valued at £400 of the money of
that day, and gave it to the Earl of Sussex, who
was present, to be delivered to the Queen from
him.
He then knelt and recited the Miserere, and
rising, went up the ladder. As he pronounced the
words, In manus tiias Domine commendo spiritum
meum, he was thrown off. The hangman was
inclined to spare him by leaving him hanging till
he was dead, but the Sheriff insisted on his being
immediately cut down so that he might undergo
the rest of the sentence whilst yet alive ; and his
daughter relates that while Bull the executioner had
his hand on his heart to tear it out he twice called
on the holy Name of Jesus.
The martyr's constancy is the prevailing idea in
a very hostile ballad published fifteen days after his
death, from which we learn a characteristic incident
of his trial.
Oh ! traitorous heart, oh martyr vile
Such martyrs nowadays
Would fain be made to mortar thin
To stop the hollow ways.
He never once relented this
Not once before his death
But as malicious traitor he
On gallows gave his breath.
BLESSED JOHN FELTON
Where, as he said in midst Guild Hall
Before the judgment seat
That they might well his body take
But more could never get. l
His property, chiefly in plate and jewels, valued
at £33,000, was confiscated to the Queen, who
however was so far mindful of her old regard for
the widow, as graciously to license her by letters
patent to have a priest in her house as long as
she lived. So writes his daughter Frances, who
afterwards married a Mr. Salisbury, in her Relation
above referred to. We find mention of one other
child, Thomas, who was at the time of his father's
death a child of but three years old, and who
afterwards became a Friar Minim, and, following his
father's footsteps, shed his blood for the Faith.
Bishop Challoner did not number Blessed John
Felton amongst the martyrs whose lives he wrote,
looking upon the act for which he died as belonging
to the political rather than the religious order. The
truer judgment of the martyr's own time placed him,
under the sanction of Pope Gregory XIII., with the
Blessed Fisher and More, Mayne and Campion and
their companions, on the walls of St. Thomas de
Urbe; and that judgment has been confirmed by
the Decree of 1886. It is not necessary to go into
the question of the excommunication or the deposi-
tion of Elizabeth in order to defend his rights to
1 "A pithy note to Papists all, and some that joy in Felton' s
martirdome ; desiring them to read and to judge, and not in spite at simple
truth to grudge, &c. Imprinted at London, at the long shop adjoining
unto St. Mildred's Church, in the Pultrie, the xxiii of August, by
John Allde." See Registers of the Stationers' Company, 1570 — 1587.
BLESSED JOHN F ELTON 13
the martyr's crown. He shed his blood for the
prerogatives of Christ's Vicar, and not merely to
bear witness to the truth of his supreme authority,
but to secure that his Apostolic voice should be
heard and his Apostolic judgment made known
amongst his English flock. Death endured for that
cause was true martyrdom.
E. S. K. and ED.
AUTHORITIES. — The chief sources for the history of
Blessed John Felton are the MS. account by his daughter,
Mistress Frances Salisbury, and the account by Sander in
his work, De Visibili Monarchia Ecclesia, 1571. These have
been referred to in the text. The latter has been reprinted
by Bridgewater, Concertatio (1589), fol. 41 B — 43 A, and trans-
lated into Spanish by Bishop Yepes, Historia particular (1599),
pp. 288 — 291.
The Protestant pamphlets also, referred to above, in the
main confirm the Catholic accounts of the martyr's firmness
and constancy. Felton is of course continually referred to by
contemporary writers and controversialists on either side.
See also Stow's Chronicle, p. 667. Among modern writers the
reader may consult Lingard (v. p. 120), Dixon (vi. p. 270), and
Mr. Cooper's account in the Dictionary of National Biography.
Few details however will be found that are not included in
this life.
II.
THE BLESSED JOHN STOREY.
Tyburn, i June, 1571.
THE BLESSED JOHN STOREY'S life has many points
of resemblance with that of Blessed Thomas More.
Like More, Storey was a layman and a married man,
and yet both were attached by close bonds to an
ancient Religious Order ; like More, Storey was an
Oxonian, and shed lustre on his University both by
his learning and his saintliness ; like More, Storey
adopted the legal profession, and rose to great
eminence in it, and like More, our martyr had to
suffer (though to a still greater degree) from the
posthumous attacks of Foxe and other Protestant
writers for his alleged cruelty to the heretics.
John Storey was born about the year 1504^ and
was the son of Nicholas Storey and Joan his wife.
It is almost certain that he was a member of a
family settled in Northumberland and Durham,2
and was connected with the Selby family.
Antony a Wood says he became a Franciscan
1 Mr. Pollard in the Dictionary of National Biography gives the
date of his birth as 1510 ; but the martyr at his death said he was
sixty-seven.
- Surtees, Durham, i. p. 233. Cf. Douay Diaries, p. 73.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 15
lay-brother,1 and this has been repeated in the
Dictionary of National Biography, but if it is true, he
cannot have remained long with the Grey Friars.
We think it is more probable that what is meant is
that he became a Tertiary of the Order. At any
rate he " was educated in philosophical learning and
in the rudiments of the civil law in an ancient hostel
for civilians called Hinksey Hall, in St. Aldate's
parish in Oxford." He graduated B.C.L. the 8th
of May, 1531, and made such progress in his legal
studies that he quickly became " the most noted
civilian and canonist of his time." When Henry
VIII. 's commissioners in 1535 established certain
lectures in the University, they appointed John
Storey to read that of the civil law, and in 1537
he was elected Principal of Broadgates Hall, now
Pembroke College.
On the 2gth of July, 1538, he graduated D.C.L.,2
and in 1539, on resigning his position at Broad-
gates Hall, he was admitted advocate of Doctors'
Commons.
The state of religion in England at the time was
so disturbed, with the King in open rebellion against
the spiritual authority of the Holy See, changing
the ancient sacred customs, suppressing and destroy-
ing the monasteries, pillaging the churches, and
slaying those who remained faithful to the cause of
God, that Storey, who had desired to be a priest,
1 Athen. Oxon. (Edit. Bliss), i. p. 387. We follow a Wood for the
details of Storey's early life. The Franciscan historians are silent
as to Storey's connection with the Order.
2 Reg. Univ. Oxon. i. 164.
1 6 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
felt that it would be better and safer for him to serve
God as a layman. He therefore, in course of time,
married a young lady named Joan Watts, whose
fidelity and love were to prove a support and con-
solation to him during his troubled life, and to be
gratefully and tenderly remembered at the hour of
his cruel death.
At present however all smiled on him. Though
always an ardent Catholic at heart, he went so far
with the times, as to take the Oath of Supremacy
exacted by the laws of Henry VIII. This fall of his
was bitterly lamented all his life, and as we shall
see, he considered that it could never be fully
expiated, save by the shedding of his blood.
In 1544 he was summoned to Boulogne, which
was being besieged by the English, who in conjunc-
tion with the Emperor Charles V. were at war with
France. His services were required there however
not as a warrior, but as a lawyer. He is said to have
performed " such excellent service in the adminis-
tration of the civil law under the Lord Marshal
there, that the King in consideration thereof did
renew his former grant of the said lecture by letters
patent for the term of his natural life." In other
words, he was confirmed in his office of Regius
Professor of Civil Law in the University of Oxford,
and he was the first to hold that high position. At
the same time an assistant in the work was given
him in the person of Mr. Robert Weston, who later
on became also his son-in-law.1
As he was not only a distinguished lawyer and
1 Le Neve, iii.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 17
scholar, but also a most eloquent and persuasive
speaker, he speedily found his way into the House
of Commons, of which he became one of the leading
members. So weighty, and at the same time winning,
were his speeches in the House, that Sander tells
us he was considered by every one facile princeps
among the members.1
The time was coming when he would have to
stand out from among them as a defender of the
Catholic faith.
Storey sat as member for Hindon in Wiltshire
in the first Parliament of Edward VI. At first he
seems to have remained on good terms with the new
Government, for on the igth of November, 1548,
the Privy Council gave the Treasurer " warrant to
continue payment to John Storey of his annuite for
reading of the Cyvile Lecture in Oxenford, and to
pay him tharerages [the arrears] of the same."2
But the storm was just about to burst. Only
five days later, on November the 24th, Parliament
assembled for its second session. Its principal
business was to sanction the changes of creed and
ceremonial which Cranmer had long been maturing
and now at last ventured to bring forward. The
old King was gone, and there remained no barrier
against the tide of heresy which threatened to over-
flow the land. A new English Liturgy was to be
1 Sander, De Visibili Monarchia, lib. 7. This is quoted in full
in the Concertatio of Bridgewater, Edit. 1589, fol. 43, &c., and also
in Spanish in Bishop Yepes' Historia particular (1599), p. 291, &c.
Sander was a friend of Storey.
2 Acts of the Privy Council,- ii. 229.
C II.
i8 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
substituted for the ancient service-books of the
Catholic Church, the awful Sacrifice of the Body
and Blood of our Lord was to be abolished from
the land, and heresy as well as schism were to be
forced on a reluctant nation.
It was now that Storey stood forth as the
champion of the ancient faith, with a courage and
fervour which were but too rare in the times of
Tudor tyranny. The Act of Uniformity was not
brought forward until the yth of January, 1548-9 ;
but the new Prayer Book of which the Act was the
sanction must have been laid before the House at
the beginning of the Session. It naturally gave rise
to heated discussions in both Houses, and in the
Lower, our martyr distinguished himself by the
learning and constancy with which he opposed its
heretical novelties.1
The great point at issue between the Catholic
and the Protestant party was of course the doctrine
of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. " On the
passing of the Act in the session of 1547 for com-
munion in both kinds, a service had been put out
in which the Catholic doctrine was maintained
substantially intact ; but heresy and orthodoxy
changed places rapidly, and among the reforming
clergy Lutheranism was fast disappearing. . . .
' On the I4th of December,' Bartholomew Traheron
wrote to Bullinger, ' a disputation was held on the
Eucharist in the presence of almost the whole
1 For a learned and exhaustive estimate of this book, its history
and origin, see Gasquet and Bishop, The first Prayerbook of Edward
VI.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 19.
nobility ; the battle was sharply fought by the
bishops ; Canterbury, contrary to expectation,
maintained your opinion (the Zwinglian) ; truth
never obtained a brighter victory. ..." ' Every
day,' wrote Peter Martyr, ' the question is dis-
cussed among the Lords, with such disputing of
bishops as was never heard ; the Commons throng-
ing the Lords' galleries to hear the arguments.' "l
Among those who hung upon these debates with the
most painful interest was our martyr.
When the Bill was introduced in the House
of Commons, he spoke out boldly against it.
He revolted against the indecent haste with which
Cranmer and his colleagues were destroying the
old religion, in the name of an infant Sovereign.
" Woe to thee, O land," he cried, in the words of
holy writ, " Woe to thee, O land, whose King is a
child."2 This speech seems to have been delivered
at the time of the third reading of the bill that
established the English liturgy, on the 2ist of
January, 1548-9. The freedom with which he
spoke gave such offence, that the House decreed
that he should be committed a prisoner to the
custody of the Sergeant.3 The journal of the House
repeated the order next day, and on the next, articles
of accusation were read against him. It was
ordered on the following day that he should be
committed a prisoner to the Tower. His wife
soon afterwards presented a petition to the House
1 Froude, iv. pp. 385, 386. 2 Eccles. x. 16.
3 Journals of the House of Commons, vol. i. p. 6. Cf. Hallam, i. 365
(1827 Edit.).
BLESSED JOHN STOREY
in his favour, which was referred to the Protector.
On February the 2Oth we find that letters from
Storey in the Tower were read in the House.
These were probably not deemed satisfactory, for it
is not till March the 2nd that we find in the journal
an entry of a letter from Mr. Storey with his sub-
mission. An order immediately follows that "the
King's Privy Council in the nether house shall
humbly declare unto the lord protector's grace that
the resolution of the house is that Mr. Storey shall
be enlarged and at liberty, out of prison ; and to
require the King's majesty to forgive him his
offences in this case towards his majesty and his
council."1
The case has attracted attention because it is
the first recorded instance of a member's commit-
ment by order of the House. "It is also remarkable,"
says Hallam, " that the Commons by their sole
authority should commit their burgess first to their
own officer and next to the Tower, and that upon
his submission they inform the Protector of their
resolution to discharge him out of custody, recom-
mending him to forgiveness as to his offence against
the council, which, as they must have been aware,
the privilege of Parliament as to words spoken
within its walls . . . would extend to cover."
The Act of Uniformity of course passed, as
Storey, in spite of his brave resistance, must have
foreseen that it would. To use Sander's significant
words : " There was no other way to the plundering
of the chalices, the silver pixes, the crucifixes, the
1 Journals of the House of Commons, vol. i. p. 9.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY
ewers and other sacred vessels, the candlesticks of
silver and of brass, the sacred vestments of woven
gold, the silk banners, the money given for the pro-
vision of wax, oil and everything else used in the
worship of God. And lastly, it was the only excuse
to give for seizing upon the money and lands given
for the maintenance of that worship, and for con-
verting them into profane uses of private persons."1
" The magnitude of the innovation," writes
Froude, " can now with difficulty be appreciated
when the novelty of the sixteenth century has in its
turn been consecrated by time. Of the strange
features of the change the strangest was perhaps
that the official opinion of Convocation was scarcely
asked even in form. Parliament now discussed
the faith of England, and laymen decided on the
doctrine which the clergy were compelled to
teach."'2
If we may trust Dodd's account, Storey after
purging himself from his contempt on his knees
before the House, retired to the country, where
" he appeared very forward in opposing all inno-
vations, and hindering the people in his neighbour-
hood from plundering and making a prey of the
goods of the Church ; to which purpose (being a
justice of the peace) he made a very warm harangue
at one of the quarterly meetings. This behaviour
being carried to Court, he was severely threatened,
and soon after obliged to withdraw into Flanders,
where he remained the rest of King Edward VI. 's
1 Sander, Anglican Schism (Edit. 1877), p. 173.
3 History of England, vol. iv. p. 382.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY
reign."1 Whether this be so or not, certain it is
that he soon found that England under the present
regime was no place for him, and he retired into
exile to a land where the exercise of the Catholic
religion was not prohibited, and where he could
assist freely at the Adorable Sacrifice of the Mass.
He was warmly welcomed at Louvain, where
he took up his abode, and at once became a
member of that distinguished University.2 Here
he found other English exiles for the Faith,
such as the famous Nicholas Harpsfield, William
Rastall, nephew of Sir Thomas More, and Antonio
Bonvisi, the noble-hearted friend of that blessed
martyr, who ministered to him of his substance as
he lay in the Tower of London. Storey, like More,
became an intimate friend of the old Italian
merchant, and when he made his will in 1552 he
appointed his "great and special friend, Anthonie
Bonvice," to be overseer or executor.
The will is very edifying reading, and we have
printed it in full in the Appendix. It seems to have
been the martyr's custom to begin whatever he
1 Dodd, part iv. bk. ii. art. vi. p. 165.
- At the ter-centenary of the Bodleian Library in 1902, the
University of Louvain sent an address to her elder sister of Oxford,
dwelling on the ties that from very early times had united the two
seats of learning. In this address occurs the following allusion to
Storey : "Then, again, how many of your scholars and professors
in the sixteenth century, during the religious dissensions which
broke out in England, retired to the Louvain University and
adorned it by their writing and teaching, as testified by the annals
of the times ? Among these were Thomas Harding, . . . Nicholas
Sander, John Storey, . . . and many others whom it would be too
long to enumerate here. " (See Dublin Review, April, 1903, p. 287.)
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 23
wrote with the holy name of " Emmanuel," and so
this will begins. His prayers for the conversion of
England, his contrition for his sin in acknowledging
an earthly King as Supreme Head of the Church,
his firm faith and deep penitence are very touching.
This document portrays to us the man as he really
was, and helps us to reckon at their true value
the ferocious calumnies circulated against him by
his enemies. It will be noted that he desired to be
buried in the church of the Franciscans at Louvain,
and that he left legacies both to that community
and to the Carthusians. He had indeed a great
devotion to both these Orders, and the greater part
of his time at Louvain was spent in prayer and
penitential exercises at the Charterhouse. The
other point worthy of notice in the will is the
promise which he had exacted of his wife never to
return to England until it was restored to the unity
of the Church. He was determined that by God's
grace neither he nor his should ever again run the
risk of making shipwreck of the faith.
After the early death of King Edward VI. and
the accession of his Catholic sister, Storey and his
family returned to England, about August, 1553.
His patent as Regius Professor was renewed,
but he resigned it before the end of the year in
order to undertake more important duties ; being
appointed Chancellor of the dioceses of London and
Oxford, and Dean of the Arches.
These appointments resulted inevitably in his
taking a prominent part in the suppression of
heresy, which threatened at once the spiritual and
24 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
temporal peace of the nation. As the greater
number of the heretics lived in London, they
came under the jurisdiction of Bishop Bonner,
whose Chancellor Storey had become. It is hardly
necessary in these days to undertake the defence
of this Bishop from the calumnies heaped upon him
by Foxe, since this has been already done in so
admirable a manner by such Anglican writers as
Dr. Maitland and Dr. Gairdner. When therefore
we find Foxe calling Blessed John Storey " a bloody
tyrant," "a cruel persecutor of Christ in His
members," and "a bloody Nimrod,"1 "even worse
than Bonner," we need not be greatly disturbed,,
it is only what was to be expected. As to Bishop
Bonner, Dr. Maitland has proved conclusively that
he has been most grossly calumniated. And what
he says about the Bishop we may apply with equal
truth to his Chancellor.
" We can scarcely read with attention any one
of the cases detailed by those who were no friends
of Bonner without seeing in him a judge who (even
if we grant that he was dispensing bad laws badly)
was obviously desirous to save the prisoner's life."
Indeed, Dr. Maitland says that he believes that one
of the causes of the bitter hatred with which the
Puritans regarded the Bishop, was his remarkable
success in inducing them to abjure their errors.
" Certainly, while the public sufferings of their
steadfast brethren formed in every point of view the
best subject for invective against the papists . . .
1 See Foxe, Memorials, viii. pp. 743 — 745. "The cursed and
bloody end of Dr. Storey."
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 25
there was among the leaders a great fear of
the Bishop's powers of persuasion ; or as Foxe
oddly calls them 'subtle snares of that bloody
wolf: " *
Yet Foxe, among other lies, dares to write of the
Bishop :
This cannibal, in three years space, three hundred martyrs
slew,
They were his food ; he loved so blood ; he SPARED NONE he
knew.
" The servant is not above his master," and a
subordinate official like Storey could not hope to
escape his share of the " rodomontade, decla-
mation, and scurrility as odious for its falsehood
as for its coarseness"2 with which his chief was
so plentifully bespattered. If, then, we find Foxe
accusing Storey of an act of gross brutality,
of throwing a faggot in the face of a heretic
at the stake to make him cease singing psalms,
we cannot believe it on his evidence alone. It
is true his accusations have been repeated by
Strype and other Protestant writers, but as Maitland
reminds us, "the coloured and exaggerated accounts"
of contemporaries like Foxe, " have been still
further coloured and exaggerated — I will add, per-
verted and falsified by more modern copyists. . . .
These stories have been handed down from one
1 S. R. Maitland, The Reformation. Essay xx. " Bonner's
Cruelty," p. 424. The whole essay is well worthy of study. The
reader may compare Dr. Gairdner's appreciation, History of the
English Church, &c., pp. 341, 342, 353, &c.
2 Ibid. p. 406.
26 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
careless writer to another, containing monstrous
falsehoods, even beyond what might be warranted by
the statements of the most loose and declamatory
writers of the time." l
Now that we have seen the worst accusations
of cruelty brought against our martyr, and shown
that they are unworthy of credit, there remains
nothing for which we can legitimately blame him
in the part that he took in the unhappy Marian
persecution. As he said while on his defence in
Parliament, he did nothing but what was prescribed
by the law, whose minister he was, and at his death
1 Dr. Maitland examines two of Foxe's accusations against
Storey and shows how baseless they are. Thomas Greene, "who
•was scourged and beaten by Dr. Storey for religion," proves to have
been a London prentice who had printed a seditious libel called
Antichrist, directed against the Queen and the Council, and whose
"obstinate perseverance in lying" when brought to account for it,
was but paternally punished by a good birching. " It seems to me,"
writes Maitland, " that he got off rather better than he might have
expected." (Reformation, pp. 20 — 27.) Another calumny was that
he had caused some of his own kinsfolk to be burnt, " never leaving
them until he had brought them to ashes. Such was the rage of
that devout Catholic and white child of the mother church, that
neither kindred, nor any other consideration, could prevail with
him although it did (at his request) with others, who in respect of
him were but strangers to them. The Lord, if it be his will, turn
his heart, or else rid his poor church from such a hydra, as
thanked be the Lord, now he hath." (Foxe, vii. 343.) Will it be
believed that although Foxe found out later on that these people
were no relation whatever to Dr. Storey, as he admits in another
page of a subsequent edition, yet he retains the original calumny
in this new edition with the marginal note, " Storey persecuteth
his kinsfolk " ? At the same time be it noted that he admits that
our martyr at the time of the first apprehension of the woman in
question, "was a very earnest suitor for her deliverance" and did
in fact obtain it for a time, and that he had also interceded for
others who were comparatively strangers to him.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 27
he earnestly deprecated the charge of personal
cruelty. We may deeply regret the ill-judged policy
which re-enforced the heresy laws, and look with
as much horror as any Protestant on the fires of
Smithfield, but we cannot justly blame those who
administered these laws, so long as they carried
them out with equity and justice.
We should not indeed represent the position of
Blessed John Storey aright with regard to the laws
in question, if we supposed him to have been
distinctly averse to them. Indeed, if any of our
readers choose to think that he was over-zealous
in a matter in which he should (to say the least) have
moved with the utmost caution, that is a point on
which the evidence does not seem to be sufficient to
defend or condemn him. Only this seems certain
that he was not broadly speaking behind his age.
In the sixteenth century no one doubted the law-
fulness or the duty of suppressing heretical opinions,
which were a danger both to Church and State.
On this point it will be sufficient to quote the
words of Blessed Thomas More.1
" The fear of the outrages and mischiefs to
follow upon such mischiefs and heresies, with the
proof that men have had in some countries thereof,
have been the cause that Princes and people have
been constrained to punish heretics by terrible
death, whereas else more easy ways had been taken
with them. And therefore here will I somewhat
(said I to your friend) answer the points which ye
1 Dialogue, bk. iv. cap. 13, pp. 275, &c.
28 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
moved at our first meeting, when ye said that many
men thought it an hard and uncharitable way taken
by the clergy to put men convict of heresy sometime
to shame, sometime to death, and that Christ so
far abhorred all such violence, as He would not that
any of His flock should fight in any wise, neither in
the defence of themselves nor any other . . . but
that we should all live after Him in sufferance and
patience. . . . But as I said before, if the heretics
had never begun with violence, though they had used
all the ways they could to affect the people by
preaching, though they had therewith done as
Luther doth now, and as Mahomet did before,
bring up opinions pleasant to the people, giving
them liberty to lewdness, yet if they had set
violence aside, good Christian people had per-
adventure yet unto this day used less violence
toward them than these do now. And yet were
heresy well worthy to be as sore punished as any
other fault, since there is no fault that more
offendeth God. Howbeit while they forbare violence
there was little violence done to them. . . . And yet
as for heretics rising among ourselves and springing
of ourselves, be in no wise to be suffered, but to be
oppressed and overwhelmed in the beginning. For
by any covenant with them Christendom can
nothing win. For as many as we suffer to fall to
them we lese (sic) from Christ. And by all them we
cannot win to Christ one the more though we won
them all home again for they were our own before.
And yet, as I said, for all that in the beginning never
were they by any temporal punishment of their
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 29
bodies anything sharply handled, till they began to
be violent themselves. We read that in the time- of
St. Austin, the great doctor of the Church, the
heretics of Afric called the Donatists fell to force
and violence, robbing, beating, tormenting, and
killing such as they took of the true Christian flock,
as the Lutherans have done in Almayne. For
avoiding whereof that holy man St. Austin, which
long had with great patience borne and suffered
their malice, only writing and preaching in the
reproof of their errors, and had not only done them
no temporal harm but also had letted and resisted
others that would have done it, did yet at the last for
the peace of good people, both suffer and exhort the
Count Boniface and others, to repress them with
force and fear them with bodily punishment.
Which manner of doing holy St. Hierome and
other virtuous fathers have in other places allowed.
And since that time hath thereupon necessity per-
ceived, by great outrages committed against the
peace and quiet of the people in sundry places of
Christendom, by heretics rising of a small beginning
to an high and unruly multitude, many sore punish-
ments been devised for them, and specially by fire,
not only in Italy and Almayne, but also in Spain,
and in effect in every part of Christendom. Among
which in England as a good Catholic realm, it hath
been long punished by death in the fire. And
specially for as much as in the time of that noble
Prince of most famous memory King Henry the
fifth, while the Lord Cobham maintained certain
heresies and that bv the means thereof the number
30 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
so grew and increased that within a while though
himself was fled into Wales, yet they assembled
themselves together in a field near unto London,
in such wise and such number that the King with
his nobles were fain to put harness on their backs
for the repression of them, whereupon there were
distressed and many put to execution, and after that
the Lord Cobham taken in Wales and burned in
London ; the King, his nobles and his people there-
upon considering the great peril and jeopardy that
the realm was like to have fallen into by those
heresies, made at a parliament very good and
substantial provisions besides all such as were made
before, as well for the withstanding as the repress-
ing and grievous punishment of any such as should
be founden faulty thereof and by the clergy left
unto the secular hands.
" For here ye shall understand that it is not the
clergy that laboureth to have them punished by
death. Well may it be that as we be all men and
not angels, some of them may have sometime
either over fervent mind or undiscreet zeal, or per-
chance an angry and cruel heart, by which they may
offend God in the selfsame deed, whereof they
should else greatly merit. But surely the order of
the spiritual law therein is both good, reasonable,
piteous and charitable, and nothing desiring the
death of any man therein. For at the first fault
he is abjured, forsweareth all heresies, doth such
penance for his fault as the Bishop assigneth him.
And is in such wise graciously received again into
the favour and suffrages of 'Christ's Church. But
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 31
if he betaken eftsoons with the same crime again
then is he put out of the Christian flock by excom-
munication. And because that being such his
conversation were perilous among Christian men,
the Church refuseth him, and thereof the clergy
giveth knowledge to the temporality, not exhorting
the prince or any man else to kill him or punish
him, but only in the presence of the temporal
officer, the spirituality not delivereth him, but
leaveth him to the secular hand and forsaketh him
as one excommunicate and removed out of the
Christian flock. And although the Church be not
light and sudden in receiving him again, yet at the
time of his death, upon his request with tokens of
repentance he is absolved and received again."
That the opinions of Sir Thomas More were
fully shared by Dr. Storey is clear. In a letter of
his to Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, written
in 1555, we find the following passage :
" Albeit, I be ... as it were relegate from the
court and tied in the city for the better purging of
the same from schism, sedition, and heresy, . . .
yet have I thought it my bounden duty to let your
honour to understand that the state of the city, being
(as you know) the spectacle of this realm, daily
drawing, partly for love and partly for fear, to confor-
mity, doth not a little amend. Whereof God grant
increase and restitution to the old state and dignityr
to God's honour and glory. And where of late
through too much pity mixed with sinful civility,
32 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
the inferior sort — yea, in times of executions — began
to be stout, and seemed to glory in their malignity;
now the sharpness of the sword and other correc-
tions, hath begun to bring forth that the Word in
stony hearts could not do. So that by discreet
severity we have good hope of universal unity in
religion, and thereby perfect unanimity among the
superior sort, unless some lurking darns1 (which as
yet in every assembly lacketh not) interturbet omnia.
The full cause of all good men is, that by God's
gracious assistance and the good counsel of your
Lordship and others, the late instruments of God's
fury, being now worldlings respecting only the
weathercock, shall shortly so be weeded, that they
choke not the corn. Which God grant, and to your
Lordship your heart's desire. With my most hearty
commendation to my fond patron and second
Father, good Mr. Bonvise, fautor of all good
Catholic men, whom I trust your Lordship hath
or will visit. Whereof I know he will be very
glad.
" Your L[ordship's] orator,
" (Signed) JO[HN] ST[OREY].
" London, June 17, 1555."
This was in fact the universally accepted
teaching of the time, and even Protestants, however
they might reject the authority of the Church and
claim for themselves liberty of conscience, were the
last to give it to others.
1 Darnels, weeds or tares ?
2 Venetian Calendar, vi. n. 137.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 33
" We must remember, too," writes Mr. Simpson,1
" that there was a great difference between upholding
the ancient religion by the then established laws
of Europe, and establishing a new religion, profes-
sing to be built on individual freedom of conscience,
by the most ruthless persecution of all consciences
that adhered to the old system." It is also well
to bear in mind that what More says about the
violence and disloyalty of heretics was more than
ever exemplified in the reign of Queen Mary. As
Mr. Gairdner has admirably put it :
" The experience of twenty years had convinced
Mary, and no doubt her subjects generally, that
defiance of Papal authority had shaken the founda-
tion of all other authority whatsoever. Rebellion
and treason had been nourished by heresy — nay,
heresy was the very root from which they sprang.
And it was really more important in the eyes of
Mary to extirpate the root than merely to lop off
the branches. She had all possible desire to show
indulgence to the misguided, if they could be brought
to a better state of mind ; and the bishops might be
trusted, especially Bishop Bonner, to do their very
utmost to dissuade the obstinate from rushing on
their fate. But there was to be no more toleration
for incurable perversity."- Again, ''There were
heretics whose acts — if the opinions which prompted
the acts had not been regarded as the greater evil —
1 Rambler, New Series, vol. vii. (1857), p. 183. We take the
opportunity of expressing our indebtedness to this admirable article,
from which we have not scrupled to quote freely.
2 Gairdner, English Church in the Sixteenth Century, p. 353.
D II.
34 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
would have deserved very severe punishment indeed,
even in days like our own."1
Blessed John Storey then must have felt that
the part he had to take in the trial and condemna-
tion of heretics was a duty, though a distasteful one.
At the same time he undoubtedly felt much com-
passion for the poor ignorant people who were often
brought before him, and who he saw were obstin-
ately clinging to errors which they did not really
understand. He more than once, as we have seen
even Foxe admit, exerted himself to obtain pardon
and liberty for these misguided people. On one
occasion he and his intimate friend, the devout and
gentle Abbot Feckenham, went to the Queen and
begged off the lives of twenty-eight poor wretches
condemned to the flames. He felt strongly that it
was a great mistake to punish these poor people and
let the ringleaders go scot free. And in open con-
sistory he once strongly advocated the punishment
of seven or eight of the principal of the Zwinglian
faction, instead of the dozens of lesser note who
suffered death. This it was no doubt that rendered
him a peculiar subject of hatred and revenge to
Elizabeth, Cecil, the Earl of Bedford, and the
rest.2
In 1555 Storey was appointed Queen's proctor
for the trial of Archbishop Cranmer.3 It was
observed that Cranmer on being brought before
1 Ibid. p. 360.
'2 Simpson, ibid. p. 184. See Persons' Temperate Ward-word to
the turbulent and seditious Watch-word of Sir Francis Hastinge, &c.
(1599). p. 32, quoted below.
3 Strype's Cranmer, pp. 543 — 545, et seq. See also Foxe, viii. 53.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 35
the court made low obeisance to Dr. Storey
and Dr. Martin as the royal commissioners, but
refused to bow to the Bishop of Gloucester, who
presided as the Pope's delegate. Foxe quotes
Storey's speech on this occasion; from which we
give an extract :
"Ye say that the King in his realm is supreme
head of the Church. Well, sir, you will grant me
that there was a perfect Catholic Church before any
King was christened. Then if it were a perfect
Church, it must needs have a head, which must
needs be before any King was member thereof: for
you know Constantine was the first christened King
that ever was. And although you are bound (as
St. Paul saith) to obey your rulers, and Kings have
rule of the people, yet doth it not follow that they
have cure of souls ; for a fortiori the head may do
that the minister cannot do, but the priest may
consecrate, and the King cannot, therefore the King
is not head."
Cranmer was in a dilemma ; he had justified all
his crimes against the Church by pleading the royal
authority, now here was the royal authority en-
deavouring to restore Papal Supremacy once more
— here was the delegate of the " Supreme Head "
proclaiming that "to rule the Church was only
given to Peter." He refused to plead. " The canons
which be received in Christendom," proceeded
Storey, " compel you to answer, therefore you are
bound to do so. And although this realm of late,
through such schismatics as you were, hath exiled
and banished the canons, yet that cannot make for
36 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
you ; for you know yourself that nee pars in
partem, nee pars in totum aliquid statuere potest.
Wherefore this isle, being indeed but a member
of the whole, could not determine against the
whole."
In February, 1556-7, Storey was put on a
commission together with the Bishops of London
and Ely, Lord Windsor, Lord North, Sir Francis
Englefield, Cole, Dean of St. Paul's, Sir Thomas
Pope, Dr. Martin, and several others for them to
discover more stringent means of suppressing
" heretical and seditious books, concealments, con-
tempts, conspiracies, of all false rumours, tales,
seditions and clamorous words and sayings," as
well as of punishing all enormities and disturbances
committed in sacred places, those who refused to
hear Mass, &c., and all vagabonds and suspect
persons abiding in or near London, &c. This seems
to be Foxe's sole ground for asserting that Storey,
" thinking their punishment in the fire not cruel
enough, went about to invent new torments for the
holy martyrs of Christ, such was his hatred to the
truth of Christ's Gospel."
Just at this time he wrote another letter to the
Earl of Devon, who was in Italy, which is preserved
in the Record Office, and is interesting " as showing
the good prospects opened to this country, had
not Almighty God in His inscrutable providence
shortened Queen Mary's days."1
1 Simpson, ibid. p. 185. This and several of the documents
quoted below are printed in the Rambler article.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 37
" EMMANUEL.
"Although, my singular good lord, it be long
sithence I have visited your honour with this my
scraping hand, yet hath not my heart forgotten my
bounden duty to pray for the preservation and
prosperous estate of your good lordship, whom God
hitherto hath proved with manifold travails, to the
end that hereafter His mercy may use you to His
glory and no small comfort of all Christian religion
in this our native country ; wherein although many
things concerning spiritual and civil government be
yet. to be desired, yet is the same through the
virtuous contemplation of the Queen's majesty and
of my lord Cardinal his grace so much repaired, and
by the prudent activity of my now Lord Chancellor1
in the execution of justice so reduced into order, that
if your lordship were present to behold how right
ruling doth daily succeed in place of ruffling raging,
your honour would conceive no less good hope of
the extirpation of vice, and planting again of virtue,
than we do here of your lordship to be no small
instrument to that purpose, when it shall please God
to send you to us again ; whereof I have thought it
my duty to certify your honour, although it be
notorious, knowing that your honour having ever
desired the same, will now the more rejoice you
do hear thereof. How other things doth stand,
this bearer your diligent servant will declare unto
your honour, which God will increase to His glory.
From London, this 23rd February [1556].
" Your lordship's most bounden servant,
"JOHN STOREY."2
1 Heath, Archbishop of York. 2 R.O. Domestic, Mary, vii. 9.
38 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
There is little more to tell of our martyr during
Queen Mary's reign. We may add however that on
the 3ist of January, 1553-4, William Frankelyn,
parson of Chalfont St. Giles in Buckinghamshire,
gave a lease of all his parsonage to John Storey,
LL.D., and Joan his wife and Ellen Storey their
daughter, for thirty-one years, at a yearly payment
of £26 135 4d.x He therefore probably lived in this
quaint old village during the vacations, and Chalfont
St. Giles, which boasts of being the home of Milton,
may reckon this illustrious martyr among its glories.
But he was not to enjoy for long this quiet country
home. The death of Queen Mary and of Cardinal
Pole upon the same sad day (November 17, 1558)
put an end to the hopes of Catholics, and the worst
apprehensions of our martyr were speedily realized.
Elizabeth proceeded warily, but her immediate
choice of Protestant councillors was an omen of
the coming change. The Device for the alteration of
Religion,2 which was drawn up by these councillors,
sketches out with consummate skill the end to be
attained and the means of attaining it. The altera-
tion was to be first attempted " at the next Parlia-
ment," and Cecil took care that the Lower House
should be packed with heretics. The Device had
laid down that none were to be admitted, even to
lower offices of trust under Government, except
those who were "young in years," "were known to
be sure at the Queen's devotion." And this was the
class of men who filled the benches of the first
1 Wood, Athen. Oxon. Edit. Bliss, 1.389.
2 Burnet, v. p. 327.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 39
Parliament of Queen Elizabeth. It was in fact known
as the " Beardless Parliament," so largely did it
consist of licentious young men. The Duke of
Feria, the Spanish Ambassador, reported that it
consisted " of persons chosen throughout the country
as being most perverse and heretical," and an
English Catholic told the Pope that in a House of
about two hundred members only ten were found
true to the old creed.1
But among these few was Blessed John Storey.
He was returned for Downton, in Wiltshire, on the
I7th of January, 1558-9. 2 It must have been with
a heavy heart that he assisted at the opening
ceremony in Westminster Abbey, on January the
25th. The Mass of the Holy Ghost was not sung
as usual, and when Abbot Feckenham in his ponti-
fical robes, with his monks in procession bearing
lighted candles, received the Queen at the west
door, she behaved with extraordinary rudeness,
crying, "Away with these lights ; we see very well ! "
The Litany was sung in English, and Dr. Cox, a
married priest and a most bitter heretic,3 preached
the sermon. In this discourse, "after saying many
things freely against the monks, proving by his
arguments that they ought to be persecuted and
punished by her Majesty, ... he then commenced
praising her, . . . exhorting her to destroy the
1 See article by Father John Pollen, S.J., Dublin Review, January,
1903, pp. 44—63.
- He had sat successively for East Grinstead (September 25,
1 553)> Bramber (March, 1553-4), and Ludgershall (October 6, 1555).
3 Cox was one of the framers of the Anglican Prayer Book.
He became Bishop of Ely.
4o BLESSED JOHN STOREY
images of the saints, the churches and monasteries,
and all other things dedicated to divine worship ;
proving by his own arguments that it is very great
impiety and idolatry to endure them ; and saying
many other things against the Christian religion."1
With these auspices did Elizabeth's first Parlia-
ment open. Meanwhile things were going from
bad to worse outside. Insults and outrages
against Catholic priests and Catholic rites passed
unpunished, three of the Bishops were imprisoned,
while the heretics were set free, and the Court
amused itself with buffoonery, plays and lampoons
of so abominable and horrible a description that
Catholics wondered that their authors did not perish
by the act of God. On the feast of the Epiphany
Elizabeth had amused herself with a mummery after
supper, in which crows appeared clad in Cardinals'
robes, asses habited as Bishops, and wolves repre-
senting Abbots. Worse than this, the churches
were broken into and robbed, the Blessed Sacra-
ment trodden underfoot, and the licentious outrages
of the mob, excited as they were by the fanatical
preachers who hastened over from the Continent,
daily grew more violent.
Even the mild and gentle Abbot Feckenham
could not contain his indignation at these outrages.
He spoke out in the House of Lords:
1 II Schifanoya to the Mantuan Ambassador. (Venetian Calendar,
vol. vii. pp. 22, 23.) Schifanoya was an admirable reporter and most
trustworthy witness. His accounts of the Coronation and the
opening of Parliament, &c., are most minute and graphic. He says
that Cox's sermon lasted an hour and a half.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 41
" My good Lords, when in Queen Mary's days,
your honours do know right well how the people
of this realm did live in an order, and would not
run before laws, . . . there was no spoiling of
churches, pulling down of altars, and most blas-
phemous treading down of the Sacrament under
their feet, and hanging up the knave of clubs in the
place thereof. There was no skurching nor cutting
of the face and legs of the crucifix and image of
Christ. There was no open flesh-eating nor shambles
keeping in the Lent and days prohibited. The
subjects of this realm, and especially the nobility
and such as were of the honourable Council, did in
Queen Mary's days know the way unto churches
and chapels, there to begin their daily work with
calling for help and grace by humble prayer and
serving of God. But now since the coming and
reign of our most sovereign and dear lady Queen
Elizabeth, by the only preachers and scaffold-players
of this new religion, all things are changed and
turned upside down, . . . obedience is gone, humility
and meekness clean abolished, virtuous, chaste, and
straight living abandoned, and all degrees and kinds
desirous of fleshly and carnal liberty."1
Parliament soon settled down to its business,
the first point of which had been declared to be
Pro Reformanda Religione et tollenda idolatria.
The Supremacy Bill was introduced into the
House of Commons at the beginning of February,
1 MS. Cott. Vesp. D. xviii. fol. 86. See, too. Lord Somers'
Tracts, vol. i. p. 81.
42 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
read the first time and referred to Committee.
During the second reading it was, says D'Ewes,
"long argued, as appears plainly from the original
journal books of the House of Commons."1 We
have few details, however, as to the opposition.
The most prominent part in it however, was taken
by Blessed John Storey. He spoke often and
strenuously on the proposed changes, by which
England was once more to be torn away from
the unity of the Church. He was taunted by his
opponents with his severity against the heretics,
and he replied (at least, so it was reported ten
years later) that he had nothing to regret save that
more had not been done. " I see," he declared
boldly, " nothing to be sorry for ; but am rather
sorry that I have done no more, and that I had not
more earnestly given my advice to spare the little
twigs and shoots, but to strike more boldly at the
roots and great branches. If this had been done
we should not see so many seeds of wickedness
taking root everywhere and flourishing so abun-
dantly."2
1 Journals of all the Parliaments, Reign Elizabeth (1682), p. 44.
- There is no contemporary report of this speech. It may be
found in Holinshed, Edition 1587, vol. ii. p. 1180. Cf. Declaration
of the Life and Death of John Storey, . . . by Thomas Caldwell, 1571,
printed in the Harleian Miscellany, iii. p. 190 ; in Lord Somers' Tracts,
i. p. 480, and in the State Trials, i. p. 1087. Here the version is:
41 I did often-times in Queen Mary's time say to the Bishops that
they were too busy with Pecora Campi, chopping at twigs, but I
wished to have chopped at the root, which if they had done, this
gere had not now come in question."
Father Persons, S.J., in A temperate Ward-word, &c., questions
the accuracy of the report. He says (p. 32) : " For the words
themselves they had never yet any other proof that they were
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 43
This was indeed a courageous speech to make
at such time ; and no wonder that his adversaries,
on hearing it, "gnashed at him with their teeth."
He was, of course, accused of referring to the Queen
herself, though there is a good deal in what Father
Persons says to show that in this interpretation of
his words there was " more passion than truth, and
more rigour than reason." For, as he goes on to
argue :
" Why is it necessary we should admit the
bloody commentary and heavy exposition only of
spoken, to my knowledge, but only that his enemies affirmed
them (to make him thereby more odious) when they had him in their
power and desired his destruction. For I never heard that himself
confessed them either in liberty, captivity, at the bar, or at his death,
and that he should not speak them (though he had thought them)
when Queen Elizabeth was now settled in her crown, as this
K affirmeth (he being known to be wise and no fool), all reason
may induce us to think and believe, seeing they could not serve to
any purpose but to his own ruin." However, as he goes on to argue
as to what Storey meant by the words, if he did say them, it is
clear he is not very sure of his ground in denying their authenticity.
I think that Storey certainly must have said something of the
kind, because this alone can explain the outcry raised against him
and because, as Persons admits, these were certainly his sentiments.
But what, to my mind, puts the matter beyond dispute is that
Sander, who knew Storey intimately at Louvain, puts this speech
into his mouth without hesitation or qualification:
" De crudelitate vero sua id in publicis comitiis Joannes ipse regnante
jam Elizabetha, respondit, se nulla in re alia peccasse, nisi quod omissa
radice, nescio quos ramusculos pracidisset, cum potius debuisset robus-
tissima quceque zizania radicitus evellisse : quod factum si fuisset, jam
(in quit) non tot ac tanta videremus impietatis germina ubique stare, atque
adeo florere ." (De Visibili Monarchia, Edit. 1571, lib. vii.)
Foxe has embroidered the speech in his usual way, making
Storey glory in the barbarities which Foxe, as we have seen, imputes
to him out of his own evil imagination. This is indeed incredible.
Holinshed and Strype merely reproduce Foxe.
44 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
his enemies, . . . who will needs have him mean
by those words the bereaving of our dear Sovereign's
life ? Was lad)7 Elizabeth (I pray you) taken to be
this root of heresy in Queen Mary's time, being
holden by most Catholics to be no Protestant at all,
as before I have shewed ? Why might not Dr. Storie
meane rather (if he had spoken those words) of
some Bacon, some Cecil, some Cook, some Knowles,
some Throgmorton, some Russell, and many other
like, that were known Protestants in Queen Mary's
time, supporters of others, and practitioners against
the present state, and yet suffered, yea borne out
by known Catholics ; while other poor cobblers,
clothiers, carriers, and such like, were punished ?
At which manner of dealing I do confess that
Dr. Storie being a man of zeal in his religion,
misliked exceedingly, and stormed also publicly one
day, before the Bishops and Privy Council in a
public consistory (for that Councillors also, for
honour's sake, and to protect their friends and
kindred, would needs be inquisitors in that Govern-
ment), complaining grievously of this abuse, . . .
whereby also it is much more probable that his
complaint of the root of heresy remaining and not
touched, was meant rather of the infected nobility
and gentry within the land . . . than of lady
Elizabeth at that day, for that indeed she was not
the root then, nor did the change of religion spring
of her principally afterwards, but of those other
inferior roots which I have mentioned."1
Whatever the martyr may have said, his
1 A temperate Ward-word, &c.,pp. 32, 33.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 45
enemies were determined to make use of his speech
to bring him to destruction.
In defiance of the privileges of Parliament, he
was brought up before the Council to answer to
the charge of having spoken evil of the affairs of
religion. Another Doctor of Laws, a priest, was
summoned at the same time. " They bravely and
prudently answered the Lords of the Council, and
especially the layman, Master Storey, who said :
' You need not interrogate me about these matters,
as I know better than any of you both the canon
laws and those of this kingdom ; let my accusers
appear and prove what I have said, for I certainly
said nothing at which you could reasonably take
offence; but should her Majesty will otherwise, I do
not refuse to die for -the Church.' The other said
the like, telling the Lords of the Council besides
that her Majesty could not do them a greater favour.
So from what I hear, all the clergy are united and
confirmed in this holy and good opinion. Some of
them will perhaps change their minds, but they will
be esteemed for what they are." l
For the moment, Blessed John Storey was
dismissed with a caution, but from this time, says
Sander, his enemies never ceased collecting new
matter of accusation against him. It was not long
before he got into trouble again. A Bill had been
introduced to deprive the venerable Bishop Whyte
of large portions of the lands belonging to his see
of Winchester. It had passed the Commons, but
nevertheless. Dr. Storey had the boldness to appear
1 II Schifanoya, Venetian Calendar, vii. p. 26.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY
before the Lords as the Bishop's counsel.1 This
was reported to the House, on March the 23rd, and
Storey, on acknowledging the offence, received a
severe reprimand from the Speaker. The Bishop's
crime had been the same as his own, and he had
already been imprisoned in his own house for daring
to teach Catholic truth in his sermons.
Blessed John Storey was soon to taste the
vengeance of his enemies. Their fury was so great
that he thought it best to hide himself for a time,
but he was soon " taken in the West country,
riding before a mail in a frieze coat like a serving-
man, and was apprehended in the highway by one
Mr. Ayleworth, one of the Queen's servants,"'2 and
being brought before the Council, was by them
committed to the Fleet, on the 2Oth of May, 1560.
At the same time, Watson, Bishop of Lincoln ;
Feckenham, Abbot of Westminster ; Cole, Dean of
St. Paul's ; and Chedsey, Archdeacon of Middlesex,
were sent to the Tower.3 The offence with which
they were charged was, " having obstinately refused
attendance on public worship, and everywhere
declaiming and railing against that religion which
we now profess."4 In the words of Foxe,
1 These lands had been granted to seculars by letters patent
under Edward VI., but taken from them and restored to the see
by Mary. They now claimed them back, and the Bishop properly
resisted the confiscation. The patentees further ventured to accuse
the Bishop of cancelling records, and some articles were devised
for his punishment. (Dixon, v. p. 96.)
2 The Declaration, v. supra.
3 Machyn, p. 235.
4 Jewel to Peter Martyr (May 22, 1560), Zurich Letters, First
Series, p. 79.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 47
" Elizabeth, staying the bloody sword of persecu-
tion from raging any further (!), caused Dr. Storey to
be apprehended and committed to ward, with many
other, his accomplices, sworn enemies to Christ's
glorious Gospel."
In the Fleet prison Blessed Jo"hn Storey found
other glorious confessors in chains. Dr. Cuthbert
Scott, Bishop of Chester, had been committed
prisoner there a week before (May the I3th), and
Dr. Nicholas Harpsfield and other dignified eccle-
siastics shared with him the miserable accommoda-
tion of the prison. In those days prisoners who
desired the common decencies of life had to pay
heavily for them, and we find, from some constitu-
tions drawn up for the government of the Fleet in
this very year, that the prisoners who had a bed
to themselves, had to pay for board and lodging
more than £i a week, a sum we should have to
multiply many times to reach its modern value.
We do not know how long Dr. Storey was con-
fined in the Fleet at this time. Sander says he
spent " some years " in prison. All we know is that
by some means or other he escaped for a time, for
we find that he was re-taken in April or May, 1562.
This we learn from a letter of Parkhurst, Bishop
of Norwich, to Bullinger (May 31, 1562) : " Storey,
that little man of law and most impudent Papist,
has been arrested in the West of England in a
courtier's dress."1 He was thrown into the
Marshalsea prison, where among his fellow-prisoners
1 Zurich Letters, n. 48. The words are "more aulico," which
have been translated " in his barrister's robes " !
48 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
was his old master, the Bishop of London. His
enemies meanwhile sought for a legal pretext to put
him to death. Nor had they long to wait. Early
in the next year Parliament passed a new Act
authorizing the Protestant Bishops to require the
Oath of Supremacy from any one who had held office
in the last three reigns, and made the penalty of
the first refusal perpetual imprisonment, and of the
second, death.
On the 2gth of April, 1563, Bishop de la
Quadra, Spanish Ambassador, wrote to King Philip
as follows :x
"This week they begin to demand the oath from
the Catholic Bishops, in accordance with the new
Act passed in Parliament recently, and the Bishops
of London and Lincoln, and Doctors Cole and
Storey have been summoned for Monday next.
After them will come the rest, and there is no doubt
some will die. I am much more afflicted at this
misfortune than at all the insults and injuries I have
received here, as I see the great danger the Catholic
religion will suffer from the death of these men,
and still more, if from faint-heartedness any of
them were to take the oath."
On May the gth the Ambassador had still more
stirring news to report.
"Last week a commission was issued to summon
for trial four of the Catholic prisoners, two Bishops
— of London and Lincoln — and two doctors — Cole,
1 Spanish Calendar, vol. i. p. 322.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 49
who was commissioner against the Lutherans in
the time of our lady, Queen Mary, now in heaven,
and Storey. The commission has not yet been
signed by the Queen, as when they took it to her,
she said she would sign it another day at her
convenience. In the meanwhile Dr. Storey was so
alarmed at the news that he determined to save
himself by flight rather than have to choose between
taking the oath or being hanged. He accordingly
made the attempt about ten days ago with the
assistance of a Flemish gentleman who was con-
fined in the same prison for debt. He went into
a garden at midnight, and having scaled the wall
came to the river, where he took a boat and came
to my dwelling. He asked for a chaplain of mine
with whom it appears he had had some conversation
about his intention, although the chaplain had not
approved of it. As he was not in the house, he
awaited his arrival, and when he came begged him
to help him to escape. The chaplain excused
himself as best he could, and even compelled him
to leave the house immediately, which he did, and
got away safely, at least up to the present they have
not been able to find him. By the indications of
the boatmen and some of the prison warders the
Council has discovered that this man disembarked
at my house, and as soon as they learnt it, which
was already nearly midnight, they sent the marshal
to me to demand the surrender of the man. I, who
barely even heard that he had escaped from prison,
answered that I knew nothing whatever about him,
as I and D'Assonleville had been the whole day in the
E II.
50 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
country and we returned home very late, but that if
they liked to search the house they were welcome to
do so, and I added that if they discovered that any
servant of mine had helped him in his flight or
hiding, I would have him punished without any
respect."
The Bishop then found on inquiry that the
chaplain had known of the escape but had not
helped it. He reproved him for not informing him
of the matter and sent him away to a friend's house,
since as he was a man who knew every Catholic in
the place, and had absolved and administered the
sacraments to many, it would be very dangerous if
the Council got hold of him. They did send for
him later, but Quadra excused himself, saying he
could not dispense with his chaplain. As he tells
the King (in cipher) : " I will rather put up with
the molestation of these Councillors, than expose
so many people to suffering and injury, as would be
the case if this chaplain were to be handed over."
The Ambassador, however, thought it was safest to
get the chaplain out of the way, and sent him
secretly over to Flanders.
The King answered on June the I5th : l
" I note what has happened about the flight of
Storey, and as your chaplain aided him to escape
you have done well in deciding to send him to
Flanders, in consequence of the inconveniences that
might result from his statements if they were to
1 Spanish Calendar, vol. i. n. 230, p. 333.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 51
take and interrogate him. I do not think he would
do anything in this matter to render him deserving
of punishment."
Meanwhile Dr. Storey had succeeded in escaping
the hands of his enemies. After lying hid for some
time in the houses of divers of his friends, he landed
in safety in Belgium, and took up his quarters in
Louvain.
Here, beside the ordinary trials of exile, he had
to bear those of poverty. His family, who came
to join him at Louvain, were now increased in
number, and he had lost all he possessed in the
world. Added to this he had to bear interior trials,
for his conscience was continually tormented with
the fear that he had done wrong in escaping from
death, since thereby he had lost the crown of
martyrdom. He spoke of this scruple very often
to his wife, and sometimes also to his friends, and
on one occasion he confided his trouble to our
informant, Sander, asking him whether it would be
lawful for him to give himself up once more into the
power of the heretics. " But I," says Sander, "did
not venture to advise him to return to prison. For
it seemed that he had been delivered by the design
of God, and that he could not count upon the
divine grace, if he placed himself in danger, when
God had set him free." He then wished to devote
the rest of his life to penance, and he fixed upon the
Charterhouse at Louvain as a fitting place of
retirement, intending to enter that Order, if his
wife also would agree to embrace the religious
52 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
state. But though she refused to do this, Storey
nevertheless remained so firm in his resolution to
do penance, that he spent more time in prayer with
the Carthusians than at home with his family.1 But
his poverty was so great that he was forced to look
out for means of livelihood, especially when those
dependent on him for bread were increased in
number by a nephew and niece and their family,
who were sent out from England to him. As he
had four children of his own it can be imagined
that he had difficulty in providing them with
the barest necessaries. His married daughter,
Mrs. Weston, and her children also, came out to
join him, her husband being a prisoner in the Fleet.
It is true that he was highly thought of by the
Duke of Alva, and that at his intercession the King
allowed him a grant of a hundred florins out of the
revenues of the Augustinian Abbey of St. Gertrude
at Louvain.2
Later on we find a spy writing to Cecil (the yth of
April, 1570), " Storey remains at Brussels . . . and
has continual access to the Duke of Alva, and was
lately rewarded with 250 crowns."3 Again, on April
the i6th he writes : " The Duke of Alva has delivered
to Storey of the benevolence of the King of Spain
a thousand crowns to be distributed among the
scholars at Louvain and Douay. The religious
men and women in this country, being English, are
appointed to receive £10 a piece."4
1 So also Molanus, De Claris Exteris, being part ii. of his Historic
Lovaniensum, lib. xii. cap. i.
* Foreign Calendar, 1560 — 1561, n. 846.
3 Foreign Calendar, 1570, n. 803. 4 Ibid. n. 811.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 53
Blessed John Storey thus acted as the King's
almoner for his distressed fellow-countrymen. This
is no doubt what the spy means by calling him
" still a preferrer of all the English traitors' business
and causes."
But all the while he was very insufficiently
provided for himself, and was quite at a loss what
to do to earn his daily bread.
Meanwhile his enemies at home were not idle ;
and the martyrdom he so ardently desired, he was
by the grace of God at length enabled to attain to.
Elizabeth, Leicester, and Cecil laid the following plot
to entrap him : The King of Spain and the Duke
of Alva had recently appointed an office at Antwerp
for the search of all English ships going into or
coming out of that port, in order to prevent the
traffic in heretical books and other forbidden mer-
chandise. The English Government, hearing of
this, saw in it a means of wreaking their vengeance
upon our martyr. " One William Parker, brother
of Elizabeth's new Archbishop,1 a wool-draper, a
man well skilled in mercantile affairs, was largely
bribed by the Council to go to the Low Countries
to the Duke of Alva, and professing himself a
1 We are quoting Mr. Simpson (p. 187). He adds that the
relationship of this Parker to the Archbishop is affirmed in a
marginal note attached to one of his letters to Cecil, in the Record
Office. It is true that Strype does not mention William as one of
the Archbishop's brothers, probably because of his being a Popish
lost sheep, as he (not knowing the plot) would consider him. Many
of the Archbishop's near relations were connected with the wool
trade, according to Strype, and his father's name was William;
it was therefore a family name and family trade.
54 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
fugitive from England, and a convert to the Catholic
faith, to solicit the office in question. The Duke,
rejoicing beyond measure in having such a near
relation to the chief spiritual heretic in England
for a convert and refugee, and withal a man so
skilled in mercantile affairs, gladly conferred on
him the office he asked for. As soon as he was
installed, he named as his assistant Dr. Storey who,
as we have seen, was living in great poverty at
Louvain. He considered it his duty to his family
to accept the office, against the wish of his friends,
who told him it was an odious one, and unworthy
of a man of his position. Thus the first part of the
plot was successful." The second part was soon to
follow, and it proved to be a most audacious act of
vindictive and illegal treachery.
It seems that a certain John Mershe, one John
Lee, and a man named Saltanstall were agents for
Cecil in the Low Countries. They were spies in
his pay, pretending to be good Catholics in exile for
the faith, and reporting to their chief all that they
could worm out of the confidence of the Catholic
refugees, or that their malignant ingenuity could
invent against them. Great numbers of these
refugees were now collected in the Low Countries
under the protection of their former Sovereign,
King Philip. Some of them, like Storey himself,
despairing of England after the failure of the
Northern Rising, seem to have become naturalized
as Spanish subjects. Priests, lawyers, knights,
peers, noble ladies, representatives of all sorts and
ranks were there, united by a common faith and
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 55
a common suffering. Victims all of them of
Elizabeth's tyrannical laws, they preferred to serve
God in exile rather than stain their consciences
by apostasy from the faith. Among the more
prominent of these exiles were the Earl of
Westmoreland, the Countess of Northumberland
(wife of the Blessed Thomas Percy), the Nortons,
and Leonard Dacre, who had been the leaders of
the Rising in the North. Who shall blame them
if they looked to Spain to help them and their
country in its hour of need ? Blessed John Fisher
had besought the Emperor through Chapuys, the
Imperial Ambassador, to invade England in the time
of Henry VIII. , in order to preserve the Catholic
faith in the land, and we cannot wonder (especially
now that Elizabeth had been excommunicated
by St. Pius V.) if English Catholics in their
distress looked to that Emperor's son to be the
champion of their proscribed religion. There is
no proof however (except the mere assertion of his
bitter foes) that Blessed John Storey was in any way
implicated in any plot against the Queen or her
Government. As we shall see, the indictment
brought against him at his trial did not venture to
charge him with any specific treasonable act, but
merely, in the usual vague way, of conspiring the
death of the Queen, just as in the case of Blessed
Edmund Campion and his companions. The real
cause of the hatred against him was his well-known
2eal for the old religion.
Among this company of Catholic exiles moved
the spies whom Cecil's gold had bought body and
56 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
soul. Feigning themselves to be devout Catholics,
living lives of continual sacrilege and of unspeak-
able treachery, they wove their dark plots for the
destruction of those who trusted and befriended
them.
The plan conceived against Blessed John Storey
in Cecil's crafty brain, to be carried out by these
agents, was no less a one than to kidnap him while
he was discharging the duties of his office and carry
him over to England. Mershe and Lee, in con-
junction with Parker and a certain Pigotte, arranged
that a ship, sufficiently manned and armed for the
purpose, should enter the port of Antwerp, and that
Dr. Storey should be induced to visit it for pro-
hibited goods which were to be placed in her. The
plan nearly failed owing to the indiscretion of
Pigotte, and the information of one of the sailors,
who suspected the plot and ran away, and after-
wards told Parker to take care of himself, thinking
that he was the victim of, and not a partaker in, the
conspiracy.
However, three merchants trading to the Low
Countries, viz., Roger Ramsden, Martin Bragge,
and Simon Jewkes, allured by the bribes of the
Lords of the Council, were found ready to under-
take the dangerous enterprise which Pigotte had
mismanaged. They arranged with the captain of a
smack, by name Cornelius Van Eycke, and settled
that this time the point of departure should be
Bergen-op-Zoom, opposite Zealand, about thirty-
five miles north of Antwerp. The plan was that as
soon as Dr. Storey and Parker should go under the
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 57
hatches to search the cargo, the hatches were to be
shut down, and the two conveyed to England, all
sail being set as quickly as possible ; nobody
knowing at the time the complicity of Parker but
Mershe and Lee who, under the English Govern-
ment, were the chief conspirators. This was
accordingly acted upon, and was perfectly success-
ful. Dr. Storey was landed at Yarmouth on the
evening of the i4th of August, 1570. Cecil had got
his enemy into his clutches again, and this time he
would take care he did not escape.
Storey wrote to Cecil from Yarmouth the
morning after his landing as follows :
"In first proof that I am personally present in
this the Queen's Majesty's town of Yarmouth, I am
bold to scribble unto your honour these presents.
The circumstances of my apprehension on water by
Zealand, this bearer and his company, diligent and
yet merciful, can better declare than myself, deceived
by my simple and yet foxy skipper, can but by
conjecture declare. If it shall stand to your
pleasure to have me restored to my keeper, from
whom like a very wreckling I did escape, then it is
my humble suit unto her Majesty and your honour
so to temper the yet continued heat of my said
keeper, that he content himself with laying on irons
on that of my legs which is only able to bear the
same, until your leisure may serve to call the corpus
before you, or so with charity to dispose the same,
now much decaying and decayed, by competent
lodging, that it perish not ante tempm a Deo prcefixum*
58 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
If any pre-occupation have been used with your
honour of me by Mr. John Mershe, late at Brussels,
or Mr. Thomas Palie, now turned a1 Je . . . , it
may yet like you andire alteram partem, in which
your doing, sicut non pcenitebit ; ita opposite juxta
seposita magis elucescent. Decimo quinto Aug. Tni
honoris orator.
"JOANNES STOREY."2
This letter was sent up to London by Parker
and Simon Jewkes, as we learn from the following
items in the bill of expenses3 which was afterwards
to form such a bone of contention. (Parker was of
course a nominal prisoner and Jewkes his keeper.)
*' Paid at Yarmouth for three horses
and a post, sent up with Parker and
Simon Jewkes £214
Paid them in their purses, to bear their
charges to London and to the court .300"
Parker however broke down on his journey when
he got to St. Alban's, and sent Cecil the following
letter from thence :
" Right Honourable, — Not long since your
Honour was advertised from Yarmouth of the
arrival of Dr. Storey, brought from beyond the seas
by me and my supports, or assistants, the I4th
of this instant, about eight of the clock in the
afternoon ; since which time I have been travelling
towards your Honour, with whom my hearty desire
1 Illegible. '2 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, Ixxiii. 18.
3 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, Ixxiii. 64.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 59
is to have conference of those things which in these
affairs doth appertain ; but being a man not much
used to travel, I have over-travelled myself, so as
yet I could not attain to the presence of your
Honour, and also not having any determinate time
to have any access to your Honour, which I require,
if it may stand with your Honour to signify the
same by the bearer hereof, and then shall I give my
diligent attendance at all times, according to my
bounden duty herewith. The Almighty have your
Honour in His blessed tuition.
" From St. Alban's, this present night, i8th
August, 1570.
" By your honour's obedient during life,
"WILLIAM PARKER.MI
Roger Ramsden and the rest set off with their
prisoners after a three days' stay in Yarmouth,
having received a strict injunction to let Storey
speak to no one. So rigorously was this injunction
observed, that one Gosling, a bailiff, got into trouble
for supplying the prisoner with kersey to make
hose of.'2
The bill here also supplies us with considerable
information.
" Paid for 5 more horses when we came
up is. and to the post for his pains,
and for bringing up our mails and
other things £3 10 o
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, Ixxiii. 21.
- The martyr was most probably imprisoned in the ancient
Toil House, a picturesque mediaeval building which contains
several dungeons.
60 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
Paid for our charges at Yarmouth the
space of 3 days with the Doctor,
Parker and the rest so long as they
were in our company, as also that
which was spent upon the master
and mariners 3 15 o
Paid for all our charges from Yarmouth
to London 5 10 o
Paid for our charges here in London to
this 26 of August, 1570, with our
horse meat the first night .... o 13 2
Paid for one to help to bring up the hoye
from Yarmouth to London because
the master came up with us . . .010 2"
Blessed John Storey arrived in London August
the 2ist. His capture naturally caused great excite-
ment and unbounded joy among the heretics. The
Spanish agent, Don Antonio de Guaras, wrote
August the 2oth to Zayas as follows :
" I wrote to your Worship on the i6th and the
news since then is that they have enticed Dr. Storey,
whom you will know, on board a ship in Flanders,
and have brought him hither. He was betrayed by
a false companion of his, a treacherous Englishman,
and an acquaintance of mine met the traitor on the
i6th instant coming from Yarmouth whither Storey
had been taken.
" My acquaintance seeing the traitor alone was
surprised that he should be here ; the latter said :
' I have come hither to do the Queen a great service,
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 61
for I have managed to bring into England a bitter
enemy of the Queen and this country.' It is now
understood that Dr. Storey will arrive here a prisoner
to-night or to-morrow."
In a letter written three days later the Ambas-
sador adds : " These people in London are only
talking of the martyrs they are going to make."
The jubilation of the Protestants may be judged
from the following letter of Bishop Horn, of Win-
chester, written to Bullinger a year later (August,
I571):
"There was here not long since a doctor of
laws, of some learning, such a one as I imagine as
those among the Jews who menaced Christ with
death. His name is Storey, a man as it were born
for cruelty, a most raging persecutor in Marian
times to whom it was gain to kill the saints and
sport to shed blood.
" This man after the happy day had shone on us
. . . was thrown into prison on an evident charge
of treason. A short time afterwards ... he
escaped to Flanders, . . . where like a fury fresh
from hell, or more truly like a wicked Davus, it is
wonderful how he made mischief. . . . There
comes to him one of his friends, whose fidelity he
least suspected, but who had been suborned by the
merchants.1 This man whispers in his ear that a
ship has just arrived from England with I know
1 Even Horn did not know that Parker had been sent to
Flanders for the very purpose of kidnapping the martyr. But it is
evident from the whole letter that Horn cared little forgaccuracy.
62 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
not what golden mountains of treasure. Fired with
the love of plunder, he straightway sallies forth,
promising the money to himself and death to the
merchants. After he had entered the ship and
was prying about in every corner, and had just
gone down into the interior of the vessel, they
suddenly closed the hatches, and with their sails set,
are carried by a prosperous and safe breeze to
England.
"And so at length he was brought to London
amidst the great congratulations of the people
awaiting him on his return."1
The Lords of the Council ordered Dr. Watts,
Archdeacon of London, to take care of Dr. Storey
till the Lollards' Tower2 could be got ready for his
reception ; for no common prison would do for such
a man.
As Lord Cobham wrote to Cecil : " In my
poor opinion no common prison is fit for him, for he
shall find too many friends." " No," comments
Simpson, " the man who might have put Cecil and
1 Zurich Letters, First Series, n. 98.
2 Not the tower at Lambeth Palace, commonly so called, but
a tower attached to St. Paul's Cathedral, where heretics who came
under the Bishop of London's jurisdiction were confined. "At
each corner of this West End [of St. Paul's] was a strong tower
of stone, made for Bell-Towers, one of them, viz., that next the
Bishop's Palace, was used by the Palace in Stow's time, and the
other, toward the South, was called the Lollards' Tower, and used as
the Bishop's Prison, for such as were detected for Opinions in
Religion contrary to the Faith of the Church." (The History and
Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster. By Seymour and
Marchant. London, 1754, vol. i. p. 739.)
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 63
Leicester, and Elizabeth herself to death, and had
only put them in fear, was not to be allowed the
use of friends. He was to have no common prison,
the vindictiveness of the Court faction was to ape
the vengeance of God, and Dr. Storey was to be
punished by that wherein he had sinned. The
Lollards' Tower, in which he shut up the heretics
whom the ancient laws then punished, was to be
new-locked and bolted to shut him up."
On August the 26th, Archdeacon Watts wrote
to Cecil that on the Friday evening last Dr. Storey
had been brought to his house, "albeit I am very
unmeet and unprovided for such a charge." The
Lollards' Tower should be made ready for him, the
locks and bolts having been broken off its doors at
the death of Queen Mary and never repaired since.
" My house is so weak," he plaintively adds,
"that I am forced to get men to watch every night,
which is a great trouble to me ; and the care that I
have of his safe keeping (being a person of whom
such an account is made) doth much impair my
health. I will commit him to the Lollards' Tower as
soon as it is ready, and will appoint a couple of
keepers to keep him there."1
He wrote again on September the 4th, that
Storey had been in the Lollards' Tower since the
Friday before.
" He seemeth to take little thought for any
matters, and is as perverse in mind concerning
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, Ixxiii. 30.
64 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
religion as heretofore he hath been ; and plainly
saith that what he did in Queen Mary's time he did
it lawfully, because he was but a minister of the
law ; and if the like law were again he might do the
like. I have appointed two of my neighbours, being
honest men and favourers of the truth, to be his
keepers jointly, and have divided the keys of the
prison between them, so as the one cannot come
at him without the other ; and I have given them
strait charge to keep him secret and safe, and not
to suffer any to have conference with him."1
Meanwhile the blessed martyr was filled with
supernatural joy. Though entirely taken by surprise
at his capture, he soon divined what was in prospect
for him, and earnestly gave thanks to God, who had
brought him back again to the place of suffering,
ardently praying that he might obtain the martyr's
crown and palm.2 The Catholics were plunged into
deep distress, and many prayers went up to Heaven
that he might be constant in the hour of trial.
The Spanish Ambassador, Don Guerau de Spes,
wrote on September the 3rd :
"Dr. Storey is at present very strictly imprisoned
and is being examined. The man who betrayed
him is also under arrest, in order to make the people
believe that he did not betray him. Many burlesque
verses have been printed about the kidnapping of
Storey."3
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, Ixxxiii. 30. - Concertatio, f. 44.
3 Spanish Calendar, 1570, n. 216.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 65
On the nth he wrote to the King :
" The captain of the smack which brought
Dr. Storey is called Cornelius Hadria,1 who I do
not think is a Bergen man. He is swaggering
about here very impudently. He arranged the
matter with Mershe the English commissioner, and
others whose names I am ascertaining."
Meanwhile the rogues engaged in this conspiracy
were quarrelling over the payment and division of
the spoil. William Parker was the luckiest of all;
for as Cecil did not desire the share he had in it
to be known, and as for appearance sake he was to
be kept in prison and tried with Dr. Storey as an
accomplice with him, under the pretence that both
of them were entrapped and brought over as traitors,
it was necessary to pay him very handsomely not
to divulge the plot, and to submit quietly to his
imprisonment in the Tower, to which both he and
Storey were transferred in December. Among the
State Papers we find Sir Owen Hopton the
Lieutenant's charges for their maintenance there ;
each of them being charged 135. 4d. a week for
diet, 53. for a keeper, and 45. for fuel and lights.2
John Mershe wrote to Cecil and Leicester on
the nth of September, 1570, enclosing the porten-
tous bill of charges presented by his accomplices :
" Right Honourable, my duty remembered, I
am earnestly pressed by these 3 young men who
1 Ramsden and his companions call him Cornelius Adrianson,
but Van Eycke seems to have been his real name.
- R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, Ixxiii. 46.
F II.
66 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
brought over Dr. Storey to commend their suit to
your Honours, which is that they may be answered
such money as they say they have laid out, amount-
ing, besides £68 us. 4d., which I have answered to
that account, £109 35. 2d., as by an account which
they will exhibit may appear. And therefore I am
bold to be a humble suitor unto your Honours
to be as good to them as may be ; for they have
adventured so far as they may no more go into
the Low Countries, their names being notoriously
known, and yet two of them are married. They
trust also that their dangerous services taken in
hand with so good a will is taken in so good part
that they shall have some further consideration, and
although they have kept themselves close in one
house which is clear, yet will they spend 5 or 6
days in the country ere they come to the city." *
We much regret that -considerations of space
forbid us from printing the bill of charges in its
entirety. It is a most interesting document and the
effrontery of the ingenuous young men who drew it
up is very amusing. It evidently quite took away the
breath of the worthies to whom it was addressed.2
It is headed A die 23 Julii anno 1570, and has
been annotated by Mershe as we shall see. The
whole comes to the respectable total of £177 145. 6d.
(which may perhaps be multiplied by at least eight
to get the modern value). This bill was of course
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, Ixxiii. 62.
2 It is printed in Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations Politiques des
Fays Bas et de I'Angleterre, etc. torn. vi.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 67
for money out of pocket, and did not include the
reward claimed by the merchants. Among the more
interesting items are the following :
" Paid for our charges the space xiii
days at the English house in
Barrow as well for Parker as for
ourselves and two men more for
divers which came out of Zealand
and from Antwerp, as also expenses
upon the master and mariners
during our abode there ...'.. £8 4 6
(Margin, Too much.)
Paid more than we were fain to give to
be released of a hoye which we had
bought at Barrow aforesaid for
that she was not so able, nor so
fit to serve our turn as we took her
to be 16 13 4
(Margin, / doubt thereof.)
Paid more to be released of x sacks of
tow and other things which at the
first were determined to be laid
upon the said hoye, and afterwards
we resolved upon the contrary . 328
Paid more for beer, bread and beef and
other victuals for this our last hoye
our company being in all x persons 10 o o
(Margin, There was V liv. paid.}
Paid to Cornelius Adrianson skipper for
his freight, according to our bargain
made with him 50 o o
(Margin, He had but 33 liv. 6s. 8d.)
68 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
Paid unto iii mariners which we hired
for x liv. a man, whereof the one
had but iii liv. vis. viii d. in hand
and afterwards ran away from us,
so that to encourage the rest which
we feared would have done the
like, we granted them the rest of
his hire, so have they in all ... 30 o o
(Margin, He that maketh freight
with the master hireth also the
mariners.)
Paid more unto one Englishman which
we took with us for over more
strength, if need should have been,
as also to be our pilot when occasion
might serve 13 6 8
(Margin,/ think he had xx or xxxfl.)
More we have promised unto another
Englishman as well for his pains
taken on the other side as also for
his coming with us for over more
aid and strength, whatsoever might
have happened by the way 20 o o
(Margin, This was needless, I would
they had left him alone.) "
Of the total sum they had already received over
£68, which was paid to them at Antwerp by one
John Taylor. They still demanded £109 35. 2d. ;
but Cecil was not disposed to give a penny more,
though Mershe wrote many strenuous letters, urging
that it were better to give way, for if the young men
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 69.
were made discontented the affair might acquire an
awkward publicity. He hoped, however, that it
would not be thought that he " allowed of their
account, which I think untrue and unreasonable,
as by the 'notes in the margin may appear;
but yet I cannot remove them from it ; they doubt
by likelihood how they shall be considered [i.e.,
what reward they will get] and therefore would help
themselves this way." He went on to plead for
more money for himself.1 We learn from this letter
that Ramsden had a wife and children at Antwerp
to whom he could not safely return, and that he
and Bragge had refused a reward of £40 a piece
offered them by Cecil's agent Lee, " saying they
would stand to the reward of the Lords of the
Council."
Cecil, in one of his last replies (after the affair
had gone on sometime and Dr. Storey was executed)
jocosely suggested that if the young men were not
satisfied, they might have Dr. Storey's carcase
among them to sell as relics. They at last invented
a new tale, namely, that they had left £2,300 of
debt behind them in the Low Countries which
the Duke of Alva had confiscated ; for that the
seizure of Dr. Storey had very much embittered
both the King and himself against Elizabeth and
her Government. However, as Simpson says,
if there had been any truth in this story, " we
doubt whether they would have been a whole
twelvemonth in finding it out as an argument for
the payment of their bill, and we have still greater
1 Letter of September 14, 1570. R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, Ixxiii. 64.
70 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
doubts whether they would have undertaken the
affair with the almost certain prospect of losing
everything they had in the Low Countries."
We may end this episode by giving one of their
whining letters to Cecil, dated June, 1571, a few
days after the martyrdom, because of the great light
it throws upon the whole transaction. We do not
know if they ever got their money, but probably
they did not. As it was, they had already received
considerably more than the traditional thirty pieces
of silver.
" To the Right Honourable my very good Lord
the Lord of Burghley, —
" The cold answer, right honourable, which of
late we received of Mr. Mershe to his motion, made
as he saith, of our cause unto your lordship, had
wholly dismayed us, had not the right honourable
Earl of Leicester sundry times declared unto us the
contrary ; and you yourself of your great goodness
very lately confirmed the same, which yieldeth us
indeed great hope that notwithstanding the said
Mershe's discouragement, we are shortly to have
some good end of that which so long we had sued
for, wherein undoubtedly your great bounty shall so
much the more appear and shine, as our present
necessity doth urgently crave the same ; and our
hope is likewise the better assured, in that you have
used, as of late we understand, so great liberality
towards Parker, whose good hap in that behalf, as
we do not in any wise malign, so doubt we not but
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 71
our travail and losses, without whom he had never
prevailed, will also be somewhat considered accord-
ingly. Yet forasmuch as those, perhaps, to whom
we had partly trusted, have not so effectually
declared our cause as both by promise and in
conscience they are bound to do, and to the intent
(whatsoever report be made to the contrary) it may
plainly appear to your lordship, that of all prudence
touching those affairs, ours hath been and still is the
greatest, may it please your lordship to understand
the whole order how we came first to deal in this
matter. The thing being pretended and planned by
others long before, charge was committed unto one
Pigotte to furnish a ship with men and mariners
sufficient for the purpose. He proceeded therein
so far, that the very place, time, and tide were
appointed, where the Doctor should be shipped with
the whole train almost in all points as we now
lastly used, for none other to that end could aptly
have served. But in effect those matters were so
slenderly handled, that when it came to the very
point, all was dashed and like to be discovered. For
beside that the men and mariners forsook the enter-
prise, and refused to deal any more therein, certain
of them letted not to make exclamation at Parker's
house, where Storey and all other rebels resorted ;
and not knowing that Parker was privy thereunto,
warned him, as he said unto us himself, to take
heed, for there were that pretended to carry him
and another into England. Until the matter was
brought into this exigent, we never dealt therein,
nor once understood of any such pretence ; and in
72 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
this extremity did one John Lee, gentleman, break
the news unto us, declaring how lewdly Pigotte had
ordered the matters, greatly complaining the danger
he stood in himself, being in fear their enterprise
would be bewrayed, that in very deed he once
determined with the rest to have fled and absented
themselves, for fear of the peril which was like to
ensue ; and so far discoursed upon the matter with
us, that plainly we perceived him to be the principal
dealer therein by order from hence, and the only
man that by promises of great rewards and other
things had allured Parker to consent thereunto :
craving instantly (for so much as he brought the
matter so far) our aid and assistance in that distress
towards the accomplishing of the rest ; whereunto,
although in heart we were very well inclined, yet
could we not upon such a sudden be persuaded to
hazard all that we had and our lives withal, until
such time as, upon sight of certain letters which he
showed us from Mr. Saltanstall and Mr. Mershe,
wherein your lordship was also mentioned, he
showed in the end your lordship's own letter for
confirmation of the rest, without which indeed we
had not so far endangered ourselves at that sudden.
But perceiving thereby that our service should be
great and very acceptable to the State, we judged
no time to be omitted, nor any danger refused,
which might further so good an enterprise. So that
it was neither Lee, Saltanstall, or Mershe, but the
credit of your lordship's letters, my lord, that moved
us, all other things set apart, presently to employ
ourselves that way, and without further delibera-
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 73
tion to hazard our lives, and all that we ever had,
rather than so good a piece of service should be
overthrown. It was a dangerous attempt, and very
well handled of Lee, the winning of Parker to
consent thereunto ; for without him the Doctor
could never have been blinded in such sort as he
was. But all the rest was our deed only, and no
man's else, as we trust Lee hath long sithence writ
unto your lordship ; and we have also his letters to
testify the same, if need require, whereby it shall
plainly appear, if Mr. Mershe have not likewise
reported accordingly, that he hath greatly abused
us. As for Parker, be it spoken under correction,
my lord, it was the opinion which Storey had of his
simplicity, and not his own policy, that so deceived
and allured him into those dangers ; which thing
Storey by this one point sufficiently declared, in that
he thought him not able to deal in any matter
touching his office without his presence to guide and
direct him ; and sure I am your lordship doth well
perceive him to be very incapable of any such affairs
as these were. For our parts, more assistance than
of a very child or infant we never had of him, and
accordingly were forced from time to time to instruct
him what he should say or do in every respect ; and
for his office, if your lordship make account what he
hath lost thereby, surely as it was his only substance,
it is well known, although he bore the name, that it
was a matter of trust, and that Storey notwith-
standing would have reaped the greatest fruit
thereof. For our parts, right honourable, besides
that we lack a great part of our disbursed money,
74 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
and the great charge which we have been at in
following her Majesty's Court these ten months
continually, what we have lost and are likely to
lose, if we should so amply declare as our cause
requireth, your lordship may think it very much ;
for over and above the £2,300 heretofore mentioned,
our liberty and traffic in those places hath hitherto
maintained the estate of mean merchants, whereof
we are now wholly destitute. And for mine own
part, those hopes which on behalf of my wife I am
like to lose, I would not willingly have given for
1,000 marks. Thus humbly beseeching your lord-
ship to weigh our cause with compassion, for that
Mr. Mershe declaring unto us so heavy a message
from you, the same is a double grief that your
lordship should wish us Dr. Storey's carcass among
us, as Mr. Mershe saith, or otherwise to make some
more reasonable suit. Wherein, my good lord, as we
have lost all that ever we had in doing this service,
so, for that matter what we require tends to the
Queen's Majesty's profit, and the Commonweal, and
is but a casualty to what it may be worth to counter-
vail our damages before mentioned ; yet we humbly
content ourselves therewith, desirous no further to
enjoy it than as the same be not prejudicial to the
intercourse and good policy of the State. And now,
if we be driven to change our suit again, as we were
once before for the matter of leather, we must be
driven withal to beg our bread, and so leave to
trouble your lordship any more. But behold your
lordship as our good patron, whose goodness it is to
consider how extremely we be forced, whilst that we
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 75
must trouble you with so many words. But we
beseech you of pardon and some end, whatsoever it
be. For* these five months the Earl of Leicester
hath promised us good despatch ; and so we be put
off to our greater destruction, fed only with hopes,
and lastly are further now from any relief at all.
Praying God to move his heart, and to preserve
your good lordship in all felicity, your honour's
orator,
" ROGER RAMSDEN."
But we must return to the Blessed Martyr whom
we left in prison in the Tower. On the I3th of
December, 1570, Don Guerau wrote to King
Philip :
" Dr. Storey has been lodged in the Tower and
confronted with the man who brought him. He is
accused of having plotted with the Duke of Alva.
They are putting him to the torture to-day, and I
expect it will go badly with him. God help him.
All the Catholics pray for him." l
On the 2nd of March, 1570-1, he wrote again :
"Your Majesty will see by the letters from Dr.
Storey to me how he is suffering in the Tower.2
Our knowledge of the martyr's doings and
sufferings from this point rests wholly on the
evidence of extremely hostile writers. It is well
to call attention to the fact before proceeding
further.
" He bore his fate with considerable stoicism,"
1 Spanish Calendar, p. 288.
2 Ibid. p. 296. These letters are unfortunately not forthcoming.
76 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
writes Froude, " but his firmness failed him in the
terrible ordeal which followed. He was examined
in his cell under the rack as Felton had been. The
Catholics prayed that God would support him under
it, but he was seventy years old and feeble for his
age, and his dark secrets were wrung from him by
his agony."1
We shall hear more of these " dark secrets " later
on. As a matter of fact, his long imprisonment
and frequent torturings before his trial are to be
accounted for by the difficulty which Cecil and
Leicester had to trump up some charge of treason
against him by which he might legally be put to
death, for it was clear that they could not make
his having been ecclesiastical commissioner under
Queen Mary or his speech in the House of Commons
treason, although they were the real cause of his
execution. It was not till Easter, 1571, that they
concocted an indictment against him. He had
been on friendly terms with the Nortons and other
refugees, actors in the Northern Rising, who had
been indicted for treason. He was therefore indicted
for comforting traitors, and one of the particular
charges against him was, that " he came one day
to Parker's house at Antwerp ; where sitting at
dinner, the elder Norton and some other of his
company came in from the church, and one said,
' This is Norton ; ' and thereupon Storey rose and
gave him place and bid him welcome, and so the
elder Norton sat down in Storey's place."
The indictment against him is still extant,2 and
1 History of England, ix. p. 312. '2 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, Ixxvii. 64.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 77
it shows how false were the virulent and spiteful
attacks made by the authors of two tracts which
were published against him after his death, and to
which we shall have to refer later on.
After reciting the indictment against the Nortons
and others for their share in the Northern Rising,
and that the said Richard Norton and the rest
traitorously fled to Antwerp, it goes on to present :
"That John Storey, of London, doctor of laws;
William Parker, of London, draper ; and John
Prestall, of London, gentleman, feloniously and
traitorously conspired, compassed and imagined the
death of the Queen, and her deprivation ; and well
knowing that Richard Norton and the rest had
committed, done, and perpetrated divers treasons
and rebellions in England, did feloniously and
traitorously, at Antwerp and divers other places,
comfort, receive, entertain, and assist the said
Richard Norton and the rest against their allegiance,
&c., and against the peace, &c., and against the
statute in that place made and provided."
" He was brought to Westminster Hall on May
the 26th,1 before the judges of the Queen's Bench
and arraigned. He refused to plead, saying ' that
he was not an English subject, that men were not
born slaves but freemen ; that kings were made for
the people, and not the people for their kings ; that
the doctrine of natural allegiance was tyrannical
1 So Simpson. The Spanish Ambassador, however, says May 27,
and Sander May 25. The trial may have lasted more than one day.
78 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
and unjust, for that as men were born free they had
a right to choose their own country, and could owe
no allegiance before they had sworn allegiance.'
He acknowledged however that he was born in
England. 'Then,' said they, 'it follows you are a
subject to the Queen and laws of the realm.' But
he said that he had not been the Queen's subject
for the last seven years, having been naturalized a
Spaniard, and was the subject of the most Catholic
and mighty Prince, Philip of Spain. He added that
God commanded Abraham to go forth from the
land and country where he was born, from his
friends and kinsfolk unto another country ; and so
he followed his example, for conscience' sake in
religion, did forsake his country and the laws of the
realm, and the prince, and had given himself up to
the service of another governor. Abraham had been
commanded to do this, to escape being involved in
the sin of idolatry in which Chaldaea was then
plunged, and he to escape the sin of heresy and
schism.1 Perceiving that they were about to give
judgment against him, he said they had no law to
1 "Quite right too, Dr. Storey," breaks out Mr. Simpson;
" you Elizabethan Catholics are much too advanced in your notions
of the rights of man, . . . now we have to defend you for the
abominable doctrine that a man is not delivered over bound hand
and foot, or rather body and soul, into the hands of any ogre who
may happen to be sitting on the throne, simply because the poor
man was born within the fortunate dominions of the ogre aforesaid.
You really do hold that a civilized man who has the misfortune' to
be born of civilized parents within the territories of Mumbo-Jumbo
or Nangaro, may, if he chooses, migrate to another realm, and
transfer his allegiance to a more sympathetic sovereign ! Fatal
error," &c., &c.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 79
do so ; then turning to the people, he said : ' Good
people, I trust ye see how violently I am used, and
how unjustly and contrary to all justice and equity
they use me.' And he added 'that he had good
hope that he was not destitute of some friends there
who would give notice to the most Catholic Prince,
his master, how cruelly they dealt with him. One
of them said to him : ' Master Storey, because you
think it violence that is shown to you instead of
law and justice, you shall know that we do nothing
but what we may do by law and equity.' Then
one of the judges said, 'This is Scarborough's
case.' ' Nay,' answered the martyr, 'my case is not
Scarborough's case ; but indeed I had Scarborough's
warning1 to come to this arraign, for I knew nothing
of it till seven o'clock this morning.' Then there
was a book delivered unto him to read wherein he
might see what they might do by law ; and after
he had read it, the Judge demanded of him ' how
he liked it ? ' Storey answered : ' God have mercy
upon me.' Then the Lord Chief Justice gave him
judgment to be drawn, hanged and quartered; and
so he was again sent unto the Tower."
1 " First knocking a man down and then bidding him stand,"
an old proverb called by the common people in those days
"Scarborough's Warning." (Simpson.) The account of the trial
as also that of the execution and last speech is taken from one of
the tracts already mentioned, which is virulently hostile in tone,
The Declaration of the Life and Death of John Storey. The other is
entitled, A copy of a Letter lately sent by a Gentleman, Student in the
Lawes, to a Friende of his, concernyng D. Storie, a black-letter pamphlet
published after the martyr's death and purporting to contain his
confessions. Reprinted in Harleian Miscellany, viii. pp. 608 — 613.
8o BLESSED JOHN STOREY
It has been said by the King of Martyrs that
*' except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and
die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth
much fruit." And so it was in the case of Blessed
John Storey. There was one present at the trial
who was wavering as to whether he should follow
the divine call. But the cruelty and injustice
there displayed decided him, and Blessed Edmund
Campion, for it was no other than he, was convinced
by what he saw and heard that England was no
place for him. He was "animated to offer himself
by this blessed man's example," writes Father
Persons,1 " to any danger and peril for the same
Faith for which the Doctor died." And so he went
abroad, not indeed to escape from like dangers, but
to prepare to meet them, and presented himself
to Dr. Allen at Douay. Later on, when he returned
on that short but triumphal mission of his, he was
wont to salute bareheaded the sacred tree of Tyburn
consecrated by the old martyr's blood, and fervently
to pray beneath it for a like glorious crown.
Having thus been seized in a foreign land by
craft and violence, and condemned in a country
that he had never meant to enter again, the martyr
was taken back to the Tower.
On his way there he was insulted by the rabble
who scoffed and jeered at him. " As he went by
the way, certain persons in several places met with
him, and one said, ' O Storey, Storey ! thou art a
strange story ! remember Master Bradford that
godly man ; his blood asketh vengeance on thee,
1 Life of Campion, p. 7.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 81
Storey; repent in time.' . . . Another cried unto
him and said, ' Blessed be God, Storey, who hath
made thee partaker of such bread as thou wast wont
to deal to the innocent members of Jesus Christ.'
Another also cried out on him and said, ' Storey,
Storey, the abominable cup of fornication and
filthiness, that thou hast given others to drink be
heaped up topful, that thy plagues may be greater
at the terrible day of God's wrath and vengeance,
unless thou ask mercy for thy filthy, corrupt, and
stinking life.' And yet another cried out unto him
and said : ' I pray God that thy heart be not
hardened as was Pharaoh's, and made harder than
the adamant stone or the steel ; that when he would
he could not repent and call for grace.' And among
the rest, one came to him at London-stone and
saluted him with this metre, saying :
Master doctor Story
For you they are quite sorry,
The Court of Lovaine and Rome :
Your holy father the pope
Cannot save you from rope,
The hangman must have your gown.
And to all these outrages ' he answered never a
word.' "*
The martyr was confined in the Beauchamp
Tower,2 in the large room on the first floor, on the
walls of which he has left a precious relic of his
imprisonment. The inscription
I57O : IHON • STORE • DOCTOR.
1 The Declaration.
- We presume that the inscription retains its original site.
G II.
82 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
no doubt cut with his own hand, can still be seen
on the left hand of the chimney.
While in the Tower he was several times offered
the Oath of Supremacy, which he steadily refused to
take.1
Two days after his condemnation he wrote a
letter to his wife at Louvain. He complained of
the injustice of his condemnation. It would have
been easy for him, he wrote, to have refuted the
charge of treason, if the case had been tried before
other judges. And he cited as witnesses of his
innocence those very men with whom he was said
to have conspired at Antwerp. But his conscience
would not allow him to act otherwise than he had
done. He could not plead as if he acknowledged
an excommunicated Queen, and especially could
not, according to his conscience, acknowledge
the jurisdiction of any judge appointed by one so
excommunicated, for fear of himself being involved
in the same condemnation. In order, therefore,
to save his own conscience, and that he might die
in the communion of Holy Church, he did not
hesitate to shed his blood. He therefore not only
returned thanks to God that he was thought worthy
to die for so good a cause, but believed that his wife
and all his friends would congratulate him, if they
really knew with what eagerness he prepared
himself for that death, by which in so short a time
he would expiate the faults of a life of nearly seventy
years.2
1 Wood, A then. Oxon. i. 388.
2 Sander, Concertatio, ff. 448, 45 A. We have only Sander's
resume of this letter.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 83
The fanatical preachers who had hitherto annoyed
him with their importunities now left him, and on
the evening before his execution the Lieutenant of
the Tower asked him if he would like any minister
of God to attend him. He said he would be most
grateful for the assistance of a Catholic priest, but
he would have nothing to do with any heretic or
schismatic. The Lieutenant, upon this, gave leave
that his old friend, the learned and saintly Dr.
Feckenham, Abbot of Westminster, himself a con-
fessor in chains for the Catholic faith, should attend
him. This was almost the last time that such a
favour was granted. The Abbot remained with him
all night, and we know from the martyr's Own
testimony, how great was the spiritual comfort
which he derived from the good old man. The fear
of death was taken away and his soul was flooded
with supernatural joy.
Meanwhile, it will be asked, what were his
powerful friends doing ? What efforts were being
made to save him by the great King whose liege
subject he had claimed to be ? If Blessed John
Storey had ever been tempted to put his trust in
princes, he knew now how true was the Psalmist's
warning that there was " no help in them."
It is true that some feeble efforts had been made
by the Spanish Ambassador and the Duke of Alva
on his behalf, but Philip II. could not afford just
then to quarrel with Elizabeth, and so to throw her
into the arms of France, even to save Dr. Storey
from his cruel fate.
" If Alva and Philip endured this, the Catholics
BLESSED JOHN STOREY
in England might well despair of help from them,
and Elizabeth might lay aside her fears. Here was
a man living under the King of Spain's protection,
in the employ of the Government, and seized and
carried off, as it were, under Alva's eyes. Yet
Alva contented himself with a mild remonstrance
to the English Minister. ' The proceeding appeared
strange to him,' he said, ' the Queen of England
should remember that it would discontent her to
have the like done in her countries ; it was the
King's pleasure, however, to bear with her in a
matter which he would not have suffered at another
prince's hand.' The English Catholics little expected
such an answer."1
Nor indeed did the Spanish Ambassador. On
the 27th of May, 1571, he wrote to the King :
" Your Majesty will have learned that I addressed
this Council from the Duke of Alva, in order to
attempt to procure the release of Dr. Storey.2 I now
hear that they took him to-day to be tried at
Westminster, and that they have condemned him
to death in the usual way. I will say no more about
it, as I have no fresh instructions to do so." . . .
He adds, in a postscript : " I had written thus far
when I decided to convey to the Council the enclosed
remonstrance. Cecil replied that an answer should
be sent after the Queen and Council had been
1 Froude, History of England, ix. p. 313.
- This was on April 16. The Ambassador, through his
secretary, John Cipres, required the punishment of Storey's
abductors, and complained of the encouragement given to the rebels
and pirates of the Low Countries in England. (Foreign Calendar,
1569— 1571- n-
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 85
consulted, as had been done previously, but he
was much surprised that the Duke and I should
intercede for an Englishman."1 The Ambassador
had demanded that Storey should be returned to
Flanders. When the answer came it was character-
istically insolent. Elizabeth sent a message that
she would keep the body of the condemned man,
but would be quite willing to send his head to the
King of Spain.2
We now approach the final tragedy. The execu-
tion took place on the ist of June, 1571. It was
carried out, says Pollard, "with horrible cruelty." a
Some of the details of the martyr's sufferings are
indeed too abominable to describe in these days,
they will be found in Antony a Wood and other
writers. It had evidently been determined by the
old martyr's relentless foes that he should be spared
no detail of extremest ignominy" and horror. We
give the account furnished us by the contemporary
pamphleteer,4 who was evidently present at the
martyrdom. Though so bitterly hostile a witness,
his account seems trustworthy, and indeed his bias
against the victim makes his testimony doubly
precious.
" The first day of June, the said Mr. Storey was
drawn upon a hurdle from the Tower of London
unto Tyburn ; where was prepared for him a new
pair of gallows, made in triangular manner. And
by the way, as he went, many people spoke unto
1 Spanish Calendar, 1571, p. 313. * Relations Politiques, vi. p. ii.
3 Dictionary of National Biography. * The Declaration.
86 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
him, and called unto him to repent of his tyranny
and wickedness ; and willed him to call upon God
for mercy ; but he lay as though he had been asleep,
and would not speak to any person. And when he
was taken from the hurdle, and set in a cart, he
made there a solemn protestation and said :
" I am come hither to die, and truly if this death
were ten times more fierce and sharp than it is, I
have deserved it. I have lived the space of three
score and seven years, and now my body must abide
this temporal pain and punishment, provided for
me here in this life, by means whereof my days
shall be cut off. But, where at the first I stood in
fear of death, I thank God, this night past I have
been so comforted with God and godly men, that
the fear of death is taken from my sight. And now
I appeal to God the Father, trusting in the Passion
of His Son Jesus Christ, and hoping by the shedding
of His Blood only to be saved. And although a long
time I could not apply the virtue of His Passion
and Death to the use and benefit of my soul, because
of my long hovering in fear ; yet now, I thank God,
I know how to apply this medicine ; as for example,
an apothecary may have a medicine in his shop
seven years, that may help a sick or diseased man,
by the counsel of a physician, but if this medicine
be not applied to the patient but still remaineth in
the apothecary's shop, it profiteth nothing — no
more could the benefit of Christ's death help me,
because, although I knew the medicine good, I did
not apply it unto my soul's health : but now it hath
pleased Almighty God to call me to account of my
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 87
sixty-seven years, which now must have an end, and
this corrupt body must feel a temporal punishment,
for my sins have deserved it (as I said before). I am
now come to a proof of this medicine. David,
when he had committed adultery with Bathsheba,
the wife of Uriah (whose husband also he caused
to be put into the front of the battle, and so was
murdered) ; he for that trespass felt a temporal
punishment, by the loss of his son, whom he loved
tenderly. Also, when he numbered his people, he
greatly displeased God ; and for his offence and
transgression he felt a temporal pain ; and choice
was given unto him from above, to choose one
of these three temporal and bodily punishments ;
that is to say : three days' pestilence ; the sword,
that is to say : bloody battle seven years ; or famine
seven years. And he thought to choose the least,
and he chose three days' pestilence ; but this scourge
took away an infinite number of his subjects. So
now as my sins deserve a temporal pain, which here
have an end, even in this flesh ; I am of the same
mind that the prophet David was : and with him I
agree saying, Invoco te, Domine, &c. ' Lord, I call
upon Thee in this day of my trouble. Hear me,
O Lord, out of Thy dwelling-place,' &c.
" But now to speak a little of my arraignment :
when I was at Westminster, I alleged in my plea
that I was no subject of this realm ; as I did like-
wise before the Queen's commissioners, Sir Thomas
Wrath, Mr. Thomas Wilbraham, late Recorder of the
City of London, Mr. Peter Osborne, Mr. Marshe, and
88 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
Mr. Dr. Watts; where the Recorder of London made
a like demand as was demanded of me at West-
minster ; and that was, whether I was born in
England or no ? Whereunto I answered, ' I was.'
' Then,' said he, ' it followeth that you are and ought
to continue the Queen's faithful subject.' Where-
unto I replied then, as I do now, saying: 'I am
sworn to the noble King, defender of the ancient
Catholic Faith, King Philip of Spain, and he is
sworn again by a solemn and corporal oath, to
maintain and defend the University of Louvain,
whereof I am a member ; and therefore no subject
of this realm, nor yet subject to any laws thereof.
For it is well known that I departed this realm
being freely licensed thereunto by the Queen, who
accounted me an abject and castaway ; and I came
not hither again of my own accord, but I was
betrayed.
" And although I had an inkling given me before
of such a thing pretended towards me, yet I could
not shun or escape it : for sure it was God who
made dim my understanding and blinded mine
eyes, so that I could not perceive it. But Holy
Writ commandeth me to love my enemies, and
here I forgive them freely with all my heart ;
beseeching God that they take no harm for me in
another country. I would be right sorry they should,
although they betrayed me. I travelled with them
from ship to ship, by the space of eight days, and
mistrusted no peril to be at hand, until I was
clapped fast under the hatches. But sure, sure it
was God that wrought it ; yea, and although I
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 89
was accounted a poller of the Englishmen of your
country, I stand now here before God, and by
the death I shall die, I had never out of any ship
more than two pieces of gold, and forty dollars
that were laid in my hand.
" But once again to my arraignment. Where
there were certain letters laid to my charge,
wherein I should go about to provoke the Mortons,
the Nevilles, and others to rebel ; I never meant
it ; yet will I discharge my conscience freely and
frankly, and tell you truth. There was a com-
mission for a like matter sent into Scotland, which
I wrote with mine own hand : but it contained
a proviso, wherein the Queen of England and her
dominions were excepted.
" There are yet two things that I purpose to talk
of; namely, for that there are here present a great
number of youth ; and I would to God I might
say or speak that which might bring all men to the
unity of the Church ; for there is but one Church,
one Flock, and one Shepherd ; if I could this do I
would think myself to have wrought a good work.
" The first point toucheth my cruelty, wherewith
I am sore burdened, and the second concerneth my
religion. As touching the first ; there were three
in commission of the which I was one who might
do least, for I was the last of the three. And
though I might, by persuasion, essay to cause them
to revoke the Articles, which they had maintained,
and to confess the presence wherein I stand ; ye
know that he who chideth is not worthy to be
condemned for fighting ; no more am I worthy to
90 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
be counted cruel for chiding. It was the Bishop
that pronounced the sentence (Excommunicainns)
and against that I could not do, for I was one of
the laity. Yet often -times the Bishop, to whom
I was a servant, was bold with me, when he had
so many prisoners that he could not well bestow
them. For at one time the Lord Riche sent him
out of Essex 28, and at another time 16 and 14,
and some of them were sent to me, whom I kept
in my house with such fare as I had provided for
myself and my family at my own cost and charge.
And to prove that I was not so cruel as I am
reported to be, let this one tale suffice : there were
at one time 28 condemned to the fire, and I moved
the dean of Paul's to tender their estate, who
after was Abbot of Westminster, a very pitiful-
minded man. I think the most part of you know him,
it is Mr. Fecknam, and we went up and persuaded
with them, and we found them very tractable ; and
Mr. Fecknam and I laboured to the Lord Cardinal
Poole, showing they were nescientes quid fecerunt.
The Cardinal and we did sue together to the
Queen, and laid both the swords together, and so
we obtained pardon for them all, saving an old
woman that dwelt about Paul's Churchyard ; she
would not convert and therefore she was burned.
The rest of them received absolution and that with
all reverence. Search the Register and you shall
find it. Yea, and it was my procurement that
there should be no more burnt in London ; for
I saw well that it would not prevail, and therefore
we sent them into odd corners, into the country.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 91
"Wherefore, I pray you, name me not cruel; I
would be loth to have any such slander to run on
me ; but sith I die in charity, I pray you all of
charity to pray for me, that God may strengthen
me with patience to suffer my death, to the which
I yield most willingly.
"And here I make a petition to you my friends,
who would have bestowed anything on me ; I
beseech you, for charity sake, bestow it yearly on
my wife, who hath four small children, and God
hath now taken me away that was her staff and
stay ; and now my daughter Weston and her three
children are gone over unto her, and I know not how
they shall do for food, unless they go a begging
from door to door for it; although, indeed, no English
persons do beg but of English, being helped by the
Lady Dormer and Sir Francis (Englefield).
" I have good hope that you will be good unto
her, for she is the faithfullest wife, the lovingest
and constantest that ever man had ; and twice we
have lost all that ever we had, and now she hath
lost me to her great grief, I know.
" The second point that I thought to speak of
is concerning my religion, for that I know many
are desirous to know what faith I will die in ; the
which I will briefly touch. I say with St. Jerome,
that ancient father and pillar of the old ancient,
Catholic and Apostolic Church, grounded upon the
Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles, that in the same
faith that I was born in, I purpose to die in. And
as the ark that Noe and his family did possess,
figured the ship of Christ's Church, out of which
92 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
ship whosoever is, cannot be saved, in that ship
am I. ... A ship that is tossed on the floods is
often in danger of loss on the sands, and sometimes
on the rocks ; but when the men who are in the
ship espy present peril at hand, there is a cockboat
at the tail of the ship, whereunto they fly for
succour; so likewise I, being in the ship of Christ,
once fell out of the same ship, and was in present
peril and great danger : but then I, following the
example of a good mariner, took the cockboat,
thinking to drive to land ; and at the last, being in
the boat, I espied three oars, that is, to wit, contri-
tion, confession, and absolution ; and I held all
these fast, and ever since then I have continued in
the ship of Christ, of which the Apostle Peter is
the guide and principal, and in the faith Catholic of
my King I die.
" Then said the Earl of Bedford : ' Are you
not the Queen's subject ? ' '" No,' said Storey, ' and
yet I do not exclude the Queen, but I pray for her,
her Council, and the nobility of this realm long
to continue.' Then said the Lord Hunsdon : ' Are
you not the Queen's subject ? You were born in
England ? ' Then said Storey : ' Every man is
freeborn, and he hath the whole face of the earth
before him to dwell and abide in, where he liketh
best ; and if he cannot live here, he may go
elsewhere.' Then was there (as I think) one of the
ministers hearing him to make so light of our noble
Queen and country, demanded of him whether she
were not next and immediately under God Supreme
Head of the Churches of England and Ireland ?
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 93
Whereunto he answered, ' I come not hither to
dispute, but if she be, she is. My nay will not
prevail to prove it otherwise.' And then they cried,
' Away with the cart ! ' And so he was hanged
according to his judgment."
The Elizabethan libeller prudently stops here.
The horrible scene that followed was little calcu-
lated to display to advantage his ''noble Queen and
country."
" The execution," says Simpson, " was con-
ducted with more atrocious cruelty than was usual
even in those most barbarous times. Lords Burleigh
and Hunsdon, the Earl of Bedford, and another earl,
whom we may not uncharitably suppose to have
been Leicester, came to gloat over the dying
moments of the man they both hated and feared in
Queen Mary's days and detested still. Dr. Fulke,
a celebrated Protestant controversialist, and many
others of the leading Puritans, were present. He
was cut down the instant he was hanged, in order
that he might have all his senses about him. He
was then stripped, and as soon as the executioner
began his obscene and disgusting function, the
modest martyr rose and gave him a box on the ear.
He was however held down by three or four men
while the rest of the cruel butchery was performed."
The malice of his enemies did not cease with
his death ; most violent attacks were made on his
memory.1 Everything which he did (or was said
1 Especially in the two tracts already mentioned. Strype,
Holinshed, and Burnet are very foul-mouthed against him. They
do but re-echo Foxe, for the most part.
94 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
to have done) as a young man, which could in any
way tell invidiously was brought up against him to
blacken his character — nay, the very cries he uttered
at the time of his martyrdom, wrung from him by
their own barbarity, were brought against him by
way of reproach.
The notorious Dr. Fulke, the antagonist of
Blessed Edmund Campion, thus wrote against
him :l
" Such as were manifestly void of patience can
be no true martyrs, as were most of those rebels
and traitors ; and Storey, by name, who for all his
glorious tale, in the time of his deserved execution
by quartering was so impatient, that he did not
only cry and roar like a hell-hound, but also struck
the executioner doing his office, and resisted as long
as strength did serve him, being kept down by three
or four men till he was dead ; and he used no voice
of prayer in all that time of his crying, as I heard
of the very executioner himself, besides them that
stood by, but only roared and cried, as one overcome
with the sharpness of the pain ; as no martyr, as the
Papists did mightily boast of him."
This passage, though quoted with relish by
both Strype and Bishop Kennet, will disgust most
readers, who will probably agree with Mr. Simpson,
that " the term hell-hound is rather applicable to
those who could complacently write such atrocious
language, and to those who could come and gloat
1 Strype, Annals, ii. 84, anno 1571.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 95
their vengeance over the sufferings of a poor dying
man — to Elizabeth and her infamous ministers, and
to the Protestant Bishops and clergy, who were con-
tinually urging them on to still further atrocities."
Strype also finds pleasure in quoting some
doggerel written by Lawrence Ramsey, a poet near
about this time, in a book entitled The Practice of
the Devil, wherein the devil is brought in, speaking
thus :
" Stand to it Stapleton, Dorman and Harding,
And Rastal, that rakehell, to maintain my order:
Bonner and Gardiner are worth the regarding,
For keeping articles so long in this border.
O Storey, Storey, thou art worth recording :
Thou stood'st to it stoutly against God and King,
And at Tyburn desperately gav'st me an offering."1
i A modern accuser, Mr. Froude, brings a serious accusation
against our martyr which needs fuller consideration. He writes
thus of Storey : " Besides the ordinary plots for invading England,
it seems that he had a scheme on foot in connection with one of the
Hamiltons for a feat which would have eclipsed the murder at
Linlithgow. It was nothing less than making away with the little
King of Scots, in the belief that with his life would be removed the
principal obstacle to his mother's marriage with some Catholic
prince." In a note he adds : "This preposterous piece of wickedness
would have been incredible had it not been confessed by Storey
himself. The account of it was transmitted by the Spanish Ambas-
sador to Philip. Don Guerau's words are these." He then quotes
a passage in Spanish of which we give the translation. " Storey
said that Hamilton told him that Prestal had written to him, that
as to the business which Storey and Hamilton had mentioned to
him, it could be done with [the] Englishman] who was then in
Ireland ; it could not be accomplished without great supply of money.
And that secret was about slaughtering the King of Scotland ; for
this Prestal had said to Hamilton that with difficulty could the
Scots be reduced to the obedience of the Queen, while she was
without a husband, and that no principal person \vould seek her
as wife while that boy lived. But that if [he] slaughtered him that
96 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
The savage execution of the aged martyr caused
a great sensation among Catholics both in England
and on the Continent, where he was everywhere
venerated as a saint.
On the 5th of August, 1571, King Philip wrote
to Don Guerau de Spes : "The death, or rather
martyrdom, of Dr. Storey was, I see by the state-
ment you send, so firm and faithful in the Catholic
religion that it is a subject of gratitude to God that
He has still preserved such men as this in England,
since by means of them hopes may be entertained
he hoped that the brother of the Emperor \vould marry her."
(History of England, ix. 310, 311.)
Now at first sight this does look very black against Storey,
especially to the reader who does not know Spanish, and therefore
assumes that Froude's quotation confirms his statement. Besides,
it rests on the authority of the Spanish Ambassador, who would
of course have no reason whatever for misrepresenting Storey to
his Sovereign.
But when the matter is examined the whole structure collapses.
This statement does not rest on the authority of the Spanish Ambas-
sador at all ! It is taken from a mere translation into Spanish
of one of the scurrilous pamphlets written against the martyr, to
which we have already referred, that namely by the Gentleman
Student in the Lawes of the Realm, which is full of the most virulent
abuse of the martyr. This student maintains that though Storey
was not charged at his trial with his various horrible treasons, he
might and would have been had he been only content to plead. He
then goes on to give what he asserts to be a series of Extracts out of
DY. Storey's Confessions, ix December, 1570.
This letter was translated into Spanish, and found its way
eventually to the State Archives of Simancas. Part of it is printed
in Spanish by Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations Politiques,
Ac. vi. p. 141. The reference is Archives de Simancas, Estado, Leg.
826, fol. 63, and is entitled Copia de carta escripta por un cavallero que
estudia leyes de Inglaterra a cierto amigo suyo sobre el Doctor Estory.
Among the stories it contains, is one that the martyr was ever in
the habit of cursing the Queen as a form of grace after meals. It
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 97
that the true religion may yet be restored there.
Having respect to the need and trouble in which
I was informed Storey's wife was at Louvain, where
she lives, I have ordered the Duke to make the
necessary provision for the maintenance of her and
her children."
The martyr's life and death is said by a
Protestant informer, to have become one of the
regular themes at the English College at Rome.1
When the time came to paint the famous frescoes
on the walls of the church, Dr. Storey was
is full of quite unsupported charges against the martyr, none of
which were brought forward at the trial. Froude's transcripts from
Simancas are now in the British Museum (Add. 26,056 b, 158), and
there it can be seen how he has made his extracts from this pre-
posterous pamphlet, which then he has the audacity to give as the
testimony of the Spanish Ambassador. His methods of dealing with
history are however too notorious to allow even such an instance
as this to cause much surprise. Besides this, when the so-called
Confessions are attentively read, it will be seen that they come to
little or nothing. Storey was certainly in communication with
Prestal and Hamilton, and we have seen that he acknowledged at
his martyrdom that he was doing his best to aid the cause of the
imprisoned Queen of Scots, and to restore her to her own kingdom.
But all the " confession " shows is that Storey had been told by
Prestal that a mysterious Englishman had a scheme for killing the
King of Scots, and that this Englishman wanted money. Later on
we find him saying " that Prestal told him he could do much with
that Englishman in Ireland, therein this examinate discouraged him."
This Prestal seems to have been in reality a traitor in the pay
of the English Government, trying to involve other men in pre-
tended plots. At any rate, Lee, Cecil's agent, who had so much
to do with Storey's capture, constantly reports long conversations
with him to his master, and says that he is very well disposed.
He pretended to be a necromancer, and boasted he could predict
the day and the hour of the Queen of England's death. Camden
calls him " a magical impostor against the Queen's life."
1 Anthony Munday, English Romaine Life, p. 25.
H II.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY
represented there among the other martyrs of
England, and so it is that he now receives the
honours due to a Beatified Servant of God. But
nowhere did he receive more veneration than at
his old University of Louvain, and among the
Carthusians and the Grey Friars to whom he had
been so devoted. They honoured him as a saint,
and his relics and picture were placed over the
altars in certain of their churches. And indeed he
deserved their homage, for few more illustrious
martyrs have suffered in England for the defence of
the Supremacy of the Holy See, than this old man,
this Regius Professor of the Civil Law, who died
amidst such excruciating agonies at Tyburn. Even
the posthumous attacks of his enemies, as Sander
reminds us, only serve to add to his glory ; " for in
trying to cast the note of infamy on the memory of
a venerable and aged man and a most holy martyr,
they only prove how great were his merits, since
even after his death their hatred and envy against
him have no rest. Frustra enim post Dei opera,
hominum attexuntur verba"
A word must be added as to those who betrayed
our martyr to his death. The arch-villain Parker,
received a handsome pension from the Government.
He became one of Cecil's regular spies. The true
history of his treachery was kept carefully concealed.
Strype himself gives two accounts of it ; that in his
Life of Archbishop Parker,1 being the more trust-
worthy. " Parker was procured by certain persons,
1 ii. p. 366.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 99
to which they say Cecil was privy, to go to
Antwerp and decoy Storey," but then he adds that
"the Roman Catholics did not forget Parker;
for this year, for some pretence, he was cast into
prison by the craft and malice of Storey's private
friends as a pirate." The truth was of course
that Parker was conveyed to England with Storey
apparently against his will, imprisoned and arraigned
with him, in order that his complicity with Cecil
might not leak out ; and Parker was well paid for
submitting to it with a good grace. Strype gives us
another version in his Life of Sir J. Cheke, asserting
that Parker was a merchant trading to Antwerp,
and that when Storey came to search his vessel
unnecessarily, he was so angry that he carried him
off to England on his own responsibility. This is
no doubt the version that the Government wished
to be accepted.1
We do not know if Ramsden and his worthy
comrades ever obtained the price of blood for which
they so greatly hungered. Lee, who lived at Antwerp,
where he was married to an Irishwoman, did not
altogether escape the punishment he so richly
merited. He contrived to get Parker's wife and
family conveyed safely over to England, and intrigued
1 There is a long story in Froude (ix. 460, &c.) in which Parker
and Cecil reappear in peculiarly disgraceful parts. According to
this, Parker personated Storey in the Tower in order to elicit a
confession from a prisoner named Baily, and to corrupt his fidelity
to the Catholic party. This, though recounted in great detail by
Froude, rests upon authority which is by no means convincing.
However this may be, Cecil and Parker were no doubt quite capable
of the treachery ascribed to them.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY
with Prestal in order to get evidence against our
martyr. But having at last (through information
furnished by Don Guerau) been detected as one of
the principal agents in the whole disgraceful business,
he was thrown into prison by the Duke of Alva.
From his cell he wrote piteous letters to Cecil and
Leicester, who eventually thought it worth their
while to intercede for his release. Probably they
recognized that he could yet do them useful service
(for even in prison he kept up the farce of being a
devout Catholic exiled for the faith), and very likely
they feared that he would betray their secrets if
pushed to desperation. Strange to say, the Duke
of Alva granted the petition and let the traitor go
free.
The wife and family of the martyr continued to
inhabit the Low Countries, though we learn from
an entry in the Acts of the Privy Council that they
paid a visit to England in 1577.
The martyr's son John became a church student
at Rheims, and eventually a priest.1 His mother,
who was still at Louvain in 1557, came to Rheims
in order to be near her son, where we find her in
1582. 2 Dr. Allen, it would appear, found she had
a sharp tongue, and did not much relish her living
so near him. Perhaps the poor woman's temper
had been soured by her troubles.
The life of Blessed John Storey seems to show
how a man who was naturally of a choleric tempera-
ment can be purified by suffering, if he has a firm
1 Knox, Douay Diaries, p. 300.
- Knox, Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, p. 168.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY
grasp of the truths of our holy religion. Much as
we dislike the Marian persecution in which he took
a prominent part, it must be conceded that he was
ever moved by a passionate love for the Catholic
Faith, and an intense desire to see his fellow-country-
men united once more in religious truth. His ardent
desire for the crown of martyrdom, his passionate
sorrow when, yielding to the frailty of the flesh, he
lost, as he thought for ever, the opportunity of
gaining the palm, his deep and life-long penitence
for his early fall into schism, his joy when he found
once more within his grasp the crown which he so
greatly coveted, have all deep lessons for us, who in
these soft days of religious peace are in danger of
losing the keenness of our faith, of sinking into a
false and specious toleration of error which is but
another name for indifferentism. It is well if in
these milder times we have learnt to shrink from all
that approaches to religious persecution, but it would
not be well if we were tempted to minimize or
conceal the fundamental distinctions between truth
and error, or allow our compassion for the heretic
to lead us to think lightly of the evil of heresy.
Rather, do we need more than ever in these days
the lessons of such a life as that of Blessed John
Storey.
ED.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY
APPENDIX.
Dr. Storey's Last Will and Testament made at Louvain
Anno 1552. 1
EMMANUEL.
In the name of God, Amen. In the year
of our Lord God, a thousand five hundred fifty
and two, and in the last day of May, I, John
Storey Doctor, lauded be Almighty God, being
whole of mind and body, do to God and the
world declare my last will and testament in manner
and form following. First and before all things
transitory, as I do most humbly render thanks,
laud and praising to my Lord God, for my creation
and redemption, so do I also most humbly acknow-
ledge His great mercies by leading me a wretched
sinner out of my native country ; the which (being
swerved out of the sure ship of our salvation), I
beseech Almighty God of His infinite mercy to
restore again to the unity of the same vessel, being
our mother the holy catholic church, for His holy
name's sake. And having full trust and affiance
that I am one, and within the number of the said
1 The original MS. (undoubtedly a holograph by Blessed John
Storey) from which this has been printed is among the Petyt MSS.
in the Inner Temple Library. (No. 538, vol. 47, fol. 66, seq.) The
will is printed by Strype, Annals, vol. ii. Part 2, Appendix x. p. 450,
but with omissions, which are here supplied. The MS. is endorsed,
" A coppye of a will made by John Story doctor in law." The water-
mark of the paper of the MS. is a unicorn.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 103
catholic visible church (the which doth, and here in
earth shall contain both good and bad, until the
same by wilful leaping out, or lawful separation be
excluded), I do confess to God and before the world,
that I in this perilous time of trial of the corn from
the moveable chaff, do believe, and have full trust
and affiance in all and every article, clause or
sentence, that our said mother the holy church, con-
tinued from the time of the apostles, hath and shall
decree, set forth and deliver to be kept and observed
by us her children. And for my breaking of any
commandment of God set forth by the authority of
the same church, and for my non-observance of
any decree, ordinance or counsel of the same, and
specially for mine offence in forsaking the unity of
it, by the acknowledging of any other supreme head
than our Saviour Jesu Christ did depute here
in earth to remain (which was St. Peter and his
successors, bishops of the see of Rome) — I do
most humbly and penitently cry God mercy, desir-
ing of Him pardon ; as I do also ask forgiveness
of all such as, by my said offence and evil example,
I have by any means slandered or offended in this
world : desiring all Christian people remaining
within the unity of our said mother the catholic
church to pray for me, being a simple and a
wretched member of the same.
And as concerning such my temporal goods, as
by the sufferance of Almighty God, I have been
steward of here in this vale of misery, my mind is
that all my debts be truly contented and paid by
mine executor hereunder named to all such persons
io4 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
as by any lawful means can show any bill or other
sufficient title to any part thereof. Also I do give
and bequeath to Ellen Storey my daughter the sum
of six hundred and iii score florins, to be paid and
delivered to her at the day of her marriage. So,
and under this condition, that she do take to husband
and marry such one as her mother then living,
or mine overseers hereunder named, or any one of
them do first consent and give licence to my said
daughter to marry or take to husband. And if
my said daughter following her own sensuality do
chance to marry with any man without, or against
the good will, pleasure and consent of her foresaid
friends, or of one of them, then my mind is that
she shall have only iii score florins towards her
raiment and no more. And if my said daughter,
Ellen, by God's good motion, do enter into religion:
then do I give and bequeath to the house and
company where she shall chance to be professed,
one hundred and xx florins, desiring them to be
good instructors of my said daughter, and of their
charity to pray for the souls of my father and
mother, Nicholas and Joan, for my soul and all
Christian souls.
Also, I do bequeath my soul to Almighty God,
of whom this my mortal flesh hath received the
same : and my body to be buried within the grey
friars in Louvain, if I do depart in Louvain, as
near unto the burial of Mr. Thomas Tybald as may
be permitted. For the which my burial, exequies,
and other divine services, then by that convent to
be done and solemnized for the wealth of my soul,
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 105
I do bequeath to that same convent twenty florins.
Also I give and bequeath unto the said convent forty
florins more, desiring them of their charity, in their
daily celebrations of Mass, that they will pray for the
souls of Nicholas and Joan my parents, for my soul
and of all Christian souls ; and to limit and appoint
one devout person of their company by the space
of ii years next after my burial, daily to make a
special memory to God for my soul and of all
Christian souls. And my mind is that the same
convent, the next day after my month's mind by
them to be kept for my soul, do receive of mine
executor the said whole sum of money, viz., iii
score florins. For the which I beseech them that I
may have my year's mind kept with Mass and Dirige
by the space of iii years.
Also, I do give and bequeath to the house and
company of the charter house in Louvain the sum
of xx florins ; requiring them of their charity in
their celebrations to pray by special memory for the
soul of my said parents and for my soul, so long
as by their charity they shall be moved thereunto.
Also I give and bequeath to the great hospital,
which lodgeth and keepeth sick persons, the sum of
ten florins, desiring them of their charity to pray
for my soul and all Christian souls.1
1 The original ending of the will here follows in the MS. It was
afterwards cancelled by the martyr, and the conclusion printed
above substituted for it. In the margin the martyr has written,
" Cancellatio hec facta est per me Jhoannem Story." It runs as follows :
" The residue of all my goods, wheresoever and in whose hands soever
they be, I do give and bequeath to Joan Storey my wife, whom I do
make mine executrice so and under the condition that she do not
io6 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
The residue of all my goods and specialties, in
whose hands soever they be, upon full trust and
confidence that I have in the promise of my well-
beloved wife, Joan Storey hereafter mentioned, I do
give and bequeath unto her ; whom I do make my
whole and sole executrice, to perform this my last
will. Provided always, and it is my full mind and
deliberate will, that my said executrice shall not
take nor demand my whole money out of my great
and especial friend Mr. Bonvice's hand, by the
space of iii years next after my decease ; but shall
return and by the space of one month abide in England, neither
send her daughter and mine thither or carry her, until the same land
or state thereof be converted and returned to the unity of our mother
the holy catholic church, out of the which the same land by schism
is swerved. And if my said wife, following her sensuality and
neglecting her soul, shall chance to return into England, as God
forbid, and make her abode there above the space of one month,
without lawful impediment of her return, or do at any time before
religion be there reformed, carry or send her daughter and mine
into that land or any part thereof, then and in such case my mind
is that my especial good friend Mr. Anthony Bonvice, upon suit
made to him by my said wife, do deliver to her of such money as
remaineth of mine in his hands twenty pounds Flemish or of English
money at her choice, and to keep the rest of my money remaining
in his hand for the payment of my legacies abovesaid, and for the
use of my daughter for her best profit, to be delivered to her
at the day of her marriage ; so that she do not marry but with the
consent of my said especial good friend Mr. Bonvice then living.
And in case that my said daughter do rather choose to enter and
continue in religion than to marry, then my will is that, after one
hundred and xx florins by Mr. Bonvice paid to the cloister where
she will be professed, and after all other my legacies performed,
that the rest of my money with him remaining shall still remain in
his hands and with the profits thereof to find my nephew John
Storey to school in Louvain by the space of iii years; and after that
time to distribute all such money as then shall remain in his hands,
the one moiety thereof to poor scholars and priests being English-
men here tarrying in these parts and the other moiety to my said
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 107
receive only such money of him, as will pay my
legacies to be prayed for, (the which several sums
my mind is shall be paid although I do depart this
life out of Louvain) and such other money as my
said worshipful friend of his charitable benevolence
will give to her for occupying such her stock as he
hath of mine in his hands. And my mind is that
this clause shall take place only in the life of my
said worshipful friend Mr. Bonvice, or else my said
wife to take up the whole at her pleasure.
Item, I do desire my said good friend,
Mr. Anthony Bonvice,1 to be overseer of this my
wife, daughter, nephew, and servant called Bess, after such sort
and rate, as to his wisdom shall seem to be most requisite and
expedient according to their necessity and following of this my last
will. And I shall most entirely desire my said worshipful and
charitable friend Mr. Bonvice to be overseer of this my last will,
and in my wife's refusal by her departing into England, to execute
this my last will as well concerning my burial and legacies, as in
causing a piece of brass to set upon my grave declaring my name and
day of my departing, if I chance to die in Louvain ; provided alway
that if my said wife do continue still in Louvain and do marry or
not marry, and do take upon her to be mine executor or not take
upon her, my full mind and special request is, that my said worship-
ful friend Mr. Bonvice do not deliver to her above the sum of thirty
pounds by the year. And after she hath tarried here at Louvain iii
full years after my decease, my mind is that my said worshipful
friend, upon her bond that she will not return into England until it
be reformed, do deliver to my said wife (if they both shall think it
best) the whole sum remaining for the behoof of her and my
daughter.
In witness whereof I have written these presents, the year and
day abovesaid.
Per me,
Jo: STORYE."
1 Antonio Bonvisi, our martyr's dear and faithful friend, was a
wealthy wool merchant, sprung from an ancient and noble family
of Lucca, but probably born in England. He was a fervent
io8 BLESSED JOHN STOREY
last will and testament, most heartily desiring him
to be good instructor of my wife, to keep and perform
her promise made to God and me. Whereupon I
have altered the last end of my will above written.
Which promise is that she at no time, until the
land of England be restored to the unity of Christ's
Catholic, a kindly patron of learned men, and the devoted
friend of Blessed Thomas More, Blessed John Fisher, and Cardinal
Pole. He ministered to Fisher and More in prison, stood by
Friar Peto when he had to fly to the Low Countries after his
courageous sermon against Henry VIII. 's first divorce, and was
eulogized by Pole, who calls him " a special benefactor of all
Catholic and good persons, . . . worthy is he of name, and I doubt
not but his name is in the book of life." He resided at Crosby
Hall, Bishopsgate Street, which he at first leased from the nuns of
St. Helen's, and after the dissolution of the priory, bought (in 1552)
from the King. . At the beginning of the reign of Edward VI. he
went into voluntary exile for the Faith, his property in England
was confiscated, and in the general pardon which concluded the
Acts of the Parliament of 1553, he was specially excepted, together
with his friends Pole and Storey. He recovered his English
property in the reign of Queen Mary, and died at Louvain at a very
advanced age, December 7, 1558. His nephew, Benedict, inherited
his English property.
Two Inquisitiones post mortem relating to him are to be found in
vol. xv. of the publications of the British Record Society, the first
taken at the confiscation of his property (p. 113), the second at his
death (p. 182). From the former we learn that before he, " without
licence from the King, craftily and rebelliously took flight with all
his family and went to parts beyond the seas, to wit, to Antwerp,"
he had conveyed Crosby Hall (or Crosbies Place as it was then
called), and other property, to William Roper and William Rastell
(both near connections of Blessed Thomas More), for the term of
99 years.
We may add that More says, in a letter written from the Tower,
that he had been for nearly 40 years " not a guest, but a continual
nursling of the house of Bonvisi," and calls Antonio the most
faithful of his friends. For other details see Dictionary of National
Biography, vol. v. p. 335 (by C. Trice Martin).
BLESSED JOHN STOREY 109
church, will return thither, or carry her daughter
and mine into that land, except it be for the only
intent to procure her mother to come thence. And
in such case not to tarry there above the space of
iii months, unless she by compulsion be enforced
thereunto.
In witness whereof I have written these presents
and subscribed my name.
Per me JOHANNEM STORYE.
AUTHORITIES. — The principal Catholic authority is, of
course, Sander, who was a friend of the martyr. His account
of him in the De Visibili Monarchia (1570) is perhaps most
accessible in the Concertatio (Treves, 1589), fol. 43 A — 45 B.
It has been translated into Spanish by Bishop Yepes, Historia
Particular (Madrid, 1599), pp. 43, 44. Sander also speaks of
the martyr in his History of the Anglican Schism (Edit. Lewis,
1877), pp. 200, &c.
The principal general sources are, the Calendars of State
Papers, especially the Spanish and Foreign, passim.
Acts of the Privy Council (Edit. Dasent).
Journals of the House of Commons, vol. i. pp 6, 8, and 9.
Camden's Annals, for 1569 and 1571.
Strype's Life of Archbishop Cranmer, and Life of Archbishop
Parker, also Memorials and Annals of the Reformation, passim.
Burnet, History of the Reformation (Edit. Pocock).
Wood, A thence Oxon., Edit. Bliss, i. 386 — 90.
Macleane, History of Pembroke College (Oxford Hist. Soc.,
1897).
Foster, Alumni Oxonienses (1500 — 1714).
Wright, Elizabeth, i. 373, 374, 378.
Maitland's Essays on the Reformation.
Foxe's Acts and Monuments (Edit. Townsend), very bitter
and unscrupulous.
BLESSED JOHN STOREY
Dictionary of National Biography (by A. F. Pollard, vol. 54,
p. 427).
There are also the pamphlets issued by various Protestant
writers in 1571, to which we have referred in the text, and the
letters printed in various volumes of the Parker Society (see
Cough's Index), all of which are exceedingly hostile. The
reader will find Froude not less bitter. He may also refer to
Dixon, History of the Church of England, vols. iv. and v., and
the Cambridge Modern History, vol. ii. pp. 474 and 585.
The other authorities, including R. Simpson's admirable
article in the Rambler, are fully referred to in the text.
III.
THE BLESSED THOMAS PERCY,
York, 22 August, 1572;
THE BLESSED THOMAS PLUMTREE,
Durham, 4 January, 1572.
FEW writers, even among Catholics, appear to have
given quite the attention it deserves to the magni-
ficent confession of the Faith, made both during
life and still more at his death, by the martyred
nobleman who forms the subject of this memoir.
He was born in 1528, and was the eldest son of
Sir Thomas Percy, brother and heir-presumptive to
Henry Algernon, sixth Earl of Northumberland,
who was childless. His mother, the Lady Eleanor,
was daughter to Sir Guiscard Harbottal, who had
fallen at Flodden Field in 1513, slain by the hand
of the Scottish King himself.1
Sir Thomas and his lady seem after their
marriage to have resided partly at Newburn, partly
at Prudhoe Castle, on the Tyne, one of the many
fortresses belonging to the Earl ; and there most
probably were spent the early years of the future
martyr's life. It was a time when there was rarely
1 History of Northumberland. By Cadwallader J. Bates, p. 209.
ii2 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
peace for long together upon the Scottish border,
and when, even whilst a truce existed between the
English and the Scotch, the tranquillity of the
country was too often disturbed by petty feuds
between the gentry of Northumberland themselves.
The din of arms must thus have been familiar to the
little Thomas Percy, even from his earliest years.
When he was but little more than eight years
old, there broke out, in the October of 1536, the
movement known as the Pilgrimage of Grace,
which stirred the whole North of England, from
the Scottish borders to the H umber. Gathering
together under banners bearing the representation
of our Lord upon the Cross, and the Chalice with
the Host, the good simple people of the northern
counties marched in thousands into Yorkshire,
crying out for the re-establishment of the monas-
teries, the repeal of the laws by which the Pope's
authority had been abolished, and the restoration
of the ancient Faith in its entirety. At first King
Henry quailed before the Pilgrims, and found it
necessary to dissemble his resentment until, by
deceitful promises of redress of their grievances, he
had cajoled them into dispersing and returning to
their homes. But, in the next spring, on their
reassembling, having meantime despatched more
numerous forces to the Duke of Norfolk, his lieu-
tenant, he succeeded in securing the persons of
their leaders ; and these were forthwith sent up to
London to be tried and executed, while their more
humble followers were hanged in scores at York,
Hull, and Carlisle.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 113
In the Pilgrimage of Grace no one, after Robert
Aske, its leader, seems to have figured more con-
spicuously than Sir Thomas Percy, our martyr's
father. He led the vanguard of the pilgrim army,
composed of six thousand men, marching under the
banner of St. Cuthbert. After their dispersion, he
returned to Prudhoe Castle ; but, on being sum-
moned to Doncaster by the Duke of Norfolk, he
surrendered of his own accord, and being taken up to
London, was thrown into the Tower. Thence, after
the formality of a trial at Westminster, he was
drawn to Tyburn on the 2nd of June, 1537, and
there hanged, in company with other supposed
leaders of the movement, amongst whom were the
Abbot of Jervaulx and a Dominican friar named
John Pickering. The official report of the trials,
now published amongst the State Papers,1 shows
that the charge, on which these sufferers were
condemned, was that they " did, as false traitors,
conspire and imagine to deprive the King of his
royal dignity, viz., of being on earth Supreme Head
of the Church of England." We may therefore be
allowed to hope that, in the sight of God, they died
true martyrs for the Catholic Faith.
The knowledge, if not the actual recollection (for
he was nine years old when it occurred), of the
circumstances which led to his brave father's death,
in defence of the very cause for which he was himself
to die so gloriously, cannot have failed to influence
the character of our martyr, especially considering
1 Given in De Fonblanque's Annals of the House of Percy, vol. i.
PP- 570. 571-
I II.
n4 BB- THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
the sufferings which Sir Thomas Percy's execution
brought upon his family. As a consequence of his
attainder, his children were excluded from succeed-
ing either to the earldom of Northumberland, or to
the estates which, on the demise of the Earl, their
uncle, a few weeks later, would naturally have fallen
to them; and for a time they had to depend entirely
upon the charity of strangers. The Lady Eleanor
Percy, their poor widowed mother, seems to have
been considered too much implicated in the so-called
treason of her husband to be allowed to retain them
in her charge ; and for a while, at all events, the
little Thomas and his still younger brother Henry
were placed under the keeping of Sir Thomas
Tempest — one of the Commissioners appointed for
the trials of the Pilgrims — who lived at Holmside,
near to Durham.
The cost of their maintenance there — to his
honour be it said — was defrayed by none other
than the Duke of Norfolk,1 who, in spite of the
relentless manner with which he had executed the
King's vengeance on the defeated pilgrims, pitied
the forlorn condition of these homeless children of
their leader. The position of Holmside exposed it,
however, to the attacks of Scotch marauders, who
might be tempted, it was feared, to carry off the
little Percys in hopes of obtaining the payment of
a ransom. Some months later, therefore, at the
request of Sir Thomas Tempest, Bishop Tunstall
wrote to Cromwell, begging that some place might
be provided for them " more within the country.
1 De Fonblanque, ii. p. 4.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 115
The children be young, and must be among women." '
We are not told what followed from the Bishop's
application, nor how long the poor children were
kept separated from their mother ; 2 and but little
more is known with reference to the early life of our
martyr. He and his brother are said, however, to
have received some part of their education at Liver-
pool, which must then have greatly differed from
the present crowded city.3
Meanwhile Henry VIII. passed to his account,
and was succeeded by his son, Edward VI. Under
the boy-king, in the February of 1549, an Act of
Parliament was passed "for the restitution in blood
of Mr. Thomas Percy,"4 who in that year attained
the age of manhood. By this Act the young Percy
was so far rehabilitated, as heir to his father, as to
be entitled to inherit any property which might come
to him from collateral branches of his family ; and
he was enabled also to receive the benefit of an
annuity which his uncle, the late Earl, had left him.
About this same time, moreover, he was knighted.
It was not till three years later that restoration
was made to him of any part of the North-
1 R.O. Henry VIII. Domestic, vol. v. p. 118.
2 In the year following her husband's execution, Lady Percy is
mentioned as being at Preston Tower, a residence some ten miles
south of Berwick, which she had inherited from her father's
family, with a portion of the Ellingham estate. (Bateson's History
of Northumberland, ii. p. 106.)
3 See Collins's Peerage of England, 1779, vol. ii. p. 386, where bills,
&c., relating to the board and education of the two young
Percys are referred to as amongst the papers of the Duke of
Northumberland.
4 Lords' Journals, 2. Edward VI.
n6 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
umberland estates, but he was then allowed to
take possession of Langley, Ellingham, and certain
other manors. Meantime the entire barony of
Alnwick was bestowed by the young King on
the adventurous and unprincipled Dudley, Earl of
Warwick, with the then unprecedented title of
Duke (not Earl) of Northumberland.
The downfall of this nobleman, consequent on
his attempt in 1553 to exclude Queen Mary from
the throne, removed the chief obstacle to Sir Thomas
Percy's reinstatement in the ancient honours and
possessions of his family ; and we may be sure that
from the first he must have had the sympathy of
the good Queen, whose own fidelity to the Faith
had been the occasion of so many sufferings. Soon
after her accession, Sir Thomas Percy was named
Governor of Prudhoe Castle, and throughout her
reign he showed himself a faithful and active
supporter of her interests. In the April of 1557, he
earned particular distinction by capturing, after a
two days' siege, the Castle of Scarborough from Sir
Thomas Stafford, who had seized upon it whilst in
conspiracy with the French King against Queen
Mary. The restoration of Sir Thomas Percy to
the earldom quickly followed, and on May the
ist of the same year he was created Earl of
Northumberland, with remainder to his brother
Henry: the subordinate titles of Baron Percy, Baron
Poynings, Lucy, Bryan, and Fitzpane, having been
conferred upon him on the previous day.
The patent of his creation set forth that "the
same was done in consideration of his noble descent,
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 117
constancy of virtues, valour in deeds of arms, and
other shining qualifications." Of the ceremony of
his installation at Whitehall, Hutchinson writes :
" It was attended with great pomp. The procession
was preceded by eight heralds and twelve trumpeters.
He was accompanied by the Earls of Pembroke,
Arundel, and Rutland, and the Lord Montague —
walking in the middle in robes of crimson velvet,
and a coronet of gold." l
Queen Mary gave him a fresh proof of her con-
fidence by appointing him at the same time Warden
General of the Marches, in conjunction with Lord
Wharton. He was soon called upon in this capacity
to show his prowess in the field. A fresh outbreak
of hostilities with the Scotch occurred in the July
°f I557j when the latter crossed the Border. The
new Earl of Northumberland led an expedition to
the Cheviots, where he not only gained a victory,
but succeeded in taking prisoner Sir Andrew Ker,
the Scotch leader.
In the following January the Queen commissioned
him to treat with Scotland for a truce between the
two kingdoms, and wrote at the same time to the
venerable Bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tunstall,
requesting him to assist the Earl with his counsel
in this important matter.2 The truce, however,
proved but of short duration ; and in the summer
of the same year we again find the Earl and his
brother, Sir Henry Percy, occupied, not always with
complete success, in repelling the inroads of the
Scotch, now led by French officers.
1 View of Northumberland, ii. 238.
- Scottish Calendar, January 21 and 23, 1558.
n8 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
Meanwhile, we must not forget to mention the
Earl's marriage, in the same year, 1558, with Anne
Somerset, daughter of the Earl of Worcester, a
courageous lady, who, by her patient endurance
throughout the long period of her widowhood and
exile, proved herself no unfitting consort for the
destined martyr. His mother, the Lady Eleanor,
seems to have continued living on her Ellingham
estate, which she had made over to him, but had to
receive back for her lifetime ; and we find her com-
plained of to Cecil, in 1563, as having had Mass
said in her house. About four years after her
husband's death, the Lady Eleanor had married
Sir Richard Holland, of Denton, in Lancashire, who
died in 1548 ; from which time, until her own
death in 1567, she remained a widow.1
In the November of 1558, Queen Mary died ;
and the accession of her half-sister, Elizabeth, was
the signal for England's being plunged again, more
hopelessly than ever, into heresy and schism.
The new Queen soon made it clear that her first
object was to sever all connection between England
and Rome ; and, following the bad example of her
father, to leave no stone unturned to wrest to herself
the authority which God has given to the Roman
Pontiff.
Elizabeth's first Parliament assembled on the
25th of January, 1559, and was dissolved on May
the 8th following. In this, in opposition to the
votes of all the Bishops, and to counter-resolu-
1 Collins, ii. p. 386.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 119
tions of both Houses of Convocation, were passed
the two Acts of Supremacy and of Uniformity, the
effect of which was to depose the Catholic religion
from its place as the religion of the country (the
observance of it being thenceforth made into a
legal crime), and to set up in its stead the institu-
tion still styled in law the Established Church of
England, to which all the old Catholic churches and
cathedrals were from that time made over.
By the first of these two Acts the spiritual
authority of every foreign prelate was declared
within the realm to be abolished, the jurisdiction
exercised till then by the Pope being made over
to the Crown. Assertors of the Pope's authority
were to be punished, for a first offence by forfeiture
of property, fora second by perpetual imprisonment;
whilst a third transgression was to be visited with
the penalty of death, inflicted as in cases of high
treason. By the Act of Uniformity the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass was prohibited, and it was required
that in all churches the ministers should use the
Protestant Book of Common Prayer alone, under
like penalties of forfeiture, deprivation, and death.1
It was thus that the so-called Church of England
came into existence ; the faithful Bishops, who had
all, save one, refused to take the oath of the Queen's
Supremacy, being at the same time deposed from
their sees by the civil power, and condemned to
end their days in prison or in voluntary exile ; whilst
into their bishoprics, thus forcibly vacated, they
1 Hallam, Constitutional History of England, i. 152 ; Lingard, vi.
P- *3-
120 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
had to witness the intrusion of ministers of the new
State-made religion.
Most justly, therefore, did our martyr Earl
exclaim later, as he stood upon the scaffold : " As
to this new Church of England, I do not acknow-
ledge it ! " How, indeed, could he acknowledge it
as the Church of Jesus Christ when he had seen
it thus brought into existence, and knew whose
handiwork it was ?
The Earl was not himself present at the passing
of these Acts, having been specially instructed by the
Council to remain in the North (where he was much
occupied as Warden of the Marches), and not to
come up to attend the Parliament.1 It may be true
enough that the disturbed condition of the Borders
at the moment supplied the Council with some
pretext for this action ; but there can be little doubt
that the real reason of his being thus kept at a
distance at so critical a juncture, was his well-
known attachment to the ancient Faith, which
would have ensured his opposition to the evil
measures then in contemplation.
Being thus debarred from attending Parliament
in person, the Earl of Northumberland named as
his proxy in the House of Lords, with power to vote
1 Foreign Calendar, January n, 1559. Privy Council to Earl of
Northumberland. "He is to stay in the North, and not come to
Parliament." In the first issue of this memoir (by the C.T.S.), the
Earl of Northumberland was wrongly said to have been present at
some of the Sessions of this Parliament ; the writer having been
misled by the lists of Peers in the Lords' Journals, in which the
Earl's name is found with those of the others, but without a p
(meaning przsens) added to it.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 121
in his name, the Earl of Arundel, who was then
regarded as a zealous Catholic. Unfortunately,
however, this nobleman proved himself in the event
unworthy of the trust reposed in him ; having been
" won over [if Rishton is correct] by the expectation
of marrying the Queen held out to him by Elizabeth
herself."1 After absenting himself from Parliament
for a great part of the Session " from indisposition "
(as the Mantuan Envoy wrote), " feigned, as some
think, to avoid consulting about such ruin of this
realm;"2 Arundel is said, in the end, to have
actually voted for the Bill conferring religious
Supremacy upon the Queen. Of this, however,
grace was given him to repent before he died ; nor
can Northumberland be held in any way responsible
for the weakness of his proxy.
On May the loth, two days after the Parliament
had closed, the Queen despatched to the Earl of
Northumberland, in conjunction with the Bishop of
Durham, Cuthbert Tunstall, and Sir Joseph Croft,
a commission to conclude a fresh treaty with the
Queen Dowager of Scotland. This treaty was
signed by the representatives of the two nations,
at Upsatlington, on the 3ist of May, 1559. 3
The venerable Bishop, with whom Northumber-
land was associated in this commission, had also
been dispensed by the Queen from attending Parlia-
ment ; the Acts passed by which had rilled him with
1 Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, Sander and Rishton.
(Edit. Lewis, p. 255.)
2 Venetian Calendar, March 21, 1559.
3 Scottish Calendar, May 10 and 31, 1559.
4 Domestic Calendar, December 19, 1558.
122 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
sorrow and dismay. As soon as the business con-
nected with the treaty was concluded, the aged
prelate wrote from his residence at Auckland both
to Cecil and the Queen herself, expressing his great
" wish to do his duty to his Sovereign once in his
days," l and announced his coming up to London,
with some faint hope perhaps of being able even
yet to do something to avert the change. Causing
himself therefore to be conveyed thither with such
haste as his great age would permit, he reached
London on July the 2Oth. It is needless to say
that the remonstrances of the good Bishop were
altogether ineffectual ; and after making a noble
protest against the introduction of any change into
the diocese of which he was the Bishop, and on
refusing to take the new Oath of Supremacy he
was declared to be deprived of his see (as already
had been most of his brother Bishops), and was
placed in strict confinement in the house of Matthew
Parker, whom Elizabeth had appointed to the
archbishopric of Canterbury. There did Bishop
Tunstall die. a prisoner for the Faith, on November
the i8th following.
Meantime, on August the 6th of the same eventful
year, 1559, the Queen had addressed to the Earl
of Northumberland, whom she still detained in his
own county, a fresh commission " for the reforma-
tion of the disorders committed by the Scots upon
the frontier." With him, however, were joined in
the commission Sir Ralph Sadler and Sir James
Croft, and the instructions secretly issued to the
1 Foreign Calendar, June 30, 1559.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 123
first of these a few days later,1 prove that the Earl's
name was placed at the head of the commission
merely to deceive the public ; the real purpose of
Elizabeth and Cecil being to give all the secret
encouragement they could to the Scottish insur-
gents, whom the fanatical John Knox was heading,
in the hope of bringing about the overthrow of the
existing Government.2 The Earl's connection with
the commission, which was from the first, as I
have said, but nominal, soon came to an end
entirely; and that he was no party to the transac-
tions carried on is shown by a letter of Sadler's,
written from Berwick a few days after he had entered
on his mission, in which he tells Sir William Cecil
that " he intends to take the assistance of Sir James
Croft in preference to that of Sir Henry Percy, or
the Earl of Northumberland : that he thinks the
former not in any wise comparable to Croft, and
the latter very unmeet for the charge committed
to him." 3
To have been thought " unmeet " by an un-
scrupulous agent of Elizabeth's, need certainly be
taken as no blame in our eyes ; and it is worth
remarking that, at the time referred to, Sir Henry
Percy, whom Sadler seems to have considered less
" unmeet " than his brother, the Earl, had already so
far abandoned his religion as to let himself be used
1 On August 8, the Queen despatched to Sadler £3,000 in gold,
whh which secretly " he may reward any manner of person in
Scotland with such sums of money as he shall think meet." (Foreign
Calendar, August 6 and 8, 1559.)
- Lingard, vi. 34.
3 Scottish Calendar, August 29, 1559.
i24 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
by Cecil as a medium of communication with John
Knox. The understanding which already existed
between Sir Henry and the Scotch heresiarch, is
shown by a letter of the latter, written on July the
ist, in which he requires such friendship from Sir
Henry "that there may be conference and knowledge
from time to time between the faithful (i.e., the
Protestants) of both realms." l
His brother's apostasy must have been one of
the sorest trials of the Earl ; and it was not till
several years later, that Sir Henry was brought back
to the Faith, when he atoned for his past infidelity
by the patient endurance of much persecution.
It was not long before Northumberland was
driven by the mistrust of the Government and the
opposition of his own colleagues in the office to
resign the Wardenship of the Marches. He then
retired to the south, and during the next few years
lived much at his Sussex residence at Petworth.
Though he still enjoyed, at all events externally, the
favour of the Queen, who in 1563 bestowed on him
the Order of the Garter, indications are not wanting
that in consequence of his well-known attachment
to the ancient Faith, he was at this time kept more
or less under surveillance, and perhaps occasionally
restricted in his movements. Thus in the May of
1565, Elizabeth's agent in Scotland wrote to Lord
Leicester, praying that " the Earl of Northumber-
land be stayed in London. From all I hear it is
very necessary. The Papists in these parts do stir
themselves." 2
1 Scottish Calendar, July i and August 4, 1559. '2 Ibid. May n, 1565.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 125
In like manner the Spanish Ambassador in
London is found writing to his Sovereign in April,
1566 (namely, three years and a half before the
rising): " The Earl of Northumberland has come.
. . . He is considered very Catholic." l
Facts such as these, joined to the martyr's own
dying declaration that he had held the Catholic
Faith " from his earliest years " even to that
day, are inconsistent with any idea of his having
ever really fallen away from his religion ; and yet
it would seem, from an expression used by him
during his imprisonment, that he must at one time
have failed in some way in a right profession of it.
One of the questions put to him when examined,
was : " Were you reconciled to the Church of Rome
before you did enter into the rebellion ? and by
whom ? " To this the Earl replied : " I was
reconciled by one Master Copley two years or
more before our stir : " adding, in answer to a
further question, that the said Master Copley
"hath no certain abiding, but was sometimes in
Lancashire and sometimes elsewhere." '
If " reconciliation " is to be understood here in
its usual sense, something more would seem to be
implied than an ordinary sacramental absolution ;
and in those times of special trial, without re-
nouncing their religion, Catholics were sometimes
led through ignorance or weakness into unlawful
1 Spanish Calendar, April 29, 1566. Guzman de Silva to King
Philip II.
- Sir Cuthbert Sharpe, Memorials of the Rebellion of 1369,
pp. 204 — 213.
126 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
acts, which afterwards gave just trouble to their con-
sciences. We know for instance how many in the
first years of Elizabeth endeavoured to escape the
penalties of non-attendance at the Protestant
service by consenting to be present at it, though
in a merely external manner ; and it may be that
to some such weakness Northumberland had at one
time yielded. If so, however, we have no other
proof of it than his reply, as above given, the exact
sense of which is not altogether clear. On the
other hand, his public acts, as far as they are
recorded, display no sign of weakness ; and in each
of the two Parliaments which he was able to attend
we find him making a courageous opposition to the
persecuting measures which they passed.
The second Parliament of Queen Elizabeth met
in 1563, and sat from January the nth to April
the loth ; the Earl of Northumberland being present
at most of the sittings of the House of Lords. By
the Act of 1559, the obligation of taking the Oath
of the Queen's Supremacy had been imposed only
on certain classes of her subjects ; but in the
Parliament of 1563 a further Act was passed
requiring it of all, who should either have said, or
heard Mass; thus extending it, says Lingard, "to
the whole Catholic population of the realm.'' To
all such, moreover, the oath, if at first refused, was
to be tendered again a second time ; the penalty
of a second refusal being death as in cases of high
treason. Against the passing of this cruel measure
our good Earl spoke boldly in the House of Lords.
He said (wrote the Spanish Ambassador on January
BB, THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 127
the 27th of the same year) " that the heretics should
be satisfied to enjoy the bishoprics and benefits of
the others without wishing to cut off their heads
as well. He said when they had beheaded the
clergy they would claim to do the same by the lay
nobles, and he was moved by his conscience to
say that he was of opinion that so rigorous
an Act should not be passed."1 In spite of this,
however, and of a vigorous speech in the same
sense by Lord Montague, the Bill was passed on
March the 3rd.
Parliament did not again assemble until the
autumn of 1566 ; in the November of which year —
in spite of the counter-votes of Northumberland
and ten other peers — the Lords passed an Act
to remedy the defective consecration of the first
Protestant Bishops, declaring it to have been
"good, lawful, and perfect." It ought, however,
especially to be observed that, though the Catholic
opponents of this measure could not hinder it from
passing, they did nevertheless get a proviso added
to it refusing confirmation to any of the new-made
Bishops' acts affecting either life or property. In
this way they saved the life of the brave Bishop
Bonner, to whom in prison the Protestant Bishop
Horn of Winchester had tried to administer the
Oath of Supremacy, in order thereby to get him
condemned to death. It was, in fact, principally
in order to obtain " good Bishop Bonner's " con-
demnation (wrote the Spanish Ambassador) that
i Spanish Calendar. Bishop Quadra to King Philip II., January
27. 1563-
128 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
the Protestant prelates had asked for a confirmation
of their acts.1
When Parliament next met in 1571 the Earl of
Northumberland was a prisoner in Scotland, having
fled thither on the failure of the Northern Rising, of
which we must now try to trace the origin.
The troubles of the unhappy Mary Queen of
Scots — whose subjects, incited by the continual
intrigues of Elizabeth and Cecil, had openly rebelled
against her — were naturally viewed with the liveliest
sympathy by the Catholics of England, for they
placed in Queen Mary, as heiress to the English
throne, their own hopes of relief from persecution
in the future. Northumberland, in particular, made
no secret of his sympathy, and when, in the May of
1568, the Scottish Queen was forced to flee from
her own kingdom and seek refuge at Carlisle, the
Earl set out from Topcliffe, in Yorkshire, where he
was staying at the time, to do what he could for
her safe and honourable entertainment. His views,
however, with reference to the Royal fugitive, were
very different from those of Elizabeth and her
minions ; and his demand to be allowed to take
charge of Mary met with a rude refusal from the
Deputy Warden of the Marches; nor were either he
or his Countess permitted to have speech with the
captive Queen, excepting once in presence of some
others. The Earl found means, however, of occasion-
ally communicating with her during her confinement
in the course of the next year at Bolton and at
1 Spanish Calendar. Guzman de Silva to Philip II., November
n, 1566.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 129
Tutbury; and he himself, in his answers when
examined, tells how he had written " praying her
especially to regard the advancement of the Catholic
religion." This, in fact, more than any mere com-
passion for her sufferings, was, he makes quite plain,
the one real cause of his supporting her; and he
adds that, when the idea of marrying her to the
Duke of Norfolk had been mooted, he " sent her
word how her marriage with the Duke was misliked,
he being counted a Protestant. If she ever looked
to recover her estate, it must be by the advancing
and maintaining of the Catholic faith ; for there
ought to be no halting in those matters."1
Meanwhile, the exercise of the Catholic religion
had been becoming day by day more difficult
and dangerous, and the only wonder is that the
ancient Faith contrived, as it did, still to keep its
hold upon the people, and that it continued for so
long a period, and particularly in the northern
counties, to be yet in reality the religion of the land.
In virtue of the sacrilegious and unjust Act of
Uniformity, all the grand old churches and cathedrals
with which, throughout its length and breadth, the
soil of England had been covered by our Catholic
ancestors, had been diverted from the sacred purpose
to which they had been originally consecrated, and
had been given over during the last eleven years to
the ministers of the new State-made religion, whose
pretended mission was derived, not from the Vicar of
our Blessed Lord, but only from the Queen. The
crucifixes and the images of our Blessed Lady and
1 Sharpe, p. 192.
J n.
130 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
the Saints had been everywhere torn down and
broken, on the senseless plea that they were incen-
tives to idolatry ; and the innumerable altars, on
which the Holy Sacrifice had been daily offered up
for centuries, had been overturned and desecrated ;
whilst the Holy Mass itself might now no more be
heard, or offered up, unless in the safe concealment
of some vault or secret chamber. The priests too,
who, remaining faithful to their trust, had refused to
take the oath affirming the Royal Supremacy in
matters of religion — an oath which, of course, no
Catholic could take without apostasy — had been
ruthlessly ejected from their cures, turned adrift to
live how and where they could, and liable, if found
to be still exercising their priestly office, to immediate
seizure and imprisonment ; or, if the offence were
often repeated, to the punishment of death. Nor
were the lay people free to refuse the ministra-
tions of the new-fangled clergy, but were made
liable to a fine each time they were absent from
their services on a Sunday.
Nevertheless, although the ministers of the new
religion were thus supported by the whole power of
the law, their own admissions supply us with the
clearest evidence of the extreme difficulty which they
experienced in thrusting the new doctrines on the
people. Indeed, if the whole subject were not so
supremely sad, the story of the difficulties encoun-
tered by these so-called Bishops (on whom Elizabeth
had astutely conferred the titles of the ancient sees),
in their attempts to execute their office, would be
highly entertaining. Thus, to take a few examples
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 131
out of many: in the August of 1561, the State
Papers show us Scory, the new Bishop of Hereford,
indignantly complaining to Cecil, that " a number of
Popish priests, who had been driven out of Exeter
and elsewhere, had been received and feasted in the
streets, with torch-lights ! '51
In the same year, the newly-made Bishop of
Carlisle, in reporting the state of his diocese to the
same official, writes : " The priests are wicked imps of
Antichrist, for the most part ignorant and stubborn,
and past measure false and subtle ; " 2 and in the
following January, the same prelate is found again
complaining of the "great prevalence of Popery in
his diocese," and announcing in dismay that "Articles
of Religion in French are being circulated among the
disaffected Papists of the North." 3 As to Durham,
Dr. Pilkington could find no other way of describing
his experiences than by saying that, " Like St. Paul,
he has to fight with beasts at Ephesus; "4 and even as
late as 1576, Dr. Barnes, his successor, in writing of
his difficulties with "the reconciling priests and
massers " of Northumberland, " whereof there was
store," actually goes on to call Durham an "Augice
stabulum, whose stink is grievous in the nose of God
and men, and which to purge far passeth Hercules'
labours."5
Lastly, to pass to Yorkshire (for our present
interest is with the northern counties), the words of
Sir Ralph Sadler have repeatedly been quoted, in
which, when the Rising we are now to speak of had
1 Domestic Calendar, 1547 — 1580, p. 183.
2 Ibid. p. 180. 3 Ibid. p. 192. 4 Ibid. p. 187.
5 Surtees Society, 1850. Proceedings of Bishop Barnes, Preface
132 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
begun, he writes to Sir William Cecil: "There are
not ten gentlemen in all this country that favour her
(the Queen's) proceedings in religion. The common
people are ignorant, superstitious, and altogether
blinded with the old Popish doctrine, and therefore so
favour the cause which the rebels make the colour
of their rebellion. . . . No doubt all this country had
wholly rebelled, if at the beginning my Lord Lieu-
tenant had not wisely and stoutly handled the
matter."1 It is hardly necessary to explain that, in
the mouths of men such as Sadler and the Protestant
Bishops, the terms " ignorance " and " superstition "
were but synonyms for adherence to the ancient
Catholic belief.
There would be no difficulty in multiplying such
quotations, but the above seem sufficient to prove
the tenacity with which, in spite of every obstacle,
the good people of the North retained their affection
for the ancient Faith ; and this fact explains the
readiness with which — like their fathers in the
Pilgrimage of Grace — many of them flocked to join
the banners of the Earls of Northumberland and
Westmoreland, when, in 1569, in the beginning of
Elizabeth's twelfth year, a brave, though in reality
ill-judged, attempt was led by these two noblemen,
to obtain the restoration of the Catholic religion.
Unwise as the Rising of the North was, and
difficult to defend when measured by its prospects
of success, no one can set himself to an impartial
study of its history without feeling that the movement
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, December 6, 1569.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 133
originated solely and entirely from the desire of the
actors to bring about the restoration of the Catholic
religion, the practice of which had become impos-
sible under the persecuting policy of Elizabeth and
of her Chief Secretary, Sir William Cecil. This is
proved conclusively, not only by the proclamations
of its leaders and by the whole conduct of those
that took part in the movement, but even still more
clearly by the admissions of their adversaries
themselves.
In the spring of the year 1569, Dr. Nicholas
Morton, a former Prebendary of York Minster, had
been sent by the Pope as Apostolic Penitentiary to
the northern counties, for the purpose of imparting
to the persecuted priests the faculties which they
required, the surviving Bishops being all imprisoned.
He was related to two of the Yorkshire families
afterwards most prominent in the Rising, the
Mortons and the Markenfields, whose 'estates lay
near to Ripon ; and was declared by Francis
Norton to have been "the most earnest mover
of the rebellion." The Earl of Northumberland,
who was then residing at his Yorkshire seat of
Topcliffe, was amongst those whom Dr. Morton
visited ; and in a letter written afterwards to Lord
Burghleigh the same Francis Norton tells how the
Earl had sent for his father, old Mr. Richard
Norton, and declared to him "the great grief he
had for that they all lived out of the laws of the
Catholic Church, for the restitution whereof he
would willingly spend his life."1 Sander, moreover,
1 Sharpe, p. 281.
134 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
in speaking of the conferences held between the
leaders before the actual outbreak, relates that
when certain persons urged the policy of putting
forward some other pretext for the Rising rather
than the Catholic faith, the Earl of Northumberland
exclaimed : " I neither know of nor acknowledge
any other, for we are seeking, I imagine, the glory
not of men but God."1
If the liberation of Mary Queen of Scots from
her unjust captivity entered into the designs of
the leaders of the Rising, it was because they con-
sidered the freedom of the Catholic heiress to
the English throne an indispensable condition for
securing their religious liberty. " In the having
of her," says the Earl in his answers to the Privy
Council, " we hoped thereby to have some reforma-
tion in religion, or at the least, some sufferance for
men to use their conscience as they were disposed ;
and also the freedom of her whom we accounted
the second person and right heir apparent."5
If we turn, moreover, to the letters of the Earl
of Sussex, Lord President of the Council of the
North, written from York to Sir William Cecil and
to the Queen herself at the first beginning of the
outbreak, we find him again and again asserting
religion as its cause. " These Earls and their con-
federates will do what they can for the cause of
religion, and therefore this matter should not be
dallied with." "They have been . . . drawn on
... to what was intended by those wicked coun-
sellors at the beginning. ... I mean the cause
1 Bridgewater's Concertatio, fol. 46. * Sharpe, p. 193.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 135
of religion." And a few days later, " The people
like so well their cause of religion that they flock
to them in all places where they come."1
Other similar expressions from the despatches
of Government and other officials, and even from
a letter of Elizabeth herself, will be quoted later ;
but the above appear sufficiently to show how clearly
it was understood on all sides that the desire to
restore the Catholic religion was the actuating
motive of the Rising.
The early autumn was spent by the northern
Catholic gentry in holding frequent consultations.
Northumberland's reluctance to take action was
due, as he says in his answers, partly to his
" finding the matter apparently without all likeli-
hood of success," and therefore "likely to breed
bloodshed " to no purpose ; and partly to his strong
sense of his obligation to remain submissive to his
Sovereign, so long as the fact of her excom-
munication should remain uncertain. His doubts
on these two points caused him much painful
hesitation, and made him the last of all the leaders
to give his sanction to the enterprise ; and even
then he only yielded under pressure which was
little short of violence, and whilst still maintaining
his loyalty to the person of the Queen herself.2
To solve their doubts as to the lawfulness of
their contemplated Rising, the two Earls, on the jth
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, 1566 — 1579, pp. 103, 108, 112.
'2 The loyalty of the Earl's sentiments towards the Queen is
shown by a letter which he wrote to her on the day before the
outbreak. (Sharpe, p. 320.)
136 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
of November, 1569, addressed a joint letter to Pope
St. Pius V., asking for advice and help. It is true
that they were driven into taking action long before
the Holy Father's answer could arrive ; and that,
when it was given, the movement already had been
crushed. Still the Pope's letter has a very special
interest, since apparently it justifies completely the
enterprise looked at in itself. It is given in full
by the continuator of Baronius, and it should be
noticed that it was dated the 22nd of February, 1570,
that is, three days before the famous Bull by which
Elizabeth was excommunicated. Clearly Dr. Morton
had not been wrong in representing her as con-
sidered by the Pope to be already practically
excommunicated, and deprived of her right of
sovereignty.1
In replying to the letter of the Earls, dated
November the 7th (which he had received, he says,
on February the i6th), the Pontiff wrote as follows :
" Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . has inspired you
with this resolution (which is worthy of your zeal
for the Catholic faith), to endeavour, by delivering
yourselves and your kingdom from a woman's
passion, to restore it to its ancient obedience to
this holy Roman See . . . and if, in maintaining
the Catholic faith and the authority of this Holy-
See, even death should be encountered by you and
your blood should be shed, it is far better for the
confession of God's truth to pass quickly to eternal
1 " Master Copley and another priest consulted by the leaders,
thought that the formal excommunication ought to be waited for
before rising." (Sharpe, p. 204. Answers of the Earl.)
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 137
life by the short road of a glorious death, than to
live on in shame and ignominy, to the loss of your
souls, in bondage to a feeble woman's passion. For
think not, beloved sons in Christ, that those
Bishops, or other leading Catholics (principibus
Catholicis) of your country whom you mention, have
made an unhappy end ; who, for their refusal to
give up their confession of the Catholic faith, have
been either cast into prisons, or unjustly visited
with other penalties. For their constancy, which
has been encouraged by the example (still, as we
believe, effective) of the blessed Thomas Archbishop
of Canterbury, can be praised by none as much as
it deserves. Imitating this same constancy your-
selves, be brave and firm in your resolve ! and
abandon not your undertaking through fear or
threat of any dangers."1
A few days after the two Earls had despatched
their letter to the Pope, they were startled by a
sudden summons to present- themselves before the
Queen, who had received information of their move-
ment. On this they held a last consultation with
their chief supporters at Brancepeth Castle, the
residence of Lord Westmoreland, where, though
almost wrung from him by force, Northumberland's
agreement to the Rising was at last obtained.2
Accordingly, setting out from Brancepeth with
1 Laderchi, Baronii Aniiales,ad. an. 1570, §384.
a The following is Northumberland's own account of this
Council, held at Brancepeth, as abridged from his answers on
examination: "My Lord (of Westmoreland), his uncles, old Norton,
and Markenfield were earnest to proceed. Francis Norton, John
138 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
such forces as could hastily be gathered, the two
Earls made a public entry into Durham on the
afternoon of November the I4th, amidst the accla-
mations of the people. Their first care on entering
was to proceed to the Cathedral and give directions
for its immediate restoration to Catholic worship,
the communion - table and Protestant books of
service being carried out and publicly destroyed ;
and this was the signal for St. Cuthbert's city once
more to assume its old appearance, and openly show
itself the Catholic town it had always remained at
heart. During the short month the Rising lasted
we read of altars rebuilt in nearly all the churches
there, and of Masses heard by crowded congre-
gations; of holy water carried to the people's houses,
and of processions headed by the cross ; and, best
Swinburne, myself, and others thought it impossible ; so we broke
up and departed, every man to provide for himself. Lady West-
moreland, hearing this, cried out, weeping bitterly, that we and
our country were shamed for ever, and that we must seek holes to
creep into. Some departed, and I wished to go, but my Lord's
uncles and others were so importunate that I and my Lord should
not sunder, or we should cast ourselves away, that I remained a
day or two. If any of us had provided a ship, we should have been
glad ; but when I found I could not get away I agreed to rise with
them, and promised to go and raise my force in Northumberland,
to join Lord Westmoreland upon the Tyne. They misliked my
departing, but I told them I must go, unless I went under my Lord's
standard without force of my own. I had got away an arrow-shot,
when the Nortons and others came to persuade me to return. Being
desperately urged, I returned, and met my Lord riding homeward.
I thought, but he passed towards Durham. When I understood
they would begin the matter there, I would no further, and willed
my Lord to return home and take better advice. I walked up and
down till sunset, and then they forced me to go." (Domestic Calendar,
Addenda, June 13, 1572.)
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 139
of all, of thousands kneeling at the feet of priests
commissioned by Christ's Vicar, to receive absolution
from censure and from sin.
On this first day of the Rising the Earls stayed
no longer in Durham than was needed for the pro-
clamation of their enterprise ; and returning to
Brancepeth for the night, they set out next day with
their army southwards. But this public restoration
of the Catholic religion in a city such as Durham,
in the beginning of Elizabeth's twelfth year, is an
event so striking as to deserve more attention than
it has usually received. Let us then interrupt the
narrative to supply some details regarding it not
noticed by most writers.
The following account of the proceedings in
Durham on November the I4th, is contained in a
letter to the Earl of Sussex from Sir George Bowes,
then in command of Barnard Castle, and is inter-
esting from the fact of its having been written on
the following day : " The doings of the Earls of
Westmoreland and Northumberland. Yesterday,
at four of the clock in the afternoon, the said Earls,
accompanied with Richard Norton, Francis, his
son, with divers other of his said sons ; Christopher
Nevill, Cuthbert Nevill, uncles of the said Earl of
Westmoreland ; and Thomas Markenfield, with
others to the number of three [score] horsemen
armed in corselets and coats of plates, with spears,
arquebuses, and daggers, entered the Minster there,
and there took all the books but one, and them and
the communion-table defaced, rent, and broke in
pieces. And after made a proclamation in the
i4o BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
Queen's name that no man, before their pleasure
known, should use any service ; and calling the
citizens before them, told them how they had done
nothing but that they would avow, and was after
the Queen's proceedings. And so tarrying about
the space of one hour they departed, putting a
watch of twenty-four townsmen to the town, which
took a servant of mine, which I sent thither, and
him carried to his lodging, and there he was kept
till this morning, and so came away. In haste at
Barnard Castle, November the I5th, at twelve of
the clock, 1569."
The fact of a watch of twenty-four of their own
fellow-townsmen being thought by the Earls a suffi-
cient force to guard the city, shows clearly how
entirely they had the sympathy of the citizens of
Durham in their proceedings at the Minster; and,
in fact, we have the express declaration of the Earl
of Sussex, made in answer to questions from the
Queen as to the " Earls' outrageous doings at
Durham," that " there was no resistance made, nor
any mislike of their doings." He says too in another
letter : " They pay for all they take, and suffer no
spoil. At Durham a man of the Earls' took a horse
of the Dean's out of his stable, but the horse was
restored and the taker punished."1 Indeed, the whole
conduct of the people at this time showed that they
were no mere passive spectators of the attempt to
give back to them the means of practising again
their ancient Faith, but were actual and glad co-
operators in it : and yet it must not be forgotten
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, pp. 119, 120.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 141
that for the eleven years preceding they had been
entirely debarred from attending (unless occasionally
by stealth) either Mass or Sacraments ; and that
every church and chapel in the country had been
for the same space of time in the hands of ministers,
who, whether priests or not by ordination, had all
conformed to the new heresy, and who were for
the most part animated by a virulent hatred of
everything that savoured of the old religion, attend-
ance at their own services being, moreover, enforced
by rigorous penalties. Of these, James Pilkington
("the late supposed Bishop," as one of the Earls'
proclamations described him1) had openly praised
God for having kept him from the " filthiness " of
the religion and orders of his predecessor, Cuthbert
Tunstall ; 2 whilst the fanatical Dean Whittingham
(who then presided over the Cathedral, and who
owed his only orders to the Calvinist ministers of
Geneva3) displayed his love of Catholicity by sacri-
legiously rifling the tomb of Venerable Bede, whose
relics, some say, he scattered to the winds,4 and by
burning the corporal cloth of St. Cuthbert, which
had been upheld by the monks as a banner at the
victory of Nevill's Cross.
As to the eleven Canons who then occupied the
places of the monks, two brothers of the Bishop —
John and Leonard Pilkington — may be supposed to
have shared his sentiments ; as also Swift, his Vicar-
1 Sharpe, p. 98.
2 Bridget! and Knox, Elizabeth and the Catholic Hierarchy, p. 48.
3 Estcourt, Question of Anglican Ordinations, p. 149.
4 Acta Sanctorum, Mali 27 (Ada S.Bedz), Edit. Bollandists.
142 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
General, who afterwards presided at the trials for
ecclesiastical offences which followed the suppres-
sion of the Rising ; whilst of the rest it is enough
to say that all of them had been appointed, or at
least confirmed in office, by Elizabeth ; l and that
(sad to tell) no less than three amongst them —
Stephen Marley (last Subprior), Thomas Spark, and
George Cliff — were apostate monks, who, following
no principle except the securing of their worldly
interests, had accepted each successive change that
had followed the suppression of their monastery in
1541, renouncing their Faith again finally on the
accession of Elizabeth.
The first two of these ex-monks were probably
in 1569 the only members of the Chapter who had
been validly ordained, George Cliff having appar-
ently received no more than acolyte's orders from
Bishop Tunstall.2 Nearly all of these worthies
seem to have fled from Durham on its occupation
by the Earls, since a memorial of Cecil's is found
to contain the following item under the heading of
" Proceedings for the suppression of the Rising : "
" The Bishop and Dean of Durham and all ecclesi-
astical persons (to be) commanded to return to their
charges."3 Most, however, of the more subordinate
1 One — John Rudd — had been dispossessed by Mary. See Le
Neve's Fasti. Hardy's Edition.
2 Surtees Society, 1845. Depositions and Ecclesiastical Proceedings
from the Courts of Durham, p. 137. Cliff was made a Canon by
Elizabeth.
3 Most of the details which follow are gathered from the Reports
of the trials held after the Rising, published by the Surtees Society,
Depositions, &c., pp. 127, seq.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 143
officials appear without reluctance to have lent their
services to the faithful priests, who, as long as the
Rising lasted, were allowed to take undisturbed
possession both of the Cathedral and the other
churches. Of these priests a word must now be
said.
In virtue of special faculties received from Rome,
the chief conduct of religious matters was under-
taken by a zealous and courageous priest named
William Holmes, whose memory deserves to be
rescued from the oblivion into which it has been
allowed to fall. So conspicuous, indeed, was the
part played by this man at the time we speak of,
that it won for him from his enemies the name of
the " Pope's Patriarch ; " and we find him so
described by them in their despatches. Thus, after
the suppression of the Rising, the Attorney-General
writes to Cecil : " One Holmes, thought to be the
Patriarch, is indicted here (Durham), but he is fled."1
Mr. Holmes was assisted in his difficult and
dangerous undertaking by three other priests, named
Robert and John Peirson and John Robson. The
first of these is spoken of by one of the witnesses
at the trials held after the Rising as " the priest of
Brancepeth," and he appears to have been private
chaplain to the Earl of Westmoreland. John Peirson
(perhaps brother to the former) was one of the
Minor Canons of the Cathedral, and had probably
made his submission to the Church some time
before. Whatever may have been his history, there
was evidently no question raised about his Orders,
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, April i, 1570.
i44 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
and he was now fully reinstated in his ministry, for
which he afterwards suffered deprivation of his
benefice.1 It was in his chambers on the Palace
Green that Mr. Holmes appears to have found a
lodging, and there that he received some of the
conforming clergy, who came to him for absolution
from their censures. As to Mr. Robson, no particu-
lars seem discoverable, beyond the frequent mention
of him in the trials as having said Mass in the
Cathedral.
The burning of the Protestant service-books at
the Cathedral had been the signal for similar pro-
ceedings at the other churches; those, for instance,
of St. Oswald's — consisting of " a Bible, the Book
of Comon Praier, the Apologe, and the Homilies "
— having been brought down, as was afterwards
deposed, and " byrnt at the brig ende." • The next
step was to rebuild a certain number of the ruined
altars, on which the Holy Sacrifice might again
be offered up, and to replace the holy-water
stoups at the church doors ; and the laborious way
in which this work was set about shows how
permanent it was meant to be by its directors —
Mr. Holmes and Mr. Robert Peirson — to whom
Lord Westmoreland's uncle, Mr. Cuthbert Nevill,
lent his powerful support. Orders are said to have
been given by them for the rebuilding of no less
than five of the Cathedral altars, although only two
seem to have been actually erected. These were
the high altar in the choir and that of our Blessed
Lady in the south transept, called the Lady
1 Sharpe, pp. 231, 260. 2 Probably Elvet Bridge.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 145
Bolton altar, from the tithes of Bolton chapelry with
which it had been anciently endowed. For the re-
erection of these altars two of the old altar-stones,
which lay buried under rubbish (one at the back of
the house of Dr. Swift, Pilkington's Vicar-General,
and the other " in the cemetery garth "), were with
considerable trouble got back into the Cathedral,
three days being spent in the work of their erection
by some dozen workmen, some of whom afterwards,
when put on their trial, had the weakness to profess
themselves sorry for their " fault." In at least
four also of the other churches — those, namely, of
St. Giles, St. Margaret, St. Nicholas, and St. Oswald
— the altars and the holy-water fonts were restored
in the same way, and in these and the Cathedral as
many Masses as the small number of priests avail-
able would permit began now to be celebrated, to
the indescribable delight and comfort of the crowds
that flocked to hear them.
It is hard, indeed, to realize what must have
been the joy of these long persecuted Catholics, to
hear their well-loved churches once more echoing
with the old familiar Latin chants of Mass and
Vespers ; to receive again in the old way holy water1
and blessed bread ; to be suffered freely (as they
quaintly expressed it) to " occupy their gaudes "
[i.e., to use their rosaries, then commonly called
gaudies], as the widow, Alice Wilkinson, declared
upon her trial " many thowsand dyd ; " to be able
i Holy water was also taken to the people in their houses. The
parish clerk of St. Nicholas' owned to having " willed two boys to
go about the parish with holy water."
K II.
146 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
once more to confess their sins to a true priest,
who had power from Christ's Vicar to forgive
them ; and, above all, to feel that our Blessed Lord
Himself was once more present on the altar, and
could be received as their food in Holy Communion.1
How sad to think that all this was but to last so
short a time !
The first High Mass, of which we find mention,
was sung in the Cathedral on St. Andrew's Day
(Wednesday, November the 3Oth), by Mr. Robert
Peirson, the choir consisting of the official singing-
men of the Cathedral, who (whatever their weakness
afterwards at the trials) seem at the time, at all
events, to have been troubled by no other scruple
than that they had not yet been " reconciled " to the
Church ; on which point, however, they were
reassured by the good priest, who told them "that
1 The following "Libel against hearers of Mass," Depositions
and Ecclesiastical Proceedings, &c. (p. 131), from the private book of
Swift, the Vicar-General, is instructive as showing the charges on
which those tried before that worthy in the ensuing April were
indicted : " That the said A.B., about St. Andrew last past, or before
fourteen day of December, 1569, by the instigation of the divell
. . . did unlawfullye erecte ... or cause to be erected . . . one
alter and holie-water stone, . . . and also in the same monthes and
yere came to Masse, Matens, Evensonge, procession, and like
idolatrous service, thereat knelling, bowing, knocking, and shewing
such like reverent gesture, used praying on beades, confession or
shriving to a prest, toke holy water and holye breade ; and did also
then and ther heare false and erroniouse doctrine against God and
the Churche of England preached by one W. Holmes in the pulpit,
and, subjecting himselve to the same doctryne and to the Pope, did,
among other like wicked people knowen to him, knell down and
receive absolution under Pope Pius name [St. Pius V.], in Latin,
false-terming this godly estate of England to be a schisme or
heresy."
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 147
all that were reconciled in heart " might take part
in the singing.1 The " throng of people " on this
occasion is declared by one witness to have been
" so much that she could not see the Mass, and
so sat down in the low end of the same church and
said her prayers."
The crown was put to the work of Durham's
reconciliation to the Church by the public absolution
of the people from their censures, pronounced by
Mr. Holmes on December the 4th, which happened
that year to be the Second Sunday of Advent. On
that day Mr. Holmes mounted the Cathedral pulpit,
and after preaching on the state of heresy and schism
which the new religion had established in the
country, exhorted all his hearers to submit once
more to the Catholic Church, and to kneel down
whilst he gave them absolution; "affirming," as a
witness at the trials said, " that he had authority
to reconcile men to the Church of Rome : " and
" thereupon he openly reconciled and absolved in
the Pope's name all the hearers there." Then,,
making his way through the still kneeling crowd to
the high altar in the choir, he offered up the Holy
Sacrifice, with what feelings of joyful gratitude we
can well imagine. The day concluded with " Even-
songe in Latten," and the singing of the anthem,
Gaude Virgo Christipara, in honour of our Blessed
Lady.
On this self-same Sunday, at Bishop Auckland
(Pilkington's own place of residence), a similar con-
soling scene was enacted in St. Helen's Church by
1 Declaration of Thomas Wark. (Ibid. p. 153.)
148 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
a priest named George Whyte, who, " coming into
the church (at whose procurement the deponent
cannot say), went into the pulpit, where, when he
had preached against the state of religion established
in this realm, he willed them to revert to the Church
of Rome ; and thereupon read absolution in the
Pope's name to all the people, . . . and afterwards
. . . said Mass there."1
How general the Catholic revival was throughout
the county would best be shown by a list of the
various places which figure in the depositions ; but
of these it seems enough to mention Sedgefield, Long
Newton, Lanchester, Chester-le-Street, Stockton,
and Monkwearmouth. How many souls were
strengthened by it to bear steadfastly the fearful
troubles which were so soon to come upon them,
can be known to God alone ; but that its effects did
not soon pass away is proved by the angry words,
already quoted, of Bishop Barnes — Pilkington's
successor — who (in writing to Lord Burghley six
years after its occurrence), says of the Church of
Durham that its " stinke is grievous in the nose of
God and men, and which to purge far passeth
Hercules' labours."
During the week which followed the public
*' reconciliation " of the people of Durham, Mr.
Holmes seems to have had the happiness of receiv-
ing back into the Church most of the Protestant
ministers yet remaining in the town. Amongst
these were no less than five of the Minor Canons
of the Cathedral, who, fortified with a commen-
1 Ibid. p. 181.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 149-
datory letter from Mr. John Peirson, their former
comrade, on Friday, December the gth, went out
all together to see Mr. Holmes at Staindrop — " who,,
besides the letter of Sir John Pierson's, was heartily
moved upon their submission to reconcile them from
the schism ; every man acknowledging his state of
life for eleven years last past privately and secretly,
did promise that they would now turn off the same."
It would seem, however, that Mr. Holmes was not
satisfied with regard to their Orders, at all events as
far as the priesthood was concerned ; for he "was
content to admit them as deacons to minister in the
church, but not to celebrate."1
Unhappily, most of these somewhat hastily
converted ministers seemed to have lacked either
the sincerity or the courage to stand the test of
persecution, and returned again to their old ways,
Still a brave profession of his Faith was made by
one of them, John Browne by name, who, in addition
to his minor canonry, held also the curacy of
Witton Gilbert. No less than three witnesses made
depositions afterwards that, in the chapel of Witton
Gilbert, on a Sunday or holiday in December last,
they " heard Sir John Browne, curate there, say
openly to his parishioners after this sort : ' I have
these eleven years taught you the wrong way in
such learning as is against my soul and yours both,
and I am sorry and ask God mercy therefor, and
you my parishioners; and do here renounce my
1 Depositions of William Smyth and William Blenkinsopp,
Minor Canons, who both, unfortunately, afterwards retracted.
(Ibid. pp. 138, 144.)
150 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
living before you all ; and wheresoever you meet me,
in town or field, take me as a stranger and none of
your curate.' "J
For a few days after his reception back again
into the one true fold, this brave man had the
consolation of ministering at the services in the
Cathedral, where he is once mentioned as serving
Mr. Holmes' Mass ; but his name was naturally
struck off from the list of the Cathedral clergy on
the suppression of the Rising, and most probably he
had to flee the country.
It is time for us to return to the Earl of
Northumberland and the Earl of Westmoreland, his
fellow-leader in the Rising. Unfortunately for the
ultimate success of their attempt, they had been
hurried into taking action without sufficient time
for preparation. They were, moreover, disappointed
both as to the co-operation of many of the gentry
from whom help had been expected, and also as to
assistance which had been looked for from abroad.
Thus, although they were enabled to carry all before
them for a little while, nevertheless the movement
could not sustain itself, and was soon forced to
collapse. Meanwhile, however, the Earl of Sussex,
the Queen's representative in the North, was so
doubtful of the fidelity of his own troops, of whose
Catholic sympathies he was well aware, that he
dared not stir from York against the insurgents till
reinforcements should reach him from the South ;
and his letters to Cecil betray his great anxiety.
1 Ibid. p. 174.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUM TREE 151
The uncompromising manner in which the
religious purpose of the Rising was put forward by
the two Earls, is well shown by the following procla-
mation which they issued a day or two after their
entry into Durham : " Thomas, Earl of Northumber-
land, and Charles, Earl of Westmoreland, the
Queen's true and faithful subjects, to all the same
of the old and Catholic Faith, — . . . As divers
ill-disposed persons about her Majesty have by their
crafty dealing overthrown in this realm the true and
Catholic religion towards God, abused the Queen,
dishonoured the realm, and now seek to procure
the destruction of the nobility ; we have gathered
ourselves together to resist force by force, . . . and
to redress those things amiss, with the restoring of
all ancient customs and liberties to God and this
noble realm."
It is true that in a later manifesto, put forth
when they were beginning to retreat, the Earls
sought to disarm hostility and win fresh adherents
by speaking only of the need of fixing the succession
to the throne, without making any open reference to
religion. But the successor, whose claim they
wished to get acknowledged, was none other than
Mary Queen of Scots, through whom they hoped
eventually to obtain the restoration of the Catholic
religion. The idea, however, of placing her upon
the throne at once was not even mooted — as we
know from the declaration of Northumberland
himself. He was guilty, therefore, of no hypocrisy
in calling himself in the above proclamation " a
true and faithful subject of Elizabeth."
152 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
On the day following their entry into Durham,
the Earls moved southwards, with the intention of
liberating, if possible, the Scottish Queen, who was
then confined at Tutbury, in Staffordshire. Nothing,
it would seem, could well exceed the enthusiasm
with which "the sturdy men of the North " flocked
to join them.
" No sooner," writes M. de Fonblanque, " had
they set up their standards in Durham, than men of
all classes, from nobles and knights, accompanied
by their tenants mounted and equipped for war,
down to unarmed labourers bringing only their
stout hearts and good-will, rallied round their
natural chiefs." They went on, continues the same
writer, " steadily increasing their numbers, till, . . .
on the 23rd of November, the force amounted to
6,000 men."1
"All their force both of horse and foot," writes
Sir F. Leek to the Council, " wear red crosses, as
well the priests as others."5 Their standard,
representing our Blessed Lord with Blood streaming
from His Wounds, was borne by old Mr. Richard
Norton, High Sheriff of Yorkshire in the previous
year, whose long grey hair and venerable bearing
excited the enthusiasm of the beholders.
The chief chaplain of their army appears to have
been none other than the Blessed Thomas Plumtree,
illustrious for his martyrdom at Durham after the
suppression of the Rising. In an old ballad of the
time he is called " the preacher of the Rebels ; " and
1 Annals of the House of Percy, ii. pp. 51, 57.
z Domestic Calendar, Addenda, December 3, 1569.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 153
the same title is given him in Lord Scroop's list of
the prisoners whom he sent to Durham : " Thomas
Plomtree, a priest and their preacher; 5>1 and as, in
the report of the trials held at Durham, he is only
mentioned once as having there said Mass, it seems
probable that he accompanied the two Earls on their
march southwards, and only returned to Durham
with them. As to this holy man's earlier life, we
unfortunately know little. He seems to have been
a native of the diocese of Lincoln, and to have been
a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in
1543. He took the degree of B.A. in 1546, and
in the same year was made Rector of Stubton,
in Lincolnshire. He resigned this benefice at the
change of religion under Elizabeth, and became
master of a school at Lincoln, which position he
also had to give up later on account of his
religion.2 A despatch of Fenelon, the French Ambas-
sador, described Blessed Thomas Plumtree, a few
days after his martyrdom, as estime home fort sqavant
et de bonne me?
Staindrop and Darlington seem to have been the
Earls' first stopping-places after leaving Brancepeth,
and at each, as at Durham, they proclaimed the
1 Among manye newes reported of late,
As touching the Rebelles their wicked estate,
Yet Syr Thomas Plomtrie, their preacher they saie,
Hath made the north countrie to crie well a daye,
Well a daye, well a daye, well a daye, woe is mee,
Syr Thomas Plomtrie is hanged on a tree.
(Sharpe, pp. 123, 383.) In a summary of those executed (p. 140),
Sharpe, by an evident mistake, calls him William Plumtree.
2 Bridgewater's Concertatio, fol. 405. See Foster, Alumni Oxonienses.
3 January 21, 1570. Quoted by Sharpe, p. 188.
154 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
re-establishment of Catholic worship. Leaving
Darlington on November the 17th, after assisting
publicly at the Holy Sacrifice, offered up most
probably by Blessed Thomas Plumtree, they passed
into Yorkshire, continually receiving fresh adherents
and nowhere meeting an opponent, and proceeded
through Richmond and Northallerton to Ripon,
where the Holy Mass was once more celebrated
in St. Wilfrid's stately Minster. Thence advancing
still further south, they encamped on November the
23rd on Clifford Moor, near Wetherby. So far
everything had gone favourably. " They had suc-
ceeded in dispersing the levies in course of forma-
tion for the Queen's service, had captured a body of
300 horse at Tadcaster, and cut off communication
with York, where Sussex lay with a garrison not
exceeding 2,000 men, ' whereof not past 300
horsemen.' A vigorous assault would have placed
him and the city at their mercy."1
At this point however, the unfortunate failure of
supplies and money, as also differences of opinion
amongst the leaders, put a stop to further progress,
and necessitated their return into the bishopric of
Durham. Marching, therefore, again northwards, they
succeeded in capturing, first the port of Hartlepool,
through which they hoped to receive succour from
abroad, and a little later Barnard Castle, where seems
to have occurred almost the only righting, and to
which they laid a formal siege. The sympathy felt
by a large portion of the garrison for the undertaking
of the Earls, was shown by some hundreds of them
1 De Fonblanque, ii. p. 58.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 155
leaping from the walls to join them ; and, at the end
of ten days, Sir George Bowes, the royalist com-
mander of the castle, found it necessary to capitulate,
and was allowed to march out with such troops as
remained faithful to him, and proceed to York.
Whilst the siege was still continuing, the Earl
of Northumberland, in consequence of the rumoured
approach of hostile troops from Berwick, had returned
with five hundred horse to Durham ; it was thus
he was present in the Cathedral on December the
4th, when Mr. Holmes publicly absolved the people.1
Also along with him and as chaplain to his
soldiers, the Blessed Thomas Plumtree seems to
have returned, for he appears to have been the
celebrant of the Mass said on that memorable day
immediately before Mr. Holmes' sermon. Amongst
the citizens of Durham tried afterwards for having
been present at the services held in the Cathedral,
one, Ralph Stevenson, admitted that "he was at
Plomtre's Masse in the Collidge Church and was at
Holmes' preichinge. ... He toke absolucion of the
said preicher, emongst the resydew of the people."2
Meanwhile, the approach of his long expected
reinforcements had set Sussex free to commence a
movement northwards, other troops to join him
having been gathered at Newcastle. The hope-
lessness of any ultimate success to be obtained by
1 Depositions and Ecclesiastical Proceedings, &c.
2 Ibid. p. 181. The Close, occupied by the Prebendaries' houses
on the south side of the Cathedral, is still called " the College."
Probably the Cathedral came to be spoken of as the "College
Church," from the erection in it of a College of Canons in place of
the former monks.
156 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
the insurgents was thus made daily more apparent.
They held their last council of war at Durham on
December the i6th, when Lord Westmoreland seems
to have been in favour of still standing out, but
the gentle and more timorous Northumberland, afraid
of causing useless bloodshed, and anxious still, as
far as might be possible, to avoid resistance to his
Sovereign, was desirous that they should cease
hostilities.1 Opinions being thus divided, no course
but flight was open to them. On the same night,
accordingly, dismissing their poorer followers to their
own homes, the two Earls, with the chief part of the
gentry that had joined them, rode off to Hexham.
A few days later they made their way across the
Scottish frontier, trusting to find safety for a while
amongst the half independent clans dwelling on
the borders ; and thence, not long afterwards,
Lord Westmoreland and many others succeeded in
escaping to the Continent.
The whole North was now at the mercy of the
Earl of Sussex, whom the Queen had especially
charged to execute on the offenders the full severity
of martial law. " The most repulsive feature," writes
the author of the Percy Annals, "in the retaliatory
measures now adopted by Elizabeth and her agents,
is the cold-blooded, calculating spirit in which whole-
1 Reports (perhaps exaggerated) of the Earl's hesitation had
already reached his enemies. On the previous November 24,
Lord Hunsdon wrote from York to Cecil : " The other [Northum-
berland] is very timorous, and has meant twice or thrice to submit ;
but his wife encourages him to persevere, and rides up and down
with their army, so that the grey mare is the better horse."
(Domestic Calendar, Addenda (1566—1579), p. 124.)
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 157
sale executions were inflicted upon the ' meaner sort,'
while those were spared who were able to ransom
their lives. The gentlemen and substantial yeomen
who fell into the hands of the authorities were
allowed to escape the penalty of their offences by a
money payment ; while the poor peasants . . . were
consigned to the gallows by hundreds. ... A report,
drawn up in October, 1573, by Lord Huntingdon,
put the number of rebels actually executed at ' seven
hundred and odd, . . . wholly of the meanest of the
people, except the aldermen of Durham, Plomtree,
their preacher, the constables, and fifty serving-
men.'"1 "In the county of Durham alone," says
Lingard, "more than three hundred individuals
suffered death ; nor was there between Newcastle
and Wetherby, a district of sixty miles in length
and forty in breadth, a town or village in which
some of the inhabitants did not expire on the
gibbet."2
Blessed Thomas Plumtree was taken in his flight
together with some three hundred others, and con-
ducted to Carlisle. Thence, a few days later, he was
sent back by Lord Scroop to Durham along with
some thirty landed gentlemen, whose estates were
marked for confiscation, and committed to the
custody of Sir George Bowes, the late opponent of
the Earls at Barnard Castle, who was now installed
in Durham Castle as Marshal for the keeping of the
"prisoners rebels." In pursuance, probably, of the
following suggestions, found in a memorial of Cecil's
1 De Fonblanque, ii. pp. 76 and 80.
2 History of England, vol. vi. p. 217.
i58 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
— " For some terror . . . particular examples are to
be made at Durham, where the Bibles and Common
Prayers were misused. . . . Some notable example
is to be made of the priests that have offended in
this rebellion"1 — Thomas Plumtree was singled out
amongst the very first for special punishment, in
hatred of his priestly character.
The Earl of Sussex came himself to Durham to
preside in person at the executions, which began on
January the 4th. On that day the blessed martyr
was led out from the Castle, in full sight of the old
Cathedral in which he had so lately offered up the
Holy Sacrifice, and conducted down the winding
street which leads to the market-place, where his
gibbet was erected. Dr. Nicholas Sander, writing
within a year and a half of the occurrence, relates
that, " on his arriving at the place of execu-
tion (Jam ad mortem ducto), his life was offered to
him, if he would but renounce the Catholic Faith
and embrace the heresy ; " to which the martyr
nobly answered, "that he had no desire so to
continue living in the world, as meantime to die to
God. Wherefore, having fearlessly confessed his
Faith, by God's grace he suffered death in this world,
that he might merit to receive from Christ eternal
life." 2
Surtees3 quotes the register of St. Nicholas' (the
church in the market-place where the martyr
suffered) as recording, on January the i4th, the
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, p. 172.
2 De Visibili Monarchia Ecclesia, Louvain, 1571, p. 732.
3 History of Durham, iv. p. 51.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 159
burial of " Maistre Plumbetre." In the English
College pictures Blessed Thomas Plumtrce is repre-
sented as being cut in pieces, after hanging, as were
most of the other martyrs ; and from his burial
having taken place ten days after his martyrdom,
it seems that his quarters must have been left
hanging on the gibbet, " for some terror," for the
space of ten whole days. The ancient cemetery, in
which he seems to have been laid, is now covered by
the pavement of the market-place.
The remainder of the priests who had worked so
zealously at Durham, during the brief restoration of
the Catholic religion, seem to have succeeded in
escaping ; although of few of them, except William
Holmes, " the Patriarch," is it possible to find
further actual mention. There seems, however, to
be good reason for identifying the John Peirson,
spoken of amongst them, with " a venerable old
priest " named John Pearson, who "was imprisoned"
.(says Father Christopher Grene, SJ.) " for many
years at Durham, for refusing to attend heretical
services;" and who — from the order in which Father
Grene makes mention of him — appears to have
died not later than the year 1585, "from his cruel
treatment in a dungeon into which he was thrust,
when in a burning fever, among a set of thieves." ]
Against Mr. Holmes, who had escaped to Scotland,
a special indictment had been made out at Durham,
and more than one allusion to him is found in the
State Papers of the time. Thus, on the I5th of
February, 1570, Lord Hunsdon writes from Berwick
1 Father Morris, Troubles, Hi. p. 315.
160 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
to the Privy Council, that " Lord Home is the
principal receiver of the Queen's rebels, and has
Mass in his house ; for the Patriarch, who was at
Durham with the Earls, is now at Fast Castle,"
near Dunbar. A little later (March the lyth), he
writes again to say that he has received information
that " the Patriarch and other rebels have prepared
a ship to pass into Flanders," and that he hopes to
intercept them, as " Mr. Randolph [then Eliza-
beth's Postmaster General] has practised with the
master of the ship." Lord Hunsdon's hopes in
this respect were, however, doomed to disappoint-
ment ; and on the following April the ist he was
obliged to inform Cecil that, by the contrivance of
Lord Home, who had received warning of his plot,
Mr. Holmes and his companions had been sent to
Orkney, to be conveyed by that circuitous route to
Flanders.1 There, amongst the English exiles for
the Faith, "William Holmes, priest," is named in
Sander's De Visibili Monarchia.
This section may be concluded with the following
beautiful letter, written by Mr. Holmes from Louvain,
in the September of 1571, to one of his fellow-
fugitives of the Rising — George Smythe, of Esh
Hall, Durham — who had not yet succeeded in
escaping to the Continent, being kept a prisoner by
Lord Lindsay :
" I am sorry to seem to neglect you in not
writing ; but I have to write when I should sleep.
I have prayed for your spiritual comfort, and am
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, and Sharpe, p. 72.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 161
glad to hear of your courage in God's cause. You
may rejoice that you are thought worthy to suffer
for His sake. Walking on the seas tried Peter's love,
but he was not suffered to drown. Drink the cup of
persecution willingly, though bitter in taste, and your
reward shall be everlasting life."1
This letter, intercepted by the spies of Cecil, can
never have been seen by him for whose encourage-
ment it was written.
None of God's saints have won the crowns they
now wear in Heaven, without going through much
suffering here on earth. It seems indeed a necessary
condition for the acquiring of sanctity in any high
degree to have first passed through the school of
suffering, since there is no way of becoming like to
our Blessed Lord without taking up the Cross.
It could not be otherwise with Blessed Thomas
Percy ; and we have now reached a period in his
life at which began for him a long course of tribu-
lations, destined in God's providence to fit him for
his final triumph.
The brave Countess of Northumberland had
clung faithfully to her husband throughout the
campaign, riding everywhere with him and his
army. On passing into Scotland after the flight
from Durham, they both took refuge for a little
while in the cottage of a Liddesdale outlaw, known
upon the Borders as John of the Side. It was
only for a few days, however, that the Earl's
enemies allowed him to enjoy even the poor shelter
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, Sept. 3 (or 13), 1571.
L II.
162 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
which Sussex, in writing to the Queen, described as
"not to be compared to any dog-kennel in England."
Acting in agreement with the Ministers of Eliza-
beth, the Scotch Regent, Murray, had already made
a proclamation, in which he warned his subjects
that "the rebellious people of England intend to
enter Scotland in a warlike manner, and set up again
the Papistical idolatry and abominable Mass; " and,
on hearing of the arrival of the fugitives amongst
the Border clans, he succeeded, by the free use of
threats and promises to the men of Liddesdale, in
procuring their expulsion.1 On being driven thence,
Northumberland, thinking that his late rough hosts
would at least respect his wife, and not wishing
to expose her to further unknown perils, left her
amongst them, and set out to seek protection from
the neighbouring clan of Armstrongs. No sooner
had he gone, however, than the poor Countess found
herself robbed of all her personal effects, including
her money and her jewels, whilst her horse and
those of her attendants were seized by the outlaws
for their own use. Happily she was not left very
long in this miserable state, but was rescued by the
friendly Laird of Fernihurst, who conducted her a
few days later to Fast Castle, on the sea-coast, where,
with many of the other fugitives, she was protected
by Lord Home.
Meanwhile the Earl himself had been betrayed
into a snare laid for him by the Regent, through
the treachery of a certain Hector Armstrong, whom,
when a fugitive in England, he had himself formerly
1 Foreign Calendar, December 18 and 22, 1569.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 163
protected. By this man he was entrapped into a
conference with an envoy from the Regent ; and
whilst talking with the latter was suddenly sur-
rounded by a troop of horsemen. These succeeded
in conveying him to Hawick, in spite of the brave
resistance of his followers, who gave pursuit and
contrived to kill the leader of the capturing party.1
The betrayal of the Earl to the Regent, in the
manner just related, took place on the Christmas
Eve of 1569, but eight days after his flight from
Durham.2 Torn away, as he was, thus suddenly
from all his friends and followers, and committed
to the mercy of a declared and faithless enemy,
it is not easy to imagine a much more forlorn
condition : and his " great distress and misery,
clean without apparel or money ; " and still more
his anxiety of mind as to the condition of " his
friends, his men, and those that were with him,"
and, above all, of " his children " — four little girls
(of whom the eldest was no more than ten), now
bereft of both their parents, and left behind in
England — is feelingly described in a letter, which
was addressed on the Earl's behalf a few days later
to his brother, Sir Henry Percy,3 who, throughout
the Rising, had taken open part against him, but who
now began to show some willingness to help him.
The news of Northumberland's capture by the
Scottish Regent was communicated to the Queen
on the day after its occurrence by Lord Sussex,
who had at once received information of it. Nothing
1 De Fonblanque, ii. p. 68.
2 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, December 25, 1569.
3 De Fonblanque, ii. p. 71.
164 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
else, however, would content Elizabeth but that
the Earl should be handed over to herself; and
she, with this object, immediately commenced
negotiating in spite of the warning sent to her by
Lord Hunsdon, that he found "the nobility and
the commonalty of Scotland bent wholly to the
contrary," and that " if his spies did not much fail,
most of the nobility thought it a great reproach to
the country to deliver any banished man to the
slaughter." l
The only effect this message had upon Elizabeth
is shown by a letter, in which she seeks to rouse the
bigotry of the Scottish Regent, telling him that " as
the rebels, besides their treason against her, have
purposed the alteration of the common religion,
she cannot think that any godly wise councillor
will either maintain them or impeach their delivery."2
This acknowledgment of the religious purpose of the
Rising, made by Elizabeth herself, is worth noting.
In the end, rinding it impossible otherwise to
obtain possession of her victim, Elizabeth was not
ashamed to bargain with the successor of Murray
as to the price of the Earl's surrender ; and at last,
in spite of her known avarice, agreed to pay for him
£2,000 — possibly worth £16,000 to £20,000 in the
present value of money. Thus the Blessed Thomas
Percy had, like our Lord, the glory of being sold for
money to his enemies ; and what added to the
infamy of the transaction was the fact that the Scots
were at the same time treating for his ransom with
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, January 13, 1570.
2 Foreign Calendar, January 24, 1570.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 165
the Countess, whose offer they would have accepted
had not Elizabeth outbidden her. Meanwhile, the
Earl himself had been placed by the Regent in
strict confinement at Lochleven, in the castle
famous for having been a short time previously
the prison of Queen Mary. There he was left to
languish for two years and a half.
We are indebted for a reliable account of the
captivity and martyrdom of Blessed Thomas Percy
(from which I shall not scruple to quote freely) to
the pen of Dr. Nicholas Sander,1 the much calum-
niated historian of the Anglican schism, who was
for some time in Flanders with the Countess of
Northumberland, besides being in actual correspond-
ence with the Earl.
After speaking of the wonderful gentleness and
patience with which the saintly man bore his
captivity at Lochleven, and of the continual fasts
and watchings and pious meditations, by means of
which he strove to win that " crown of glory, which
the just judge now has rendered to him," this
writer goes on to relate that, although the Calvinist
Laird of Lochleven, who had the Earl in keeping,
" often brought thither a number of persons of his
1 Martyrium sanctissimi viri Thames Percei, Comitis N orthumbria .
It was published, after Sander's death, in Bridgewater's Concertatio,
Treves, 1589. So far as I know, it has not yet been translated.
Unfortunately I have not been able to consult the MS. at Florence
which Mr. Turnbull found among the Medici Archives there. He
says it contains an account of the execution sent to the Grand Duke
of Tuscany by one of his residents in England, and that it records
"the speech and even the prayers uttered by the Earl at the solemn
moment." (W. Turnbull, Letters of Mary Stuart, p. 67, note.)
166 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
sect, who tried to draw the Earl away from the
Catholic faith into their new errors ; these men,
nevertheless, were never able, either by cunning
arguments and speeches, or by any kind of threats
or promises, to prevail on him to depart even in
the smallest matter from the communion of the
Catholic Church ; and yet, if he would have but
yielded somewhat to their heresy, there were not
wanting persons quite prepared to promise to him,
not merely his release from prison, but also his old
rank and honours. If, as often happened, meat was
brought to him on days on which Catholics observe
a fast, he contented himself with bread alone ; and
by his example he moved some of those attending
on him to repent of their apostasy. Sometimes he
spent whole days upon his knees, . . . and prayer,
to which he had been devoted all his life, was now
more than ever his delight." " I myself," continues
Sander, " have seen a fair sized book, elegantly
written and illuminated by his own hand, into
which he had brought together a quantity of prayers
gathered out of various works."
The above account of the promises made to the
Earl at this time, if he would but renounce his
Faith, is confirmed by the following passage taken
from an intercepted letter, which was addressed, in
the May of 1570, to the Duchess of Feria in Spain,
by Sir Francis Englefield, then living in exile for
the Faith at Antwerp. After mentioning the Earl's
imprisonment at Lochleven, the writer of this letter
says : " Hunsdon has offered Northumberland con-
ditions of pardon ; but he has refused them without
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 167
liberty (be given) to the Catholics to live as
such." 1
The unselfishness with which, at the cost of all
manner of sacrifices to herself, Lady Northumberland
laboured for her husband's liberation could not be
surpassed ; and at one time it really seemed as if
her efforts were about to be successful. With the
Earl's keeper, William Douglas, of Lochleven, she
contrived to come to an agreement as to the sum
which would be accepted, and the raising of the
money seemed to be the only further thing required.
For this purpose, seeing no hope of obtaining it as
long as she remained where she was, and afraid lest
her own liberty should sooner or later be interfered
with, about the June of 1570 she moved northwards
to Aberdeen, with the view of making her way
thence to the Continent. In this she received much
help from Lord Seton, who, after entertaining her
for some time "in old Aberdeen in the Chancellor's
house " — where " it is said," wrote Randolph, " she
hears Mass daily " — himself set sail with her for the
Low Countries in the following August.2
In Flanders, the Countess received a kind
welcome from the Duke of Alva, who undertook to
interest the King of Spain on her behalf; and from
that monarch (though only after several months'
delay) she received a promise of 6,000 crowns,
which fell far short of the sum demanded by
Lochleven. Nothing, however, could daunt her
zeal, and at last, in the January of 1572, she was
able to send word to her husband that, thanks to
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, May 7, 1570. 2 Sharpe, p. 346.
168 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
a further promise of 4,000 crowns from Pope
St. Pius V., the sum required for his ransom was
obtained ; and that nothing was now left but to
take the necessary measures for securing his safe
passage to the Continent.1
How high the hopes of the Earl's many friends
abroad had risen, may be gathered from the
following letter written from Louvain, in the month
just mentioned, to the prisoner of Lochleven by
none other than the Dr. Sander I have quoted. It
was intercepted by the agents of Elizabeth, and
so was never suffered to convey the consolation
intended by its writer. We see from it that
Dr. Sander was then on the point of setting out for
Rome, whither St. Pius V. had summoned him ;
and it contains a very pleasing reference to that
Pope's affection for the imprisoned nobleman.
" Amongst my other fortunes, I account it not
the best that I am forced to leave this country,
when you, as we hear, are drawing near to it ; for
1 The Countess' long and touching letter conveying the above
intelligence is given in the Annals of the House of Percy , ii.pp.g6 — 101.
In speaking of persons likely to be able to assist her husband, she
describes Dr. Allen (afterwards Cardinal) as "the most singular
man in my opinion, next to Mr. Sanders, on this side the seas. If
he might be had (to help you), I think you could not have the
choice of the like, whensoever God should send you hither." The
following shows the anxiety both of the Earl and herself for their
children, who had been separated from them, and were apparently
in the hands of Protestants. " For your children, the best means
that I can imagine to have them transmitted hither were a suit to
be made to have them licensed to come to see you. . . . The eldest
of all I wish the rather, because her age is fittest to receive
instruction, and most ready to take knowledge now of the
virtuous examples, which here she could see and learn, and there
doth want altogether."
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 169
now I depart to Italy, being called for to Rome ;
and yet amongst my adversities, I accept it the
least that I go not hence before I see you in some
towardness to come hither. What travail my Lady
has taken for your deliver}', not only do I know who
was a part of it, but all men see ; because she was
no longer able to work by private means, but was
forced to follow the Court, and to press upon the
Duke's grace even against his will. God saw her
tears and heard her prayers. But what say I, hers ?
He saw and heard yours, which were so earnest
that they also appeared in her. I shall long to hear
from you, being at Rome ; and, much more, to hear
of your delivery, and to deliver your letter of thanks
to him that there loves you ; and truly if he loves
you, as he has given good evidence, then God loves
you. For these three hundred years there was no
such man in that See, albeit many excellent men
have sat there. But you have a more proper token
of God's love — your imprisonment, affliction, trouble,
and tedious oppression. That do you embrace, and
you have conquered the world. As you have borne
yourself well in adversity, so take care not to forget
the goodness of God if He send you prosperity, as
I beseech Him to do."1
The activity of the spies employed by Cecil (now
Lord Burghley) on the Continent, is proved by the
quantity of letters such as the above, which they
found means of intercepting, and which are now
calendared in the volumes published by the Master
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, January 8, 1572.
170 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
of the Rolls, together with the letters of the spies
that sent them. It was through the agency of one
of these spies — a man named John Lee, who, by
his pretended zeal for the Catholic Faith, and his
feigned ardour in the cause of Mary Queen of Scots,
had contrived to worm himself into the confidence
of the poor Countess and the other exiles (we hear
more of this rascal in the life of Blessed John
Storey) — that the Ministers of Elizabeth received
prompt and full information of each step taken by
the unfortunate lady for her husband's liberation.
On learning, therefore, that a final agreement
was on the point of being come to between the
Countess and Douglas of Lochleven, Elizabeth
determined at once to push on her negotiations
with the Scottish Regent to the conclusion on
which she had set her mind. The shameful bargain
for the Earl's surrender was accordingly arranged
on the i6th of April, 1572, as is shown by a letter
from the Queen herself to Lord Hunsdon, the
Governor of Berwick, in which she signifies her
willingness to pay the £2,000 demanded. Its actual
payment seems, however, only to have been extorted
from her by the repeated assurances of Lord
Hunsdon, that the Scots " would not deliver up
the Earl without the money."1
It is true that the Scottish Regent strove to
veil the infamy of his own part in the proceeding
by accompanying his surrender of the Earl with
a hypocritical request that his life might be spared ;
but it seems impossible that he should have had
1 State Papers, Scotland, April 16, May i, 2, and 7, 1572.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 171
any doubt as to Elizabeth's intention in demanding
him. The delivery of the Earl to Lord Hunsdon
took place at Eyemouth, near to Coldingham, on
May the 2gth, and thence on the same day he was
conveyed to Berwick. Sander relates that his
heartless keeper at Lochleven, in placing him upon
the vessel which was to carry him to Coldingham,
had treacherously endeavoured to persuade him that
he was about to be set free, and conveyed across
the sea to Flanders ; and that the meek confessor
of Christ, although suspecting some deceit, had
bestowed a parting kiss on his betrayer, in imitation
of his Master.
Hunsdon, who had probably expected to find his
prisoner either querulous or sullen, and who was
hardly likely to understand aright the calmness, even
in the midst of danger and of sorrow, of one who
had given up all earthly things for God, remarks
with something of a sneer, in announcing the Earl's
surrender to Lord Burghley, that "he is readier to
talk of hawks and hounds than anything else, though
very sorrowful and fearing for his life."1 He did
not see that he had no right to expect a prisoner to
discuss with his captor the things which really lay
deepest in his heart. Still, that Lord Hunsdon was
not without some sense of the disgraceful nature of
the transaction to which he was a party, appears from
-the remark, which Sander says he made on paying
down the price of the Earl's blood to the Scotch
lord who surrendered him : " You have got your
money, but you have sold your faith and honour! "
1 State Papers, Scotland, May 29, 1572.
172 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
As soon as Elizabeth heard that the Earl had been
actually surrendered, she wrote herself to Hunsdon,
giving instructions with reference to his confinement,
and enclosing a long list of questions, drawn up by
Burghley, to which a written answer was to be re-
quired from him. " You may use speeches," wrote
the Queen, "to terrify him with the extremity of
punishment if he shall conceal anything. As you
see cause, you may also comfort him with hope, so
as it be not in our name, if he will utter the truth of
every person. . . . We like not any chargeable
entertainment of him in his diet, considering him as
a person attainted."1
Reference has been already several times made
to the Earl's full and careful answers to these
questions, which have been published, with all their
quaintness both of phrase and spelling, by Sir
Cuthbert Sharpe.2 Surely it is impossible to read
them without being struck by the singleness of
purpose and scrupulous regard to conscience which
characterized his whole conduct with reference to
the Rising.
" Entertainment," such as accorded with the
instructions of the Queen, seems to have been found
for him in the house of Sir Valentine Browne, the
Treasurer of Berwick, whose report of him to
Lord Burghley, as " nothing altered from his old
mummish opinions, which he would persuade to be
taken as the cause of the rebellion,"3 is a fresh
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, June 5, 1572.
2 Memorials of the Rebellion, pp. 189, seq.
3 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, June 8, 1572.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 173
testimony, if one were wanted, to the confessor's
fidelity to his religion. In the same letter, dated
June the 8th, his keeper speaks of him as " standing
in great hope of Her Majesty's mercy," which seems
to show that Hunsdon had acted on Elizabeth's
insidious permission to " comfort him with hope "
intended by her never to receive fulfilment.
News of the Queen's orders did not reach
Berwick till July the nth, on which day Lord
Hunsdon received instructions to convey the Earl to
York for execution. A further delay of some six
weeks, however, followed, occasioned partly by the
real or pretended hesitation of the Queen, partly by
Hunsdon's blunt refusal to undertake the charge of
being the Earl's " carrier . . to execution into a
place where he had nothing to do," though at the
same time he declared himself quite willing to
" deliver him at Alnwick, but no further."1
It seems to have been during this latter portion
of his stay at Berwick that Blessed Thomas had a
violent and dangerous attack of fever, in which his
one anxiety, as Sander tells us, was his fear that it
might rob him of the martyr's crown.
The disagreeable task of conducting him to the
place where he was to be martyred was entrusted,
at the suggestion of Lord Hunsdon, to Sir John
Forster, on whom the revenues of a large part of
the attainted nobleman's estates had been bestowed,
together with the use of Alnwick Castle. It was an
undertaking not altogether free from risk, and it is
evident that those that had to carry it out were not
1 Ibid. July u.
174 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
without anxiety. Not only did the route from
Berwick lead necessarily through Northumberland,
the actual earldom of their victim — where, as
Hunsdon himself had previously written to the Privy
Council, people " knew no other prince but a Percy,"
and loved in particular the good and virtuous Earl
Thomas "better than they did the Queen"1 — but
Durham and a great part of Yorkshire, the chief
scene of the recent Rising, had also to be traversed.
Accordingly, with the duplicity which from the first
had characterized the proceedings of the Earl's
enemies, they diligently spread the report that he
was about to be reinstated in his former honours ;
and even he himself seems to have been kept in
ignorance of the orders which the Queen had given,
though he can hardly have been really doubtful as to
the ultimate result.
Arrived at Alnwick, his own feudal castle, he
was handed over to Sir John Forster on August the
1 8th, and there the following night was spent. The
journey thence to York was broken both at New-
castle and Darlington, and thus occupied three
days; and in consequence, as it would seem, of the
weakness left by his late illness, the Earl was
conveyed in a carriage surrounded by a strong guard
of horsemen.2 Friends came in numbers to greet
him as he passed, and his cheerful and intrepid
expression rilled them with admiration. When they
1 Foreign Calendar, December 31, 1569; and Domestic Calendar,
Addenda, January 13, 1570.
2 The strength of the force employed is shown by Forster's
charge of £154 us. 4d. for his journey from Alnwick to York and
back. (Sharpe, pp. 333, 334.)
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 175
offered him good wishes for his life and honour,
Sander says that he replied : " That life would be
more pleasing to my flesh than death — not so much
on account of myself, as of my wife, my children,
and my friends — I neither can nor will deny,
provided that my conscience be not injured. For,
rather than that should suffer, let death come and
life depart."
York was reached on the afternoon of August the
2ist, a mid-day halt having been made at Topcliffe,
which had been the Earl's last place of residence
before the Rising. Here it seems possible he may
still have found his children, and have been allowed
to say farewell to them. We are not told where he
was lodged on the one night he spent in York, but
we may presume he would be taken to the Castle.
This presumption falls in with what Sander tells us
of his farewell interview with Sir Thomas Metham,
a venerable sufferer for the Faith, who, together
with his lady, had been several years detained as
prisoners in York Castle, on account of their refusal
to attend service, or receive Communion in the
Protestant Church.1 " He had formerly," says
Sander, " been united in close intimacy and friend-
ship with the Earl, and was desirous to see him
enduring imprisonment for our Lord, in order that
his own constancy in his holy resolution might be
1 A letter addressed to Cecil (Domestic Calendar, Addenda), dated
York, February 6, 1570, describes Sir Thomas Metham as a " most
wilful Papist. ... He does much hurt here, and is reverenced by
Papists as a pillar of their faith. . . . I caused him to be committed
to the Castle, where he remains and does harm, yet would have
done more if he had remained at large."
1 76 BE. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
strengthened by the spectacle." Having obtained
the permission of his keeper, " he saw him and held
converse with him, and bade him a last adieu.
Then returning to his own place of confinement, he
gave up his soul to God a few days afterwards, so
that having loved each other in life, in death they
were not divided."
At York a last attempt was made to draw the
prisoner, if possible, from the Catholic Faith ; and
his life (whether with the Queen's authority or not)
was offered him if he would but abandon his
religion. Of this fact, Sander says,1 he had received
most certain information ; and the self-same thing
is affirmed by Cardinal Allen.2
It is hardly necessary to say that Blessed
Thomas refused to listen to an offer of his life made
dependent on such a condition ; and at last, about
nine o'clock on the same evening (August the 2ist),
Sir John Forster, seeing that he could not induce
him to alter his determination, announced to him
that he was to prepare to suffer execution about two
o'clock on the afternoon of the next day.
The Earl received the announcement with a joy
1 It seems necessary to caution readers against a most strange
mistake made by Tierney (in a note to Dodd's History, iii. 13) with
reference to this offer of life made to the Earl. Through want of
attention to the text of the passage from which he is quoting, he
makes Sander " mention it only as auditum quendam incertum et
praterea nihil." Due care in reading Sander would have shown him
that the words, " auditum quendam," &c., refer, not to the offer of life
made to the Earl, if he would apostatize (which fact Sander says
he has ab auctoribus certissima fdei), but solely to a ridiculous report
that the Earl had been called on to adore an image of Elizabeth.
2 Responsio ad Persecutores. Published by Bridgewater, fol. 316.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 177
which impressed even his enemies, and then set
himself, as was his wont, to prayer. It was not
long, however, before he was interrupted by the
return of Forster, in company with the Protestant
Dean of York, and a minister named Palmer, who
had come to argue with him. His success in repel-
ling their attacks extorted even Forster's admiration,
who was heard to exclaim next day: "I have known
the Earl of Northumberland for many years, but
never have I seen in him such wisdom, eloquence,
and modest firmness as he displayed last night."
Finding themselves overcome in argument, the two
ministers requested that he would at least join with
them in prayer ; but this too he refused, saying that
"he knew they were not members of the true Church
of God."
On their departure he again applied himself with
great joy to prayer, and, though urged by his faithful
attendant, named John Clerk, to take some rest, he
replied : " If Christ chid His disciples for not
watching one hour with Him, do you wish me, who
have so little of life left, to sleep for an hour ? " and
thus he continued in this holy exercise all through
the night, except for some portion of an hour, when
through simple weariness he fell asleep : nor would
he allow himself to break his fast, except by tasting
a few plums. When the hour appointed for his
death drew near, making the sign of the Cross upon
his forehead as he came forth bareheaded from his
cell, he surrendered himself with a calm and steady
countenance into the hands of those who were to
conduct him to the broad open place in York, known
M ii.
178 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
as the Pavement, where the scaffold had been set up
for his execution, and where an immense crowd had
gathered.
I must tell the story of his martyrdom in the
words of Sander, merely omitting things which seem
unnecessary. " On arriving at the place of execution
the Earl took off his cloak, and again making the
sign of the Cross, not only on his forehead, but also
on the steps, he mounted cheerfully to the platform,
where Palmer, the same Protestant minister who
had visited him the night before, began to urge him
to acknowledge his crime against the Queen in the
presence of the assembled crowd.
" On this the Earl, turning towards the people,
said : ' I should have been content to meet my
death in silence, were it not that I see it is the
custom for those who undergo this kind of punish-
ment to address some words to the bystanders as to
the cause of their being put to death. Know, there-
for^, that, from my earliest years down to this
present day, I have held the Faith of that Church
which, throughout the whole Christian world, is
knit and bound together ; and that in this same
Faith I am about to end this unhappy life. But, as
for this new Church of England, I do not acknow-
ledge it.'
" Here Palmer, interrupting him, cried out in a
loud voice : ' I see that you are dying an obstinate
Papist ; a member, not of the Catholic, but of the
Roman Church.'
" To this the Earl replied : 'That which you call
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUM TREE 179
the Roman Church is the Catholic Church, which
has been founded on the teaching of the Apostles,
Jesus Christ Himself being its corner-stone, strength-
ened by the blood of Martyrs, honoured by the
recognition of the holy Fathers; and it continues
always the same, being the Church against which,
as Christ our Saviour said, the gates of Hell shall
not prevail.'
" When Palmer tried a second time to interrupt
him, the Earl said : ' Cease, pray, to further trouble
me, for of this truth my mind and conscience are
most thoroughly convinced.' And when Palmer
still would not be silent, the Earl, turning to the
people, said : ' Beware, beloved brothers, of these
ravening wolves, who come to you in the clothing
of sheep, whilst, meantime, they are the men that
devour your souls.' At this, rushing straight down
from the platform, as though he had received a
blow, Palmer left the Earl free to finish his address^
" ' To me it has been a grievous sorrow,' he
continued, ' that, in consequence of an occasion
furnished in a manner by myself, so many of the
common people have been put to a violent death
for the zeal with which they strove to further God's
religion, and clung also personally to myself. Would
that by my own death I might have saved their
lives ! and yet I have no fear but that their souls
have obtained the glory of Heaven.'
" 'As to other matters brought against me, they
are already fully explained in my answers to the
questions set me by the Privy Council ; but I know
that in them there is no room for mercy, and
i8o BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
therefore from them I expect none : but from Him
alone, whom I know to be the author of all mercy,
who will, as I truly believe, grant mercy to me.'
" After commending to his brother's care his
children, his servants, and some small debts,1 he
begged all present to forgive him, declaring that he
on his part forgave all from his heart. Then
kneeling down he finished his prayers.
" Then, after kissing a cross, which he traced
upon the ladder of the scaffold, with his arms so
folded on his breast as to form a cross, he stretched
himself upon the block ; and as soon as he had said,
* Lord, receive my soul ! ' the executioner struck off
his head. At that same instant, a great groan, which
sounded like a roll of thunder, burst from the
weeping spectators, as with one voice they called
on God to receive his soul into eternal rest.
" It was thought very wonderful that, from the
moment of his laying himself upon the block, he
gave not even the smallest sign of fear, and made no
movement whatsoever, either of head or body.
" The people gathered up the martyr's blood so
diligently with handkerchiefs and linen cloths, that
not even a straw stained with it was suffered to
remain without their carrying it home to be treasured
1 His brother, Sir Henry Percy, who succeeded him in the
earldom, was at this time a prisoner in the Tower, on a charge of
conspiracy to free the Queen of Scots. His return to the Faith
seems to have dated from about this time, and he incurred in conse-
quence the severe displeasure of Elizabeth. After being long
restricted as to his place of residence, and continually watched by
spies, he was again thrown into the Tower, on no definite accusa-
tion ; and at length was murdered there, in 1585 — on account, as
Catholics believed, of his religion.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 181
as a sacred relic. For throughout his life," Sander
concludes, " he was beyond measure dear to the
whole people."
Thus, at the comparatively early age of forty-
four, did Blessed Thomas Percy win his crown in
the year 1572, on August the 22nd, the octave-day
of the Assumption of our Lady, and, as it happened,
on a Friday. A despatch, sent a few days later to
Lord Burghley,1 informs us that the actual hour of
his death was three o'clock* He thus had the
privilege of expiring at the same hour as our Blessed
Lord, for whom he laid down his life.
Drake's History of York 2 supplies the following
particulars with reference to his burial : " His head
was set up on a high pole on Micklegate Bar, where
it continued for two years, but was afterwards stolen
from thence. The body was buried in Crux Church
by two of his servants, where it now lies without
any memorial."
Since Drake wrote, the Church of Holy Crux,
which stood at one end of the Pavement, has been
pulled down, and the site built over.3 All exact
traces of the tomb of Blessed Thomas Percy seem
thus unfortunately to be lost at present. At Stony-
hurst College there is preserved one of the Thorns
from the Crown of our Blessed Lord, which had
been given to the martyred Earl by Mary Queen of
1 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, September 2.
z Tom. i. p. 143. Edition of 1788.
3 This was done in 1887, through the influence of Archbishop
Thompson, and in spite of the protests of Earl Percy (now Duke
of Northumberland) and of archaeologists in general.
1 82 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
Scots, as a proof of her grateful appreciation of his
services. "The Earl," writes M. de Fonblanque,
" had worn it, mounted in a golden cross, around his
neck to the day of his death, when he bequeathed
it to his eldest daughter, Elizabeth ; " who " in her
turn gave, or bequeathed it, to the Jesuit Father
Gerard." The golden casket, in which it is now
enclosed, bears, says the same writer, the following
inscription : " Hasc spina de Corona Domini sancta
fuit primo Mariae Reginae Scotiae, Martyris, et ab ea
data Comiti Northumbriae, Martyri, qui in morte
misit illam filiae suae, Elizabethan, quae dedit
Societati."1 The Countess of Northumberland sur-
vived her husband's martyrdom for more than
twenty years. She bore with edifying patience the
sufferings and privations of her exile till her death,
which took place at Namur in 1596. Her youngest
daughter, the Lady Mary Percy, who seems to have
been born during the Earl's imprisonment at
Lochleven,2 became the foundress in 1598 of a
community of Benedictine Nuns at Brussels, since
removed to the Abbey of St. Mary at East Bergholt,
where it still flourishes. Amongst these good
Religious, who playfully speak of the martyred
father of their foundress as their "grandfather,"
the memory of the Blessed Thomas Percy has been
ever held in special veneration.
1 Annals of the House of Percy, ii. 121, 122.
2 A MS., quoted in the Catholic Magazine of August, 1838, gives
June ii, 1570, as the date of Lady Mary Percy's birth, which would
thus seem to have occurred during her mother's residence at Old
Aberdeen.
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 183
APPENDIX.
Mention has been made in the foregoing pages
of a book of prayers, which Sander tells us the
martyred Earl wrote with his own hand, partly
during his earlier years, partly during his imprison-
ment at Lochleven. The following are Sander's
words, in speaking of the latter period.
" Sometimes he spent whole days till even late
at night upon his knees. And in this holy exercise
so great was his delight, not only in his previous
life, but more than ever then ; that when, through
bodily weakness, he could neither go on kneeling,
nor recite prayers walking up and down, he would
betake himself to writing, and yet wrote nothing
else but holy prayers. I myself have seen a fair
sized book, elegantly written and illuminated by his
own hand, into which he had brought together a
quantity of prayers gathered out of various works.
Of which labour this seemed to me the most
abundant fruit, that when he himself could pray
no longer, his handwriting still continued ever
pleading for him." l
Happily the book itself, thus spoken of by Sander,
is still in existence; and, thanks to the kindness
of its present owner, Mr. George Browne, of Trout-
beck, Kendal, in entrusting it for a brief space to
the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, I am able
here to give some account of it. That the existing
volume was once at least the property of Blessed
1 Martyrium, &c., Bridgewater, fol. 46.
1 84 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
Thomas Percy is shown by internal evidence
which will not admit of question. In several of
the prayers his name is introduced : " Me, thy
unworthy servant Thomas Percy," and the first
five pages display coats of arms belonging to his
family. The first three quarters of the book are
elaborately written and decorated, and contain the
date (fol. 15) 1555. One of the prayers is a "General
Confession" in English, and is especially noteworthy
because the Blessed Martyr (who seems to have
taken it from some primer published during the
schism) has carefully corrected some erroneous or ill-
sounding expressions which occur in it. Thus the
prayer runs : " Graunt nowe that . . . we may be
faithfull true and obedient unto the quene our
soveraigne ladie and supreme hed /\ immediatly
under Christe." After the word " hed " the Blessed
Martyr has inserted in the margin " in temporall
matters" It is thus a witness to his fervent
orthodoxy.
The second part of the book differs greatly in
its style of execution from the first, and was evidently
written at a late period of his life. At the head of
the first page stands his name " Northumberland."
The writing seems to be that of a man made pre-
maturely old by suffering, and no longer thoughtful
of appearances. This part of the book apparently
contains the prayers which the Earl wrote, as
Sander tells us, during his confinement in Lochleven
Castle, 1570 — 1572. Among the more striking of
these prayers are those to his Guardian Angel,
St. George, and All Saints. They occur in Latin
BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE 185
in the primer of 1517, and were evidently favourites
with our forefathers. They take the form of a
" Memorial " or " Commemoration," i.e., they consist
of antiphon, versicle and response, and collect.
In the spirit of humble penitence which is so
remarkable throughout, the book concludes with
prayers for Confession, and a long and minute form
of examination of conscience.
G. E. P.
AUTHORITIES. — The fullest accounts yet published of
Blessed Thomas Percy, the yth Earl of Northumberland,
seem to be those given in De Fonblanque's Annals of the
House of Percy, 1887, vol. ii. pp. 3 — 125 ; and in Collins's Peerage
of England, 1779, vol. ii. p. 386, in an article on the Dukes of
Northumberland by Thomas Percy, Protestant Bishop of
Dromore.
For the Rising of the North the authorities chiefly followed
have been the various Calendars of State Papers of the period,
particularly Domestic, Addenda, 1566 — 1579; Sir Cuthbert
Sharpe's Memorials of the Rebellion of 1569, 1840, in which a
number of the Bowes Papers are published ; and Lingard's
History of England.
The account of what was done in Durham, during the
brief restoration of the Catholic religion, is taken from the
volume of the Surtees Society for 1845, — Depositions and
Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Courts of Durham.
The account of the Earl's martyrdom is from Sander's
Martyrium sanctissimi viri Thames Percei, Comitis Northumbrice,
published after its author's death, in Bridgewater's Concertatio,
1589.
W. Turnbull, in his Letters of Mary Queen of Scots (p. 67),
says that he found among the Medici archives at Florence
a letter written to the Grand Duke of Tuscany by his
Resident in England, giving a minute description of the
martyrdom. A careful search at Florence has failed to bring
to light any such document, and it seems clear that Turnbull
confused the Earl with Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, of
i86 BB. THOMAS PERCY AND THOMAS PLUMTREE
whose execution in the reign of Queen Mary there is an
account among these papers.
PORTRAITS of B. Thomas Percy are published by De Fon-
blanque, from a painting at Alnwick Castle ; and by Sir
C. Sharpe, from a painting at Petworth made in 1566, when
the Earl was in his thirty-eighth year.
What is known of B. Thomas Plumtree is gathered from
the same sources, and from a brief notice of his martyrdom
in Sander's De Visibili Monarchia, 1571.
IV.
THE BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE.
London, 13 June, 1573.
IN the spring of 1561 a new phase of the
religious persecution began. Up to that time there
had been but little violence shown, for little had
been needed. The Catholic Church had not fallen
without some struggle. So long as they remained
free, the churchmen had most unequivocally pro-
claimed their faith in the ancient Church, and
Elizabeth did not at first dare to show that she
meant to lead the realm into heresy. She gave
herself out as a Catholic, though leaving herself
free to make reforms. Then she prohibited preach-
ing, pretending that it would lead to disturbances.
By imprisoning a few Bishops she enabled her
party to obtain the votes in Parliament necessary to
give her Supremacy Bill the semblance of legality,
and after that, by depriving the more courageous
of the clergy, she forced her new liturgy upon the
country. Unfortunately the amount of violence
necessary was but small, for the subservience of
England to the tyranny of the Tudors was lament-
able. But this country was not then as insular
as it was soon to become, and the Catholics
i88 BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE
still hoped that the influence of the Pope and of
their co-religionists on the Continent might win
them relief. On his side the Pope twice tried to
send envoys to Elizabeth, but in vain. Excuses
were made for refusing them admission into
England, and on the second occasion Sir William
Cecil frightened the Queen by affecting to have
discovered a plot against her amongst the Catholics,
though when the charges were formulated the real
offence was found to be that they had celebrated
or attended Mass.1 Amongst those apprehended
was Blessed Thomas Woodhouse, who was com-
mitted on the i4th of May, 1561, to the Fleet Prison,
where he was admitted as a " pore priest " who
could not pay for his keep, but lived on precarious
charity.2
For the chief facts which we are able to relate
of this noble servant of Christ we are indebted to
a narrative written and forwarded to Rome by
Father Henry Garnet, S.J., and first printed in the
second volume of the Catholic Spectator, in the year
Sir Thomas Woodhouse, as he was styled
1 A short account of the missions of Parpaglia and Martinengo
will be found in The Month for January, 1902.
2 Richard Simpson in the Rambler, vol. x. p. 20.
3 Brother Foley, S.J., who re-edits Father Garnet's Relation, in
the seventh volume of his Records of the English Province of the Society
of Jesus, from the Stonyhurst MSS. vol. i. n. 3. does not seem to
be aware that it had been published sixty years earlier. The late
Mr. Simpson was certainly unaware of its existence when he wrote
the article in the Rambler to which we have referred. An earlier
but shorter narrative, dated 1574, exists in the Archives of the
Society, of which Foley gives an abstract in Records, vii. p. 1257.
BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE 189
according to the ancient usage, had been ordained
priest towards the end of Queen Mary's reign. He
was made Rector of a Lincolnshire parish, but had
held it less than a year when the persecuting laws
of Elizabeth obliged him to leave the place. He
took refuge, in 1560, in the house of a gentleman
in Wales, and taught his sons, but was unable to
remain there long. It was the next year that while
at the altar, in the act of saying Mass, he was seized
and thrown into prison.
He was a prisoner for our Lord during twelve
years, and all this time gave the example of a very
holy life. The details that have come down to us
show in him a strong individuality of character, in
which great simplicity, boldness, and a gentle zeal
were the chief features.
During the plague which raged in London in
1563, Tyrrel, the warder of Fleet Prison, was allowed
to remove all prisoners for the Faith to his own
house in Cambridgeshire. Here Blessed Thomas,
knowing him to be a Catholic at heart, publicly
reproved him for eating meat in Lent, and declared
if he continued to do so he would not stay in the
house. The warder laughed good-humouredly, think-
ing his prisoner could not get away if he would. But
the martyr was as good as his word, and one day he
was missing. Tyrrel sent in alarm to have search
made for him in London, when it was found that
he had gone quietly back to his old prison in the
Fleet. He was equally sturdy in refusing to
uncover when heretics said grace at table. On
one occasion where this was complained of, he was
i go BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE
set in the stocks. But for all his uncompromising
ways he won general confidence and affection, and
was allowed a good deal of liberty. He had the
freedom of the prison, and was even able to make
secret excursions to his friends in the day.
He was fearless in all that concerned God's
service. He not only recited his Office regularly,
but said Mass daily in his room in the prison, and
was unmoved by the more timid or prudent counsels
given him by fellow-prisoners. Once, when some
of the heretics, who had got scent of what was
going on, hammered at the door with repeated
blows, he turned to those who were with him, just
before the Consecration, and promised them they
should not be taken ; and so it was, for the intruders
went away. In the same undaunted spirit he made
use of every opportunity to make converts, entirely
disregarding the peril. Having received a Mr.
Gascoigne, a prisoner for debt, the fact was reported
by some of the Protestants. Gascoigne asked him
what he should answer if he was questioned as to
who had received him, "for I," he said, "will never
deny that I am reconciled." Blessed Thomas in
reply urged him to say without hesitation that he
had reconciled him, for he was ready to avouch it
with his blood.
His perfect freedom from fear was not ordinary
courage ; it came from a veritable longing for
martyrdom. One day people came to tell the
Catholic prisoners that a new Act had been passed
by Parliament the day before, which would bring
all Catholics to the gallows ; upon which he knelt
BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE 191
down, and with bared head prayed to God that he
might be the first. When Blessed John Storey was
sentenced to death, Woodhouse conceived the simple
idea that he might by some means or other make
interest with the Council to let him take his place
and suffer death for him, and "with many fair
words, some gift in hand and large promises," tried
to get his keeper to enter into his scheme and help
him to carry it out.
It was with the same mingled simplicity, zeal,
and fearlessness that in the twelfth year of his
captivity he wrote to Lord Treasurer Burghley a
letter which led to his martyrdom.1 It bears date
the igth of November, 1572, and runs thus :
"JESUS.
" Your lordship will peradventure marvel at my
boldness that dare presume to interpell your wisdom,
being occupied about so great and weighty affairs
touching the state of the whole realm. Howbeit I
have conceived that opinion of your Lordship's
humanity, that ye will not condemn any man's
good-will, how simple or mean soever he be ; which
maketh me bold at this present to communicate my
poor advice, what is very requisite and best for your
Lordship to do in so great and ponderous affairs.
1 Father Garnet and the author of the Relation of 1574, knew
something of this letter, perhaps from a draft or duplicate preserved
by the martyr. Mr. Simpson had the good fortune to find the
original amongst the Burghley Papers in the British Museum,
" classed with a series of madmen's letters, such as we suppose all
public men are used to receive now and then." Mr. Simpson pub-
lished it in the Rambler article already referred to.
i92 BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE
Forasmuch therefore as our Lord and God, Jesus
Christ, hath given supreme authority unto His
blessed Apostle St. Peter, and in him to his suc-
cessors the Bishops of Rome, to feed, rule and
govern His sheep, that is to say all Christians, at such
time as He said unto the same His Apostle thrice,
* Feed My lambs, feed My sheep,' — my poor advice is
that ye humbly and unfeignedly even from the very
bottom of your heart, acknowledge and confess
your great iniquity and offence against Almighty
God, especially in disobeying that supreme authority
and power of the See Apostolic, so ordained and
established by the King of kings and Lord of lords,
Jesus Christ ; and that in all dutiful manner and
apparent fruits of penance ye seek to be reconciled
unto that your supreme prince and pastor here in
earth, appointed and assigned unto you by your
Lord God and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Likewise
that ye earnestly persuade the Lady Elizabeth,
who for her own great disobedience is most justly
deposed, to submit. herself unto her spiritual prince
and father, the Pope's Holiness, and with all
humility to reconcile herself unto him, that she
may be the child of salvation. Now your Lordship
hath heard my poor advice, which if your wisdom
shall not disdain to follow, I hope it shall turn
through the mercy of God to the preservation of
our dear country, and to a most flourishing and
happy state in the Christian Commonwealth, and
shall also redound unto your eternal salvation,
honour and glory. But if, which God forbid, ye
shall contemn or neglect the same, I fear it will be
BLESSED THOMAS V/OODHOUSE 193
to the great desolation and ruin of our beloved
country and people, and to the utter subversion and
perishing of you and yours for ever in hell ; where
is the gnawing worm, where is the unquenchable
fire, where is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Dixi.
" My lord, for this my poor advice I require no
other thing of your Lordship but that ye will not
molest by any means this bearer, who is wholly
ignorant of the contents and a hot Protestant ; nor
yet the guardian, nor yet the gaolers, who are
likewise ignorant of my doings ; for they lock me
up more closely than I think your honour would
they should, and suppose I have neither pen, nor
ink, nor messenger.
" Your honour's humble and daily beadsman,
"THOMAS WOODDUS."
The third or fourth day after the despatch of
this characteristic letter,1 the holy priest was
1 Apparently the washerwoman of the Fleet was the bearer;
one day after Mass the martyr gave her the letter to deliver
to one of Lord Burghley's servants, which done, she was to return
without having said a word. The last lines of an imperfect Latin
account of the martyr in flowing hexameters will serve as a
specimen of the whole :
Cum sic intrantem Christi fortissimus heros
Lotricem alloquitur, sacris de more peractis,
" I mea, dixit, anus, Burlceo hac scripta Baroni,
Aut uni e famuli s Domino tradenda relinque.
Nee tibi languenti pvce liming crede morandum,
Nee verbis opus esse puta, sese indice prodent
Scripta suo, tu lenta retro vestigia torque.'1
Excipit ilia sinu venturi ignara tabellas.
Nee mora, linteolis, et rebus onusta lavandis
Custodem, tortis scripto latitante capillis
Decipit, atque audax ad nota palatia tendit.
N II.
194 BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE
summoned to the Lord Treasurer's presence. He
went in his "priest's gown and cornered cap." The
interview must be related verbatim from Father
Garnet's account.
Mr. Treasurer " seeing him such a silly [simple]
little body as he was, seemed to despise him, saying,
' Sirrah, was it you that wrote me a letter the other
day ? ' ' Yes, sir,' saith Mr. Woodhouse, approach-
ing as near his nose as he could, and casting up his
head to look him in the face. ' That it was, even I,
if your name be Cecil ; ' whereat the Treasurer
staying awhile, said more coldly than before,
' Why, sir, will ye acknowledge me none other
name nor title than Mr. Cecil?' 'No, sir,' saith
Mr. Woodhouse. 'And why so ? ' saith the Treasurer.
'Because,' saith Woodhouse, 'she that gave you
those names and titles had no authority so to do.'
* And why so?' saith the Treasurer. 'Because,'
saith Woodhouse, ' our holy Father the Pope hath
deposed her.' ' Thou art a traitor,' saith the
Treasurer. ' Non est discipulus super Magistnun,'
saith Mr. Woodhouse. Then the Treasurer paused
awhile, and after, said unto him, ' In the super-
scription of thy letter thou callest me Lord Burghley,
High Treasurer of England.' ' I did so,' saith
Woodhouse, ' for that otherwise I knew my letter
would not come to your hands.' Then the Treasurer
began to dispute with him against the Pope's
authority, and the other did defend it and heated
the Treasurer a little. At last he grew cold again
and asked Mr. Woodhouse if he would be his
chaplain, and he said, ' Yea.' ' And wilt thou say
BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE 195
Mass in my house?' 'Yea, that I will,' saith
Mr. Woodhouse. ' And shall I come to it ? ' saith
the Treasurer. 'No,' saith Woodhouse, 'that ye
shall not, unless ye will be reconciled to the Catholic
Church.' And so he was sent back again to the
Fleet, where he was separate from his companions
and put in a chamber by himself."
But his zeal still found means to communicate
with the outer world. Father Garnet in a report
to the Father General says he " wrote divers papers,
persuading men to the true faith and obedience,
which he signed with his name, tied to stones, and
threw them out of the prison window into the
street."1
Within a week all England was talking of
Mr. Woodhouse's bearding of the great Lord
Treasurer. The Protestants said he was mad,
many Catholics reproached him with rashness.
Those who knew his holy life would not join in
such judgments. The Council would have been
glad to favour the idea of his being mad, and sum-
moned him before them with this view. He " made
a short courtesy, as he would have done to so many
gentlemen of worship." They told him to kneel,
but he refused and " stood still upright." " Oh, poor
fool," said one of the Council, "the Pope hath nothing
to do in this realm." He answered, " Christ said
unto Peter, Pasce oves meas, pasce agnos meos, and I
say that if Christ have in England either sheep or
lambs, the Pope who is Peter's successor, hath to
1 Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus*
vol. vii. p. 967.
i g6 BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE
do in this realm." Another said, "This is thy dream."
" No," he answered, " it is not my invention but the
opinion of St. Augustine and other Doctors of the
Church." And the attempt to make him out mad
was given up as hopeless.
He was repeatedly examined both publicly and
privately. Once when he had denied the Queen's
title before the Recorder of London and other com-
missioners, some one said, " If you saw her Majesty,
you would not say so, for her Majesty is great."
" But the majesty of God is greater," he answered.
At length in April, 1573, he was arraigned at the
Guildhall. He denied the authority of the judges,
saying " they were not his judges, nor for his judges
would he ever take them, being heretics and pre-
tending authority from her that could not give it
them." He also protested against the competency
of secular judges to try priests and spiritual causes,
as the earlier Relation tells us, and was treated with
the greatest indignity and contumely and held for a
fool. He was found guilty of high treason and
sentenced accordingly, but two months elapsed
before his execution.
Before as after his condemnation he ever kept
up the same bright, sweet demeanour, the same
intrepidity, the same eager desire to suffer for his
Master. When first a smith came to rivet irons on
him he rewarded him with two shillings. When
the same man afterwards came, on some occasion,
to take them off, he stood waiting, cap in hand,
after his work, hoping for a present, and at last said,
" Sir, this day seven-night when I burdened you
BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE 197
with irons, you rewarded me with two shillings :
now that I have taken them away, for your more
ease, I trust your worship will reward me much
better." "No," said the martyr, "then I gave thee
wages for laying irons on me, because I was sure to
have my wages for bearing them ; now, thou must
have patience if thou lose thy wages, since thou
hast with taking away mine irons taken also away
those wages I have for carrying them. But come
when you will to load me with irons, and if I have
money thou shalt not go home with an empty purse."
When some one told him he was to be removed
to the Tower to be racked, " No," said he, " I cannot
believe that; but notwithstanding bring me true
news here that it is so and thou shalt have a crown
of gold for thy pains." From this answer it may be
gathered that he had light from God about what
was to happen to him : and so, again, the next day
a servant brought him word it was reported through
all London he should be put to death the next week,
" No," he answered, " I shall not die these two
months and more." And so it happened.
After his sentence he was not taken back to his
old prison, but was committed to Newgate. On his
way to the prison he was much ill-treated, " being
tugged and lugged hither and thither, weak and sore
laden with irons ; insomuch as going up the stairs
at Newgate, he fell down divers times on the stairs ;
and to one that seemed by his words to pity him, he
answered with a smiling countenance that these
troubles were sweet to him." Some one in the
crowd gave him a blow on the face. " Would God,"
ig8 BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE
he said turning to him, " I might suffer ten times
as much that thou might go free for the blow thou
hast given me. I forgive thee and pray to God to
forgive thee even as I would be forgiven."
At Newgate he was put into the place conse-
crated by the martyrdom of the Blessed Carthusian
Fathers who had been starved to death five-and-
thirty years before. The author of the " Relation of
1574" says it was the part of the prison appropriated
to robbers, and a most dismal place. But after a
time he was removed to another chamber, where a
number of ministers were allowed access to him
and disputed with him. Some of them he confuted,
surprising those present by his learning ; but when
the Dean of St. Paul's came he severely rebuked
him, and ended with the words, " Begone, Satan."
His martyrdom was consummated on Friday,
the I3th of June, 1573. He was drawn in the usual
way to the place of execution. Hearing him pray
in Latin, some of the crowd wanted him to pray in
English so that all might join with him. He
answered that with the Catholics he would willingly,
but as for the others he would neither pray with
them nor have them pray with him or for him ;
though he would willingly pray for them. The
Sheriff was impatient at what he called his obsti-
nacy, and cried out, " Away with him, executioner,
strip him of his garments, put the rope about his
neck and do it quickly." Then he called to the
martyr to ask pardon of God, the Queen, and the
country, but Blessed Thomas answered, " Nay,
I on the part of God, demand of you and of the
BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE 199
Queen, that ye ask pardon of God and of holy
Mother Church, because contrary to the truth ye
have resisted Christ the Lord, and the Pope, His
Vicar upon earth." These bold words drew shouts
from the ever-fickle crowd of " Hang him, hang
him, this man is worse than Storey." He was cut
down alive, so that "he went between two from
the gallows to the fire, near which he was spoiled,
and came perfectly to himself before the hangman
began to bowel him ; inasmuch as some have said
he spoke when the hangman had his hand in his
body seeking for his heart to pull it .out."
He is described as of middle stature, " with rosy
and fair face," the " latter part of his chin adorned
by a blackish beard," full eyes, a joyful expression
which he retained to the last, and a robust body.
A few words must be added on the admission of
the Blessed Martyr into the Society of Jesus while
he was still in prison. As might be expected, the
writers who describe his death briefly, do not
mention this at all, and it is very probable that
they did not know anything about it. Even Father
Henry More, S.J., though he was aware of the fact
from Father Thomas Stephenson's Life of Thomas
Pound, seems to have been unable to find further
evidence, and gave up the inquiry as " somewhat
obscure and uncertain." 1 Of late years, however,
a good deal more information has been discovered.
i. In the " Relation of 1574," to which reference
has already been made, the following passage occurs.
" He was inflamed with so great a love for the
1 H. More, Historia Provincice Anglicans, p. 33.
BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE
Society of Jesus and desire of entering it, that he
wrote to the Superior in Paris, earnestly entreating
him to deign to admit him, unable indeed to be
present in person, though he was so in heart ; and
begging that he might be honoured by at least the
name of the Society, and that he might be admitted
to participate in its merits and indulgences, as far
as the Constitutions of the Society permitted it."
Towards the end of the same Relation, this sentence
occurs. " He was so studious of humility, that
when he had obtained from the Fathers of the
Society of Jesus the favour that he had asked for,
he would not tell it to his friends but only to his
confessor." l
2. Brother Foley in his Records, has printed a
translation of a letter from Father Henry Garnet,
then Superior in England, to the Father General,
dated London, the nth of March, 1601, in which
the following passage occurs. " In the year 1572
or 1573, a priest was martyred, who was the proto-
martyr of all the priests, and the first of all in the
time of this Queen, except Felton and Storey, who
were laymen. His history has come to my hands,
which I will immediately send to Father Robert
[Persons].2 He was called Thomas Woodhouse.
I write this now because I happened to be in
London3 at the time of his martyrdom, and I have
heard it said by Catholics elsewhere, that when in
1 Foley, Records S.J. vii. p. 1267. His summary, however, is
far from complete.
2 This is presumably the long Relation in Foley, vii. 967.
3 He was then a young layman. He entered the Jesuit Novitiate
at the age of twenty, in 1575.
BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE
prison he was received into the Society by the
Provincial of Paris, and it will be well to make
inquiry into the matter, because it will afford no
little consolation to all our members. He died
directly through the confession of a private indi-
vidual, and a little while after the appearance of
the Bull of Pius V. He was so animated by the
news of his reception to the Society, as the
Catholics said at the time, that he sat down and
wrote to Cecil exhorting him to persuade the Queen
to submit herself to the Pope. Your Paternity shall
see this letter."1
The letter just mentioned has been already
quoted from the original, which is preserved among
the Burghley Papers. Father Garnet must have
had access to some draft or duplicate preserved by
the martyr's friends. The next document may be
connected with the Father General's answer to
Garnet's letter.
3. In the same volume which contains the
" Relation of 1574," and just before it, there is
bound up a single leaf of paper on which have been
jotted down some notes in an early seventeenth
century hand, presumably by some librarian or
secretary, from documents then in the Archives of
the Society, but which are no longer forthcoming.
They begin,
" I573- Gulielmus (sic) Wuddus, in carcere
Londinensi detentus, potest admitti in Societatem.
" Carmina ab eodem scripta in carcere."
1 Foley, Records S.J. vol. vii. p. 967.
BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE
After this page is bound the Latin life of the
martyr, which has been called the " Relation of
1574," written in a hand of that date, and then come
some three hundred lines of Latin heroics by the
same writer dating from London. Of these a few
have been quoted already. Perhaps the rough note
"Verses by, &c.," should read "Verses about the
Martyr."
One is tempted to conjecture that the above
note was made with a view to answer some such
inquirer as Father Garnet. It runs in the form
one would expect to find in an official register, and
its evidence appears to bring us very near to the
original record of our martyr's admission to the
Society.
Such are the facts on this subject as at present
known. It will be noted that several of them were
not published before the drawing up of the Decree
of 1886, and this accounts for the Decree itself
describing the martyr as a Secular Priest, and it is
in any case clear that the honour of having formed
and trained this hero of Christ belongs to the
Secular Clergy. Later on, when the time came for
drawing up Offices and Masses, the Postulators of
the Society of Jesus asked to have Blessed Thomas's
name, with that of Blessed John Nelson, inserted
among the titulars of their special feast (December
the ist), with a special eulogium in their Martyrology,
and commemorations in their Lessons, and this
petition was at once granted by the Sacred Congre-
gation of Rites.
E. S. K.
J. H. P.
BLESSED THOMAS WOODHOUSE 203
P.S. Since the above was in print I have noticed
the following reference to our martyr in Dr. Sander's
Report to Cardinal Moroni (Catholic Record Society,
1904), written in May, 1562. " Thomas Woddus,
Reginae Marias capellanus, in ipso actu privationis
populum obtestatus est ut ab haeresi et schismate
caveret." Whether this deprivation refers to his
chaplaincy, or to the rectorate in Lincoln, does not
appear. Elizabeth's visitors were ejecting Catholics
in the autumn of 1559, but Mr. Gee's Elizabethan
Clergy, pp. 98, 129, 266, 269, 279, makes no mention
of Thomas Woodhouse. In any case we have here
another instance of the martyr's unusual courage
and vigour in resisting the encroachments of heresy.
J.H.P.
AUTHORITIES. — The original texts of all the Latin papers
quoted in the text from the Stonyhurst Papers, and from the
volume in the Archives of the Society of Jesus, which is entitled
Anglia, Necrologia, are still unpublished, but Foley's Records
(vol. vii. 967 and 1267) contain copious extracts in English.
The translations from the Stonyhurst Papers in the Catholic
Spectator, vol. ii. 1824, are presumably from the pen of
Dr. George Oliver. Mr. Richard Simpson's article in the
Rambler (vol. x.) contains the State Papers from the British
Museum and Record Office printed in full.
V.
THE BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE,
PROTO-MARTYR OF THE SEMINARY PRIESTS.
Launceston, 29 November, 1577.
FOUR years passed after the martyrdom of Blessed
Thomas Woodhouse before another martyr shed
his blood. But the pressure of the persecution went
on increasing. The statutes of 1559 and 1563 were
found insufficient. Elizabeth and her Ministers
had hoped, perhaps, that a few years of such
repression would extinguish the Faith in England,
as it had been extinguished in Sweden, Denmark,
and Norway. There were no bishops, except in
prison ; there were no churches ; there were no
monasteries ; there were no Catholic institutions of
charity or education. Catholic worship, the preach-
ing of the word of God, existed no longer save in
holes and corners ; and heavy fines and weary
imprisonment must by degrees crush out the
constancy of many and terrify the rest of the
afflicted Catholics. And yet the Government made
little way, and on the contrary from about 1561 a
considerable reaction had set in, many who had
fallen were reconciled, many gave up the too
common temporizing attendance at the heretical
worship. Two causes, in this state of things,
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE 205
incited the Government to fresh severities. The
one was the Bull of Excommunication and Deposition
in February, 1570. The other was the foundation
of the Seminary at Douay.
There were still, scattered up and down the
country, some good and zealous priests who in
danger and difficulty ministered as they might to the
needs of the faithful. As late as 1596 no fewer than
forty or fifty of these ancient priests are said to have
been labouring in England.1 But in the absence of
any means of recruitment their numbers must yearly
diminish, and they were doomed within a few
years to inevitable extinction. Divine Providence,
however, provided a remedy. Dr. William Allen
had been successively Fellow of Oriel College,
Oxford, Principal of St. Mary's Hall, Proctor of the
University, Canon of York, when in 1561 he was
obliged to leave the country. He returned to labour
for three years with immense fruit in England,
finally left the country in 1565, and on Michaelmas
day, 1568, laid the foundations of his great work,
the Seminary of Douay for the training of priests
who should perpetuate the Faith in England. A
select band of able men soon gathered round him
to aid in the work, Marshall, Bristow, Stapleton,
Dorman, Gregory Martin, and others. Students
then began to join the College. The first ordi-
nations took place in the year of Blessed Thomas
Woodhouse's martyrdom. The next year, 1574, the
first three missionary priests left the College gates
for England. In the course of another six years it
1 Knox, Douay Diaries, Historical Introduction, p. Ixii.
2o6 BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE
sent a hundred such labourers into the English
vineyard. The tide was stemmed ; it was soon
turned in the other direction. A continuous stream
of youths for education, converts to be instructed
and received, candidates for the priesthood to be
prepared and ordained, set in to Douay ; the stream
was fed by a ceaseless drain of members from the
Universities. By 1578 the Seminary had instructed
more than five hundred men in the knowledge of
religion. Ten or eleven would sometimes arrive in
a single day from England. The studies were of a
high order, piety and union reigned, the young
missionaries were filled with zeal, and even longed
for martyrdom. Cecil and Elizabeth herself were
far too clear-sighted not to understand how vast a
change the establishment of the College wrought in
the situation. Every effort was made to bring about
its destruction, and failing that, to harass and impede
its work.
A new penal statute, added to the code of
persecution in 1571, made it high treason to obtain,
publish, or put in use any Bull, writing, or instrument
from the Pope, whatever it might contain, or in
virtue of any such instrument to absolve or reconcile
any person, or to be absolved or reconciled. The
same statute enacted the penalties of pramunire,
imprisonment and forfeiture for bringing into the
country, giving to any one to use, or receiving for
use or wear, any object, Agnus Dei, beads, crosses
or pictures, which had been blessed either by the
Pope or in virtue of faculties from him.
Still God's work went on. The new missionaries
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE 207
were themselves amazed at their success. Henry
Shaw, one of the first three sent, wrote after a year's
work to Allen, "The number of Catholics increases
so abundantly on all sides that he, who almost alone
holds the rudder of the State, has privately admitted
to one of his friends, that for one staunch Catholic at
the beginning of the reign there were now, he knew
for certain, ten."1 In 1577, Allen wrote that "the
number of those who were daily restored to the
Catholic Church almost surpassed belief," and that
" one of the younger priests lately sent on the
mission had reconciled no fewer than eighty persons
in one day." 2
The blood of martyrs was not long wanting to
water this new harvest. It was the fifteenth of the
missionaries sent from Douay who was chosen by
God to be the first martyr of the Seminary. Cuthbert
Mayne3 was himself a convert. He was born in
1544, at Youlston, an estate in the parish of
Sherwell,4 near Barnstaple, in Devonshire, and
1 Douay Diaries, p. 98. z Ibid. Ixiii.
3 The account of the Blessed Cuthbert Mayne, which follows,
is chiefly taken from an ancient MS. in the Archives of the see of
Westminster (vol. ii. 49), which is by far the fullest in detail of the
early relations, and appears to have been very carefully drawn up.
It is a quarto MS. of fourteen pages, very closely and neatly written
in an Elizabethan or Jacobean hand. Tierney-Dodd and Challoner
have used it for their histories of the martyr. It differs from
Champney and the Briefe historic of the glorious martyrdom of xii.
Reverend Priests (1582), p. 145, as to the date of his trial, which it
places at the June Assizes, whilst they defer it to Michaelmas.
4 He was baptized in the old square Norman font in SherwelT
Church, March 20, 1544. His baptismal register is still extant
there. It runs : " Cuthbert Mayne the sonne of William Maine,
was baptised the xx daie of March, ano p'dto." The day of his
baptism being St. Cuthbert's feast, will account for his Christian,
name, which is unusual in the south of England.
208 BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE
brought up as a Protestant by an old uncle, a priest
who had joined the heretical religion and had a
good benefice, which he wanted his nephew to hold
after him. When Cuthbert came to the age of
eighteen or nineteen his uncle got him ordained
a minister. He used afterwards to speak of this
with great sorrow, and declared that at the time
"he knew neither what ministry nor religion meant."
He had been educated at Barnstaple Grammar
School, and now went to Oxford, where, after
studying for his Bachelor's degree at St. Alban's
Hall, he became chaplain at the newly-established
College of St. John,1 and there became the
friend and companion of Gregory Martin and
of Blessed Edmund Campion, the latter, like
himself, at that time a Protestant. His lovable
character quickly endeared him both to heretics
and Catholics. Some of the latter becoming
intimate with him, the result was that before long
he confessed himself convinced of the truth of the
Catholic faith.2 But he dreaded the poverty he
would have to face if he threw up his appointment
1 Maine or Mayn Cuthbert, sup. for B.A., March 26, 1566 ; adm.
April 6 ; det. 1567 ; sup. for M.A., 10 February, 1569-70 ; He.
April 8, 1570, inc. July 10. (Fasti, p. 185; Boase, Register of the
University of Oxford, i. 260, and Courtenay's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis,
PP- 343- 757. 778. 1278.) One Jasper Mayne, D.D. (1604—1672).
is mentioned by Prince, Worthies of Devon (pp. 461-3), who says
that the martyr was in all probability near akin to him. The
family still exists in Devonshire. There is a good Mayne monument,
with coats of arms, in the Church of St. Petrock, Exeter.
2 He only administered the Lord's Supper on one occasion
while at the College, but "every Sunday gave them a dry Com-
munion." (Briefe Historic.)
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE 209
as chaplain to the College, and shrank from the
loss of his friends ; and so he remained as he was,
all the while grieving for the error in which he had
lived, groaning at the " profane " office he still
filled, and yearning to enter the bosom of Holy
Church. Meantime, Gregory Martin and Blessed
Edmund Campion had given up friends, country,
and worldly prospects, and were studying at Douay,
whence they wrote entreaties to their old com-
panion to break away courageously and follow them.
One of these letters fell into the hands of the
Bishop of London, and was at length the means
of bursting asunder Blessed Cuthbert's bonds.
The Bishop, on making his discovery of the state
of mind of the chaplain of St. John's and others
named in the letter, sent to have them all arrested.
The others were seized and thrown into prison.
Cuthbert was fortunately absent, and was at once
warned of his danger by a friend at Oxford, Thomas
Ford, a fellow of Trinity College, and afterwards
also a martyr. This cannot have been later than
1570, 1 for in that year Blessed Thomas Ford was
admitted into the Seminary at Douay. Whether
Blessed Cuthbert found difficulty in leaving the
country or remained uncertain as to his future
course, does not appear ; but after an interval of
two or three years, he made his way at last from
the Cornish coast to the Continent, and in 1573 his
arrival at Douay is registered in the College Diaries.
He was at once admitted into the Seminary, and
1 Nor earlier, for on July 10, 1570, Cuthbert Mayne took his
Master's degree at Oxford, as we have seen.
O II.
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE
there applied his whole energy to the double task
of the study of theology and of holiness. In the
course of 1575 he was considered to have made
such strides in both that Dr. Allen had him ordained.
He was especially admired for his diligence and his
humility. Short as the time of his preparation
had been, his friend and biographer says it seemed
long to him from the greatness of his desire to
labour for souls in England and to atone for his old
infame ministerium by the exercise of the holy
priesthood. On April the 24th of next year (1576)
he started, with the blessing of his Superior and the
prayers of his companions, for England, together
with the Blessed John Payne. At the coast they
were delayed by stormy weather and reports of
danger at the English ports ; but at length they got
safely into the country, and then taking an affec-
tionate farewell, went their several ways, to meet
again only when they had won the martyr's palm.
A few weeks1 after their departure from Douay a
letter came from Henry Shaw, one of the first three
missioners, entreating that Blessed Cuthbert might
be sent to England without delay. He must have
learned to appreciate the future martyr while they
were together at the Seminary. Two items of news
about them reached the Seminary a little later — on
June the 28th. One was that a spirit of great exas-
peration had been excited among the heretics by
the numerous conversions, and that all kinds of
tortures were threatened, in particular, against
Henry Shaw, Blessed Cuthbert, and Blessed John
1 May 2, 1576. (Knox, Douay Diaries, p. 104.)
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE
Payne, whenever they should be caught; the other was
that the carefully collected theological notes of the
last two, with their store of books, pictures, rosaries,
Agnus Dei, and other pious objects, had all been
seized, but had been cleverly recovered again by
a Mr. Richard Evingham, a pious young Catholic
who had been at Douay, and whose father had paid
the forfeit of his son's devotion, being thrown into
prison, while the son himself was eagerly sought
for by the persecutors.1 After many adventures and
escapes, young Evingham succeeded in reaching
Douay on the 5th of October, 1576.
After a short visit to his native Devonshire,
Blessed Cuthbert went to live in the house of
Mr. Francis Tregian, at Golden, about five miles
from Truro, in Cornwall.2 Mr. Tregian was a man
of large fortune, exceedingly hospitable and a
fervent Catholic. The missionaries usually sought
shelter for a longer or shorter period, first in one,
then in another such influential family, amongst
whose large household they could live unnoticed,
whilst they were enabled to say Mass, preach, and
administer the Sacraments to the neighbouring
Catholics, and also find many opportunities of
meeting Protestants whose conversion was thought
hopeful. No details of Blessed Cuthbert's ministry
1 Douay Diaries, p. 106.
• The name Tregian should be pronounced Trudgeon. In this
form it is still not uncommon in Cornwall. The estate in St. Ewe,
from which the family took its name, is so called from the British
words Tre and Udgian (oxen town). The priest's hiding-place
(where Blessed Cuthbert may sometimes have been concealed)
still exists at Golden ; which is in the parish of St. Probus.
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE
are recorded, except that he passed as Mr. Tregian's
steward, and that it was noted afterwards that not
one of those whom he gained to God ever fell away.
Conceal himself as carefully as he might, however,
vague rumours gradually spread about, and before a
year had passed, the storm, which was unusually
violent at the time in many parts of the country,
broke over Mr. Tregian's house.
The Bishop of Exeter was making a visitation
at Truro — the Protestant Bishops were usually the
hottest persecutors — and it was determined between
him and the High Sheriff, Richard Grenville l of
Stowe, to search the house at Golden. The High
Sheriff presented himself on the 8th of June, 1577,
with the Bishop's Chancellor, and nine or ten
Justices of the Peace, accompanied by their servants,
a party of about a hundred men. Mr. Tregian met
them at the threshold. " We are come," said the
High Sheriff, " to search your house for a certain
Bourne who has committed an offence in London
and fled to this neighbourhood, and indeed is said to
have taken refuge here." Tregian declared no such
person was in his house, nor had he any idea where
he might be, and protested against the indignity of
searching a gentleman's house without any warrant
1 In the Briefe Historic it is given as Greenfield, but see J. Morris,
Troubles, i. p. 65. He was at this time simply Mr. Sheriff Grenville,
being knighted later as a reward for his share in Blessed Cuthbert's
martyrdom. This is the hero so glorified in Kingsley's Westward Ho!
though even Kingsley is forced to admit that Sir Richard " was subject
at moments to such fearful fits of rage that he had been seen to
snatch the glasses from the table, grind them to pieces with his
teeth, and swallow them."
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE 213
from the Queen. But resistance to such a force
was impossible, and the Sheriff with drawn dagger
and threats of violence forced his way into the
house with his followers.
The blessed martyr was completely unaware of
what was going on, and coming into his room by
the garden entrance and hearing the battering at
his other door, which was locked, opened it, and
found himself face to face with the High Sheriff.
" What art thou ? " said the latter. " I am a man,"
answered the martyr — but as the High Sheriff put
his question he grasped the Blessed Cuthbert by the
bosom and in doing so his hand struck against
metal, so, asking if he wore a coat of mail, he tore
open his clothes and made the discovery of an
Agnus Dei, which the holy priest wore suspended
from his neck in a case of silver and crystal. This
was enough to make him a criminal by the Act of
1571, and calling him every opprobrious name, they
at once carried him off, with his books and papers,
to the Bishop at Truro. Tregian, who was also
arrested, was liberated for a time on bail, but
the martyr, after a long examination of himself and
his papers, was committed to the custody of the
Sheriff, who carried him from one gentleman's house
to another, with every kind of ignominious treatment,
until they came to Launceston. Here he was very
cruelly used, confined to a filthy and dark under-
ground prison, loaded with heavy irons, chained to
his bedposts, allowed no books or writing materials,
— indeed there was no light to use them — and not
permitted to see any one except in presence of a
214 BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE
gaoler. The capture was regarded as so important
a service to the Crown that the Sheriff was knighted
for it.1
Eight days later, on June the i6th,2 the Assizes
commenced at Launceston, the Earl of Bedford
among others being present, and Blessed Cuthbert
was brought to trial, together with several gentle-
men and servants,3 who were accused of aiding and
abetting his offence.
In order to throw the more contempt on them,
they were stripped of their upper garments, and
made to appear at the bar in their doublets and
hose.
An elaborate indictment had been prepared
against the martyr, containing the following heads
of accusation.
" i. That he had on a stated day traitorously
obtained from the Roman See a printed faculty
containing matter of absolution of sundry subjects
of the kingdom.
" 2. That on a day named he had traitorously
published the said document at Golden.
" 3. That on another day he had at Launceston
maliciously and with evil intent taught and defended
1 The examination of Blessed Cuthbert, " first taken not long
before his execution at Launceston," will be found in the Record
Office, Domestic, Elizabeth, cxviii. 46.
2 Tregian's Life says September the i6th.
3 Mr. Richard Tremayne, Mr. John Kempe, Mr. Richard Hore,
Mr. Thomas Harris, Mr. John Williams, M.A., and three servants.
Mr. Tregian himself was brought to London to be dealt with by
the Council.
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE 215
in express words, the ecclesiastical power of a foreign
Bishop, to wit, the Bishop of Rome, heretofore
usurped in this kingdom.
" 4. That on a certain day he had brought into
this kingdom a vain and superstitious thing, com-
monly called an Agnus Dei, blessed, as they say, by
the said Bishop of Rome, and had delivered the
same to Mr. Francis Tregian.
" 5. That on a day named he had publicly said
Mass and administered the Lord's Supper according
to the Popish rite, and all these things contrary to
statutes made in the ist and I3th years of our
sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth and against her
peace, crown, and dignity." l
Very full details of the trial are recorded in the
manuscript from which these particulars are taken.
It is difficult at the present day to realize that such
a perversion of the forms and authority of law can
ever have been possible in England. The most
elementary principles of evidence, of argument, of
justice were violated. The martyr urged that the
" Bull " did not come from Rome, that it was a
printed copy — printed at Douay, where he had
bought it — of the announcement of the Jubilee of
1575, having no force or application of any kind
after that year, and that of course he had never
published it at Golden or anywhere else,2 that no
1 J. Morris, Troubles, i. pp. 71 — 77.
2 Mr. Froude (History of England, vol. xi. p. 54) says that
Mayne "was discovered in Cornwall in November, 1578, having
about him copies of the Bull of Pope Pius," meaning, of course, the
Bull of Excommunication. " This and similar executions are now
2i6 BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE
evidence had been offered of the alleged publication,
or that the Agnus Dei had been brought from Rome,
or that he had brought it into England or delivered
it to Mr. Tregian. The finding of a missal, chalice
and vestments in his room, to which the High
Sheriff testified, was also far from proving that he
had said Mass. And in answer to three illiterate
witnesses who said that in a secret conversation
with them in prison he had denied the Queen to
be supreme head of the Church, he declared he had
not made to them any positive assertion or denial.
One of the judges, Judge Manwood, instructed
the jury that where plain proofs were wanting,
strong presumptions ought to be considered suffi-
cient, and directed them to convict the prisoner
accordingly. The jury, after deliberating some
time, were still undecided, in spite of the strongly
prejudiced charge, when the High Sheriff in the
sight of the court went amongst them and held
a long consultation with them, an act as illegal
and scandalous then as it would be now ; after
which being called on for their verdict they pro-
nounced the blessed martyr guilty of high treason
and the others of felony. The next day they
were all brought up for judgment. The sentence
of death was pronounced on Blessed Cuthbert and
held to have been needless cruelties." Here Mr. Froude seems to
have thought he had made too great an admission and he is not
ashamed to add, " But were a Brahmin to be found in the quarters
of a Sepoy Regiment, scattering incendiary addresses from Nana
Sahib, he would be hanged also " ! " He was tried for treason and
hanged at Launceston, without any charge against him except his
religion," says Hallam. (Constitutional History, vol. i. p. 145.)
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE 217
that of perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture on
the rest. On hearing the sentence the martyr raised
his eyes and hands to heaven, and with a calm
voice and joyful face cried aloud, Deo gratias. He
was taken back to his wretched prison, handcuffed,
and loaded with fetters. Here he remained over five
months amongst criminals of the lowest class.
The delay was due to the fact that the two
Judges of Assize had differed. Judge Jeffries had
allowed himself to be overborne at the moment
by Manwood, but subsequently forwarded to the
Council a report of the trial and his reasons for
not concurring in the sentence. By order of the
Council the case was discussed by all the judges
together, but they were as little agreed as the first
two, though the older judges and those of greater
authority took the side of Jeffries. The Government,
however, well aware of the stream of missionaries
pouring into the country, and stung by the abundant
fruits of their apostolate, were unwilling to forego
the opportunity of making an example, and an order
was sent to the High Sheriff, signed by eight or nine
of the Privy Council, to proceed with the execution.
When a servant told the holy priest to be pre-
pared, for he was to die in three days, he heartily
thanked him and said he would most gladly have
rewarded him, had he anything to give, since he
had been the first to bring him such joyful news ;
and from that moment he gave himself up to more
intimate prayer and preparation for his passion.
During the second night of this preparation, the
chamber was filled with a bright supernatural light,
218 BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE
and the other prisoners in amazement called to him
to know what it was. He answered that it was
nothing in which they were concerned, and begged
them to be silent.
The day before his martyrdom he was brought
out of his prison to a conference with a number of
justices and other gentlemen who had come with
two ministers to see him. From eight o'clock in
the morning till nightfall, ironed as he was, and
weakened with ill-treatment, he kept the field,
meeting all they had to say with complete success,
as some who were present had the honesty to
confess, though the ministers and their patrons
spread the report that he had been unable to answer
them. But what was much more than success in
argument was the victory of his faith and constancy;
for the justices present assured him they could
answer for his life and liberty if he would affirm on
oath that the Queen was the supreme head of the
Church of England. The martyr asked for a Bible,
and perhaps for an instant they thought that terror
of death and desire for life had prevailed, but in
another moment he had taken the Holy Scriptures
into his hand, made the sign of the Cross, and
kissed the sacred volume, and the words came
clear and firm, " The Queen never was, nor is, nor
ever shall be, the head of the Church of England."
The next day was the eve of St. Andrew, an
auspicious day for a martyr's death. The place
was not less so, for its ancient name was Fanum
Sancti Stephani — " the Church of St. Stephen." With
such happy auguries Blessed Cuthbert set out for
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE 219
the market-place, where the execution was to take
place. When he was laid on the sledge some of
the justices wanted him to be placed so that his
head should hang over the framework, and thus be
more cruelly bruised by the stones ; he made no
objection himself, but the deputy of the High Sheriff
was humane enough to forbid it.1 At the place of
execution, after kneeling in prayer for some time,
he went up the ladder, and began to explain to the
people the cause of his death and to make an
exhortation to them, but he was soon stopped, and
one of the justices told the hangman to attach the
rope, adding as the ladder was going to be turned,
" Now let him preach if he will." At the same
moment another called out, " Now, villain and
traitor, you are at the moment of death ; tell us then
truly whether Mr. Tregian and Sir John Arundell2
knew of the things you are going to die for."
" I know nothing about them," answered the
martyr, " except that they are good and pious men ;
and as to the things laid to my charge, no one but
myself has any knowledge." Then he was thrown
off so suddenly that he had not time to finish the
verse In manus tuas, which, striking his breast, he
had begun. He was almost instantly cut down,3 but
1 The contemporary author of the Imprisonment of Francis Tregian,
says " he was uneasily laid on a hurdle, and so spitefully drawn,
receiving some knocks on his face and his fingers with a girdle,
unto the market-place," &c. (See J. Morris, Troubles, i. p. 98.)
2 Mr. Tregian's brother-in-law.
3 The Briefe Historic, however, says: "Some of the gentlemen
would have had him cut down straightway that they might have
had him quartered alive, but the Sheriff's deputy would not, but
let him hang until he was dead."
BLESSED CUTHBERT MAYNE
the malice of the persecutors was baulked of part of
its satisfaction, for as he fell from the gibbet, which
was unusually high, his head struck with great force
against an angle of the scaffold. One of his eyes
was put out by the blow, and so he was nearly
insensible while the usual butchery was gone
through.
When the quarters of the holy martyr were
distributed, his head was stuck upon a pole at
Wadebridge.1 In some way it came into the
reverent hands of Catholics and is now preserved
as a most precious relic of the first martyr of the
seminaries, at the Carmelite Convent, Lanherne.
The words of a saint about a saint are ever of
special interest. Blessed Edmund Campion heard
of his old friend's happy end for the first time more
than a year afterwards, when he learned the par-
ticulars from Gregory Martin. In his answer, dated
August, 1579, from Prague, he says, " We all thank
you much for your account of Cuthbert's martyrdom.
It gave many of us a real religious joy. Wretch
that I am, how has that novice distanced me ! May
he be favourable to his old friend and tutor ! I
shall now boast of these titles more than ever."
Mr. Francis Tregian, after various imprisonments
and sufferings, in which his mother, his wife and
children were involved, was condemned to the
penalties of prcemunire. His property, forfeited to
the Crown, was given by Elizabeth to Sir George
1 The quarters were distributed as follows: One to Bodmin,
another to Barnstaple (near the martyr's birthplace), a third to
Tregony (about a mile from Mr. Tregian's house), and the fourth to
Launceston. In the Briefe Historie St. Probus is given for Tregony.
BLESSED CUT H BERT MAYNE
Carey, created by her Lord Hunsdon in 1559.
He himself remained a prisoner for thirty years,
chiefly in the Fleet Prison, but was at length set at
liberty and died at an advanced age on the 25th of
September, 1608. His body was found absolutely
incorrupt seventeen years after his death, and his
son-in-law, Francis Plunket, in his Life of him,
relates several miracles wrought by his relics.1
E. S. K.
AUTHORITIES. — These are already sufficiently referred to
in the notes. We may add, however, the following.
Estcourt, Question of Anglican Ordinations, p. 138, App. p. Ixii. ;
Simpson's Campion (1867), pp. 49, 73, 93 ; Frere, A History of
the English Church in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.
pp. 210 — 213 ; Morris, Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers,
Series I. pp. 65 — 140, for the life and sufferings of Mr.Tregian;
and W. Meyer Griffith, Blessed Cttthbert Mayne, Proto-Martyr
of the Seminaries (London, 1903), a tiny booklet which has the
merit of being the first to clear up the question as to the
martyr's birthplace. It contains a sketch of the font at
Sherwell Church, and a facsimile of the martyr's baptismal
register. Prince, Danmonii Orientates Illustres, or, The Worthies
of Devon (1701), gives (p. 461) the Mayne family arms, gules,
a fess argent between four hands or.
PORTRAIT. — A rude sketch of the martyr's features exists.
It was possibly the work of his gaoler, or of some visitor to
1 J. Morris, Troubles, i. p. 62. If Mr. Tregian would have gone
to the Protestant service he might not only have secured full
immunity for himself and his servants, but also the life of Blessed
Cuthbert. " But no persuasions or offers whatsoever could once
induce him to agree thereto, always preferring Christianity before
his own immunity or his servants' liberty. And concerning the life
of Cuthbert Mayne, always alleging that he would not hazard
his own soul unto Hell to withhold his man's from Heaven." (Ibid.
P- 97-)
222 BLESSED CUT H BERT MAYNE
his prison. A copy will be found in Portraits of the English
Martyrs (Art and Book Co., 1895).
RELICS. — The skull of Blessed Cuthbert is, as we saidr
reverently preserved at the Carmelite Convent, Lanherne,
Cornwall. The hole through the top shows the shape of the
spike on which it was exposed. There are projections on
the sides of the hole, showing that there must have been a
raised edge on the spike. The following memorandum is
preserved in the Convent. " Richard Raine, Esq., made a
present to our Community, in the year 1807, of the skull of
Mr. Cuthbert Mayne, who was put to death for his faith, in
Cornwall, in the year 1577." Many fragments have been
detached from this relic (which is the upper part only of the
skull), and the nuns have been only too generous in distri-
buting particles. It is now, however, sealed up in a beautiful
reliquary, presented by the late Mr. Charles Weld of
Chideock.
A portion of the relic is at the Catholic Church, Laun-
ceston, others are at Bruges, Erdington, Durham, Harrow
(Visitation Convent), Parkminster, Roehampton, Ushaw, and
elsewhere.
In the splendid old mansion of Sutton Place, Guildford,.
the seat of the Westons, and afterwards of the Salvins, there
was found, some years ago, in a cupboard in an old lumber-
room, together with other relics, enclosed in a magnificent
Gothic reliquary of the fourteenth century, a large part of
the skull of Blessed Cuthbert Mayne, being the part under
the right ear. (This seems never to have been at Lanherne.)
It is not known how these relics came into the possession of
the family.
VI.
THE BLESSED JOHN NELSON,
JESUIT.
Tyburn, 3 February, 1577-8.
Two days after the martyrdom of Blessed Cuthbert
Mayne, another capture was made, this time in
London ; that of the Blessed John Nelson.
John Nelson was born of an honourable York-
shire family, at "Skelton, within two miles of York,
being the ancient house of the Nelsons, being
knights of good worth." l His life had been exactly
coextensive with the duration of the schism, for he
was born in the fatal year 1534. He was from his
earliest years a man of great faith and a loving zeal
for God's cause, and Dr. Bridgwater says he had
a vehement detestation for the error of many
Catholics who in the early years of Elizabeth's
reign thought it lawful to go to the Protestant
worship. He used to declare it a great grace of
God to him, that he had been able to withdraw
a good many from this error, and had the consola-
tion of seeing them imitate the courage and con-
stancy of the Catholic Bishops and other holy
1 An old MS. in the Archives of the see of Westminster, vol. ii.
p. 65.
224 BLESSED JOHN NELSON
confessors who were suffering the loss of goods
and liberty in Elizabeth's prisons for this cause.
His intimate friends related after his death how he
had long been accustomed to say that the Catholic
religion would never be restored in England until
many should shed their blood for confession and
testimony of the same ; and whatever hopes people
might found on other means, he never wavered in
this opinion.1 Moreover, both when at Douay and
for years before, he was firmly persuaded that he
himself would shed his blood for the Faith. To
such a man Douay offered an irresistible attraction ;
and in 1573, at the mature age of forty, he left
England and betook himself to the Seminary. Of
his four brothers two followed his example. Martin,
the next in age to himself, arrived in 1574, and was
ordained and sent on the mission the same year ;
Thomas followed in 1575, and was ordained and
sent to England in I577-2
It is difficult in middle age to fall into a life of
regular discipline ; but John was remarked as being
always most prompt in his obedience to every order
of his Superiors. His great longing for the holy
priesthood is also spoken of. His desire was
accomplished on the nth of June, 1576, when he
was ordained at Bynche, by the Archbishop of
1 F. Watford's Relation of Martyrs. (Stonyhurst MS. Collectanea
M. fol. 131 — 143. Printed in Pollen's Acts of English Martyrs,
p. 250.)
2 Both brothers lived till the year 1625, Martin dying at Sutton,
in Herefordshire, on December 4, and Thomas at Antwerp, in
June. Christopher was the owner of Skelton. The fifth brother
apostatized from the Faith and became a minister.
BLESSED JOHN NELSON 225
Cambrai. He left Douay for England on November
the yth of the same year, with four companions
who had been ordained with him, and a young
relation of his own name, whom he was afraid to
leave in the troubled state of the country, from
which many of the English were flying.
His ministry lasted but one year. The Douay
Diary l says he " had laboured much," but no par-
ticulars have been preserved of his work unless an
act related in the Diaries be rightly attributed
to him. A certain woman in London led the life
of an anchoress, enclosed in some open space, where
she passed several years without ever leaving it,
to the general wonder. But, as is thought, from
an ignorance which heresy had made very common,
she never had a thought of reconciliation to the
Church or of the holy sacraments. This poor
woman was at the point of death and was sur-
rounded by a great number of the neighbours, when
"one of ours," says the diarist, "rather than allow
a soul so religious in life to pass away without the
sacraments, disguised himself so that he might not
be at once seized as a priest, and then boldly
entering the place, bade the bystanders to withdraw
a little, and, as if he were engaged in some other
business with her, reconciled her to the Church,
and that done she expired." In the margin of this
entry a contemporary hand had written " Nels.,"
and it is highly probable that the priest was no
other than the blessed martyr.2
1 Knox, Douay Diaries (Diarium Secundum), February 15, 1578, p. 133.
2 Ibid. June i, 1577, P- I22-
P II.
226 BLESSED JOHN NELSON
It was just a year after his arrival in England
that he was called upon to exorcise a possessed
person. The evil spirit was forced to leave his
victim, but before doing so threatened the holy
priest that he would have him taken up in a week,
and that it should cost him his life.1 And, in fact,
on Sunday, December the ist, late in the evening,
as he was saying the Matins of the next day's
Office, he was seized and at once committed to
Newgate Prison on suspicion of " Papistry."
A few days elapsed and then he was summoned
for examination before the Queen's High Com-
missioners. There was no accusation against him,
but the Commissioners began by tendering the
Oath of Supremacy, which of course he refused to
take. The simple refusal did not of itself bring him
within any of the penal statutes, inasmuch as he
was not known or proved to be included in any of
the classes of persons who could be obliged to take
it ; on the other hand, to maintain expressly the
authority of the Pope was highly penal for any one,
and the second offence incurred the punishment
of high treason. According to the just and humane
practice of our day, the worst criminal is carefully
warned against incriminating himself; but it was
far otherwise in Elizabeth's time, and the Com-
missioners at once went on to draw from the martyr
matter for his condemnation. " Why would he not
take the oath?" he was asked. "Because I never
heard or read," he answered, " that any lay prince
could have that pre-eminence." "Who, then,
1 Yepes, Historia particular (1599), lib. ii. c. 13, p. 97.
BLESSED JOHN NELSON 227
according to your opinion, is the head of the
Church?" He answered boldly, "The Roman
Pontiff, as being Christ's vicar and the lawful
successor of St. Peter." They next asked him what
he thought of the religion now practised in England,
to which he replied that it was schismatical and
heretical. Required to define schism, he said it was
a voluntary departure from the unity of the Catholic
Roman faith. Upon this they asked whether the
Queen, then, was a schismatic. To answer this
question in the affirmative was, by the Act of 1571,
at once high treason, so the martyr tried to evade
it. He answered that he could not tell, because
he did not know her mind and intention as to the
promulgation and support of Protestantism. But
the Commissioners would not let him escape. They
answered that the Queen unquestionably did pro-
mulgate and support it, and pressed him to declare
whether that being the case, she was a schismatic
or a heretic. The martyr paused. He knew life
was at stake. Was it possible to escape offending
against the cruel law of his earthly sovereign without
offending against God and his own conscience ?
Then, seeing that there was no escape, " If she be,"
quoth he, " the setter forth and defender of this
religion now practised in England, then is she
a schismatic and a heretic." Having thus got
from him matter for a capital charge, they ordered
him back to prison.
For nearly seven weeks he remained in peace.
Towards the end of this time a special providence
secured to him the grace of saying Mass and
228 BLESSED JOHN NELSON
nourishing himself with the Bread of the Strong. A
priest and some other friends, who came to see him
and knew his desire to say Mass, were very anxious
to assist at the Sacrifice and receive Holy Com-
munion from his hands. They proposed the feast of
the Purification, but on consultation they all agreed
that it would be a dangerous day, as such a festival
would be likely to excite suspicion. They then
proposed the day after, but whether warned by a
Divine light or guided by Providence, Blessed John
preferred the Thursday before. Had the other day
been chosen he would have had to go through his
martyrdom without the Holy Viaticum, for on the
very next day after his Mass he was told he was to
be brought to trial on the morrow, which would be
the eve of the Purification. He was warned at the
same time that his condemnation was certain unless
he retracted the answers he had given at his first
examination.
Accordingly on Saturday, the ist of February,
1577-8, he was tried on the charge, as Stow testifies,
of " denying the Queen's Supremacy and such other
traitorous words against her Majesty." The
evidence of his previous examination was clear,
and confirmed by his answers in court, so that the
verdict was a matter of course, and sentence was
passed accordingly, at which it was remarked that
he did not the least change countenance, or betray
any sign of emotion.
For the next two days — his martyrdom was fixed
for the third — he was confined, his biographer says,
""in a most filthy underground dungeon." It was no
BLESSED JOHN NELSON 229^
doubt the same afterwards described by Father
Henry Garnet : " We have here a Limbo," he says,
" the place where they ordinarily confine all those
who have been already condemned to death ; and
all Catholics under sentence of death have to go to
that prison before execution, unless exempted by a
particular favour. ... It is a place underground,
full of horrors, without light, and swarming with
vermin and creeping things. It is impossible to see
there without candles continually burning, and there
is neither bed nor chair, unless the persons provide
for themselves. One of our holy martyrs, a priest
(Father Southwell), was there some years ago after
being sentenced to death, and whilst sleeping some
poisonous insect entered his body causing intense
suffering, until he was transferred to the repose of
the saints and just ones of God."1
From the moment of his condemnation the
servant of God gave himself up entirely to prepara-
tion for his martyrdom. He would take no other
food than bread and a little weak beer. The gaoler's
wife when he came back from the court, offered him
some wine out of compassion, thinking he must be
dejected by his sentence. But he refused it. He
said he would prefer water, or rather vinegar and
gall, so that he might more closely follow his Lord,
and wished to give no indulgence to his body
which was so soon to die. He spent the time
chiefly in prayer, and when he had occasion to
speak, his words were almost exclusively of eternal
1 Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus,
vol. vii. p. 1361.
230 BLESSED JOHN NELSON
things. A friend who came to see him advised him
to fortify his courage by reading the Acts of the
Martyrs. He answered "that he had enough to
occupy his mind withal, and to meditate upon full
well." His friend went on to remind him of all
the torments the martyrs had borne, and of the
heroic constancy with which they had been able to
endure them. "Yes," he answered, "these thoughts
have long been familiar to my mind and have filled
me with such sweetness that I doubt nothing but
that I shall find and feel the grace of God's conso-
lation in the midst of my agony."
Early on the day of his martyrdom, Monday,
February the 3rd, he was transferred to a better
part of the prison, where two of his near relations
came to take leave of him. Very likely they may
have been his brothers. Dodd says of Thomas
Nelson, then a priest, that he had the satisfaction
of visiting his brother before his death. They found
him absorbed in prayer, his hands joined and lifted
up. They were overcome with tears, but the martyr,
unmoved, said they ought to console him and not
need his consolation ; and that they would do better
to shed their tears over their sins than over him ;
for whom all things, by God's goodness, were
falling out according to his desire. They were
going to bid him good-bye, when they were over-
powered with a fresh burst of grief; on which the
servant of God, feeling that he was beginning to be
overcome, and fearing the weakness of nature, very
lovingly sent them away. Hardly were they gone
when " two proud ministers of Satan " burst in and
BLESSED JOHN NELSON 231
began to torment his last moments with controversy,
but he would not so much as enter into conversation
with them, and finding him obstinately silent they
at last gave up the attempt.
When he was brought out of the prison and laid
on the hurdle, some of the officers called on him to
beg pardon of the Queen for his great offences
against her. " I will ask no pardon of her," he
answered, "for I have never offended her." The
hostile crowd broke into cries of "Traitor," and
threats. " Well," said he, " God's will be done, I
perceive I must die, and surely I am ready to die
with a good will ; for better it is to abide all punish-
ment here, be it never so grievous, than to suffer the
eternal torments of hell fire."
He said, In manus tuas Domine, as he was lifted
from the sledge at Tyburn, and begged all Catholics
who were present to say with him a Pater, Ave, and
Credo, which he recited aloud in Latin, and after
which he added the Confiteor, Miserere, and De
proftmdis. He then addressed all present, saying,
" I beg you to bear me witness that I die in the
unity of the Catholic Church, and for that unity do
now most willingly suffer my blood to be shed ; and
I earnestly beseech of God, through His infinite
mercy, to make you all true Catholic men, and both
to live and die in the unity of the Roman and
Catholic Faith." From the crowd there were cries
of "Away with thee and thy Catholic Romish Faith,"
but the martyr was not to be cowed, and repeated
his prayer again. He went on to ask pardon of all
whom he had ever offended and to declare his
232 BLESSED JOHN NELSON
forgiveness of his enemies and persecutors, and to
pray for God's forgiveness for them. Being urged
again to ask the Queen's forgiveness, he repeated
that he could not do so, never having offended her.
But after a pause he added that he would ask pardon
of her also and of all the world for any offence he
had ever given, as on his part he forgave all.
The hangman being told to hasten, the martyr
once more recommended himself to the prayers of
the Catholics, that Christ our Lord by the merits
of His bitter Passion would receive his soul into
eternal joys, and as they drove away the cart and
left him hanging, many voices were heard to cry
out, " Lord, receive his soul." He was cut down
immediately, and was fully conscious while the usual
cruelties were inflicted ; and when the executioner
had his hand on his heart, he raised himself a little
and, like another St. Stephen, in the very agony of
death said, " I forgive the Queen and all the authors
of my death."1
A friend who was present, as he rode away
immediately to the north of England, said to his
companion, " It is now come to pass that John
Nelson foretold me seven years since, that he
should die for the Catholic Faith.'' The Briefe
Historic before referred to, and published but four
years later, records that there was then a credible
fame of miraculous cures wrought by the martyr's
relics.
i The author of the Briefe Historie says, " Some that stood near
report this, . . . but I, though I saw his lips move, yet heard not
so much." He adds, "The hangman had three or four blows at
his head before he could strike it off."
BLESSED JOHN NELSON 233
Blessed John Nelson, like Thomas Woodhouse,
Thomas Pound, Thomas Metham and others,
was an admirer of the Society of Jesus before its
missioners had appeared in England, and like them
he applied abroad for leave to be admitted in this
country, which under the circumstances he could
never expect to quit, and his" prayer like theirs
was granted. Though we do not know to which
Provincial he addressed himself, nor what was the
date of his application, Father Stephenson has
recorded the fact of his admission,1 and the Fathers
of the Society keep his feast with that of their other
Martyrs in England.
" God be blessed for him, and blessed be the
memory of this his martyrdom amongst men in all
our posterity. Amen."
E.S. K.
AUTHORITIES. — The earliest printed biography seems to
be that included in A brief e Historic of the Glorious Martyrdom
of xii Reverend Priests [? Rheims], 1582, unpaged. See also
Concertatio, fol. 49 A — 50 B, Yepes, pp. 304 — 307. Champney's
Annals, p. 793. Challoner, i. pp. 20 — 23.
1 H. More, Historia Provincice Anglicans, 1660, p. 35.
VII.
THE BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD,
LAYMAN.
Tyburn, 7 February, 1577-8.
ONLY four days after Blessed John Nelson's martyr-
dom, Tyburn was the scene of another like tragedy
and another like triumph.
Some three months earlier, in the first half of
November, 1577, a noble-looking youth was walking
in the streets of London, when a cry was heard,
" Stop the traitor, stop the traitor ! " on which the
young man was seized by the passers-by and carried
off to the nearest justice of the peace. The
prisoner's name was Thomas Sherwood, his age
twenty-seven years.
Blessed Thomas Sherwood was the son of pious
Catholic parents. We have a beautiful account
both of him and his family written by one of his
brothers, which has been preserved among the
Stonyhurst manuscripts.1 From this we learn that
his father, Henry Sherwood, was born in Not-
tingham, and was brought up as a singing-boy in
the chapel of the Earl of Northumberland. He was
1 Printed in Pollen's Acts of English Martyrs, pp. 2 — 8.
BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD 235
afterwards sent to Oxford by the Earl, in the reign
of Henry VIII., where he continued six or seven
years, but was unable to take his degree, as that
involved subscribing to the Oath of Supremacy.
On leaving the University he entered the employ-
ment of a Watling Street merchant tailor, and
acted for some time as his factor in Spain. On his
return he adopted the trade of a woollen draper,
and married a virtuous maid called Elizabeth
Tregian,1 by whom he had fourteen children, most
of whom lived to man's estate, and were all brought
up in the Catholic religion.
When Elizabeth came to the throne, Henry
Sherwood retired for a time to Belgium and lived
for a year at Mechlin, where the nuns of Syon
had also found a refuge. Shortly after his return to
England he and his wife were taken at Mass in
London, and were brought before the High Com-
missioners. His wife made a very brave confession,
and put Dr. Cox, the Bishop of Ely, to shame by
her trenchant replies to his calumnies against
Catholics.
Her husband was committed to prison, where he
remained six months, being released at last through
the intercession of the Spanish Ambassador. He
then went with his wife and younger children to
live at Nottingham, where after some years, being
called in question for not coming to church, they
went to stay with one of their sons, who was married,
in Dorsetshire. That son being molested for the
1 Sister to Mr. Francis Tregian, the noble confessor, in whose
house Blessed Cuthbert Mayne was taken.
236 BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD
same cause, they all went to London, where the
old man lived a life of strict retirement, attending
only to his devotions and never leaving his lodging.
It was shortly after their coming to London that
Thomas was apprehended.
The Blessed Thomas had been born in London
and had been brought up for some years at school.
But at the age of fifteen he was taken from school
to serve his father in the trade of a draper, which
he did for several years.
" Afterwards," writes his brother, " being more
devoted to a religious course of life than to a
worldly, he obtained from his parents leave to pass
the seas and come to Douay, where, having con-
ferred with certain venerable Fathers, by them he
was encouraged to fall again to study ; and deter-
mining upon that course, it was thought fit he
should first return into England, as well to adjustate
his accounts with his father, having the best part
of his substance in his hands and charge, as also
to procure some competent means to maintain him
for some time at his study.
" Upon which occasion he returned back, and
whiles he travailed in the despatch of his business
he was met one morning in Chancery Lane by one
George Martin,1 son to the Lady Tregonwell, in
Dorsetshire, which George had seen him divers
times at his mother's house in the company of one
Mr. Stampe, a priest ; and so meeting him and
calling for the constable, caused him to be appre-
hended."
1 " Martine Tregonian." (Briefe Historic.)
BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD 237
Father Persons,1 in his De Persecutione Anglicana,
calls the Lady " Tregony," and Challoner says the
martyr was wont to frequent her house in London.
She was a good and virtuous Catholic, but her son
was widely different from his mother both in faith
and morals.2 " This young spark suspected that
Mass was sometimes privately said in his mother's
house ; and this, as he imagined, by the means of
Mr. Sherwood, which was the occasion of his
conceiving an implacable hatred against him."3
1 In Bridgwater's Concertatio, fol. 283.
2 The Tregonwells lived at Milton Abbas, near Blandford,
Dorset. The Sherwoods probably made the lady's acquaintance
when they were living in Dorsetshire. She was no doubt the widow
of Sir John Tregonwell, and had been his second wife. She was by
birth a New. Sir John Tregonwell had been one of the Royal
Commissioners for the dissolution of the monasteries under
Henry VIII. and had obtained Milton Abbey as his share of the
spoil. His tomb is still to be seen in the desecrated church, with
his effigy in brass. He is kneeling, clad in armour, with surcoat
bearing the Tregonwell arms, and the inscription runs : " Here
lyeth buried Sir John Tregonwell, Knyght, doctor of the cyvill
lawes, and one of the maisters of the Chauncerye, who dyed the
xiiith day of January, in the yere of our lorde 1565, of whose soul
God have mercy."
It should be added, that Bishop Challoner was mistaken when
he writes of our martyr, " He went over to the English College of
Douay, in Flanders, where I find him, in the diary of the house,
a student, in 1576." The only Sherwood who appears in the Diary
at that date is a priest. (Douay Diaries, pp. 102, 259.) Father
Persons, however, is also mistaken when he asserts (Philopater, 1593,
p. 186) that Sherwood had never been out of England. In a list of
martyrs of the Seminaries of Douay and Rome, drawn up by
Dr. Barrett, in 1593, Sherwood's name appears as a student of
Douay College, and the statement has been copied by later writers.
Though he never actually studied there, it will be seen from the
text, that there was some justification for this claim.
3 Challoner, i. p. 23.
238 BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD
The result was the cruel and cowardly denunciation
of his mother's friend to the persecuting instincts
of the London crowd.
When however they arrived before the Justice,
who was none other than Mr. Recorder Fleetwood,
one of the bitterest enemies of Catholics, the young
man had no charge to bring against Blessed Thomas.
All he could say was that he suspected him to be a
Papist, that he was much in the company of priests,
and had been across the seas and had no doubt
conferred with traitors there. But he had rightly
gauged the present administration of law and justice.
In default of an offence the magistrate set to work
to create one, as the High Commissioners did
shortly after with the Blessed John Nelson. He put
a string of questions about the Queen and the
Pope's Supremacy, the heretical or schismatical
character of the new religion, and whether the
Queen were a heretic or not. It required but little
skill to entrap the ingenuous youth, who made no
attempt to evade the questions, but answered plainly
according to his conscience. He preserved none
the less a modest and respectful manner, " being of
his nature," says his brother, " very meek and
gentle." He was pressed by the Justice as to what
he thought of the Bull of Pius V., and whether, if
the Pope had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, she
were then lawful Queen or no. He answered that he
knew nothing of the Bull, but if the Pope had indeed
excommunicated the Queen, he thought she could
not be lawful Queen.
This was of course quite sufficient for the
BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD 239
purpose of his enemies, and the martyr was at once
committed to the Gatehouse at Westminster, while
Fleetwood made haste to acquaint her Majesty's
Council of his important capture. The Attorney-
General, Gilbert Gerard, was thereupon ordered to
go to the prison and receive his examination. He
did so on November the 2oth, and there obtained
again from the martyr the statement as to the
excommunication of the Queen, which Fleetwood
had already got from him. According to the
iniquity of the times the utterance so obtained was
treated as an act of high treason, and for it he finally
suffered. As, however, he would not confess the
names of any other Catholics, he was sent to the
Tower, where his examination was continued under
torture.1
The Council Book contains two entries on the
iyth of November, 1577, which shall be here
inserted.
" Windsor, I7th November, 1577.
" A letter to Mr. Attorney-General, signifying
unto him that he shall receive the examination of
one Thomas Sherwood, lately committed by the High
Commissioners, for hearing of a Mass, and since
examined by Mr. Recorder of London : which exami-
nation containing matter of high treason against
her Majesty's person, their Lordships have thought
good to send unto him and require him, after he
shall have substantially considered thereof, to
acquaint the Lord Chief Justice therewith, and
1 " Being the first that was racked for mere matter of faith in
our memories." (Brief e Historic.)
240
BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD
presently to give order that the said Sherwood be
this term arraigned and proceeded against according
to the laws of this realm in that behalf provided ;
but before they proceed to his arraignment, to take
some pains further to examine him both upon the
points of his confession, and also to see if he can
discover any others of his knowledge to be of his
opinion ; and where, and of whom, he hath gathered
the substance of his arguments gained in his
said confession, wherein perchance he may bolt
out some other matters or persons worthy to be
known."
At the same time they sent
" A letter to the Lieutenant of the Tower requir-
ing him to receive into his hands, of Mr. Recorder of
London, the person of Thomas Sherwood, and to
retain him close prisoner, and from conference with
any person, until such time as he shall receive order
from Mr. Attorney-General, who is appointed to
examine him upon such matters as he is to be
charged withal : and showing this their Lordships'
letter to Mr. Recorder, which shall be his sufficient
warrant for the delivery of him.
" He is required in a postscript that if the said
Sherwood shall not willingly confess such things as
shall be demanded of him, he is then required to
commit him to the dungeon amongst the rats."1
1 A Reading on the Use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England,
by David Jardine, Appendix, p. 79. The substance of the letters
is printed by Father Pollen (Acts of English Martyrs, pp. n and 12),
and the full text in Dasent's Acts of the Privy Council.
BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD 241
This last direction would have seemed incredible
were it not found in the Council books themselves.
According to Mr. Jardine, this dungeon " is
described as a cell below high water mark and
totally dark. As the tide flowed, innumerable rats,
which infest the muddy banks of the Thames, were
driven through the orifices of the walls into the
dungeon. The alarm excited by the irruption of
these loathsome creatures in the dark was the least
part of the torture which the unfortunate captives
had to undergo ; instances are related, which
humanity would gladly believe to be the exaggera-
tions of Catholic partisans, where the flesh has
been torn from the arms and legs of prisoners
during sleep by the well-known voracity of these
animals." :
Here then our brave young martyr was thrown,
and here he lay for well-nigh three winter months,
only leaving the horrible place for the still more
terrible torture-chamber hard by. He suffered from
"cold, stench, and hunger," and it was evidently
intended by the rigour of his suffering to force
him to give information as to where he had heard
Mass and what priests had said it. It was no doubt
because they failed in the attempt that recourse was
had to still more cruel means. Three times the
martyr was most sorely racked in the vaulted
chamber near which he had been confined. This
torture he bore with a supernatural fortitude
not unequal to that of the early martyrs, and
strengthened by God he persisted in refusing any
1 Op. cit. p. 26.
Q II.
242 BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD
information which could have betrayed others or
brought them into danger. And here again, the
Council Book corroborates the Martyr's Acts.
"Sherwood's courage and constancy," says Mr.
Jardine, " overcame the horrors of this dungeon ;
and continuing his resolution, a warrant was issued
from the Board, on the 4th of December, 1577,
authorizing the Lieutenant, the Attorney — and
Solicitor-General, and the Recorder ' to assay him
at the rack.' This also appears to have failed,
for he made no discoveries of importance."1 The
warrant is printed in Mr. Jardine's Appendix, and
directs that the commissioners are to " assay him
at the rack upon such articles as they shall think
meet to minister unto him for the discovering either
of the persons or of further matter."
We may now continue our narrative from a
contemporary document by an anonymous writer,
which though undated must have been written
before 1582, as it is quoted by Father Persons in his
De Persecutions Anglicana, which was printed in that
year.
" The brave youth was sent to the Tower, . . .
and meantime the chamber he had in the city was
ransacked (according to the custom of those harpies)
and all his goods removed, together with about
ninety pieces of gold belonging to other persons,
which were owing to his needy and afflicted father,
1 Jardine, p. 27.
2 Ibid. p. 8r. It is also given in Pollen's Acts of English Martyrs,
pp. 13, 14.
243
as if the pieces themselves were guilty of high
treason and denial of the Supremacy. In the
prison Sherwood suffered very grievous things with
a constancy worthy of all praise. . . . To begin
with, the holy youth was harassed by repeated
torturings, in order that overcome with pain, he
might confess where he had heard Mass, to the
intent that any he might name, might be punished
with like plunder of goods and bodily injury. But
he was brave beyond his years, no racking, no cross-
examination could make him name any one. Thus
baulked, his barbarous torturers changed their
proceedings and cast the martyr, who had now lost
the use of his limbs, into a very dark and fetid
dungeon. Here he was left without necessary
clothing, in order that the terrors of darkness, the
stench, and most of all, the shameful nakedness,
might break his resolution, which no torture could
move. As to food, it is easy to conjecture of what
sort it was, seeing that he was not allowed to buy
anything to sustain life — nay, more, what calls for
the utmost commiseration is that when a certain
good man,1 touched by the report of the extreme
hunger which the blessed youth was suffering, sent
him some money, and by means of a prisoner con-
veyed it to Sherwood's own keeper (this everyone in
the Tower has), the keeper returned it next day,
because the Lieutenant would not allow him to have
1 Father Persons has added in a note: " Mr. Roper, son-in-law
to Thomas More." William Roper died January 4, 1577-8, not in
1573, as Cresacre More, Life of Sir Thomas More, p. 119, Edition
of 1725, erroneously says.
244 BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD
the benefit of any alms. The martyr's friend asked
whether the keeper himself would not expend it for
his benefit, but he was told it was impossible. All
that the most earnest prayers could effect was to
induce him to take sixpence to buy straw for the
youth to lie on, so great was the inhumanity of the
Lieutenant towards his starving prisoner."
Blessed Thomas's brother gives us some more
precious details.
" He was of small learning, scarcely understand-
ing the Latin tongue, but had much read books of
controversies and devotion, and had used much to
converse among Catholic priests, and by reason
thereof, having a good wit and judgment, and
withal being very devout and religious, he was
able to give good counsel, as he did to many of
the more ignorant sort, being much esteemed for
his virtuous life and humble and modest behaviour :
besides God did give a special grace in his [con-
versation] , whereby together with his good example
of life, he much moved and edified others. He was
a man of little stature of body, yet of a healthful
and good constitution, and very temperate in his
diet.
" After his first racking in the Tower (which was
said to be rigorous), being visited by a Catholic
gentlewoman, he showed himself of that joyful and
comfortable spirit as she was astonished thereat.
As also his keeper with compassion giving him
warning that he was to be racked again, he was
BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD 245
so little moved therewith, as merrily and with a
cheerful countenance he said these words : ' I am
very little, and you are very tall ; you may hide me
in your great hose and so they shall not find me ; '
which the keeper did afterwards report to divers,
much marvelling at his great fortitude and courage.
He was about the age of twenty-seven years when
he was martyred."1
Our martyr was brought to trial on Saturday,
the ist of February, 1577-8. The official record of
his trial still exists.2 It took place in the Court of
the Queen's Bench at Westminster. The martyr
1 Hallam states that the Blessed Thomas was only fourteen
years of age, and the mistake has been repeated by more than one
recent writer. Hallam makes the statement on the authority of
Ribadeneyra (Continuatio Sanderi et Rishtoni, chap, xxvi.), writing
many years later. The brother's witness conclusively shows that
Ribadeneyra was mistaken. The following conjecture is offered to
the reader as a possible explanation of the error. The Philopater
of Father Persons appeared at Lyons in 1592 ; Ribadeneyra's
Appendix, or Continuation of Sander and Rishton, which refers to the
former work, was published probably with an edition of the History
of the English Schism in 1594 (Dodd says 1595). Whoever will
compare the passage of Ribadeneyra about Blessed Thomas
Sherwood (chap, xxvi.) with that of Persons (sect. iv. 266) will
see that the former is taken almost textually from the latter. Now
Persons begins his passage with the words, Quid . . . causes fuit
cur annis abliinc quatuordecim,juvenempr<zclarum, &c. Ribadeneyra (in
the Latin translation of 1610), Adolescens, imo puer quatuordecim
annorum, liberalis admodum forma, &c. Is it fanciful to suppose that
from an imperfect recollection of Persons' book, or badly written
notes, he mistook the passage from Philopater for annos natum quatuor-
decim ? It may be added that he probably was boyish-looking and
young for his age as well as small of stature, as all the authorities
dwell so much on his youth.
'^ Coram Rege Roll. (20 Elizabeth, rot. 3.)
246 BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD
was accused in the indictment of having on
November the 2Oth last " diabolically, maliciously,
and traitorously ... of his own perverse and
treacherous mind and imagination, ... in the
presence and hearing of divers faithful subjects of
the said Lady our Queen " uttered, answered,
published, and said "these false traitorous English
words following, . . . falsely, maliciously, advisedly,
directly, and treacherously — to wit, ' that for so much
as our Queen Elizabeth . . . doth expressly disassent
in Religion from the Catholic faith, of which Catholic
faith, he sayeth that the Pope Gregory the thirteenth that
now is, is conserver, because he is God's General Vicar
in earth : and therefore he affirmeth by express words
that our said Queen Elizabeth . . . is a schismatic and
an heretic:' to the very great scandal and deroga-
tion of the person of our said Lady the Queen,
and the subversion of the state of this realm of
England," &c.
The other words of which he was accused (for
we may spare the reader any more of the redundant
adjectives and adverbs which besprinkle the report
so lavishly), were those which we have already
quoted as having been extorted from him by
Fleetwood, and again by the Attorney-General, as to
the excommunication of the Queen.
The martyr having pleaded not guilty, the trial
was fixed for the following Monday, "the morrow of
the Purification of Blessed Mary the Virgin," on which
day he was speedily found guilty and condemned
to death in the usual form, i.e., " that the aforesaid
Thomas Sherwood be led by the aforesaid Lieutenant
BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD 247
unto the Tower of London, and thence be dragged
through the midst of the city of London, directly
unto the gallows of Tyburn, and upon the gallows
there be hanged, and thrown living to the earth,
and that his bowels be taken from his belly, and
whilst he is alive be burnt, and that his head be
cut off, and that his body be divided into four
parts, and that his head and quarters be placed
where our Lady the Queen shall please to assign
them."
There is no account preserved of the martyrdom.
It took place on Friday, February the 7th, at
Tyburn ; l and the Acts expressly mention that after
the hanging, the other barbarous details of the
execution were inflicted on him while still alive and
conscious.
Three weeks later one who arrived at Douay
from England brought the news that " for the
profession of the Catholic faith a certain youth
named Thomas Sherwood had endured not prisons
only but even death : and that in all his torments
his cry had been, ' Lord Jesus, I am not worthy to
suffer these things for Thee, much less to receive
those rewards which Thou hast promised to such as
confess Thee.' "
Can we conclude this sketch of the life and
sufferings of this bright and heroic soul better than
1 The writs to the Lieutenant of the Tower to deliver up
Sherwood to the Sheriffs, and that to the Sheriffs of London to
conduct him to execution, are in the Controlment Roll (20 Elizabeth,
rot. 29). See Pollen, Acts of English Martyrs, p. 19. Stow records
the execution in his Chronicle.
248 BLESSED THOMAS SHERWOOD
in the words of his ancient biographer ? — " Farewell,
most holy martyr, and help with your patronage
me, a most unworthy sinner, who am labouring to
increase your honour here on earth. Amen."
ED.
AUTHORITIES. — Briefe Historic, p. 158. Concertatio (1589),
if. 79 B — 80 A. Yepes, pp. 360, 361. Raissius, Catalogus
Sacerdotum Anglo- Duacenorum. Champney's Annals (in West-
minster Archives), p. 740. Challoner (1874), i. pp. 23, 24.
Pollen, Acts of English Martyrs, pp. i — 20. Dasent, Acts of the
Privy Council.
VIII.
THE BLESSED EVERARD HANSE,
SECULAR PRIEST.
Tyburn, 31 July, 1581.
Two opposite currents were becoming stronger day
by day in England. On the one hand, the labours
of the new missionaries, in spite of the heat of
persecution, brought a great many into the Church.
But on the other hand, among large numbers, there
was a cruel and growing eagerness, fostered and
rewarded by the Government, and stimulated by
every art of calumny and misrepresentation, to
track down the devoted priests and hunt them to
death as if they were a natural prey. It was thus
that the Blessed Everard Hanse obtained the crown
of martyrdom. He was visiting some prisoners for
the Faith in the Marshalsea Prison, an every-day
event in the prison discipline of the day, when the
gaoler noticed the foreign make of his boots. This
was enough to awaken suspicion in the excitement
of the time, roused, as it was, to the highest pitch
by the search for Father Campion, and his capture
which had just been effected. Hanse was at once
brought before a magistrate and required to give
250 BLESSED EVERARD HANSE
an account of himself. He made no attempt to
evade the inquiry, but with fearless openness declared
that he was a priest, and was immediately com-
mitted to Newgate, and as if he were a most
dangerous and degraded criminal, heavily ironed
and placed amongst the felons there.
He was born in Northamptonshire. His father
and mother were both followers of the new religion,
and Everard was sent to Cambridge. His abilities
attracted attention, and having received heretical
Orders he was presented to a rich living. His MS.
Acts1 speak of him as surrounded by an admiring
crowd when he preached, and as much carried away
by his success. Meantime his elder brother, William,
had obeyed the call of divine grace and left England
to prepare himself for the priesthood. The Seminary
had been shortly before obliged to leave Douay,
largely owing to the intrigues of Elizabeth against
it, and in March, 1578, had found a refuge at Rheims
under the protection of the Cardinal Archbishop,
Louis of Guise. William Hanse arrived there on
November the nth following the transfer, and in
the course of the next spring was ordained, said his
first Mass on April the 28th, and was sent on the
perilous English Mission on the 23rd of May, 1579.
The two brothers had many discussions about
religion, but Everard remained unmoved. God's
mercy, however, had singled him out not only for
the grace of conversion, but for the glory of martyr-
dom. In the midst of his prosperity he was struck
down by a dangerous illness. As he lay long in
1 Westminster Archives, vol. ii. p. 175.
BLESSED EVERARD HANSE 251
extreme suffering, hovering between life and death,
things began to appear to him in a new aspect, and
God completed His work by some supernatural
light, the nature of which his Acts do not specify.
He did not delay. His brother was summoned to
his sick-bed, and had the consolation of instructing
him in the Faith, and receiving him into the unity
of the Church.
Everard did not give himself to God by halves.
As soon as he was recovered and had resigned his
living, he set out for Rheims, with the desire of
becoming a teacher of the truth amongst his
countrymen to whom he had been a preacher of
error. He was admitted to the Seminary on the
nth of June, 1580, just four days after the Blessed
Edmund Campion and Father Persons had left for
England.
At this time the College was more than ever
like a busy hive, priests or students were con-
tinually arriving from or setting out for England,
Rome and Paris; the lectures in Theology, Philo-
sophy, Scripture, the Classics, and Hebrew, were in
full activity ; the version of the New Testament
was nearing completion, and controversial works
succeeded each other rapidly. So far from the
migration to Rheims having injured its work, there
were this year no fewer than one hundred and twelve
members in residence, besides others living in the
town, and joining in the studies. Such was the life
in which the new convert found himself. He lost
no time in applying himself with his whole energy
to theology, especially moral theology, and the
252 BLESSED EVERARD HANSE
practical duties of a missionary priest, and rapidly
acquired a sufficient knowledge to warrant his
Superiors in presenting him for ordination. The
English fields were ripe for the harvest, labourers
were urgently needed, and no time was to be lost.
Besides all this, our martyr, we are told, was
filled with an " unspeakable desire to gain others,
but especially some of his dearest friends into the
unity of the Church." On the 2ist of the February
following his arrival, he was ordained subdeacon,
and on Holy Saturday, which in 1581 was March
the 25th, he was raised to the priesthood in the
Church of our Blessed Lady at Rheims, by the
Bishop of Chalons, being one of thirteen, of whom
four besides himself were afterwards martyrs. He
said his first Mass on April the 4th, and on the 24th
set out for England, with three other priests.
During the latter months of his residence at
Rheims, the College diaries record again and again
harrowing accounts of the seizures, imprisonments,
and torturings of the missionaries of which the
news reached the Seminary from England.1
But so far from being terrified by these horrors
or hesitating in their purpose, the students were
only more eager for the combat. Two years later
(the i4th of April, 1583), Dr. Barrett wrote2 from
Rheims to Father Agazzari :
" There is among all a great fervour of charity,
and an exceeding desire to aid our country. They
1 Knox, Douay Diaries (Diarium Secundum), September 18,
October 9, December 22, 1580; January 25, January 31, 1581.
2 Ibid. Introduction, p. Ixxxii.
BLESSED EVERARD HANSE 253
seem to me like men striving with all their might
to put out a conflagration. They cannot in any
way be kept back from England."
Allen wrote of the very period under discussion : l
"These late terrors (thanks be to God)
trouble them so little, that divers straight upon the
arrival here in Rheims of the late proclamation of
January (1581), came to their Superiors to desire
leave to go in ; and being answered that the times
were not seasonable, they said it was no God-a-
mercy for a priest to enter in at other times, but
that they were brought up and made specially for
such days, and nineteen persons the same week
following took Holy Orders."
That ordination would seem by the Diary2 to
have been the very one in which Blessed Everard
Hanse was made subdeacon. We may well suppose
that he returned to England, anticipating, even
by the light of common sense, but a short
apostolate. He took the precaution of adopting a
feigned name, and passed as Evans Duckett. From
this time the practice was usually adopted by the
missionaries. It was unfortunately only a slight
protection against the ubiquitous spies of Cecil
1 Allen, Apology for the English Seminaries (Mounts in Renault,
1581), f. 85 v.
2 Knox, Douay Diaries (Diarium Secundum), February 21, 1581.
This entry follows immediately that of February 12, which records
the news of the January Proclamation
254 BLESSED EVERARD HANSE
and Walsingham, who penetrated even into the
seminaries and supplied their employers with
minute particulars of the names, appearance, and
movements of the priests and students.
And in fact Blessed Everard had laboured but
three months in the vineyard when he was seized, as
we have seen. He had gone to give alms and con-
solation to the prisoners for Jesus Christ ; and he
received at once the recompense of being made a
prisoner for Jesus Christ himself.
From a paper in the Ambrosian library at Milan,
consisting of extracts from the correspondence of
Allen and others in the following month, we learn
that various efforts were made to prevail on him to
acknowledge the Royal Supremacy, and also that he
was beaten, and for a long time hung up by his
feet. This must have been immediately after his
committal ; for the Newgate gaol delivery took
place a few days after the holy priest's committal,
and he was accordingly brought to trial on Friday,
July the 28th, at the Old Bailey, before the Recorder
of London, Fleetwood, a bitter enemy of Catholics.
As in the case of the Blessed John Nelson and the
Blessed Thomas Sherwood, there was literally no
offence to charge him with, for though he had
declared himself a priest, the famous statute by
which it was made high treason for a priest
ordained abroad to be in England was not as yet
passed. The judge had therefore first to make his
victim commit a capital offence before he could
charge him. This did not, however, require much
skill, for the martyr answered all his questions with
BLESSED EVERARD HANSE 255
as much readiness and frankness as if they were on
indifferent topics instead of involving his life.
The Recorder first asked him where he was
ordained and for what purpose he had come into
England. He answered that he was ordained at
Rheims and that he had come back in order to gain
erring souls to the unity of the Christian Church.
Recorder. — "Then you are subject to the Pope?"
Blessed Everard. — " So I am, Sir."
Recorder. — "Then the Pope has some authority
over you ? "
Blessed Everard. — " The most just authority."
Recorder. — " What ! now in England ? "
Blessed Everard. — " Most assuredly. He hath
as much authority and right in spiritual government
in this realm as ever he had, and as much as he
hath in any other country, or in Rome itself."
The judge now proceeded to extract from him
matter against another statute. He was asked
whether he thought the Pope could err. He
answered as any Catholic would answer now,
that in his own life and conduct he was liable to
error, or even in his writings as a private doctor,
but not in his "judicial definitions of controverted
questions."
They were warily bringing him nearer to the
snare, — a most needless ingenuity — and asked
whether Pius V. had not acted judicially in the
Bull of Excommunication against the Queen, and
then reading out the part in which she is declared
to be a heretic and a supporter of heretics, and
therefore deprived of her royal crown and dignity,
256 BLESSED EVERARD HANSE
required the prisoner to say if the Pope had not
erred in this. He answered, " I hope not," using
this expression because the act of the Pope was not
a doctrinal definition but a question of fact and of
discipline.
This answer served to bring him within the reach
of the statute of 1571, which made it high treason
to declare the Queen a heretic or schismatic. But
Fleetwood seems to have had an artistic sense of
completeness in judicial persecution, and went on
to secure against his prisoner an accusation under
a new statute passed this very year, 1581, which
extended the ever-widening embrace of high treason
to the act (among many others) of persuading any
subject of the Queen to leave the established religion
for that of the Catholic Church. So as a final
question he asked, " Have you given the answers
we have heard with a design to persuade those
who are present to embrace the same opinions ? "
"I know not," said the open-hearted priest,
"what you mean by the word persuade, but I would
fain that all believed the Catholic Faith from their
hearts as I do."
The offence had now been obtained, and a lawyer
in the court was directed then and there to draw up
the indictment, the charge being to this effect : that
Everard Hanse, a scholar of the Pope, and made
priest beyond the seas, had come back into England
to withdraw the Queen's subjects from their
obedience ; that he had asserted that the Pope was
his Superior, and had in England the same
authority as heretofore ; and likewise that he had
BLESSED EVERARD HANSE 257
declared that he hoped Pius V. had not erred in
pronouncing the Queen a heretic and depriving her
of her kingdom, and that he had said these things
to persuade others to follow his opinions.
The indictment having been read out, the martyr
was ordered to hold up his hand, as is usual when
pleading, on which the judge took the opportunity
to browbeat him, because his right hand being
occupied in holding up his heavy chains, he had held
up the left. When asked if he was guilty of what
was charged against him, he answered with his
usual frankness that though the indictment was not
«xact in every particular, yet he quite acknowledged
its substantial truth. And upon this, sentence of
death was pronounced as in cases of high treason.
Such was the degradation of English justice under
Elizabeth, at least where Catholics were concerned.
Such a sentence would have been iniquitous and
illegal, even apart from the cruelty and injustice of
the statutes it professed to apply.
The account of the martyr's trial which has been
given from his Acts is briefly confirmed by the
honest Stow. " Everard Hanse," he writes, "a
seminary priest, was in the Sessions Hall in the Old
Bailey, arraigned ; where he affirmed that he was
subject to the Pope in ecclesiastical causes, and that
the Pope had now the same authority here in
England that he had a hundred years past ; with
other traitorous speeches ; for which he was
condemned and executed."1
1 Stow's Chronicle (1581). The heretics declared he was as
foolish as he was false ; and that it was impossible he could have
R II.
258 BLESSED EVERARD HANSE
Blessed Everard's martyrdom was consummated
three days after his sentence, on the 3ist of July,
1581, at Tyburn, "about eight of the clock in the
morning." On the day before, he wrote from his
prison a letter to his brother which has happily
been preserved.1 It is as follows :
" Brother,
" I pray you be careful for my parents ;
see them instructed in the way of truth ; so that
you be careful for your own state also. What you
shall take in hand that way, think no other but that
God will send good success. My prayers shall
not be wanting to aid you by God's grace. Give
thanks to God for all that He hath sent. Cast not
yourself into dangers wilfully, but pray to God when
occasion is offered you may take it with patience.
" The comforts at the present instant are
unspeakable ; the dignity too high for a sinner ; but
God is merciful. Bestow my things you find
ungiven away upon my poor kinsfolk. A pair of
pantofBes I leave with M. N. for my mother.
Twenty shillings I would have you bestow on them
from me, if you can make so much conveniently ;
some I have left with M. N. I owe ten shillings
and two shillings ; I pray you see it paid ; M. N.
will let you understand how and to whom. If you
want money to discharge it, send to my friends, you
got enough learning in two years to be fit to be ordained priest,
which as the writer of the Briefe Historic remarks was a strange
thing for them to say, as they had thought him learned enough
to be one of their own ministers four or five years before.
1 It is printed in the Briefe Historie.
BLESSED EVERARD HANSE 259
know where, in my name. Summa Conciliorum, I
pray you restore to M. B[lackwell ?] ; the other
books you know to whom.
" Have me commended to my friends : let them
think I will not forget them. The day and hour of my
birth is at hand, and my Master saith ' Tolle crucem
tuam et sequere Me.' Vale in Domino.
" Yours,
" EVERARD HANSE.
" Pridie obitus."
Beneath the gallows he appeared with the same
bright, frank, untroubled manner which had always
been the faithful expression of his character. He
told the people he was a Catholic priest, and was
most glad to die in testimony of his faith. He then
went on to speak of the misrepresentations which
had been industriously circulated of his answers
at his trial. It had been given out that he main-
tained that the Pope could not sin ; that princes
had no sovereignty of their own, the Pope being
supreme in their realms even in civil things : and
that treason to the Queen was no sin before God.
(These calumnies were even put out in print.1)
He denied them in a few words, and protested that
he had never said or meant anything except that
1 See Appendix for an account of this pamphlet. The martyr
cannot have mentioned the fact of these calumnies being printed, as
they did not appear till after his death. The sentence I have put
in parenthesis is evidently an addition of the writers of the Acts.
Father Persons (De Persecutione Anglicana, ap. Concertatio, fol. 31 B)
indignantly relates how Crowley, the minister, had twisted and
misinterpreted the martyr's words.
260 BLESSED EVERARD HANSE
the various so-called treasons, which were nothing
but the confession of the Catholic Faith, were no
offences against God. When asked whether he
acknowledged the Queen for his Sovereign, he
answered that he did acknowledge her as his
Queen, and that he had never offended her
Majesty otherwise than in matters of his con-
science, which their new-made statutes had made
matters of treason.
The ministers asked him to pray with them, but
he answered that it was not lawful for him to pray
with heretics ; but he humbly begged all Catholics
to pray for him and with him. He was praying
earnestly when the cart was drawn from under him.
About a month later the account of his martyrdom
reached the Seminary, and is recorded in the Diary.1
" For a moment or two, scarcely to be counted, he
was left hanging, and then alive and fully conscious,"
the other cruelties were inflicted ; " when his bowels
had been torn out and his heart, still palpitating,
was in the hand of the executioner, he is said to
have pronounced the words : ' O happy day ! '
Moreover, the concurrent testimony of several
witnesses has come to us that when his heart was
thrown into the fire, it leaped up out of the flames
with great violence, and being again flung in and
covered with a faggot of wood, a second time it
leaped up with such force as to lift the faggot out
of its place and hold it for a time quivering in the
smoke." "As if," adds the writer of his Acts, "God
would manifest the victorious constancy of His
1 Donay Diaries (Diarium Secunduin), August 27, 1581.
BLESSED EVERARD HANSE 261
martyr by the miraculous impetuous movement of
his heart."1
" Two nights after," writes Mendoza to Philip II.,
" there was not a particle of earth which his blood
had stained that had not been carried off as a relic,
and infinite sums were given for his shirt and other
clothes." Thus was God glorified in His saints.
E. S. K.
AUTHORITIES. — Brief "e Historie, p. 140. Concertatio, fol. 78 A
— 79 B. Yepes, pp. 356 — 360. Champney, p. 756. Challoner,
i. pp. 25—28.
RELICS. — The only relic remaining of Blessed Everard
Hanse seems to be a little piece of linen stained with his
blood, which is preserved in the private chapel of the
Archbishop of Westminster.
At St. Scholastica's Abbey, Teignmouth, is preserved
a dried heart, which the immemorial tradition of the com-
munity describes as " the heart of an English Martyr which
leaped out of the fire." It may very possibly be that of
Blessed Everard Hanse.
APPENDIX,
There is a pamphlet in the British Museum
entitled *!" A true report, of the A \ raignement and
execution \ of the late Popishe Traitoiir, \ Euerard
Haunce, executed at Ty \ borne, with reformation of
the | errors of a former u \ ntrue \ booke published \
cocerning the \ same. Printed at London, by j
Henrie Bynneman, | Anno 1581.
This work professes to correct the " untrue
1 Raissius, Catalogus Christi Sacerdotum, pp. 14, 15.
262 BLESSED EVERARD HANSE
reportes," of "a pamphlet lately published as
gathered by MS., and printed by Charlewoode
and White, touching ... a wilfull and obstinate
traitor named Everard Ducket alias Haunce," &c.
We glean some facts from this scurrilous libel
(which is said to be the work of Anthony Munday),
e.g., the names of the martyr's judges. They were,
besides Recorder Fleetwood, Sir John Branch, Lord
Mayor ; Sir Owen Hopton, Lieutenant of the Tower;
Sir William Damsell, Knight ; Master Sekford,
Master of Requests to her Majesty, &c.
The indictment was framed " with the advice of
a learned Councillor, Master James Dalton, one of
the Council of the City and of her Majesty's Com-
mission there." It ran thus :
" That Everard Haunce, late of London, clerk,
otherwise called Everard Ducket, late of London,
clerk, the xxviii day of July, in the year of the reign
of our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth, by the grace of
God of England, France, and Ireland, Queen,
defender of the Faith, &c. At London, that is to
say, in the Parish of St. Sepulchre, in the ward of
Faringdon Without of London aforesaid, maliciously
intending to withdraw the subjects of our said
Sovereign Lady the Queen from their natural
obedience toward our said Sovereign Lady the
Queen, and from the religion by her Majesty's
authority within her dominions established, to the
Romish religion, in full and open sessions then
and there holden, before the Justices of our said
Sovereign Lady the Queen of gaol delivery of her
BLESSED EVERARD HANSE 263
gaol of Newgate of London aforesaid, then and
there judicially sitting, did say and utter these false
malicious and slanderous words, that is to say,
that he (meaning himself), the said Everard, being
in England, is subject to the Pope in ecclesiastical
things. And that the Pope hath now the same
authority here of England over the Church that he
had a hundred years past, and which he now hath
at Rome. And that the Pope hath the Holy Spirit
of God given unto him and cannot err. And that
the Pope in publishing that he hath authority to
depose kings and princes, hath delivered true doctrine.
And where the Pope by his sentence hath declared
the Queen (meaning our said Sovereign Lady the
Queen) an heretic, and deprived her of her crown of
this realm of England and her subjects discharged
of their allegiance, he hopeth that the Pope therein
hath not erred. And that he (meaning himself, the
said Everard) is a priest, and so made at Rheims
beyond the seas, and that he came over to win souls,
and wished the Queen's subjects to believe him in
all these things. And that, that which he hath spoken
before, he spake it with purpose and to that intent
that the Queen's subjects should believe him and be
of the same opinion.
" And further that the said Everard, by the words
aforesaid, by him uttered maliciously and traitor-
ously, then and there did put in practice to withdraw
the subjects of our said Sovereign Lady the Queen
from the religion now by her Majesty's authority
established within her dominions, to the Romish
religion, with intent to withdraw the same subjects
264 BLESSED EVERARD HANSE
of our said Sovereign Lady the Queen from their
natural obedience to our said Lady the Queen,
against the peace of our said Lady the Queen, her
crown and dignity, and against the form of the
statute in such case lately made and provided."
The foreman of the jury was one Anthony Hall.
The only witness was the councillor who drew up
the indictment. The jury very quickly returned
their verdict, whereupon the Recorder and Master
Sekford made learned speeches against the Papal
authority, and the Recorder passed sentence of
death.
The martyr having been sent back to Newgate,
a minister named Crowley, " a grave preacher," was
sent to him by the Bench, but he soon returned,
saying he could make nothing of the prisoner, who
was unwilling to listen to him, and further, produced
a paper signed by himself and fifteen others, in which
he declared that the martyr had said, " amongst
other traitorous blasphemies, these words following :
Treason against the Prince is no sin against God."
This was the calumny which the martyr protested
against at his death. It is easy to see how perfectly
innocent words might be perverted in this way.
The martyr was condemned for treason against the
Prince — "Yes," he may have said, "but my so-
called treason is no offence against God." And this
is what actually passed, according to Father Persons*
In any case, the "godly minister" having devised this
calumny, urged on the strength of it that the martyr
should be executed the very next day, lest the
BLESSED EVERARD HANSE 265
Papists should get access to him before his death,
and the truth being divulged, he might have an
opportunity of refuting the lie at his execution.
The writer adds that unfortunately this advice was
not taken, so that Hanse took occasion " to qualify
his speech touching treason against the Queen to be
no sin." The execution was delayed, "not for any
hope of doing good with him, which was of all men
holden desperate," but in order to know the pleasure
of her Majesty's Council, who might order him to
be further examined.
His death is thus described. " And so continu-
ing in the obstinate profession of his false Romish
faith, and requiring the prayers of those of his sect,
and refusing all other intercession to God for him,
he suffered due pains of death and execution, as in
cases of high treason is due and accustomed by the
laws of this realm, to the great dread of God's judg-
ments to himself, a terrible example to others."
We fools esteemed their life madness and their end
without honour. Behold how they are numbered among
the children of God, and their lot is among the saints.1
ED.
1 Wisdom v. 4, 5.
IX.
THE BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION,
JESUIT.
Tyburn, i December, 1581.
ON the 3rd of August, 1553, the good citizens
of London were gladdened by the sight of a
brilliant state pageant, the solemn entry of the first
Queen Regnant of England, Mary Tudor, through
Aldgate, which was festooned and draped with
banners, while the whole route was lined by the
various crafts in their gayest attire. First came the
Lords three and three, with their knights and
gentlemen ; the foreign Ambassadors, each with a
retinue of his own countrymen ; the officers of the
household ; the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas White ;
the Earl of Arundel, bearing the sword of state ; the
ladies of the household, and then her Majesty in " a
long-sleeved robe of crimson velvet, embroidered with
pearls," mounted on a white palfrey whose harness
was fringed with gold. Following the Queen came
her sister, the Princess Elizabeth, and one hundred
and sixty other noble dames according to prece-
dence, the Queen's horse, eight thousand strong, and
the Aldermen, while the city guard with bows and
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 267
javelins brought up the rear. From the roofs and
windows eager and loyal spectators shouted " God
save Queen Mary." Minute guns were fired from
the Tower, and at various points choirs of school
children sang the praises of the Sovereign. The
triumph was not an empty show. The rule of
violence under Henry and Edward was over, the
revolution in what most Englishmen still held to be
sacred seemed to have spent itself. The old order
was once more triumphant.
Opposite St. Paul's the procession halted, and
a bluecoat-boy, thirteen years old, approached her
Majesty to make, in behalf of the London scholars,
an oration in her honour. The boy thus already
conspicuous for his learning, eloquence, and modest
grace was Edmund Campion. Well assured did
his youthful predictions seem that day, of the reign
of justice, mercy, and religion, with which England
was now to be blessed. Yet only twenty-eight
years later, from the same Tower which Mary now
entered in triumph the Blessed Edmund was to
be led out as a traitor and felon, to receive the
martyr's crown.
The year in which this boy was born was marked
by great events, which both for good and evil were
to exercise a dominant influence over his life. Father
Robert Persons, his companion in later years and
his first biographer, thus writes of them :
" His birth happened [on January the 25th]
in about the year of God 1540, and the thirtieth
of King Henry VIII., which was the year wherein
268 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
the said King pulled down and destroyed the greatest
religious houses in England and persecuted most
violently the Catholic faith, for defence whereof
Father Campion was afterwards by God's holy
providence to shed his blood ; as it was also the
year wherein the Religious Order, the Society of
Jesus, was founded and confirmed in Rome by the
See Apostolic, of which Order the said Father was
to be so worthy a member, as afterwards he proved.
And by this account it falleth out in like manner that
when Father Campion so freely and willingly
offered himself to suffer death for the Catholic
religion, in his own native country and city, he was
in the very flower of his age, to wit, between one or
two and forty years old, which is a remarkable
circumstance, both for merit before God and honour
in the sight of man."
His father, by name also Edmund, was a citizen
and bookseller of London. His parents were
Catholics, not only at the time of Edmund's birth,
but also during the reign of Mary, though afterwards
they would seem to have yielded to the times. The
martyr could only hope that they died in the Faith.
The family consisted of three boys and one girl. Of
the boys Edmund and another took to learning, the
third to military service.
When Edmund was about nine -or ten years of
age his parents wished to apprentice him to a
merchant, but a member of the Grocers' Company,
seeing his sharp and pregnant wit, induced the guild
to undertake the boy's education, and he was sent
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 269
first to a preparatory school, and then to Christ-
church, Newgate, founded by Edward VI. out of
confiscated Church property, as a salve to the
conscience of the people. Young Campion carried
off prize after prize, not only in his school, but in the
general competition which was held between the
various Grammar Schools of London. When, there-
fore, he was still a boy, probably in 1555, the Grocers'
Company had no scruple in applying to Sir Thomas
White, already mentioned, to give Campion a
scholarship in his new foundation of St. John's
College, Oxford. With this Sir Thomas most
willingly complied " after he was informed of the
youth's rare towardliness in learning and virtue."
The Company further gave him an exhibition for his
maintenance.
In 1557 Campion, though only seventeen years
of age, was already famous for his eloquence and
his various gifts, and the charm of his character had
so endeared him to Sir Thomas that he made him
Junior Fellow of his College. Sir Thomas was a
staunch Catholic. His firmness and loyalty in the
Wyatt rising had done much to secure Mary her
throne, and he had founded the College of St. John
as a place of safety for Catholics in the great English
heresy. His endowments were, however, too soon
turned to other purposes. Anglicanism was pro-
claimed the only legal religion of the land. The
enforcement of the law was of course a work of
time, but the Royal Commissioners, on whom the
task was laid, did their work skilfully. In 1559 or
1560, by their order, the Catholic President of
2yo BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
St. John's, Dr. Alexander Belsize, on account of his
religion was deprived of his office, and all the
crucifixes, vestments, and holy vessels given to the
chapel by Sir Thomas White were taken away.
The oath of the Queen's spiritual supremacy was
not, however, generally tendered to the members
of the University. It was considered more prudent
not to drive men to extremities, but to be content
with their external acquiescence in the new order
of things.
Five years elapsed without any formal test being
demanded of Campion, but during this period
he was exposed to influences which tended to
weaken the strength of his convictions. A number
of admiring friends, a large circle of disciples,
" Campionists " as much because of their love for
the man as for their admiration of his scholarship
and of his eloquence, gathered round him. This
tended to deaden the voice of conscience, and to
persuade him that as a humanist and a layman he
need not trouble himself with vexed questions of
theology, or with disputes on the Pope's Supremacy.
His obligations to his college and to his pulpit were
clear, the rest but doubtful, and so in the year 1564
he took the oath, and acknowledged the spiritual
headship of the Queen. Thus gradually was the
great change effected in Campion's surroundings.
Though he remained a Catholic at heart, he had
given up the practice of his religion, and had, at
least externally, admitted the determining principle
of the English Reformation.
Campion's position in the University and his
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 271
pre-eminence as a speaker may be appreciated by
some account of his chief oratorical displays. The
first was at the reburial of poor Amy Robsart,
when her body, under pressure of public opinion, was
removed from Cumnor to Oxford for honourable
sepulture. The next was a panegyric, composed in
idiomatic and eloquent Latin, on Sir Thomas White.
Campion enumerates his charities, the thirty towns
which he had enriched, the foundation of Merchant
Taylors' School, the restoration of Gloucester Hall,
and the foundation of St. John's College. "This
he had founded when literature was enslaved,
imprisoned, in poverty, in despair, half dead with
sorrow, washed out with tears ; he has beaten all
of us students, with our holy ways, our sacred
teaching, our pious talk, and our sacrilegious life.
In this man's tongue, manner, gait, there was
nothing polished, dressed up, painted, affected or
false, all was open, pure, sincere, chaste, undefiled.
He begged that we would not pray for his recovery,
but for faith and patience in his last moments, and
nothing annoyed him so much as wishes for a
renewal of health."
His next rhetorical triumph was prompted by an
event of a very different character — the state visit
of Queen Elizabeth to Oxford in 1566, after she had
witnessed the pageants at Kenilworth. Thirteen
years before, Campion had welcomed Queen Mary to
London. He was now to greet with all the fire
of his eloquence the entry of her sister to the
University. Sir William Cecil and the Queen's
advisers were careful to prohibit the introduction
272 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
of any dangerous or theological matter. Campion
was to discourse on "the effect of the moon upon
the tides," and of the "higher and lower heavenly
bodies." On the 3rd of September, 1573, he
defended his thesis before the Queen and her
favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, the Chancellor of
the University, over whose victim, Amy Robsart,
he had, as we have said, but six years previously,
delivered a funeral oration. His academic oppo-
nent was a dear friend, Richard Bristow, who
afterwards became a Catholic, one of the founders
of Douay College, and the author of the celebrated
Motives. In his preamble Campion declares himself
only reconciled to his unequal contest against " four
pugnacious youths, by the thought that he is
speaking in the name of Philosophy, the princess
of letters, before Elizabeth, a lettered Princess,
whose blessed ancestors were adepts in science,
who set her the example of visiting the poor
scholars." Then he addresses " the magnificent
Chancellor, whose godly and deathless benefactions
to the University he could not deny if he would,
and ought not to conceal if he could." Campion's
compliments and eloquence went home, and the
dispute concluded, the Queen specially recom-
mended him to Dudley, who willingly undertook to
further the orator's career. Himself the secret
friend of Papists, till policy persuaded him to
embrace the Puritan cause, Leicester sent for
Campion, and bade him ask what he would, as
the Queen and himself would provide for his
future. Campion modestly replied that the friend-
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 273
ship of the Chancellor was worth more than all
gifts.
Four years later, however, in dedicating to him
his History of Ireland, he gratefully acknowledges
the kindness he had received from the Earl of
Leicester, as Dudley was now called. " How
often," he says, "at Oxford, how often at the
Court, how often at Rycot, and at Windsor, by
letters, and by reports, have you not furthered with
your advice, and countenance, with your authority,
my hopes and expectations, mere student though
I was." Campion has never known Leicester, with
all his power, harm any man, or enrich himself at
other's cost, or act from any unworthy motive.
Such in substance is Campion's opinion of Leicester.
It may seem surprising that he should think so well
of a man whom we now know to have been worth-
less, and on many occasions wicked. But Campion's
mind was naturally deferential, one that thinks no
evil of those placed in exalted positions. He lived
amongst Dudley's friends, who would not have
talked about his misdeeds, while they would have
insisted upon the evidence for the better side of his
character. And again this would have been thrown
into relief from being ignored or decried by rivals
no better than he.
But to return to Campion's oratorical displays
at Oxford. Father Persons thus describes the sequel
to the disputation last mentioned.
" When by chance one day the Ambassador of
Spain, then resident with the Queen, accompanying
s n.
274 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
her in this her progress, whose name was Don
Diego de Guzman, Canon of Toledo, was asked by
the said Queen and her Council how he liked the
exercises of learning which he had heard in that
University of Oxford, he answered : ' Very well,' but
that he marvelled not thereat considering the variety
of good wits and talents which then were discovered,
and presupposing (as he did) that such, as had done
any exercise before her Majesty, did come very well
prepared before for the same ; wherefore he desired
to hear somewhat done extempore and without
preparation.
" Whereupon certain chosen men were called
presently to Martin College, there to dispute upon
the sudden, and upon the questions and themes that
the said Ambassador should propose unto them.
" And so they did, there being present with the
Ambassador, the Earl of Leicester, Sir William
Cecil, then Secretary but afterwards Great Treasurer
of England, and one of the chief persecutors of
Father Campion. There were also divers others
of the Council and the nobility of England present,
together with learned men of that University. And
among others that were called to do this exercise
upon the sudden, Mr. Campion was one, and he
that bare away that day most praise from that place
for his excellent doings, as he also did a little after
for a certain rare oration that he was forced to make
upon the sudden in the Queen's house of Woodstock,
some eight miles from Oxford, before the said
Queen, in which he confessed afterward that he
was like to have lost himself utterly at the begin-
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 275
ning, partly by the hastiness of the time, and partly
by the sudden great pomp wherein the Queen came
forth to hear him, until after a space (as he was
wont to tell) he remembered that she was but a
woman and he a man, which was the better sex, and
that all that splendour and pomp that glittered in
his eyes, was but transitory vanity and had no
substance in it, by which cogitations and other the
like he was emboldened to g'o through with his
speech, as he did to the great contentation of the
Queen and others of the Court, and to his own
high commendation.
" Sir William Cecil himself, then present at these
exercises, who was afterwards made Lord Treasurer
of England, as hath been said, and came to be one
of Father Campion's judges for his execution about
fifteen years afterwards, when this servant of God
stood condemned to be martyred, — this man, I say,
was the chief and principal praiser of Mr. Campion
at that time, who with his voice in Council
persuaded his death, when others of his fellow-
councillors were of contrary opinion, which I have
been told by one that heard with his own ears the
consultation about that matter, but yet when he was
in Oxford he gave singular praises to Mr. Campion
above all the rest for his rare learning and talents,
and invited him with many hopes and promises to
follow that course. And when about some four
years after this Mr. Campion was departed out of
the realm and gone over the sea to Douay, the
said Cecil said to a certain especial friend of
Mr. Campion's, named Richard Stanihurst, gentle-
-276 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
man of Ireland, . . . Cecil, that old fox, affirmed
that it was very great pity to see so notable a man
as Campion was to leave his country, for that indeed
(said he) he was one of the diamonds of England."
With all this success, Campion's mind was not
at rest. Persons, who had been through similar
mental struggles, writes of them as follows.
"The good man had a wonderful fight and
combat with himself what to resolve and what
course it were best for him to follow. For on the
one side there spurred him forward to follow the
world all those flattering hopes and allurements
which before I have signified, together with youth,
ambition, desire to satisfy the expectation of his
friends, and emulation to see others of his equals
and inferiors to pass on and be advanced : but on
the other side held him back and terrified him
greatly, his judgment, the remorse of his conscience,
fear of death, Hell, and the like, for that he could
not persuade his own understanding but that the
Catholic religion only was true, and consequently
that all the doctrine, life, and whole course of the
Protestants was false and damnable, and yet he
desired to follow it for a time. So as on the one side
was his will and affection, or at leastwise a most
vehement inclination of ambition to follow the
Protestants, and on the other side was his judgment
and conscience, which caused a most strong and
dangerous combat within himself for a good time,
and what to resolve he knew not, and so much the
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 277
less for that he wanted all or most of those helps
which the Catholic Church is wont to assign for
men to fly unto in such like cases of doubtful
deliberations concerning the soul, to wit, the holy
sacraments and the spiritual counsels of a good
ghostly father, or of some other godly learned man.
Yet did Mr. Campion heartily by prayer commend
himself to Almighty God, but still hearkened to
both parts inwardly to see whether he could hear
or find any sufficient reasons to satisfy his judgment,
and to appease his mind to follow that which love
of the world for the present did invite him unto."
In 1564, having completed his studies of Aristotle
and natural theology, he was compelled by the
statutes of his College to take up the Fathers, and
then Catholicism . stared him in the face. Let us
hear his friend Persons again.
" One thing there was among all the rest that
did greatly hold his deliberation in suspense, which
was the reading of the works of certain ancient
Fathers of the primitive Church ; for that whatso-
ever one of us had heard or conceived in the whole
day for pulling out of the thorn of conscience, or
for smoothing the way to be Protestant, either by
good-fellowship and conversation with Protestants
themselves, or by hearing their sermons, or reading
their books or the like, all this was dashed soon
after again by one hour's reading of some book or
treatise of the old holy Doctors, and the wound of
our conscience was made again so green and grievous
278 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
as ever before by that which in every leaf and page
almost we should find to be spoken by those holy
men, either of virtue or austerity of life, or of
questions and matters of controversies, and that so
directly for the Catholic religion, and most perspicu-
ously against all that the Protestants did either
teach or practise, as if these ancient Fathers had
lived and seen their dealings, and had been their
open adversaries in these our days."
Still the hour of grace had not struck. If long
formed convictions, the voice of conscience, the
testimony of Holy Scripture and tradition all called
him to abjure the Queen's new religion "the sugared
words of great folk, the pregnant hopes of speedy
and great preferment," bade him linger, for a while
at least, where he was. At this crisis too he had
found a friend, who supplied him with what pro-
fessed to be a conscientious motive for not making
the dreaded sacrifice. This was Richard Cheney,
Bishop of Gloucester. Alone of the Elizabethan
hierarchy, he detested in his heart the doctrines of
the Establishment, but had persuaded himself that
he might lawfully adhere to it externally, if in his
heart he held and promulgated as far as possible
the teaching of the primitive Church. To this course
also he persuaded Campion, and prevailed on him
in spite of his reluctance to be ordained deacon, so
as to be able to preach and carry on Cheney's
work. No sooner, however, was the step taken
than Campion's conscience stung him anew and he
loathed the heretical Orders he had received.
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 279
In 1568, matters were brought to a crisis. The
Grocers' Company, whose exhibition he still held,
suspecting him of secret Popery, summoned him
under pain of losing his scholarship to prove his
orthodoxy by preaching at Paul's Cross. Campion,
who was then Proctor, obtained a temporary post-
ponement, and after further correspondence, in which
the demands of the Company were explicitly formu-
lated, he resigned his exhibition. At this same time,
1569, when his hold on Oxford was being thus
loosened, he was receiving letters from his old
college friend, Gregory Martin, calling him to
Rome. Martin was a man of mark, " the Hebraist,
the Grecian, the poet, the honour and glory of
St. John's." He had been tutor to the Venerable
Philip Howard, but in this year, when the Duke
of Norfolk and his household, on account of his
connection with Mary Queen of Scots, were sum-
moned to attend Common Prayer and sermons,
Martin fled abroad and became a Catholic. Before
he left, however, he wrote to Campion warning him
against the perils of ambition, offering him a home,
and reminding him " that if their money failed one
thing was left — Qui seminant in lacrimis, in exultations
metent — ' They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.' '
Thus urged alike by conscience within and by
hostile pressure without, Campion finally left Oxford
at the completion of his Proctorship, on the ist of
August, 1569.
From Oxford, Campion turned his steps towards
Dublin, where a project was on foot for rebuilding the
old University founded by Pope John XXL, which
280 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
had perished with the suppression of the monasteries.
The chief promoters of the undertaking were James
Stanihurst, Recorder of Dublin, Speaker of the House
of Commons, the father of Richard, Campion's pupil,
and a zealous Catholic, and Sir Henry Sidney, the
Lord Deputy, with whom also Campion was on
terms of intimacy. But the Protestant opposition
was too strong. The work lapsed into the hands of
Elizabeth, who founded Trinity College twenty-five
years later.
The University scheme having failed, Campion,
who was in March, 1571, the guest of Stanihurst,
devoted some ten weeks to compiling a short history
of Ireland. As a specimen of his style a short
quotation may be interesting. It must be remem-
bered that all the other writings of the martyr
which we shall have occasion to cite were written
in Latin. This is his description of the country.
"The soil is low and waterish, and includeth
divers little islands environed with bogs and
marishes : highest hills have standing pools in
their top. The air is wholesome, not altogether so
clear and subtle as ours of England. Of bees good
store, turf and sea coal is their most fuel. It is
stored of kine ; of excellent horses and hawks ;
of fish and fowl. They are not without wolves, and
greyhounds to hunt them, bigger of bone and limb
than a colt. . . . Sheep few, and those bearing
coarse fleeces, whereof they spin notable rug
mantle [frieze]. . . . Eagles are well known to breed
here. Horses they have of pace easy, in running
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 281
wonderful swift. Therefore they make them of great
store. ... I heard it verified by honourable to
honourable, that a nobleman offered and was refused
for one such horse, an hundred kine, five pounds
lands, and an eyrie of hawks yearly during seven
years. . . . The people are thus inclined : religious,
frank, amorous, ireful, sufferable of pains infinite,
very glorious, many sorcerers, excellent horsemen,
delighted with wars, great almsgivers, passing in
hospitality."
Campion was delighted with his stay in Ireland,
adopted its chief Saint as his patron, and when
circumstances made him think of disguising himself,
his predilection was to adopt the semblance and
speech of an Irishman, and he is said to have acted
the part admirably.1
Before his History was finished Campion's troubles
thickened. He was now considered a Catholic by
all, and openly lived as such. But the times were
disastrous for the followers of the old Faith. The
rising in the North had failed. The Bull of
St. Pius V. had been posted by Felton on the
Bishop of London's gates on the feast of Corpus
Christi, 1570. Elizabeth's Government was resolved
on restraining all persons of note supposed to favour
the Catholic side, and to apprehend Campion among
others. At first he remained concealed in Stani-
hurst's house. On March the igth he was at
Turvey, then back again in Dublin, and a few weeks
later at Drogheda.
1 See Blessed Ralph Sherwin's letter of June 4, 1580, quoted
below.
282 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
All this time the pursuivants were at his heels,
but Campion remained ever brave and cheerful, and
found time to continue his learned researches, and
in his hours of retirement to lay deeper foundations
of his spiritual life. After many shifts he finally
embarked from Tredah, a port about twenty miles
from Dublin, disguised under the name of Mr. Patrick,
as servant to Melchior Hussey, the steward to the
Earl of Kildare. On the 26th of May, 1571, he was
present at Dr. Storey's trial in Westminster Hall,
and then took ship to Douay. In mid-Channel his
vessel was overhauled by the Hare, an English
frigate cruising there. As Campion had no pass-
port the captain impounded his money and baggage,
and landed him as a prisoner at Dover, intending
to take him under his own charge to London.
Campion, however, perceived that his captor's main
object was secured by the appropriation of his
effects, and with the captain's tacit consent, effected
his escape. Having obtained a fresh supply of
money from some friends in Kent, he made his way
to Calais and finally reached Douay.
This noble College, the nursery of so many
martyrs, which had been founded by Dr. Allen
four years previously, as yet numbered only fifteen
or sixteen members, among whom were eight or
nine doctors or licentiates in theology. The
students were for the most part converts, and
naturally corresponded with their Protestant friends
who were at all inclined to the Church, in the
hopes of effecting their conversion. It was thus
that Gregory Martin had written to Campion and
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 283
thus that Campion himself wrote to several, who
at his invitation left all and followed him to
Douay. We still possess one such letter, addressed
to the Anglican Bishop Cheney, and dated the
ist of November, 1571. It is for us the first-
fruit of his reconciliation to the Church. We do
not know the exact date of that event, nor how far
he had advanced towards it when he was planning
and writing his History of Ireland. Here both the
suggestion and inspiration are evidently due to his
reception. Father Persons calls the letter " a
vehement epistle," and doubtless the ardour with
which he addresses his correspondent, and the
motives he sets before him, show us the fervour
and the reasons with which he himself had been
actuated at that crisis in his life.
" It is not now as of old the dash of youth, or
facility of pen, nor any punctilious care of regularity
in correspondence, that makes me write to you.
I used to write from the mere abundance of my
heart : a greater necessity has forced me to write
this letter. We have already been too long sub-
servient to popular report, to the times, to reputation.
At length let us say something for the salvation of
our souls. I beg you, by your own natural good-
ness, by my tears, even by the pierced side of
Christ and the wounds of the Crucified, to listen
to me.
" There is no end nor measure to my thinking
of you ; and I never think of you without being
horribly ashamed, praying silently, and repeating
284 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
the text of the Psalm, Ab alienis, Domine, parce
servo tuo. ' From the sins of others, O Lord, spare
Thy servant.' What have I done ? It is written :
Videbas furem et currebas cum eo ; and Laudatur
peccator in desideriis suis, et impius benedicitur. ' Thou
didst see the thief, and didst run with him. The
sinner is praised in his desires, and the impious
is blest.'
" So often was I with you at Gloucester, so often
in your private chamber, so many hours have I
spent in your study and library, with no one near
us when I could have done this business, and I did
it not; and what is worse, I have added flames to
the fever by assenting and assisting. And though
you were superior to me in your counterfeited
dignity, in wealth, age, and learning ; and although
I was not bound to look after the physicking or
dieting of your soul, yet since you were of so easy
and sweet a temper, as in spite of your grey hairs
to admit me, young as I was, to a familiar inter-
course with you, to say whatever I chose in all
security and secrecy, while you imparted to me your
sorrows and all the calumnies of the other heretics
against you. Like a father, you exhorted me to
walk straight and upright in the royal road, to
follow the steps of the Church, the Councils and
Fathers, and to believe that, where there was a
consensus of these, there could be no stain of false-
hood. This now makes me very angry with myself
for my false modesty or culpable negligence, because
I made no use of so fair an opportunity of recom-
mending the Faith, and applied no bold incentive to
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 285
one who was so near to the Kingdom of God, but,
while I enjoyed your favour and renown, I promoted
rather the shadowy notion of my own honour than
your eternal good.
" But as I have no longer the occasion that
I had of persuading you face to face, it remains
that I should send my words to you to witness to
my regard, my care, my anxiety known to Him to
whom I make my daily prayer for your salvation.
Listen, I beseech you, listen to a few words. You
are sixty years old more or less, of uncertain health,
of weakened body, the hatred of heretics, the shame
of Catholics, the talk of the people, the sorrow of
your friends, the laughing-stock of your enemies.
Against your conscience you falsely usurp the name
of a bishop; by your silence you advance a pestilent
sect which you love not, stricken with anathema,
cut off from the body into which alone the graces
of Christ flow, you are deprived of the benefit of all
prayers, sacrifices, and sacraments. Whom do you
think yourself to be ? What do you expect ? What
is your life ? Wherein lies your hope ? Is it in the
heretics, who hate you so implacably, and abuse you
so roundly ? Is it because of all heresiarchs you are
the least crazy? Because you confess the true'
presence of Christ on the altar and the freedom
of man's will ? Because you persecute no Catholics
within your diocese ? Because you are hospitable
to your townspeople and to good men ? Because
you have not plundered your palace and lands as
your brethren do ?
" Surely these things will avail much if you
286 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
return to the bosom of the Church ; if in company
with the household of the faith you suffer even the
smallest persecution, or take any wholesome counsel.
But now whilst you are a stranger and an enemy,
whilst like a base deserter you right under a foreign
flag, it is in vain to attempt to cover your many crimes
with the cloak of virtue. You will gain nothing
except perhaps to be tortured somewhat less
horribly in the everlasting fire than Judas, or Luther,
or Zwinglius, or than those antagonists of yours —
Cooper, Humphrey, and Samson. What signifies
the kind of death ? Death is the same, whether
you are thrown from a high rock into the sea or
pushed from a low bank into the river ; whether one
is killed by iron or by rope, whether racked in
torture or shot dead, whether cut down by sword or
axe, whether crushed under stones or battered by
clubs, whether roasted with fire or scalded in water.
" What is the use of fighting for many articles of
the Faith and to perish for doubting of a few ? To
escape shipwreck and to fall by the dagger ? To
flee from the plague and die of famine ? To avoid
the flames and be suffocated by the smoke ? He
believes no one article of the Faith who refuses to
1 believe any single one. For as soon as he knowingly
oversteps the bounds of the Church, which is the
pillar and ground of the truth, to which Christ
Jesus, the highest, first, and most simple truth, the
source, light, leader, measure, and pattern of the
faithful, reveals all these articles — however many
Catholic dogmas he retains, yet if he perniciously
plucks out one, that which he holds, he holds not by
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 287
orthodox faith, without which it is impossible to
please God, but by his own reason, his own con-
viction.
" In vain do you defend the religion of the
Catholics if you hug only that which you liker
and cut off all that seems not right in your eyes.
There is but one plain known road, not enclosed by
your palings or mine, not by private judgment,,
but by the severe laws of humility and obedience ;
when you wander from this you are lost. You
must be altogether within the house of God, within
the walls of salvation, to be sound and safe from
injury; if you wander and walk abroad ever so
little, if you carelessly thrust hand or foot out of
the ship, if you stir up ever so small a mutiny in
the crew, you shall be thrust forth ; — the door is
shut, the ocean roars, you are undone.
" ' He who gathereth not with Me,' saith the
Saviour, ' scattereth.' Jerome explains, ' he who
is not Christ's is Antichrist's.' You are not so stupid
as to follow the heresy of the Sacramentarians ;
you are not so mad as to be in all things a slave
of Luther's faction, now condemned in the General
Councils, which you yourself think authoritative,,
of Constance and Trent. And yet you stick in
the mire of your own conceit, so that you may
pose as a man who brings to light the artifices of
pedants,1 and who presides as an honoured judge
over the poorer brethren.
" You will remember the sober and solemn
answer which you gave me, when three years ago
1 Cornicum oculos configcre.
288 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
we met in the house of Thomas Button, at
Sherborne, where we were to dine. We fell to
talking of St. Cyprian. I objected to you, in order
to discover your real opinions, that synod of
Carthage which erred about the baptism of
infants. You answered truly that the Holy Spirit
was not promised to one province, but to the
Church ; that the Universal Church is represented
in a full Council, and that no doctrine can be
pointed out about which such Councils ever erred.
Acknowledge your weapons, with which you conquer
the adversaries of the mystery of the Eucharist.
You cry up the Christian world, the assemblies
of bishops, the guardians of the deposit, that is, the
ancient faith ; these you commend to the people
as the interpreters of Scripture ; most rightly do
you ridicule and hold up to scorn the impudent
figment of certain professors of false patristic.1
" Now what do you say ? Behold the renowned
Fathers, the patriarchs and apostolic men, of late
gathered at Trent, who were all united to contend
for the ancient faith of the Fathers. Legates,
prelates, cardinals, bishops, deputies, doctors of
diverse nations, of mature age, of rare wisdom,
princely dignity, wonderful learning. There were
collected Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portu-
guese, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians, Flemings, Illyrians,
many Germans, some Irish, Croats, Moravians —
even England was not unrepresented. All these,
whilst you live as you are living, anathematize
1 Patrunculorum quorundam. So Bombino for Latrunculorum , which
might mean " worthless wretches," " mere pawns."
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 289
you, drive you out, banish you, abjure you.
What reason can you urge ? Especially now you
have declared war against your colleagues, why do
you not make full submission, without any excep-
tions, to the discipline of these Fathers ? See you
aught in the Lord's Supper that they saw not,
discussed not, resolved not ? Dare you equal
yourself by even the hundredth part with the lowest
theologians of this Council ? I have confidence in
your discretion and modesty, you dare not. You
are surpassed then by your judges in number, value,
weight, and in the serious and clear testimony of
the whole world.
" Once more consult your own heart, my poor
old friend. Show again your old nobility of
character and those excellent gifts which of late
are smothered in the mud of dishonesty. Give
yourself to your mother who begot you to Christ,
nourished you, consecrated you ; acknowledge how
cruel and undutiful you have been ; let confession
be the salve of your sins. You have one foot in
the grave; you must die, perhaps directly, certainly
in a very short time, and stand before that tribunal
where you will hear, ' Give an account of thy
stewardship.' Unless, while you are on the way,
you make it up quickly and exactly with the
Adversary of sin, it shall be required to the last
farthing, and you shall be driven miserably from the
land of the living by Him whom you will never be
able to pay.
" Then those hands which have conferred
spurious Orders on so many wretched youths shall
T II.
290 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
for very pain scratch and tear your sulphurous body ;
that mouth stained with perjury, and defiled with
schism, shall be filled with fire and worms and the
breath of tempests. That swelling carnal pomp
of yours, your episcopal throne, your yearly
revenues, spacious palace, honourable greetings,
band of servants, elegant furniture, that affluence
for which the poor ignorant people esteem you so
happy, shall be exchanged for fearful wailings,.
gnashing of teeth, stench, misery, filth, and chains.
There shall the spirits of Calvin and Zwingli, whom
you now oppose, afflict you for ever, with Arius,
Sabellius, Nestorius, Wyclif, Luther, — yea, with the
devil and his angels you shall suffer the pains of
darkness and belch out blasphemies.
" Spare yourself, be merciful to your soul, spare
my grief. Your ship is wrecked, your merchandise
lost ; nevertheless seize the plank of penance, strike
out with all your might, and come even naked to
the harbour of the Church. Fear not but that
Christ will preserve you with His hand, run to meet
you, kiss you, and put on you th$ white garment ;
the hosts of Heaven will exult. Take no thought
for your life; He will take thought for you, who
gives the beasts their food, and feeds the young
ravens that call upon Him.
"If you but made trial of our banishment, if you
but cleared your conscience and came to behold and
consider the living examples of piety which are
shown here by bishops, priests, friars, masters of
colleges, rulers of provinces, lay people of every age,
rank and sex, I believe that you would give up six
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION agr
hundred Englands for the opportunity of redeeming
the residue of your time by tears and sorrow. But
if for divers reasons you are hindered from going
freely whither you would, at least free your mind
from its grievous chains, and whether you remain
or whether you flee, set your body any task, rather
than let its grossness oppress you, and banish you
to the depths of Hell. God knows those that are
His, and is near to all that call upon Him in truth.
" Pardon, my venerated old friend, for these just
reproaches and for the heat of my love. Suffer
me to hate that deadly disease, let me avert the
perilous crisis of so noble a man and so dear a
friend, with any dose however bitter. That it will
be so — if Christ gives grace and you do not refuse —
I hope as firmly as I love you dearly, and I love you
as passing excellent in nature, in learning, in gentle-
ness, in goodness, and as doubly dear to me for
your many kindnesses and courtesies. If you
recover yourself, you make me happy for ever ; if
you decline, this letter is my witness. God judge
between you and me, your blood be on yourself.
Farewell. — From him that most desires your
salvation.
" EDMUND CAMPION."
(Nov. i, 1571.)
As a summary of arguments against the via
media, as an exposition of the hollowness of the
Anglican position, of the absolute, essential and
necessary antagonism between Anglicanism and
Catholicism, of the impossibility of salvation outside
the one Church, and of the consequent need for
292 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
all to join it, this letter is perhaps unsurpassed.
How far it told with Cheney, we know not. The last
traces of Catholicism were being expunged from
Elizabeth's religion. The Communion was no longer
to be put into the mouth but into the hands of the
communicant ; all ceremonies and gestures not
prescribed in the prayer-book were to cease ; people
were to communicate, not on the great feasts of
Easter or Christmas, but on Ash Wednesday and on
one of the two Sundays before Easter, Whit Sunday,
and Christmas. All altars were to be pulled down
and the altar-stones defaced, and put to some
common use. Prayers for the dead, the wearing
or the use of the rosary, the burning of candles
on the feast of the Purification, and the sign of
the Cross were alike strictly forbidden. All this
was enough to decide Cheney. Still Campion
says of him, in 1581, two years after the Bishop's
death, " a most miserable old man, evil entreated by
robbers without, who yet entered not his father's house"
It is possible that he was reconciled secretly ; in
any case he was mistrusted by the Protestants
in life and in death, for though he was buried in
Gloucester Cathedral, no monument or memorial
marked his remains.
At Douay Campion took the degree of Bachelor
of Divinity, in acts held on March the 2ist, and the
27th of November, 1572, and the 2ist of June, 1573,
and received minor orders and the sub-diaconate.
After nearly two years here, Campion felt drawn
to the Society of Jesus, and set forth in pilgrim's
garb for Rome. On the road he met an old Oxford
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 293
acquaintance, a Protestant, who had known him
" in great pomp and prosperity," and who remons-
trated with him on his absurd dress and mean mode
of life, as unworthy of an Englishman, and fit only
for a crazy fanatic. But Campion, says Persons,
" made such a speech of the contempt of this world,
and the eminent dignity of poverty, as greatly moved
the man and us also his acquaintance that remained
yet in Oxford when the report reached our ears."
Campion having reached Rome in the spring
of 1573, entered the Society in April, and there
being then no English Province, he was allotted to
that of Austria. After two months in Prague, he
spent one year's probation at Briinn, and then
returned to Prague to teach. His fervour in his
novitiate may be guessed from the following letters
addressed to his late companions at Briinn.
I.
" How much I love you in the bowels of Jesus
Christ, my dearest brothers, you may conclude from
this, that in spite of my daily occupations which
scarcely leave me time to breathe, I have decided
to steal time from the midst of my functions and
cares to write to you. How could I do otherwise
directly I heard of a sure messenger to Briinn ? How
could I help being set on fire at the remembrance
of that house, where there are so many burning
souls, fire in their mind, fire in their body, fire in their
words — the fire which God came to send upon earth,
that it might always burn there ? O dear walls, that
once shut me up in your company ! Pleasant
294 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
recreation-room, where we once talked so holily !
Glorious kitchen, where the best friends . . . contend
for the saucepans in holy humility and charity
unfeigned ! How often do I picture to myself one
returning with his load from the farm, another from
the market ; one sweating stalwartly and merrily
under a sack of rubbish, another under some other
toil ! Believe me, my dearest brothers, that your
dust, your brooms, your chaff, your loads, are
regarded by angels with joy, and that through
them they obtain more for you from God than if
they saw in your hands sceptres, jewels, and purses
of gold.
" Would that I knew not what I say; but yet, as
I do know it, I will say it : in the wealth, honours,
pleasures, pomps of the world, there is nothing but
thorns and dirt. The poverty of Christ has less
pinching parsimony, less of weariness, than an
emperor's palace. But if we speak of the spiritual
food, who can doubt that one hour of this familiar
intercourse with God and with good spirits, is
better than all the years of kings and princes ?
I have been about a year in religion, in the world
thirty-five ; what a happy change, if I could say
I had been a year in the world, in religion thirty-
five ! . . . Prague, 26 February, 1575.
ii.
"Although the words of men, my dearest
brothers, ought to have much less weight and
influence with you than that Spirit who without
sound of words whispers in your ears, yet since this
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 295
work of love is not altogether useless or unnecessary,
your charity will cause you to receive this fraternal
letter, the witness of my love and duty, with your
usual kindness. I write not to you as though you
required the spur, for wherever you go your hearts
.are ever inflamed with all the virtues, but that I,
while I employ my time in writing to you, may spur
myself, and may enjoy the perfume of the remem-
brance of your affection, and may testify my
affection towards you. And I would that, as I speak
and you perform, so you might speak and I perform.
For I know what liberty there is in obedience,
what pleasure in labour, what sweetness in prayer,
what dignity in humility, what peace in conflict,
what nobleness in patience, what perfection in
infirmity.
" But to reduce these virtues to actual practice,
there is the rub, that is the work which you are
doing, running in glorious career what I may call
races of Heaven on earth. I, as the poet says,
will follow as I can, non passibus cequis. My dearest
brothers, our life is not long enough to thank
Christ for revealing these mysteries to us. Which
of us would have believed unless He had called him
and instructed him in this school, that such thorns,
such filth, such misery, such harrowing sorrows
were concealed in the world under the feigned
name of goods and pleasures ? Which of us would
have thought your kitchen better than a royal
palace ? your broths better than any banquet ?
your troubles than others' contentment ? your
conflicts than their quiet ? your crumbs than their
296 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
abundance ? your mean estate than their triumphs
and victories ? For I ask you, whether, if you
could compass what they so much desire, and
through the whole course of your life feed your
eyes on sight-seeing, and changes of scene and of
company, your eyes would be the stronger ? If you
fed your ears with news, would they be the fuller ?
If you gratified your heart's every desire, would
it be richer ? If you filled your flesh with feasting,
would it become immortal ? This is their dark
delusion, who are deceived by vanities, and know
not what a happy life means. For while they hope
and expect great things, they fancy they are making
great progress, and not one in a hundred obtains
what he dreamed, and if perchance one obtains it,
yet after he has reckoned up his accounts and made
an inventory of his load of care, the slipperiness of
fortune, his disgraceful servility, his fears, plots,
troubles, annoyances, quarrels, crimes, which must
always accompany and vex the lovers of the world,
he will doubtless find himself to be a very base and
needy slave. One sigh of yours for Heaven is better
than all their clamours for this dirt ; one conver-
sation of yours, where the angels are present, is better
than all their parties and debauched drinking-bouts,
where the devils fill the bowls. One day of yours
consecrated to God is worth more than all their life,
which they spend in luxury. My brothers, run as
you have begun ; acknowledge God's goodness to
you, and the dignity of your state. Can any pomp
of kings or emperors, any grandeur, any pleasure,
I will not say equal, but shadow forth your honour
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 297
and consolation ? They (I speak of the good among
them) fight under Christ their King, with their
baggage on their back ; you are eased of your
burdens, and are called with the beloved disciple to
be familiar followers of your Lord. They are admitted
to the palace, you to the presence chamber ; they to
such repast as they can find, you to the store-rooms
filled with delicious meats; they to friendship, you
to love; they to things costly and rare, but you to
the innermost recesses of the treasury. Think how
hard they are put to, they even who live as they
ought in this naughty world ; then you will more
easily see what you owe to His mercy in calling
you out of infinite dangers into His Society. How
hardly shall they follow Christ when He marches
forth in haste against His enemies, who have wives
on their bosom, children on their shoulders, lands
on their back, cares on their heads, whose feet are
bound with cords, whose spirits are well-nigh
smothered. Is not your happiness great whom the
King marshals by His side, covers with His cloak,
clothes and honours with His own livery ?
"Yet after all what great thing is it for me to leave
friends for Him, who left Heaven for me ? What
great thing for me to be a servant to my brethren,
when He washed the feet of the traitor Judas ?
What wonder if I obey my fathers, when He
honoured Pilate ? What mighty thing for me to
bear labours for Him, who bore His Cross for me ?
What disgrace if I, a sinner, bear to be rebuked,
when He in His innocency, was curst, spit upon,
scourged, wounded, and put to death ? Whenever
2g8 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
we look into this glass, my brothers, we see clearly
that the temptation of no pleasure, the fear of no
pain, should pluck us from the arms of such a
master. You see I have nearly filled my paper,
though I have plenty to do. It is^time to check
myself and to remit you to that Teacher, who by
His sacred influences can impress these things
more strongly on your minds than I can. Hear
Him, for He hath the words of eternal life.—
20 February, 1577."
On the i8th of October, 1574, Campion, having
completed his novitiate, was sent to teach rhetoric
at the Jesuit College at Prague. He both excited
and directed the literary enthusiasm of this College
with marvellous success. For the spiritual benefit
of his students he founded, in January, 1575, the
Sodality of the Immaculate Conception. Besides
his professorship he was loaded with other offices.
In the morning he rose half an hour before the
rest ; he rang the bell to arouse them, and went
to each cell to awaken the inmate and light his
candle. After fifteen minutes he repeated his visits
to see that all were dressing ; then he rang both
for the beginning and end of prayers. After two
hours of school he went to the kitchen to wash
the dishes. Without the house "he preached
publicly," says Persons, " made exhortations in
private, taught the Christian doctrine unto children,
heard confessions, visited prisons and hospitals of
sick men, and at the death of sundry great persons
made such excellent funeral orations as astonished
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 299
the hearers." Though we are not to suppose that
he did all these things every day, it nevertheless
seemed a miracle that he could bear all his labours,
and yet he was never in better health.
It is interesting to turn at this point to his
discourse, De juvene Academico,1 in which he sets
forth what he conceives to be the highest ideal of a
Catholic scholar.
This imaginary person is supposed to be born
of well-to-do Catholic parents, to have been gently
nurtured, and to have learnt his religion with his
alphabet. His mind was " subtle, hot, and clear ;
his voice flexible, sweet, and sonorous ; his walk
and all his motions lively, gentle, and subdued, and
the whole man seeming a palace fit for wisdom to
dwell in." He was taught by one of the greatest
scholars of the day, and his pronunciation specially
cared for, so that when he grew older, he easily
acquired the true terms of eloquence. The school
years were devoted to the classics, especially to
the works of Cicero in Latin for the purpose of
debate, and he acquired a knowledge of painting,
playing the lute, and singing at sight. On attaining
the age of sixteen he began to meditate on his
vocation in life, and to prepare himself for that,
1 The date of this composition is uncertain. Father Persons
ascribes it to Campion's stay in Ireland, Mr. Simpson to his residence
at Douay, and conceives it to refer to the seminarists. But it is
more probable that it was written while Campion was at Prague,
where he taught secular students, such as are described in his
speech. This speech, moreover, contains no reference to England,
or to the very peculiar circumstances of the Bouay seminarists.
300 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
he read philosophy, chiefly in Aristotle and Plato,
and his studies further included history, mathe-
matics, and the physical sciences, as far as they
were then known. All his reading was done in
order and moderation. He avoided alike pro-
miscuous literature and late hours, and always
allowed himself about seven hours sleep. Above
all, he never read writings of a dangerous or
immoral kind, of which Ovid's Art of Love is
given as a type. His religious exercises included
attendance at the sermons and catechisms, private
conferences with theologians, and the perusal of
contemporary Catholic authors, especially contro-
versialistic, to arm him against the dangers of the
day. He was on his guard against superstition.
With his fellow-students he was gentle and kind,
especially with those of lowly birth, and was atten-
tive and charitable to the sick.
At the age of twenty-three this ideal student
begins his course of theology proper, and here
Campion artistically ends. The academic course
might be considered as completed, and his hearers
were left to infer that this ideal school-boy and
university man would eventually develop into an
ecclesiastic who would effect wonders in the cause
of God, of the Church, and of his fellow-men.
After exhorting his auditors not to despair
because the ideal was so high, he concludes with
an ardent appeal to them to give themselves heart
and soul to the service of the Church.
" Listen to our Heavenly Father asking back
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 301
His talents with usury ; listen to the Church, the
mother that bore and nursed us, imploring our
help ; listen to the pitiful cries of our neighbours
in danger of spiritual starvation ; listen to the
howling of the wolves that are spoiling the flock.
The glory of your father, the preservation of your
mother, your own salvation, the safety of your
brethren are in jeopardy, and can you stand idle ?
If this house were blazing before your eyes, what
would you think of the young reprobate who sang
or grinned, or snapped his ringers, or rode cock-
horse on his cane, in the common crisis ? Behold
by the wickedness of the wicked the house of God
is devoted to the flames and to destruction, number-
less souls are being deceived, are being shaken, are
being lost ; any one of which is worth more than
the empire of the whole world. Do not, I pray you,
regard such a tragedy as a joke ; sleep not while
the enemy watches ; play not while he devours his
prey ; relax not in idleness and vanity while his
fangs are stained with your brother's blood. It is
not wealth or liberty or station, but the eternal
inheritance of each of us, the very life-blood of our
souls, our spirits, and our lives that suffer. See
then, my dear scholarly young friends, that you lose
none of this precious time, but carry a plentiful and
rich crop away from this seminary, enough to supply
the public wants, and to gain for yourselves the
reward of dutiful sons."
A word must here be said about the interior
trials from which Campion suffered at this period.
302 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
Father Persons tells us, that " the greatest and only
difficulty which the Fathers there had with him
for a time, was to appease his conscience about the
scruple, whereof I have spoken, touching his being
made deacon in England after the heretical fashion ;
the memory of which profane degree and schismatical
order did so much torment his mind every time
that he did think attentively of it, as it did breed in
him extreme affliction. Neither sufficed it to tell
him, which also he knew right well of himself, that
it was no order, degree, or character at all that he
had received, seeing he that gave it to him and laid
his hands upon him was no true Bishop, and
consequently had no authority to give any such
order more than a mere layman, and that it was
only an apish imitation of the true Bishops of the
Catholic Church, that which the Protestant Bishops
did use for a show to the people, as though they
had holy and ecclesiastical orders among them ;
but indeed themselves did not so esteem thereof that
any character was given as in Catholic ordinations
by imposition of hands, for that amongst them a
man be a priest or minister for a time and then a
soldier or craftsman again, and that the Puritans
or newer Calvinists did deny flatly all spiritual
authority of Bishops. And therefore, albeit the sin
was great for a Catholic man, especially such as
Mr. Campion then was, to take any ordination at
the hands of any such heretical, schismatical, or
excommunicated persons ; yet was he to believe
that that sin was now fully forgiven by his hearty
repentance and turning to Almighty God, and by
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 303.
his satisfaction already done for the same ; and
therefore that he should trouble himself no more
with the memory thereof, but rather put it wholly
out of his mind and cheerfully proceed in the service
of God which he had taken in hand.
"This, I say, and divers other such-like points
were often inculcated to him by these learned men
there, and especially by his ghostly fathers ; which
though for a time did greatly comfort him, yet
every now and then the remembrance of this mark
of the English beast, as afterwards he was wont
to tell us, did make him sad and melancholy. And
he could never wholly be delivered of this inward
grief until the absolute order and commandment
of his General came from Rome to trouble himself
no more about that scruple, and until he was made
both deacon and priest by the Archbishop of
Prague, after the rite of the Catholic Church, for
by the receiving of this true character, the other
imagination was wholly blotted out and put in
oblivion.
" So then after this he lived in very great quiet
and contentment of mind all the time he abode in
that country, which was for the space of eight yearsr
in which time he applied himself to the labours
and functions of his religion with such exceeding
charity and zeal and perfect obedience, as I have
heard some of the Fathers say who lived there with
him, that albeit he was ever fully occupied and
many times with divers charges and functions at
once, as reading, preaching, and the like, yet it was
never known that he so much as propounded any
3o4 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
other difficulty to his Superior when he laid any
new labour upon him but only this : ' Doth your
Reverence think I am sufficient to discharge that
office together with the other which I had before? '
And if the Superior said yes, he took the same
upon him without further reply, persuading himself
to hear God's voice by the voice of his Superior ;
and if God did lay this charge upon him, He would
give him strength also, and ability to perform it.
This was his manner of proceeding then, and ever
after, and namely in the great affair of his journey
to England, as he told to his General, and to us
too, when he returned to Rome ; and protesteth the
same in his epistle to the Council of England,
whereof we shall speak after, and therefore no
marvel if Christ his Master prospered him so well
and brought him to so happy an end, seeing that
in all his actions he cast himself so confidently
upon His holy providence."
Whilst at Prague, Campion had several oppor-
tunities of helping or encouraging his own country-
men. He had interviews with Sir Philip Sidney,
the son of his former protector in Ireland, who,
though only twenty-one years of age, had been sent
to Bohemia on a diplomatic mission. After much
argument Sidney professed himself convinced of the
truth of the Faith, but said he must remain as he
was, though he promised never to injure Catholics.
Later on, in 1577, Campion wrote to Gregory
Martin to encourage him, at the time when the
English College at Douay was in great danger of
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 305
being suppressed by the machinations of the English
and Dutch heretics. It was (in great measure) to
guard against this danger that the English College
at Rome was first opened, and Martin was sent
there to look after the students. Campion cheered
him with the following affectionate letter :
" Such accusations as those wherewith you
accuse me, trouble me not, for they coax out of you
a letter full of endearing complaints, and let me see,
to my joy, how lovingly you look for my reply. It
may perhaps be stale to excuse myself on the
plea of business, but I do, and ever will steal time
enough for the religious rites of our friendship,
which is always in my heart. I lately sent a parcel
to you at Douay : in it there was a long letter to
you ; and because you did not receive it, you wrangle
with me about the postmen. But don't irritate
me, though you are tall and I short.
" Your next sentence gives me sad news, which
nips my jokes in the bud. Are there indeed such
troubles in Flanders? Has the peril reached to
the English College? How far? Are they to be
driven out ? Let them be driven anywhere but into
their own country. What is it to us, to whom
England is imprisonment, the rest of the world
transportation ! Be of good cheer ; this storm will
drive you into smooth water.
" Make the most of Rome. Do you see the dead
corpse of that Imperial City ? What in this life
can be glorious, if such wealth, such beauty, has
come to nothing ? But what men have stood firm
u n.
306 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
in these miserable changes, — what things ? The
relics of the saints — and the chair of the Fisherman.
What a work of Providence ! Why is Heaven
neglected for worldly glory, when we see with our
own eyes that not even on earth have the rulers
of earth been able to preserve these monuments of
their vanity, these trophies of their folly ! What
will this smoke seem in the ether of Heaven, when
it so soon blows away in the atmosphere of earth ?
How will angels laugh when even men mock ?
"But 7\aO/ca? eh 'AOijvas. It is 'carrying
coals to Newcastle ' to write such things to you.
For your whole letter breathes a noble spirit ; your
story, your hopes, and your requests set me in a
blaze at all points. Nor is this the first time ; all
your letters show with what prudence, with what
Christian love, you love me, when you so heartily
congratulate me on the state of life which I have
embraced, though it places so strong a barrier to
our union. This is real friendship. I remember
too how earnestly you called me from Ireland to
Douay, how you admonished me, and how effective
were your words. . . . What you foretold is fulfilled.
I live in affluence, and yet I have nothing; and I
would not exchange the hardships of my Institute for
the realm of England. If our tears are worth all
this, what are our consolations worth ? And they are
quite numberless and above all measure. So, as you
rejoice with me, you may go on rejoicing, for what I
have found is indeed most joyful. As for your praises,
I pray you, my dear Father, to commend my soul to
God in your Sacrifices that it may become less
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 307
unworthy of your praise. This is the sum — since
for so many years we had in common our college,
our meals, our studies, our opinions, our fortune,
our degrees, our tutors, our friends and our enemies,
let us for the rest of our lives make a more close and
binding union, that we may have the fruit of our
friendship in Heaven. There also I will, if I can,
sit at your feet."
Campion had long cherished the hope of
returning to England as a missioner of the true
Faith, and his desire was now to be gratified.
Dr. Allen begged the Pope and the General of
the Society to send some Jesuits to England, and
it was determined that Campion and Persons should
be the first to go. Whilst the General wrote officially
to Campion's Superiors, Dr. Allen conveyed the
message to our martyr in the following beautiful
letter :
" Rome, the 5th of December, 1579.
" My father, brother, son, Edmund Campion,
for to you I must use every expression of the
tenderest ties of love, — Since the General of your
Order, and he, as I take it, speaks for Christ
Himself, calls you from Prague to Rome and thence
to our own England ; since your brethren after the
flesh call upon you (for though you hear not their
words, God has heard and granted their prayers),
I who am so closely connected with them, with you,
and with our common country, both in the world
and in the Lord, must not be the only one to keep
3o8 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
silence, when I should be first to desire you, to call
you, to cry to you. . . . Make all haste and come,
my dearest Campion ; you have done enough
at Prague towards remedying the evils that our
countrymen inflicted upon Bohemia. It will be
dutiful, religious and Christian in you to devote the
rest of your life and some part of your extraordinary
gifts to our beloved country, which has the greatest
need of your labours in Christ.
" I do not stay to inquire what your wish and
inclination may be, since it is your happiness to live,
by the will of others, not by your own ; and you would
not shrink from the greatest perils or the farthest
Indies if your Superior bade you go. Our harvest
is already great in England ; ordinary labourers are
not enough ; more practised men are wanted, but
chiefly you and others of your Order. The General
has yielded to all our prayers ; the Pope, the true
father of our country, has consented ; and God in
whose hand are the issues, has at last granted that
our own Campion, with all his gifts of wisdom
and with increased gifts of grace, should be restored
to us. Prepare yourself then for a journey, for a
work, for a trial. You will have an excellent
colleague. And ' though they still live who sought
the Child's life,' yet ' a door is open for you in the
Lord.' It is not I that am preparing for you and
your Order the place in England that your soul
presaged, but it is you, I hope, who will procure for
me and mine the power of returning. . . ."
Father Persons thus describes the advent in
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 309
Bohemia of the summons to England, and what
followed thereupon.
" As soon as ever the Rector of Prague had
intimated the General's order unto him, he, taking
it as coming from God Himself, smiling to the
Rector, said that he did accept the citation, and
would make his appearance as he was commanded ;
and being scarce able to hold tears for joy and
tenderness of heart went to his chamber, and there
upon his knees to God satisfied his appetite of
weeping and thanksgiving, and offered himself
wholly to His divine disposition without any
exception or restraint, whether it were to rack,
cross, quartering, or any other torment or death
whatsoever.
" After this he asked leave of his Rector to
bestow and distribute among certain peculiar
scholars and fellows of his that remained in Prague,
some dictates and writings that he had gathered
there, and some few others he carried with him to
Italy, and there gave them also away; and with
these and with his breviary only he took his journey
on foot to Rome, being not much less distant than
his other journey afterward from Rome to England.
And surely I remember he came after so venerable
a manner to Rome as he might move devotion, for
he came in grave priest's garb, with long hair after
the fashion of Germany, and he served God so
earnestly upon the way, and commended the success
of his journey with so great instance and devotion
unto Him, as it was not hard to prognosticate what
was like to ensue of the same.
310 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
"Yea, not only now, but before he departed out of
Prague there happened this. [The night before
Father Campion left Prague, a certain Father James
Gall, a Silesian and a very simple soul, who was
reputed to have ecstasies, wrote over the door of
Campion's cell, P. Edmundus Campianus, Martyr.
He was reprimanded next day for his breach of
discipline, and excused himself by saying that he
had felt impelled to act as he had done.]
" Father Campion's arrival in Rome was in the
year 1580, upon the Passion Week, and after he had
been with his General and understood his mind
about the journey to England, and that it should be
immediately after the octave of Easter, he made
instant suit that, seeing the time was so short, he
might be distracted with no other thing or cogitation,
but only to commend himself to God, and visit the
holy places of the city, and prepare himself for the
voyage. In which voyage and mission he desired
most earnestly and humbly that he might be charged
with no temporal care or solicitude in the world,
either to be superior to other, or to provide for meat
and drink or the like, but that he might be left
alone to his prayers, and to preach and teach when
occasion should be offered. And this point he
urged so far forth, and showed so hearty an aversion
from meddling with the same, as it was the cause
that the charge of the mission was laid upon his
fellow [i.e., Father Persons himself] , though of less
age, standing in religion, and ability than himself.
" Now, then, when Father Campion saw himself
freed from all other care and cogitation, but only
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 311
to attend to his devotion, he took his fill thereof;
and in those fifteen or twenty days that he stayed in
Rome he went every day to pray and say Mass in
different churches where Apostles' and Saints' bodies
lay. And the like did for their part, and had done
all the Lent before, those other priests also of the
English Seminary that were appointed by their
Superiors to go with us in this first mission. . . .
Two of the principal were Mr. Ralph Sherwin and
Mr. Luke Kirby, that afterwards were fellows to
Father Campion in glorious martyrdom. All these,
I say, together used such notable and extraordinary
diligence for preparing themselves well in the sight
of God, and to obtain His holy grace and the
assistance of His blessed saints for this mission, as
was matter of edification to all Rome. . . .
" He went very badly apparelled (as I have
before signified), to wit, with old buckram under a
bare cloak, and this of his own choice, for he would
say, that to him that went to be hanged in England,
any kind of apparel was sufficient. He took unto
himself for this journey the name of his old
protector in Ireland, by which he escaped before,
which was of St. Patrick, apostle of that country,
recommending himself most devoutly unto him ;
and so kept the same until he was ready to enter
England, at what time he was persuaded to leave
it in respect of the new troubles raised in that
country by Dr. Sander's arrival there, for which
occasion he might be suspected or called perhaps
in question for an Irishman, if he continued that
name, whereupon he left it and called himself
312 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
Edmonds, in remembrance of St. Edmund, King
and Martyr of England, whom he desired to
imitate.
"The manner of the whole journey was that
one or two only were charged with the care of
providing victuals upon the way, so that all the rest
might the better attend unto their devotions. In
the morning, after the Itinerarium said, each man
had his time allotted for their meditations and
mental prayer, and after that to say their service of
the Breviary and other devotions as each man
would, and where commodity of church and of
other things necessary was offered, there either all,
or as many of the priests as could, or at least some
one for all the rest, said Mass.
" After dinner also, besides their ordinary service
of Evensong, Compline, and Matins for the next
day, they had their several times appointed for
saying their rosary or their beads and divers sorts
of litanies, and towards night the examen of their
conscience, which every man did with so great care
and diligence as men that supposed that within very
few days after they might chance to see themselves
before the judgment-seat of Almighty God ; seeing
they knew the entertainment which they were like
to receive in their country if they were appre-
hended, and for this cause, to prepare themselves
the better to this event, the book which they most
read and conferred of upon the way was St. Luke's
story of the Acts of the Apostles.
" But Father Campion, among all the rest, had a
fashion to leave the rest of the company every
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 313
morning after the Itinerarium was said, and to get
him before the space of some half-mile or more to
the end he might with more freedom make his
prayers alone, and utter his zealous affections unto
his Saviour without being heard or noted by his
fellows. And this he used throughout all the way,
which endured more than a month, and would not
suffer himself to be overtaken until he had fully
finished his devotions, which was commonly some
hour before dinner ; and then he would stay to go
in company with the rest, and would be so merry
and talk of suffering for Christ with such comfort
(for of this point commonly was the subject of
their talk) as a man might easily perceive with
whom he had had conversation in his prayers
before. . . .
"[At Bologna the party was hospitably received
by Cardinal Paleotto, and] the very like courtesy
and kind entertainment had we also afterward of
the good Cardinal [i.e., St. Charles] Borromeo, Arch-
bishop of Milan, whose rare sanctity is sufficiently
known to the whole world. He received us, I say,
all into his house and detained us with him for
divers days, had sundry learned and most godly
speeches with us tending to the contempt of this
world and perfect zeal of Christ His service ;
whereof we saw so rare an example in himself,
and his austere and laborious life, being nothing in
effect but skin and bone through continual pains,
fasting, and penance, as without saying any word he
preached to us sufficiently, so as we departed from
him greatly edified and exceedingly animated. . . ."
3i4 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
Then they pushed on by Turin, and across
Mont Cenis for Geneva. There they called on
Beza. The door was opened by Candida his so-
called wife, whom he had run away with from her
husband in Paris. After much difficulty she con-
sented to bring them in. Beza appeared in his long
black gown, round cap, and fair long beard ; he
saluted them courteously but did not offer them a
seat. They questioned him on the subject of
religion, and Campion who was then disguised as
a servant, " faced out the heretical old fool," says
Sherwin, by asking him to explain the unity of the
Swiss and English religions, seeing their difference
on such important points as the Sacraments. Beza
soon thought his best plan was to bow them out,
which he accordingly did. They left Geneva the next
day, saying a Te Deum for their escape from that
" miserable " city, and finally reached Rheims on
May the 3ist, after a journey of nearly six weeks.
The whole party was received with enthusiasm,
" and especially Father Campion was exceeding
welcome both to Mr. Dr. Allen, the President, and
to all the rest, for that he had been one of them
before in Douay, and they had not seen him now
for the full space of eight years or more, so as there
was no end of their embracing and welcoming the
good man ; and so much the more, for that he came
now for so holy and honourable a cause, though
environed with more difficulties than we had yet
heard of."
There were many points about the mission to
be discussed with Allen. Persons thus describes one,
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 315
which concerned our martyr in particular. Father
Campion went to the President and said :
" ' Well, sir, here now I am. You have desired
my going to England, and I am come a long
journey, as you see, from Prague to Rome and from
Rome hither. Do you think my labours in England
may countervail with all this travail, as also my
absence from Bohemia, where, though I did not
much, yet I was not idle nor unemployed, and yet
also against heretics ? '
" Whereunto the President answered :
" ' My good Father, your labours in Bemeland,
though I do not doubt they were very profitable,
yet do I imagine that another man of your Society
may supply the same, [or] at least two or three.
But towards of England, I hope verily that Almighty
God will give you strength and grace to supply for
many men, and seeing that your obligation is greater
towards that country than towards any other, and
the necessity of help more urgent, and the talents
that God has given you more fit and proper for
that than for any other land, doubt you not but
all is Christ's holy providence for the best, and so
be you of good comfort.'
" ' As for me,' said Father Campion, ' all is one ;
and I hope I am and shall be ever indifferent for
all nations and functions, whereinsoever my Superiors
under God shall employ me. I have made a free
oblation of myself to His Divine Majesty both for life
and death, and I trust that He will give me grace
and force to perform, and this is all I desire.' "
316 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
Whilst at Rheims, Campion preached to the
students on the text : Ignem veni mittere in terram —
"I am come to send fire upon the earth." His words
were filled with a loving enthusiasm, and he cried
out " fire, fire, fire " so vehemently, describing the zeal
for martyrdom, that passers-by thought there was
a conflagration, and were going to fetch water-
buckets to put it out.
From Rheims, Persons and Campion went to
St. Omers, and disguised themselves for their
passage to England ; Persons as a soldier returning
from the Low Countries, and Campion as a
merchant of jewels. Persons reached London via
Calais and Dover, without serious difficulty, and
found shelter with Mr. George Gilbert and his
friends. Of Campion's state of mind at St. Omers,
where he was awaiting news of Persons, the
following letter tells us. It is addressed by him
to Everard Mercurian, the General of the Society :
" Father Robert [Persons] with George, his
companion, sailed from Calais after midnight on
the day before I began writing this ; the wind
was very good, so we hope that he reached Dover
some time yesterday morning, the i6th of June.
He was dressed up like a soldier ; such a peacock,
such a swagger, that a man must needs have very
sharp eyes to catch a glimpse of holiness and
modesty shrouded beneath such a garb, such a look,
such a strut. Yet our minds cannot but misgive
us when we hear all men, I will not say whispering,
but crying the news of our coming. It is a venture
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 317
which only the wisdom of God can bring to good,
and to His wisdom we lovingly resign ourselves.
According to orders, I have stayed behind fora time
to try, if possible, to fish some news about Father
Robert's success out of the carriers, or out of certain
merchants who are to come to these parts, before
I sail across. If I hear anything I will advise upon
it ; but in any case, I will go over and take part in
the fight, though I die for it. It often happens that
the first rank of a conquering army is struck down.
Indeed, if our Society is to go on with this adventure,
the ignorance and wickedness against which this
war is declared will have to be overthrown. On
the 2Oth of June I mean to go to Calais; in the
meantime I live in the College of St. Omer, where
I am dressing up myself and my companion,
[Brother] Ralph [Emerson] . You may imagine
the expense, especially as none of our old things
can be henceforth used. As we want to disguise
our persons and cheat the madness of this world,
we are obliged to buy several little things which
seem to us altogether absurd. Our journey, these
clothes, and four horses, which we must buy as soon
as we reach England, may possibly square with our
money; but only with the help of Providence, which
multiplied the loaves in the wilderness. This indeed
is our least difficulty, so let us have done with it.
I will not yet close this letter, that I may add
whatever news reaches me during these three
days. For though our lot will be cast, one way
or other, before you read this, yet I thought that,
while I am here, I ought to note every particular of
318 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
this great business, and the last doings on which
the rest, as yet unwritten, will hang. A certain
English gentleman very well informed in matters
of State, often comes to me ; and he tells me that
the coming of the Bishop of St. Asaph is canvassed
in letters and in conversation. Great expectations
are raised by it ; for most men think that such a
man, at his age, would never undertake such a task,
except there was some rising on foot. I told him in
the simplest manner the true cause of his coming.
Still he did not cease wondering ; for the episcopal
name and function is in high honour in England."
On June the 24th, the feast of his patron,
St. John the Baptist, Campion finally reached
Dover, where he and his lay-brother companion,
Ralph Emerson, were at once seized, by order of the
mayor, who had received instructions and was on
the watch for them. Campion, however, fervently
implored the aid of his patron St. John, and they
were eventually allowed to proceed.
Father Persons continues : " Being so happily
and unexpectedly delivered from Dover, he made
all the haste he could to come to London, where
he was greatly desired, and much prayer was
made for him. The greatest solicitude was how
he would do at his first arrival, for that he knew not
where to go, and with the same care came he also,
what to do in that behalf. But God provided better
for him herein than he could possibly imagine, for
coming to land upon the Thames side at London,
there was there, by God's providence, a certain
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 319
Catholic that partly by his person and apparel,
described to him before by Father Persons, and
partly by that he saw him accompanied by a little
man named Ralph Emerson, whereof also Father
Persons had given knowledge, he did suspect him
to be the same man, and so, stepping to the boat-
side, said, ' Mr. Edmonds (for so he was called), give
me your hand. I stay here for you to lead you to
your friends.' With which speech Father Campion
was wonderfully comforted."
Father Persons had by then already left London,
and Campion on June the 2gth, the feast of SS. Peter
and Paul, boldly preached in the great hall of a
house near Smithfield, which Lord Paget had hired
of Lord Norreys, while gentlemen kept watch as
servants and porters. This sermon attracted some
notice, and made the Council eager to appre-
hend him. Campion therefore confined himself to
private conferences and constantly changed his
abode, but even this became unsafe ; and after
Hilary Term, 1580, both he and Persons, who had
now returned to London, resolved on making for
the country. At Hoxton, before parting for their
separate missions, Campion, at the instigation of
Mr. Thomas Pound, a Catholic prisoner for the
Faith, who had obtained a temporary absence
from the Marshalsea, wrote an open letter to the
Council, in the form of a public vindication of the
presence and purpose of the Jesuits in England.
Though not intended for publication, Pound let it
go abroad in manuscript, and it soon became widely
32o BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
known as Campion's " Brag and Challenge." It was
composed in haste, in less than an hour and a half;
but is so pithy in substance and in style, that its
appearance produced dismay among Protestants, and
gave great joy to Catholics.
The chief points of the document, which is
drawn up under nine heads, are as follows : That
Campion, now eight years a member of the Society,
had come to England simply under obedience, with
no hope of gain or preferment, to preach the Gospel,
minister the Sacraments, and convert sinners ; that
he was strictly forbidden to deal in any way with
politics, and only asked for three public discussions.
The first before the Lords in Council, on the
relation of the Catholic Church to the Government ;
the second, of which he made most account, before
the leading Masters of the Universities, on the
proofs of the Catholic religion, which he undertook
to demonstrate invincibly ; the third, before the
lawyers spiritual and temporal ; " wherein he could
justify the Faith by the common wisdom of the
laws " then existing.
Though unwilling to say anything that " might
sound of an insolent brag or challenge," and being
himself dead to the world, and willing to cast his
head under any man's foot, and to kiss the ground
he treads on, yet was the writer so sure of the
truth of his faith that he only asked to meet at
once any of the most learned Protestants, who
would enter the lists with him. He begged the
Queen, Elizabeth, his " sovereign lady," to attend at
the conferences he had demanded, and to allow
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 321
him to preach in her presence. He doubted not
but that the Lords of the Council would, when they
had heard him preach, see through the evil counsel
by which they were misled. He concludes with the
following impassioned words :
" Many innocent hands are lifted up for you
daily and hourly by those English students whose
posterity shall not die, which beyond the seas,
gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the
purpose, are determined never to give you over,
but either to win you to Heaven or to die upon your
pikes. And touching our Society, be it known
unto you that we have made a league — all the
Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude
must over-reach all the practices of England —
cheerfully to carry the cross that you shall lay upon
us, and never to despair your recovery while we
have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked
with your torments, or to be consumed with your
prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise
is begun ; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So
the Faith was planted, so it must be restored.
" If these my offers be refused, and my en-
deavours can take no place, and I having run
thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded
with rigour, — I have no more to say, but to recom-
mend your case and mine to Almighty God, the
Searcher of hearts, Who send us of His grace, and
set us accord before the day of payment, to the
intent we may at last be friends in Heaven, where
all injuries shall be forgotten."
v n.
322 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
This simple, ingenuous, and fearless manifesto
made no little stir, and fresh repressive measures
were taken. The prisons were crowded with
Catholics, and many distinguished sufferers were
consigned to Wisbeach Castle. The chief among
these were Watson, Bishop of Lincoln ; Feckenham,
Abbot of Westminster ; the Earl of Southampton,
Lord Herbert, Lord Compton, Lord Paget, Sir
Thomas Fitzherbert, Sir John Arundell, Sir Alexander
Culpeper, Sir John Southworth, Sir Nicholas Poyntz,
Sir Thomas Gerard, Sir George Peckham, John
Talbot of Grafton, William and Richard Shelly,
Ralph Sheldon, Thomas and Francis Throgmorton,
John and Edward Gage, Nicholas Thimbleby,
William and Robert Tyrrwhit, Richard Culpeper,
John Walker, Mr. Towneley, Mr. Guildford, Robert
Price, Peter Tichbourne, Erasmus Wolseley, John
Gifford, Brian Fowler, Thomas Cross. Of their
treatment at this time a priest writes :
" In their old age they are sent to Wisbeach
Castle, a most unhealthy place, under the orders
of a sour Puritan. It is certain they cannot live
long there. Over and above the miseries of im-
prisonment, they are shamefully treated by their
keeper. All books but a single Bible are taken from
them, ^nor are they allowed any papers of their own-
writings or notes. Conceited ministers are let in on
them without warning, with whom they must argue
without preparation, or endure their insults. The
most false and ridiculous libels upon them are
published and even printed, in order to lessen the
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 323.
consideration in which they are held. Last month
an immodest woman was shut up without their
knowledge in one of their chambers to give a handle
for a false charge of incontinence. No access is
allowed, and we are obliged to use tricks to com-
municate with them. When any one wants to give
them an alms, he walks in the neighbouring fields
and cries out, as if he was hunting for game. At
this sign one of them looks out of the window, and
learns by signal that there is something for the
prisoners. The next night, when everybody is
asleep, the sportsman cautiously creeps up to the
wall, and one of the prisoners lets down a basket
from the window whence the signal was given, and
draws up what is put into it. The same plan is
generally adopted for the other prisons, but the
variety of places requires a variety of methods, and
the zeal, charity, and bravery of the Catholics is
greatly conspicuous in designing and accomplishing
these dangerous services." l
While the persecution was in progress, Campion
was working with success in Berkshire, Oxfordshire,
and Northamptonshire. Among his more notable
converts were Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton,
Sir William Catesby of Ashby St. Ledger, and Lord
Vaux of Harrowden. Persons' harvest was equally
rich, and included John Shakespeare, the father of
the poet. Campion wrote as follows to his Father
General about his manner of life, and the state of
the country at this period.
1 Quoted in Sander, De Schismate (Edit. 1628), p. 317.
324 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
" I ride about some piece of the country every
day. The harvest is wonderful great. On horse-
back I meditate my sermon ; when I come to the
house I polish it. Then I talk with such as come
to speak with me, or hear their confessions. In
the morning, after Mass, I preach ; they hear with
exceeding greediness and very many go to the
sacraments, for the ministration whereof we are ever
well assisted by the priests, whom we find in every
place, whereby both the people is well served and
we much eased in our charge. The priests of our
country themselves being most excellent for virtue
and learning, yet have raised so great an opinion of
our Society that I dare scarcely touch the exceeding
reverence all Catholics do unto us. How much
more is it requisite that those who hereafter are to
be sent for supply, whereof we have great need, be
such as may answer all men's expectations of them !
Specially let them be well trained for the pulpit.
I cannot long escape the hands of the heretics ; the
enemies have so many eyes, so many tongues, so
many scouts and crafts. I am in apparel to myself
very ridiculous; I often change it and my name also.
I read letters sometimes myself that, in the first
front, tell news that Campion is taken, which noised
in every place where I come, so filleth my ears with
the sound thereof, that fear itself hath taken away
all fear. * My soul is ever in my hands.' Let
such as you send for supply premeditate and make
count of this always. Marry, the solaces that are
ever intermingled with these miseries are so great,
that they do not only countervail the fear of what
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 325
punishment temporal soever, but by infinite sweet-
ness make all worldly pains, be they never so great,
seem nothing. They will find consciences that are
pure, courage invincible, zeal incredible, a work so
worthy, the number innumerable of every age and
sex, both of high degree, of mean calling, and of the
inferior sort.
" Here even amongst the Protestants themselves
that are of a milder nature, it is turned into a
proverb, that he must be a Catholic that payeth
faithfully what he oweth, insomuch that if any
Catholic do injury, everybody expostulateth with
him as for an act unworthy of men of that
calling. To be short, heresy heareth ill of all men ;
neither is there any condition of people commonly
counted more vile and impure than their ministers,
and we worthily have indignation, that fellows so
unlearned, so evil, so derided, so base, should in
so desperate a quarrel over-rule such a number of
noble wits as our realm hath. Threatening edicts
come forth against us daily ; notwithstanding by
good heed and the prayers of good men, and, which
is the chief of all, God's special gift, we have passed
safely through the most part of the island. I find
many neglecting their own security, to have only
care of my safety.
" A certain matter fell out these days unlocked
for. I had set down in writing by several articles
the causes of my coming in, and made certain
demands most reasonable. I professed myself to
be a priest of the Society ; that I returned to enlarge
the Catholic Faith, to teach the Gospel, to minister
326 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
the sacraments, humbly asking audience of the
Queen and the nobility of the realm, and proffering
disputations to the adversaries. One copy of this
writing I determined to keep with me ; another copy
I laid in a friend's hands, that when myself with the
other should be seized, another might thereupon
straight be dispersed. But my said friend kept it
not close long, but divulged it, and it was read
greedily ; whereat the adversaries were mad, answer-
ing out of the pulpit, that themselves certesse would
not refuse to dispute, but the Queen's pleasure was
not that matters should be called in question, being
already established. In the meanwhile they tear
and sting us with their venomous tongues, calling us
seditious, hypocrites, yea heretics too, which is much
laughed at. The people hereupon is ours, and that
error of spreading abroad this writing has much
advanced the cause. If we be commanded and may
have safe escort, we will unto the court.
" But they mean nothing less, for they have
filled all the old prisons with Catholics, and now
make new ; and in fine plainly affirm that it were
better to make a few traitors away, than that so
many souls should be lost. Of their martyrs they brag
no more now ; for it is now come to pass that for
a few apostates and cobblers of theirs burnt, we have
bishops, lords, knights, the old nobility, the patterns
of learning, piety, and prudence, the flower of the
youth, noble matrons, and of the inferior sort
innumerable, either martyred at once, or by con-
suming prisonment dying daily. At the very writing
hereof the persecution rages most cruelly. The
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 327
house where I am is sad ; no other talk but of
death, flight, prison, or spoil of their friends ; never-
theless they proceed with courage. Very many
even at this present are being restored to the
Church, new soldiers give up their names while
the veterans offer their blood ; by which holy hosts
and oblations God will be pleased, and we shall, no
question, by Him soon overcome.
" You see now, therefore, Reverend Father, how
much need we have of your prayers and Sacrifices,
and other heavenly help, to go through with these
things. There will never want in England men that
will have care of their own salvation, nor such as
shall advance other men's. Neither shall this Church
here ever fail, so long as priests and pastors shall
be found for their sheep, rage man or devil never so
much. But the rumour of present peril causeth me
here to make an end. 'Arise God! His enemies
avoid.' Fare you well."1
Father Persons gives us the following more
detailed description of the missionary journey
through England, to which Campion briefly alluded
above.
"It was -not long after our departure but that
the Council, by their spies and other persons whom
they apprehended, had notice of our journey, and
presently they sent divers pursuivants after us into
most shires of England, with large authority to
apprehend us wheresoever they should meet with us.
1 No date. Probably November, 1580.
328 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
But we had always warning by the diligence of the
Catholics, so as we easily avoided them, and they lost
their labour and we had three or four months free
to follow our business, in which space, by the help
and direction of the young gentlemen that went
with us, we passed through the most part of the
shires of England preaching and administering
the sacraments in almost every gentleman and
nobleman's house that we passed by, whether he
himself were a Catholic or no, if he had any
Catholics in his house to hear us, which commonly
was in manner following.
" We entered for the most part as acquaintance
or kinsfolk of some person that, lived within the
house, and when that failed us, as passengers or
friends of some gentleman that accompanied us,
and after ordinary salutations we had our lodging
by procurement of the Catholics within the house,
in some part retired from the rest, where putting
ourselves in priest's apparel and furniture, which
ever we carried with us, we had view and secret
conference with the Catholics that were there, or
such of them as might conveniently come, whom
we ever caused to be ready for that night late to
prepare themselves to the Sacrament of Confession,
and the next morning very early we had Mass and
the Blessed Sacrament ready for such as would
communicate, and after that an exhortation, and
then we made ourselves ready to depart again, and
this was the manner of providing when we stayed
least, but when longer and more liberal and full stay
was, then these exercises were more frequented."
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 329
Then, after describing the persecution in London,
Persons continues :
" While these things were doing in London,
where the Court lay, Father Campion and his
fellows proceeded prosperously in their affairs in
the country ; for that passing over many shires they
confirmed and gained to the Catholic religion very
great numbers of all sorts of people, whereunto the
most part of all such, as dwell in the country
abroad (and so do dwell the better of the English
nobility and gentry, and are farther off from great
towns, where the infection of ministers beareth most
rule with artisans and merchants), are of themselves
more inclined, remembering the virtuous life and
just proceeding of those of the ancient religion, and
seeing and feeling the contrary now. Of this great
concourse and proneness of people to be converted,
Father Campion in his epistle to his General giveth
abundant testimony. And one thing I can affirm
of my certain knowledge, that, as it was a most
comfortable thing to see the universal inclination of
so infinite people to the Catholic religion, so was it an
incredible sorrow and compassion to any Christian
heart to see the rents and breaches, the wrenches
and disjointures, which the preaching of new
doctrines for twenty years had made in the con-
sciences and belief of this good people, which lived
before so many ages in one only faith."
Of the result of Campion's journey, Father
Persons says :
330 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
" This may be enough to show how profitable to
the salvation of souls and serviceable to Almighty
God were the labours of His servants and priests in
this work. For many of them that were furthest run
out of order were reduced ; others that were not gone
so far, but [were] in going, were stayed ; others
that were doubtful were resolved ; others that were
cold and negligent and seemed to care little for any
part, were stirred up ; others, and those very many,
that had good meaning and good desire also, but
were oppressed with fear, were animated and put
both in heart and comfort, and those that were good
of themselves were much confirmed. And in these
exercises passed Father Campion and his fellows
their time in the country with preaching, private
conference, exhortations, writing of letters, and
administration of the sacraments until the month of
October, at what time, Michaelmas being begun, it
was thought convenient that they should meet at
London again to take further order about their
affairs, especially Father Campion and Father
Persons, who had not seen the one the other since
they departed from London in the beginning of
July.
" At their first meeting they related, the one to
the other, the mercies that God had showed unto
them in the time of their being abroad in the
country, what shires, towns, houses they had visited,
what success they had had, what perils they had
escaped, what disposition they had found in them-
selves for the time to come. And secondly, they
consulted what course was to be held for the time
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 331
to come, wherein they resolved that Father Persons
for the present should stay in London, or near about,
as the persecution and necessity of business should
suffer, for that it seemed he was less sought for yet
than was Father Campion, who for this and other
causes, especially that he was most earnestly desired
in divers places, was thought more convenient to
return again into the country until the present
tempest of persecution was somewhat assuaged or
blown over. This being so agreed upon, the next
question was whither and to what shire Father
Campion should go, for divers did sue for him most
instantly, as hath been said, but above other the
Catholics of Lancashire and Norfolk, unto which
shires he had not time or commodity to reach in his
former circuit. But finally it seemed best that he
should go to Lancashire both for that it was more
distant from London, and more generally affected to
the Catholic religion, and for that there was more
hope to find commodity of books for him to write or
answer the heretics, if perhaps they should provoke
him, as it was supposed they would shortly, seeing
that his foresaid paper of satisfaction and challenge
was now in their hands, and spread over England
as it was, and no other talk almost at ordinary
tables and other public meetings but of this.
And albeit hitherto nothing appeared in answer
thereof, yet seemed it impossible but that shortly
there would be. For all which causes it was resolved
that Father Campion should depart again out of
hand and, with all the secrecy that he could, put
himself within the compass of Lancashire."
332 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
Leaving London for the North, Campion spent
Christmas with the Pierrepoints at Thoresby in
Nottinghamshire. Then Henry Sacheverell, Mr.
Langford, Lady Foljambe, Mr. Powdrell, Mr. Ayers
or Amias, of the Stipte, in Derbyshire, were in turn
his hosts. At the Stipte Mr. Tempest succeeded
Gervase Pierrepoint as Campion's guide, and led
him to Dr. Vavasour, Mrs. Bulmer, Sir William
Babthorpe, of Osgodby — who had the previous
August given a bond of £200 that he and his family
would dutifully repair to church, and apprehend
" all rogueing Popish priests, and other like evil
Popish subjects" — Mr. Grimston, Mr. Hawkeworth,
and Mr. Askulph Cleesby. In the third week of
Lent, Mr. Smythe succeeded as conductor, and took
him to the house of his brother-in-law, Mr. William
Harrington, of Mount St. John, near Thirsk, where
one of the host's six sons was so fired by Campion's
example, that he went over to Rheims and returned
as a priest to be martyred.1
From Mount St. John he was conducted by
Mr. Moore, a Yorkshireman, to the houses of
Catholics in Lancashire — the Talbots, Southworths,
Heskeths, Worthingtons, Mrs. Allen (widow of the
Cardinal's brother), the Houghtons, the Westbys,
and the Rigmaidens.
This itinerary is supplied by Cecil's papers,
whose spies were dogging Campion's steps. Many
came to hear him, and persons of quality spent
whole nights in barns, so that they might be early
1 The Ven. William Harrington was martyred at Tyburn on
February 18, 1594.
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 333
at the place the next day. " Even up to my time,"
wrote Father Henry More in 1660, " Campion's
memory was still popular in the North, and his
sermons were still remembered on the Hail
Mary, on the Ten Lepers, on the King who went
on a journey, and on the Last Judgment. Not only
his eloquence and fire, but a certain hidden infused
power, made his words strike home." He preached
daily save when occupied in writing, or obliged to
flee from the pursuivants. At Blainscow Hall
he was saved by the ready wit of a maid-servant
who, in affected anger, pushed him into a pond,
whence he emerged covered with mud and unre-
cognisable by his pursuers.
All this while he was composing a fresh book —
De Heresi Desperata. " And truly I can affirm of my
knowledge," says Father Persons, "that it was
Father Campion's perpetual opinion that heresy in
England was desperate, and that few or no men
of judgment did think in their consciences that
doctrine to be true and defensible that was com-
monly taught and practised, the absurdities thereof
being so many and manifest as they were ; but that
some of policy, some for present government, others
for ease, others for gain, honour, and preferment,
and all commonly for some temporal interest or
other, did stretch out a hand to hold it up for a
time by force and violence. Which opinion also
of his he declareth in divers parts of his little golden
book of Ten Reasons, and namely, in the conclusion
to the scholars of the Universities."
This title had been adopted by Campion because
334 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
the controversy excited by his Challenge, made it
necessary to readjust the plan of his book, and to
devote it to explaining, in Ten Reasons, why it was
that he had so boldly challenged the Protestants to
dispute.
After Whit Sunday, May the I5th, he came
up to London to superintend its printing. The
book was full of learning, and the quotations
were verified by Mr. Fitzherbert at the London
libraries. In or near London, Campion was the
guest of Mr. William Bellamy, who with his
wife and family were converts, at Uxenden Hall,
Harrow-on-the-Hill ; of Mr. Brideman, in West-
minster ; of Mr. Barnes, in Tothill Street ; and of
Lady Babington, at Whitefriars. In going to and
from Harrow, Campion passed by Tyburn Gate,
which faced the present Marble Arch. Here was the
great triangular gallows, which had been erected
anew for the execution of Dr. Storey, whose blood
had consecrated it, and Campion would always walk
between its posts uncovered, and with a profound
bow, in honour of the martyrs, and because, as he
told Persons, it was one day to be the scene of his
own conflict.
After many dangers Campion's book was finally
printed at the Lady Stonor's Lodge, in Stonor Park,
with the title of Decem Rationes — The Ten Reasons.
Four hundred copies of it were distributed on or
about Tuesday, June the 27th, the next before the
feast of SS. Peter and Paul, when the benches of
St. Mary's Church, Oxford, were found covered
with the new work. It treated of the Holy Scriptures
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 335
and their authority against Protestants, of the
nature and authority of the Church, of General
Councils, of Church history, of Protestant Paradoxes,
especially those of Calvin, such as God being the
author of sin, and of minor controverted points.
The work was dated Cosmopolis, 1581, and set
the University on fire.
This remarkable book, though written under
such great difficulties, was admirably adapted to
the temperaments and the needs of the men of that
day. It acquired a very high reputation, and twenty-
nine editions of it have been published in various
languages and at various times. Marc Antony
Muretus, the humanist, wrote of it as, Libellus
aureus, vere digito Dei scriptus. Elizabeth's Council
also paid the book a significant compliment by
ordering some Anglican clergymen to write an
answer to it — an answer which was chiefly notice-
able for the unmeasured abuse with which it
attacked Campion.
The publication of Father Campion's Ten Reasons
forms, as it were, the climax of his missionary
career. He already had a presentiment of what was
in store for him, and of this he wrote in the following
terms, to his Father General, Claudio Aquaviva, in
the last letter we possess from his pen, dated the
gth of July, 1581.
" Our adversaries were never more monstrously
cruel than now ; the cause of Christ never in better
condition or more security, for we are pressed with
no other arguments than those, whose premisses
336 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
are the rack, starvation, cursing ; this has already
broken down the dignity of our enemies, and turned
the eyes and ears of the whole realm towards the
Catholics. Nothing else was lacking to this cause,
than that to our books written with ink should
succeed those others, which are daily being pub-
lished written in blood."
This was written a fortnight before he was taken.
Seeing the stir that the book had made, Persons,
who was now with Campion at Stonor, thought it
prudent that they should part, and that Campion
should go back to the North. On Tuesday, there-
fore, the nth of July, 1581, after the usual mutual
confession and renewal of vows, he desired him to
proceed to Norfolk, and knowing his easy temper
placed him under obedience to Ralph Emerson, his
lay-brother companion, who was to judge when and
how long Campion should stay at the houses of the
Catholic gentry which they passed on their way.
The first night Campion and Ralph slept at the
house of Mrs. Yate, the Mote, Lyford. Her
husband, a prisoner for the Faith in London, had
begged Campion to visit his family, and Persons
had granted an exception in his favour for one day.
Mrs. Yate had several nuns and two priests, named
Ford and Collington, as her guests, who were all
delighted to confess to Campion ; and on Wednesday,
July the I2th, he continued his journey, as obedience
enjoined.
That same day, however, a party of Catholics
came over to see the nuns, and they were
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 337
disappointed and mortified to find they had missed
Father Campion, and Ford.was only too glad to
ride after him to persuade him to return. He over-
took him at an inn near Oxford, where a number of
the students and masters of the University had
assembled to meet him. After much reluctance
Brother Ralph finally consented to Campion's
returning for the Sunday, while he went on to
obtain books of which the Father stood in need.
On Sunday, July the i6th, more than sixty
Catholics and Oxford students were assembled for
Mass and to hear Campion preach. His sermon
was on the Gospel for the day, the Ninth Sunday
after Pentecost — the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem —
and he showed how England, like the chosen city,
was now the slayer of the prophets. The earnest-
ness of the preacher, his own personal danger as he
spoke, the circumstances under which the}'- were
assembled, made the congregation afterwards declare
that they had never heard words like his.
But among the congregation there was a traitor,
Eliot — Judas Eliot as he was afterwards called —
who had contrived to find admission, and departed
immediately after service. A watchman who was
placed on the tower reported, while the company
was at dinner, that the house was surrounded with
armed men. A strict search was made, but without
result, for the priests were hidden in a secret cavity
above the gateway. Irritated at their failure, the
searchers abused Eliot, who was without, for
bringing them on a fruitless errand. He retorted
that they had not known how to find the priests,
w n.
338 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
and re-entered the house with them. But again
the search was useless, for the priests were a
second time stowed away, and Mrs. Yate, who
had a bed prepared for her near the priests' hiding-
place, obtained permission from the magistrate that
his men should not disturb her rest. All seemed
safe, yet at midnight, in her anxiety to hear
Campion again, she summoned him to her bed-
chamber, and he and his auditors escaped only by
a hair's breadth from the searchers, who heard the
voices and forced the door.
At length day broke and the intruders, Eliot
included, were descending the stairs to leave,
baffled and crestfallen, when the traitor, looking at
the arch under which he stood, cried out, " This has
not been tried." The man to whom he spoke and
who was in the secret, turned pale, and said that
"walls enough had been broken." Eliot marked
his confusion, seized an axe, and after a few blows
exposed to view the three priests, lying side by side
on a narrow bed, their faces and hands raised to
heaven. They had confessed their sins one to
another, and had received for their penance to say
Fiat voluntas tua, with a triple invocation of St. John
Baptist, who had previously more than once saved
Campion when in similar straits.
After the capture there followed a delay of three
days at Lyford, before instructions were received
from the Council to bring the prisoners, who
included several laymen with the three priests,
under strong escort to London. The party halted
at Abingdon, where several Oxford scholars came
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 339.
to see the famous Campion ; at Henley, where
Campion recognized and saluted Persons' servant,
whose master was concealed in the neighbourhood ;
and at Colebrook, where a number of Catholics and
other gentry came to look at Campion, who managed
to give such a turn to his conversation with the
guard, that the Catholics could understand its secret
import. From Colebrook to the Tower the prisoners
were treated with great indignity ; they were mounted
with their faces to their horses' tails, their elbows
pinioned, and their legs tied under the horse's belly.
On Campion's hat was a large placard, Campion,
the seditions Jesuit. Through all the insults and
ridicule Campion's fortitude, cheerfulness, and cour-
tesy never failed.
On July the 22nd Campion entered the Tower,,
and was thrust by the Lieutenant, Sir Owen
Hopton, into the " Little Ease." On the fourth
day, July the 25th, he was conveyed secretly to an
interview at which he met the Earls of Leicester
and Bedford, two Secretaries of State, and also, it is
said, the Queen herself. They told him they found
no fault with him save that he was a Papist, and
Elizabeth asked him if he regarded her as his true
Sovereign, to which he replied, as at his trial,
strongly in the affirmative. Of this examination
there seems to be no official record extant.
When back in the Tower, Hopton, at the instiga-
tion no doubt of Elizabeth's Council, endeavoured
to effect Campion's apostacy by fair promises. He
was tempted with offers of preferment in the
Protestant Church, and the possibility of the
340 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
primacy. Then, as these overtures were entirely
ineffective, it was resolved to proceed to the torture.
Campion was therefore led to the rack-chamber,
where he knelt down at the door, made the sign of
the Cross, and while he was being bound to the
rack, invoked the holy names of Jesus and Mary.
The pangs of the racking were as powerless as the
bribes to shake the martyr's constancy, yet lying
reports that he had revealed the names of Catholics
and abjured the Faith were officially published, and
obtained some credence even among Catholics.
As to the betrayal of Catholics, the fact was,
that the Government already knew the names of
many of Campion's hosts. Of this there can be no
doubt, as the official lists of them are still extant
among Lord Burghley's papers. These gentlemen
were now put under arrest, and were told that
Campion had betrayed them, a cruel slander, which
could hardly fail to damage the martyr's reputation
for the time, as he was not aware of it, and could
not, even if he had known, have protested that he
had never divulged any name except such as the
persecutors were already well aware of, or such as
could take no harm from his confession. It was
not until his last speech from the scaffold that he
was able to explain this, and so to dissipate the
calumny finally, though in truth his constancy had
by then been so well proved, that the defence was
no longer necessary.
Campion's enemies, eager to damage his reputa-
tion in every way they could, now endeavoured to
discredit his learning and to injure the fame which
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 34 r
he had won by his book, by making him dispute
with certain learned Protestants. To these con-
ferences he was brought unprepared, and at the
moment when he was in the most unfit condition.
Wearied in mind, racked and tortured in body, his
face pale and worn, without a seat or support, he
found himself with Sherwin, Bosgrave, Pound, and
other Catholic prisoners, surrounded by a strong
guard, placed in the Tower chapel opposite a table
at which were seated his opponents, Nowell,
Dean of St. Paul's, and Day, Dean of Windsor,
with distinguished professors as notaries in atten-
dance.
Three more of these conferences were held, as it
would seem in the room now called the Council
Chamber in the Lieutenant's quarters ; and though
Campion was browbeaten, insulted, and threatened,
his answers were so calm, clear, and forcible,
though most meek, that the discussions, as the
heretical Bishop Aylmer said, did no good to
the Protestant cause, and they were discontinued.
Among the converts made by them was the
Venerable Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who
was at that time following the life of a worldly
courtier in Elizabeth's suite.
The result of these conferences on the popular
mind is reflected in the following ballads which
appeared at their close.
A Jesuit, a Jebusite ? wherefore I pray ?
Because he doth teach you the only right way ?
He professeth the same by learning to prove
And shall we from learning to rack him remove ?
342 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
His reasons were ready, his grounds were most sure,
The enemy cannot his force long endure.
Campion in camping on spiritual field,
In God's cause his life is ready to yield.
Our preachers have preached in pastime and pleasure,
And now they be hated for passing all measure.
Their wives and their wealth have made them so mute,
They cannot, nor dare not with Campion dispute.
Let reason rule and racking cease,
Or else for ever hold your peace.
You cannot withstand God's power and His grace,
No, not with the Tower and the racking-place.
All attempts to disparage Campion's learning
and religious steadfastness having failed, the only
course left was to expose him as a traitor to the
scorn of his countrymen. Being asked what he
thought of certain passages held to be treasonable
in the works of Sander, Allen, and Bristow, he
replied, " That he meddleth neither to nor fro, and
will not further answer, but requireth that they may
answer." As to the validity of the Bull of excom-
munication and deprivation, he said, "The question
dependeth upon the fact of Pius Quintus, whereof
he is not to judge, and therefore refuseth further to
answer."
In these answers the martyr so expressed himself
as to satisfy his duty towards the various powers
which, though in conflict one with another, could
still lay claims to his allegiance. If he had tried to
answer so as to satisfy his persecutors, he would
have had to use words distinctly derogatory to the
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 343
dignity of . the Pope. But he did not fail in the
least in his respect for the Holy See, while his words
signified his loyalty to the Queen, and also nobly
asserted his individual liberty.
To appreciate this we must remember that he
had always avowed his allegiance to Elizabeth as
his Queen. We have heard one strong assertion
of this, and we shall hear one stronger still, that
which he made with his last breath. Another may
be quoted here from the tenth of his Ten Reasons,
where, after enumerating the great Catholic Kings,
Edward the Confessor, Louis of France, Hermene-
gild, Henry, Wenceslaus, &c., &c., who had, in the
words of Isaias xlix. 23, been " nursing-fathers " to
the Church, he continues : " Give ear, O Elizabeth,
most potent Queen ! With those monarchs range
thyself. To do otherwise would be unworthy of
thy progenitors, of thy wit, of thy learning, of the
eulogies passed upon thee, of thy royal fortune.
To accomplish this is my only endeavour against
thee, and attempt it I will, whatever the event.
For the adversaries have already so often threatened
me, as though I were the enemy of thy life, with
the gibbet. 'All Hail, Holy Cross!' The day
shall come, O Queen, the day that shall make it
clear as noon-tide which of the two did love
thee best — the Company of Jesus or the brood of
Luther."
The last touch is thoroughly characteristic of
the English Catholics. Not only did they reckon
themselves loyal to the Queen, but also that they
alone were truly loyal to her. The new religionists,
344 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
they held, would only support her as long as it was
their interest to do so.1
Campion's allegiance, therefore, was not in
question. They durst not have asked for a pro-
fession of it, or they would have injured their
prosecution. So he was craftily questioned about
the Bull of Excommunication, in order to inveigle
him into statements about the limits of Elizabeth's
powers of misgovernment. Such statements his
bigoted enemies would easily have twisted into
an odious offence against the autocratic Queen.
Hence the merit of his reticence. In refusing
to pledge himself to the formulas proposed by the
insidious and deceitful enemies of the Church, he
was asserting his liberty in the only way which was
possible for him.
On October the 3ist he was for a third time
racked in the hopes of extracting some compro-
i Where many authors might be quoted, it will be sufficient to
cite Father Persons. In his Reasons why Catholiques refuse to goe to
Church, which was published just before Campion's Decein Rationes,
he devotes a special section to prove that "The Catholique fay the
teachethe obedience more then other religions." He further
testifies that the English Catholics were grievously maligned in
being called disloyal, "In all which great wronges they have no-
appeale but unto God and to your Maiestye, as Vicegerent in his
place, before whom they desire, above all other thinges to cleare
themselves from this greevous objected crime of disloyalty, by
protesting and calling the omnipotent knowledge of our great God
and Saviour to witness, that they are deeply slaundered in this
poynte, and that they are as readye to spend their goods, landes,
livings and lyfe with all other worldly commodities whatsoever, in
the service of your Maiestye and their Countrie, as their ancestors
have been to your Noble progenitors before this, and as all dutiful
subiectes are bound to doe unto their soveraine Princesse and
Quene." (Sig. I. vi. vii.)
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 345
mising confession, and the tortures were so cruel,
that he thought they meant to kill him in this
manner. Of his fortitude, Lord Hunsdon said that
one might sooner pluck his heart from his bosom
than rack one word out of his mouth that he made
conscience of uttering. When asked the next day
by his keeper how he felt his hands and feet, he
answered : " Not ill, because not at all." These
barbarous cruelties produced a reaction in the
public mind ; indeed, they raised an outcry all
through Europe.
The short-sighted Government had resolved
that Campion must be silenced at any cost, and
death seemed now the only sure means to attain
their end. On Tuesday, November the I4th, at
Westminster Hall, with Sherwin, Kirby, Bosgrave,
Cottam, Johnson, Orton, and Rishton, he was
indicted on an absolutely false charge, of having
entered England for the purpose of raising a
rebellion, said to have been planned by them with
Allen and others at Rheims and Rome.
On hearing the indictment, Campion said :
" I protest, before God and His holy Angels, before
heaven and earth, before the world and this bar,
whereat I stand, which is but a small resemblance
of the terrible judgment of the next life, that I am
not guilty of any part of the treason contained in
the indictment, or of any other treason whatever."
Then while the jury was being empanelled for the
next Thursday, he lifted up his voice, and added :
" Is it possible to find twelve men so wicked and
void of all conscience, in this city or land, that will
346 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
find us guilty together of this one crime, divers of
us never meeting or knowing one the other before
our bringing to this bar ? "
The prisoners were now commanded to hold
up their hands and plead Guilty or Not Guilty.
But both Campion's arms were so maimed by the
racking that he could not raise them, on which
one of his companions took his hand out of the
furred cuff in which it was, and, kissing it, held it
up as high as was possible. Finally, they were
taken back to their respective prisons.
On November the i6th the prisoners were
brought up for their trial. The foreman of the jury,
William Lee, was an informer and a fanatic ; the
remainder were men of little note, and only too
ready to do his bidding. The presiding judge,
Chief Justice Wray, contrived, suggests Lord
Campbell, under a show of impartiality, to obtain
what convictions he desired. Anderson, the Queen's
Counsel, opened the case against the prisoners by
accusing them with much vehement extravagance
of gesture and language, of conspiracy and sedition,
and of being connected with Storey and Felton.
Campion replied that they were there, not to be
tried by " the descant and flourishes of affected
speeches," but by sufficient evidence and substantial
witness. As to the sequel, that they were traitors
because Catholics and guests of the Pope, it in no
wise followed. " If a sheep were stolen, and a
whole family called in question for the same, were
it good manner of proceeding for the accusers to
say, 'Your great-grandfathers and fathers and
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 347
sisters and kinsfolk all loved mutton. Ergo, You
have stolen the sheep.' "
He showed that there was no evidence against
them of conspiracy, that their oaths, whether of
those who were secular priests, or his own as a
Jesuit, were of a purely religious character. That
they had received money from the Pope merely for
their support as missioners ; that in Rome, as
elsewhere, he had never denied that Elizabeth was
his lawful Sovereign.
In answer to Popham, the Attorney-General, he
justified his various disguises and escapes by the
example of St. Paul. Finally, when Eliot deposed
that he had persuaded his audience to obedience
to the Pope, Campion made him confess that
the Pope's name had never been mentioned in his
sermon ; and showed that the great day of which
he had spoken, and which Eliot swore meant the
day fixed for the rebellion, was no other than the
Day of Judgment.
He also defended the other prisoners and cross-
examined their opposing witnesses ; and at the end,
on behalf of all at the bar, made an appeal to the
jury. The whole discourse against them that day,
he said, consisted — first, in presumptions and pro-
babilities ; secondly, in matters of religion ; thirdly,
in oaths and testimonies of witnesses. He proved
that the two first in no way substantiated the
charge of treason ; and as to the two chief witnesses,
asked what credence could be put in them ; " the
one (Eliot) a confessed murderer ; the other
(Munday), a well-known and detestable atheist — a
348 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
profane heathen — a destroyer of two men already."
The jury now retired for their verdict. During
their absence Judge Ayloff, who was on the bench,
pulling off his glove, " found his hand and seal of
arms bloody, without any token of wrong, pricking
or hurt," and the blood returned whenever he wiped
it away. This fact was witnessed by Catholics and
counted by them as a miracle. The pleadings had
occupied about three hours, and after the lapse of
another hour, during which a glass of beer was
brought to Campion by some one in court, the jury
returned with a verdict of Guilty against all the
prisoners.
When asked by the Chief Justice why sentence
of death should not be passed, Campion replied :
" It was not our death that ever we feared. But
we knew that we were not lords of our lives, and
therefore for want of answer would not be guilty of
our own deaths. The only thing we have now to
say is that if our religion do make us traitors, we
are worthy to be condemned ; but otherwise are
and have been as true subjects as ever the Queen
had. In condemning us you condemn all your own
ancestors — all the ancient bishops, priests, and
kings, — all that was once the glory of England, the
island of saints, and the most devoted child of the
See of Peter. For what have we taught, however
you may qualify it with the odious name of treason,
that they did not uniformly teach ? To be con-
demned with these old lights — not of England only,
but of the world — by their degenerate descendants
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 349
is both gladness and glory to us. God lives ;
posterity will live ; their judgment is not so liable
to corruption as that of those who now sentence us
to death."
Campion's defence during the whole day had
been clear, pointed, calm, and dignified, but in this
last speech, delivered with a noble mien, he
surpassed himself, and his fellow-prisoners forgot
their fate in the holy enthusiasm his words pro-
duced. After the sentence was pronounced in the
usual form, Campion broke out into the Te Deum,
and all the martyrs were taken back to their prison,
their hearts filled with great joy.
Of the trial Hallam says the prosecution was as
unfairly conducted, and supported by as slender
evidence as any perhaps that can be found in our
books. Both judges and jury were in fact bought
and predetermined for "the verdict the most unjust,"
says the old writer quoted by Challoner, " that ever
I think was given up in this land, whereat already
(1582) not only England but all the Christian world
doth wonder, and which their posterity shall lament
and be ashamed of."
The public opinion was manifested in a ballad :
They packed a jury that cried guilty straight,
You bloody jury, Lee and all th' eleven,
Take heed your verdict which was given in haste
Do not exclude you from the joys of heaven.
On his return to prison attempts were again
made to persuade Campion to apostatize ; this time
by his own sister, who brought him an offer from
350 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
Hopton of a benefice of £100 a year. He was also
visited by Eliot, who professed repentance for
having encompassed his death, and declared himself
in great fear for his life from Catholics. Campion
freely forgave him all his malice and perjury,
besought him to do penance, and while assuring
him of his safety as regarded his life with Catholics,
promised him a letter to a Catholic Duke in
Germany with whom he might live in perfect
security. This interview had such an effect on
Delahays, Campion's keeper, that he afterwards
became a Catholic.
After this, the Duke of Anjou, then in England
as a suitor for the hand of Elizabeth, was asked
to intercede for him, and promised to do so.
His confessor, an Abbe, undertook to see that the
Duke gave effect to his promises. He found him
about to begin a game of tennis. On hearing the
message and that the petitioners were without, the
Duke stood hesitating, like a man just awakened
from a deep sleep, stroking his face with his left
hand. After a while he raised his right hand, which
held the racket, and said " Play ! " This was all
the answer the petitioners could get from him.
In the splash and mud of a rainy morning in
December, Campion was led forth from the Tower
in the same gown of Irish frieze he had worn at his
trial. Undaunted he saluted the vast crowd, saying,
" God save you all, gentlemen ! God bless you and
make you all good Catholics." He then knelt and
prayed with his face towards the east, concluding
with the words, In mamis tuas, Domine, commendo
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 351
spiritum meum. Then he was strapped on the hurdle,
Shervvin and Briant being together bound on a
second hurdle. They were dragged at the horses'
tails through the gutters and filth, followed by
an insulting crowd of ministers and rabble. Still a
few Catholics managed to exchange a word with him
on spiritual matters, to their great consolation. One
gentleman, like Veronica in another Via Dolorosa,
most courteously wiped his face, all spattered with
mire and dirt, "for which charity," says the priest
who saw the deed, " may God reward and bless
him ! " Passing under the arch of Newgate, whereon
there still stood an image of our Lady, Campion
raised himself and saluted the Queen of Heaven,
whom he hoped to see so soon. The martyrs had
a smile on their faces, and as they drew near
Tyburn the people cried out, " But they laugh ;
they do not care for death ! "
At the gallows Campion was the first ordered to
put his head into the halter, which he did with all
obedience ; then when the noise was somewhat
stilled he began with a grave countenance and sweet
firm voice, Spectaculum facti sumus Deo, angelis et
hominibus. But he was interrupted by Sir Francis
Knollys and the sheriffs, who urged him to confess
his treason. Again and again he maintained his
innocence, while divers charges of sedition were
again preferred against him. Pressed anew to
declare his opinion on the Bull of St. Pius, and
urged to renounce the Pope, he replied that he was
a Catholic and would not discuss the Bull. Then
he prayed, " Christ have mercy on me," or such-
352 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
like prayer, and was once more interrupted by a
minister offering to pray with him, to whom he
humbly said, " You and I are not one in religion,
wherefore I pray you content yourself. I bar none
of prayer, but I only desire them of the household of
faith to pray with me, and in mine agony to say one
Creed " — to signify that he died for the confession
of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith.
Then he again turned to his prayers, and some
called out that he should pray in English and not
in a foreign tongue, but he pleasantly answered,
" That he would pray God in a language that they
both well understood." Being told to ask the
Queen's forgiveness and to pray for her, he protested
his innocence saying, " This is my last speech, in
this give me credit. I have and do pray for her."
To Lord Charles Howard, who asked if by Queen
he meant Elizabeth, Campion replied, " Yea, for
Elizabeth your Queen and my Queen, unto whom I
wish a long reign with all prosperity." While these
words were being spoken the cart was drawn away
and the blessed martyr, among the tears and groans
of the vast multitude, went to his reward. At the
bidding of someone in authority his body was not
cut down till after death.
The greatest precautions were taken to prevent
Catholics securing relics. A young man who
dropped his handkerchief into the blood on the
ground was taken and committed. Another
contrived to possess himself of a finger, and later
on one of the arms was taken from the gate where
it was nailed. Father Persons managed to buy the
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 353
rope in which his martyred friend was bound or
hanged, and died with it round his neck.
Among the miracles wrought by his relics are those
on Mr. Anderton, of Lancashire, twice cured by
them, and once when laid out as dead. His picture
was hung over altars, his name was assumed by
religious in their novitiate, and his intercession was
implored even in Bohemia. In his cell at Prague
an altar with his picture was erected, and the
pavement was kissed on which his feet had stood.
His confessors there, Father Anthony Francis and
Father Paul Campanus, publicly testified to his
sanctity and purity of conscience.
As to the fruits of Campion's death we have
the estimate of Father Henry Walpole, that
ten thousand persons were converted through it.
That a great number of conversions followed is
abundantly proved, among others, those of the
daughters of Walsingham and Hopton. "Although,"
says a contemporary writer, " we lost the chief
pearl of Christendom, yet it is well, for all men are
of opinion that the offences and negligences of our
predecessors and forefathers were so great, and
our own sins so many, as they must needs be re-
deemed by the blood of the martyrs."
H. S. B.
J. H. P.
ii.
354 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
AUTHORITIES. — The death of Campion called forth several
scores of pamphlets, both Catholic and Protestant, a full
account of which will be found in Mr. Simpson's work, which
will be mentioned immediately. They are all short, and
confine themselves chiefly to the martyrdom. Father
Persons' Of the Life and Martyrdom of Edmund Campion
(written in 1594) is a work of very great value, and enters into
many details. Though never finished, it gives us by far the
most vivid and complete portrait of the martyr that we
possess. It survives in a transcript made by Father
Christopher Grene, now among the Stonyhurst Manuscripts,
Collectanea P. vol. i. and was privately printed by Brother
Foley, in the Letters and Notices (Manresa Press), 1867, 1868,
p. 278, &c.
The reason why Father Persons did not complete his
work was because another biographer, who was exceedingly
well-fitted to attract the attention of that age, undertook to
bring out the Life. This was Padre Paolo Bombino, a
latinist of note in an age when Ciceronian Latin was the most
esteemed and popular of languages among scholars. His
Vita et Martyrium Edmnndi Campiani Martyris Angli, was
first published at Antwerp, in 1618, and subsequently
reprinted at Mantua and elsewhere. Bombino's life is
written with extreme care and diligence, and is the fullest
of all the biographies ; but the excessive attention to style
robs the Life of much of its naturalness and vigour. In the
Archives of the Society of Jesus there is a copy of Bombino's
work, in which there are many additions by the author,
which have not yet been published. It is to be regretted
that this work has never appeared in an English dress.
Mr. Richard Simpson's Edmund Campion : A Biography,
Edinburgh 1867, London 1889, is an historical work of great
importance. Its author, however, a convert from Pro-
testantism, drifted during his later years into an extreme
aversion to the temporal rights of the Holy See (see the
notice of him in the Dictionary of National Biography), and in
writing this volume his bias has carried him into many
mistakes and some grave errors. Though the defect is in a
certain way a fortunate one, in so far as it is likely to disarm
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
355
the prejudices of Protestant readers, it of course prevents
the biography from being adequate or even entirely just
to the martyr, though its scholarship and sympathy (except
on the point above mentioned) give it true and permanent
value.
Mr. Simpson had access to all the papers relating to
Campion, both in public and private archives (including
those of the Society of Jesus) so far as they were then known.
Notice of some additional papers, which have come to light
since his time, and further researches into particular episodes,
will be found in the following articles in The Month, by the
late Father John Morris, S.J. :
Blessed Edmund Campion at Douay, 1887, vol. 61, p. 330.
Blessed Edmund Campion and Companions, Martyrs, 1887
vol. 61, p. 457, &c.
Blessed Edmund Campion and his " Ten Reasons,1' 1889
(July), vol. 66, p. 372, &c.
A new Witness about Blessed Edmund Campion, 1893
(August), vol. 77, p. 457, &c.
Also in the following article, by Father J. H. Pollen, S.J. :
Blessed Edmund Campion's Journey to England, 1897
(Sept.), vol. 90, p. 243, &c.
Blessed Edmund Campion's History of Ireland was
published, but with some alterations, by Holinshed in 1587,
and again by Sir James Ware, in his History of Ireland,
in 1633. In Holinshed it was read by Shakespeare, who
borrowed from it frequently while writing his character of
Wolsey. (Henry VIII. act iv, sc. 2) : On the character and
limitations of the History, see Father Edmund Hogan, S.J.,
Blessed Edmund Campion's History of Ireland and its Critics, in
the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, ser. 3, vol. 12, 1891, pp. 629, 725.
There is a manuscript copy of the work at the Heralds'
College.
On the publication of the Decem Rationes at the Stonor
Park Press, see an article by W. H. Allnutt, Bibliographies,
vol. ii. pp. 161 — 165, and The Month for January, 1905.
Campion's Opuscula (which consist of a few sermons,
verses, and letters, besides the Ten Reasons) have been
published six or seven times ; the last and most complete
edition being that at Barcelona in 1888. See also the Biblio-
356 BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION
theque de la Compagnie de Jesus, Edit, de Backer, i. 1025 — 1031 ;
Edit. Sommervogel, ii. 586 — 597.
RELICS. — i. Bone. Portion of a phalanx-bone. Whether
this came from the hand or the foot, cannot perhaps be
ascertained with certainty from the bone itself in its present
•condition. But all things considered, there can be little
doubt that it is part of the "thumb," the rescue of which
was recorded by Serrano, the Spanish Ambassador's secretary,
three days after the martyrdom (Morris, New Witness, referred
to above), and with which the " finger," mentioned on p. 352,
is also presumably to be identified. It is preserved in Rome,
but a considerable portion has been detached, and presented
to the English Jesuit Novitiate at Roehampton.
2. Shirt in which he suffered. One fragment (a) is preserved
at Stonyhurst College (Reliquary I.), two others (b, c) by the
Jesuit Fathers in London (Reliquary I. no. 7 ; III. no. 3);
Relic (a) is inscribed, in a sixteenth century hand, "ex indusio
P. Campiani," (b) "of the shirt of Father Edmond Campian
in which he suffered," (c) " B. P. Campion M. Soc. lesu."
The two latter inscriptions in a late sixteenth or early seven-
teenth century hand. Relics (a) and (c) are apparently of the
same material, coarse linen, (b) is fine linen.
3. The cord by which he was hanged or bound. A thin rope,
about twelve feet long, a good deal worn and frayed.
Stonyhurst, Reliquary I, Inscription "Vincula B. Edm.
Campiani," sixteenth century hand. Father Persons always
carried this relic about with him, and died with it round his
neck. (Simpson's Campion, p. 330.)
4. Hat No. i. This relic and the following arose from
the custom, common in the sixteenth century, of men
exchanging hats in memory one of the other. When Campion
entered the Society of Jesus, he was received by St. Francis
Borgia ; he was in fact the first new member whom the then
recently-elected General admitted. As a sign of esteem the
Saint gave the future martyr his hat, and Campion took it
with him to Prague, and there it is still preserved.
5. Hat No. 2. When Fathers Persons and Campion
parted for the last time, they exchanged hats. Campion was
arrested soon after, and whilst he was being carried to London.
a placard, CAMPION, THE SEDITIOUS JESUIT, was stuck into
BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION 357-
this hat. A few weeks later in the Tower his fellow-
captive Stephen Brinkley, — who had been Campion's com-
panion at Stonor, and who was then almost the only person
able to communicate with him by messenger, — begged this
hat from him. In due time Brinkley was exiled, and carried
his relic with him to Flanders, where on the 3rd of August,
1585, he enclosed it in a reliquary, with a Latin inscription,
of which the above description is a summary, and which
may be read in Father Morris's article on Campion's Ten
Reasons, mentioned above. Part of this relic, with a copy of
the inscription, was found at Antwerp in 1877, and half of
this portion is now at the Jesuit Novitiate, Roehampton.
6. Rosary Ring. A rather large thick ring of white metal
or German silver ; ten small knobs on short stems, the bezel
is inscribed IHS. sixteenth century. Its history, as at present
recorded, does not extend beyond the middle of the nineteenth
century, when it belonged to the Rev. R. Vandepitte, who
gave it to the nuns of St. Mary's Convent, York, and they to
the late Father J. Morris, S.J., who deposited it with the
Jesuit Fathers at London.
PORTRAIT. — Though a good many ancient pictures of
Blessed Edmund exist, it is not known that any can claim
to be a portrait, except that painted immediately after his
death for the Gesu in Rome, and under the eyes of those
who knew the martyr personally. The painting still exists
in Rome, but has unfortunately been very extensively re-
coloured. A copy, made from the picture in its original
state by Mr. Charles Weld, is at Stony hurst, and photographs
of this have been published.
X.
THE BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN,
SECULAR PRIEST.
Tyburn, i December, 1581.
WE are not surprised to find that attachment to
the Catholic Faith long kept its hold upon English
seats of learning. Thus Strype says the Inns of Court
were " disaffected " in 1569. Mass was privately
said at the Temple, and when a number of suspected
benchers were examined by the Ecclesiastical Com-
missioners about "coming to service," they parried
the question by saying " they came to the Temple
Church upon Sundays and holidays, meaning no
more than that they came and walked about the
roundel there." l All through Elizabeth's reign the
Universities continued to feed the Seminaries
abroad. A paper in the Record Office of 1580, or
thereabouts, reports that " Balioll Colledg hathe
not bin free from the suspicion of papistrie this
longe time.": But one of the strongest instances is
Exeter College, Oxford, where, Strype declares, in
1578, " of eighty, were found but four obedient
subjects ; all the rest secret or open Roman affec-
1 Strype, Annals, vol. ii. c. Iv. n. 607.
2 Knox, Douay Diaries, Appendix, p. 363.
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 359
tionaries, and particularly one Savage, a most
earnest defender of the Pope's Bull and excommuni-
cation." 1 Some few of these may have been crypto-
Catholics, but no doubt the greater number were
men brought up in the new religion, but by sympathy
and reason drawn to the Church of all ages. Of
this class, a little earlier in the decade, was a
distinguished fellow of the College, Ralph Sherwin.
He was a native of Derbyshire, his home being at
a place called Rodesley, near Longford. He was
nominated to a fellowship in 1568, by Sir William
Petre.2 Anthony a Wood speaks highly of his
attainments. " In 1574," he says, " proceeding in
arts, he was made senior of the act or public dispu-
tation, celebrated July the 26th, the same year;
being then accounted an acute philosopher, and
an excellent Grecian and Hebrician."3 On this
occasion the Earl of Leicester and a brilliant
audience were present, and his reputation was
greatly enhanced. God's grace, however, would
not allow him to follow the career of prosperity
which might have been his. The next year he gave
1 Strype, Annals, vol. iv. c. xiii. n. 539.
2 Sir William Petre founded eight fellowships in Exeter College,
of which he reserved the patronage to himself, and, it would appear,
to his heirs. (See Wood's Fasti Oxonienses.)
3 Ralph Sherwin, sup. for B.A. 26 Apr. 1571, adm. 22 Nov., det.
1572, M.A. 1574, Fellow of Exeter 1568 — 1575. (Boase, Register of the
University of Oxford, vol. i. 282.) In the register of Exeter College,
vol. II. ii. 32, in the list of students, A. D. 1572, we find " No. 16, Sherwin,
Sir Ralph." (Cf. Wood, Athena, i. 478.) On November 24, 1577, he
was still a Fellow of Exeter, though then at Rome. (See R.O.
Domestic, Elizabeth, cxviii. 37 (i.), where he is called Stephen
Sherewin.)
360 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
up everything, embraced the Catholic Faith, and
was received into the Douay Seminary. Here he
gave two years to theological study and was ordained
priest by the Bishop of Cambrai on the 23rd of
March, 1577. Of ten who were raised to the priest-
hood on this occasion, three afterwards gave their
lives for the Faith, the Venerable William Andleby
in 1597, Blessed Lawrence Johnson in 1582, and
Blessed Ralph Sherwin.
Blessed Ralph did not enter at once on the
English Mission. A few months before his ordination,
a new Seminary had been begun in the very heart
of Catholic life, at Rome. The great success of
Douay, and the unmanageable numbers which
flocked to it, as well as the difficulty of meeting its
expenses, suggested to Dr. Owen Lewis, one of the
most distinguished and zealous of the exiles, and
through him to Pope Gregory XIII., the idea of
establishing another College, in the ancient English
hospice for pilgrims in Rome. A few students had
been detached from Douay in 1576 to make a begin-
ning, and were lodged at first in some houses near
St. Peter's, then in houses adjoining the hospital,
and finally in the hospital itself, transformed into a
college.
After a pilgrimage to the relics of St. John
Baptist honoured at Amiens, Blessed Ralph started
with two other priests and a deacon for the new
establishment at Rome, on the 2nd of August, 1577.
He passed nearly three years there, and has always
been an object of special veneration within its walls,
as the first of its members to suffer martyrdom.
BLESSED RALPH S HER WIN 361
The new Seminary had been founded but a few
months when very serious dissensions broke out,
which though healed for a time were revived again
later, and indeed sowed the first seeds of the
lamentable discord between the seculars and regulars
which so long added to the afflictions of the
suffering Church in England. Dr. Maurice Clenock,
the first Rector, was not a happy appointment ;
rivalries and jealousies between the students of
Welsh and English nationality were fostered by
his real or supposed partiality for his countrymen,
and, worst of all, the division amongst the students
soon involved the Society of Jesus. Two Fathers
had from the first been associated in the manage-
ment of the College, one as Prefect of Studies, the
other as Minister ; they appear to have fallen under
the suspicions of Clenock as fomenting the discontent
against his government with a view to obtaining
the entire direction for their own Society. At all
events, the English party not only clamoured to have
their Rector removed, but also to have the College
entrusted to the government of the Society. This
is not the place to enter further into the question.
It is only thus far touched upon because Blessed
Ralph took a decided and leading part in petitioning
for the Fathers. He was one of four who urged
the suit at the feet of the Pope himself, and again
and again pleaded with the Cardinal Protector. On
one occasion, when all the students were required to
give the Cardinal their opinions in writing, Sherwin
wrote,
" I, Ralph Sherwin, call to witness God the reader
362 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
of all hearts, that I, solely for the increase of his
honour and the benefit of my country, think and
humbly beg that the government of this Seminary
should be committed to the Fathers of the Society.
" Your Eminence's most humble son,
" RALPH SHERWIN, Priest." l
But all their petitions having been rejected, our
martyr, together with thirty-two others, actually
accepted the alternative of leaving the Seminary
rather than acquiesce in the existing state of things.
At the last moment, however, when they went to
obtain the Pope's blessing before leaving Rome, their
wishes were complied with, and from this time the
College was placed under the government of the
Fathers, and so remained until the suppression of
the Society. There seems no doubt that the move-
ment of which Blessed Ralph was the leader was
inspired by a generous desire for the best training
in ecclesiastical perfection, and its object had the
warm sympathy of Allen. 2
The Register of the Alumni begins from the
time of the Society's government. The first entry
is that of the Blessed Ralph. It is as follows :
+
JESUS, MARIA.
The names of the A lumni.
On April the 23rd, in the year of the Lord
1579, it was demanded, in the presence of the most
1 Quoted by Father Persons, Story of Domestical Difficulties, p. 67.
Stonyhurst MSS.
a See Dodd, vol. ii. pp. 225, seq. and the Historical Introduction
to Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, p. Iviii.
BLESSED RALPH S HER W IN 363
Reverend Dom Spetiano of Milan, holding the
place of the most illustrious Cardinal Moroni, and
the Reverend Fathers Cola, Provincial, and Robert
Bellarmine, of the Society of Jesus, from all the
underwritten scholars, whether they were prepared
to lead an ecclesiastical life, and to proceed to
England whensoever it should seem good to
Superiors, and they replied as follows :
1579-
i. Father Ralph Sherwin, English, a priest,
aged 29, a student of sacred theology, declares and
swears upon the Holy Scriptures that he is ready
to-day rather than to-morrow, at the intimation of
Superiors, to proceed to England for the help of
souls. (In the margin by a later hand.} He was sent
and became a martyr.
The Annals of the English College says of the holy
priest, " It were hardly possible to tell the ardour
wherewith Sherwin yearned to fly to the help of his
wretched country. While here in Rome the news
of the inflictions and tortures which his Catholic
fellow-countrymen were made to suffer, far from
daunting, fired him with more intense longing.
His disposition, talents, and virtue would have
enabled him to have been of no slight use to his
country had he not been seized soon after landing."1
To this encomium may be added his great love
of holy obedience,'2 which would not improbably
have led him into a religious order, if it had
1 Foley, Records S.J. vol. vi. p. 78.
2 Cf. Simpson's Life of Campion, p. 183.
364 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
not been for his still greater desire to sacrifice
himself in the work of the English Mission.
With the year 1580 the time drew near for the
satisfaction of his holy longings.
In the latter part of 1579, Allen's influence had
succeeded in determining the Society of Jesus to
take a part in the glorious labours and perils of the
missionary priests in England. About the same
time he made pressing representations to Pope
Gregory XIII. of the urgent need of Bishops in
England. The great increase in the numbers of
the clergy continually brought home the necessity
of some ecclesiastical government on the spot,
and there was also a crying want of someone to
administer the Sacrament of Confirmation, which
the English had always regarded with special
devotion, and which was exceptionally necessary
in the fiery persecution then raging. The Venerable
Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph, in spite
of age and infirmities, volunteered for this service
of toil and danger ; and after much hesitation, on
account of the exceptional risks he would run, the
Pope consented to his departure. In the spring
of 1580 the Bishop's party and the first Jesuit
missionaries set out together from Rome. The
Bishop was accompanied by Dr. Nicholas Morton,
Prebendary of York, and now Penitentiary of
St. Peter's, and four old priests from the English
Hospital at Rome — Dr. Brumberg, William Giblet,
Thomas Crane, and William Kemp — and the party
was to be joined later by Laurence Vaux, the
deprived Warden of Manchester, now at Louvain,
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 365
who afterwards died in prison for the Faith. The
Jesuits were Blessed Edmund Campion and Father
Persons, with Brother Ralph Emerson.
With this noble company of missionaries three
of the young seminarist priests were chosen to
set out for England, and one of these was Blessed
Ralph Sherwin. The others were Blessed Luke
Kirby and Edward Rishton, and they took with
them two young laymen, John Paschal, Blessed
Ralph's pupil and special charge, and Thomas
Bruscoe or Briscoe. At this time St. Philip was still
living at San Girolamo della Carita, just opposite
the English College, and there can be little doubt
that the departing missionaries, according to the
custom observed as long as the Saint lived, went
to get the old man's blessing before they started.1
They all set out on April the i8th, and were accom-
panied by a distinguished company of friends as far
as the Ponte Molle, where there was an affectionate
leave-taking.
In this part of the journey, at all events, Blessed
Ralph, with the religious and seminarists, went on
foot. At Bologna, where they were delayed some
days, they received hospitality from Cardinal
Paleotto, the Archbishop, and Blessed Ralph, as
well as Campion, was encouraged to speak on some
religious topic at dinner. At Milan, again, they were
received by St. Charles as his own guests during
eight days, and Blessed Ralph preached before him.
1 They were not the first missionaries from the English College.
The Rev. John Askew had been sent as early as May, 1579, and
four others on November 4 of the same year.
366 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
Though the story of this journey properly belongs
to the life of Blessed Edmund Campion, the follow-
ing letter of Blessed Ralph, describing to one of
his friends at Rome their adventures at Geneva,
naturally finds a place here.1
" My loving and old acquainted friend, Mr.
Bickley,
" Many just causes might have moved me
ere this to have saluted you by letters, but, in
truth, greater necessities have compelled me to
the contrary. I trust nothing can bring you into
sinister opinion of me, such is the propension of
your sweet nature. But to let all these terms, more
officious than needful, pass, you know by letters,
I hope, of all contingents that have happened to
us between Rome and Turin. Now the rest of our
journey briefly I shall impart unto you.
" We entered the Alps all in health, and apt for
travel and passed them making great journeys
to St. John Maurien, where we encountered with
many troops of the Spanish soldiers, and by that
means were somewhat distressed for necessary
provision for man and horse. Thence we passed
to Aquabella (Aiguebelle), where we met with
another rout of the army ; and here we understood,
if we passed Lyons way, we should sustain much
difficulty beside peril of the Dolphinates,2 where the
1 This letter was published (presumably by Dr. G. Oliver) in
vol. i. of the Catholic Spectator, in 1824, and again with old spelling,
and corrected readings by Father Pollen, Journey of Blessed E.
Campion (reprint), p. 25.
2 The insurgent peasants of Dauphine.
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 367
rustics are in arms against the nobility. At
Aquabella therefore we entered into deliberation
how to avoid these inconveniences, and found no
means but only by Geneva, and resolved all upon
that ; which merrily we jested at and with great
ease overcame. But before we arrived near this
sink of heresy every man disguised himself, and
Mr. Campion dissembled his personage in form of
a poor Irishman, and waited on Mr. Paschal ; which
sight, if you had seen how naturally he played his
part, the remembrance of it would have made you
merry.
" Well, thus disfigured we represented ourselves
to the gates of Geneva, and there by the soldiers
were demanded from whence we were and whither
we went. After answer was made, a captain com-
manded one of his soldiers to guide and conduct us
to the magistrate, whom we found in the open
market-place, and forthwith were demanded the
place from whence and whither we travelled ; which
by us related he demanded the cause why we passed
not the ordinary way. It was answered to avoid
the Spaniards and Dolphinates who were up in
arms. Then he asked what countrymen we were,
and it was answered some English, some brought
up in Ireland, and here Mr. Campion was called
Patrick. After this he inquired whether we were
of their religion, and Mr. Paschal answered, No ; and
one other of our company boldly told that from the
first to the last we were all Catholics. Then he
replied saying, ' The Queen and all England is of
our religion.' 'No,' saith one, 'there be many
368 BLESSED RALPH S HER WIN
good Christian Catholics,' though many also as he
had said. After this he commanded a soldier to
guide us to our inn, and gave charge that we should
be well used. All this while, above in chambers
looking out, we saw the long-bearded ministers of
Geneva who laughed at us ; but if we might have
had our wills we would have made them to have
wept Irish. Passing through the streets of the
city, some said, ' These are priests;' others, 'They
are all religious men;' and one would needs be
doing with Mr. Campion, because he went like
a poor Irish serving -man, and in Latin asked
him, Cujus es? which he well perceiving answered,
Senior, no ; and the fellow therewith amazed, said,
Potesne loqui latine ? and Mr. Campion gave a shrink
with his shoulder, and so shaked off the knave.
Well, our inn being taken, forthwith Father Persons
and Mr. Paschal with Mr. Patrick his man and
myself went out to talk with Beza, whom we found
in his house, and there saluted him, showing that
passing that way we thought good to see him, for
that he was a man talked of in the world ; and
after such speech Father Persons asked how their
Church was governed ; who said, by equality in
the ministry ; and that they were nine, and every
one ruled his week. Then it was said that we
had Bishops in England, and how that the Queen
was the continual head. He answered shamefully
that he knew not that : but after that assertion,
though much declining, insinuated that he liked
that not ; yet being urged said, as they commonly
shift, that they differed in discipline not in doctrine.
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 369
All this while Mr. Campion stood waiting with hat
in his hand, facing out the old doting heretical fool.
After this he told some false bad news, and then
came strangers with letters and so we were enforced
to leave this reprobate apostate, and returned to our
inn, where we found Mr. Powell, a familiar acquaint-
ance both of Mr. Persons and mine, and three
or four Irishmen more, with whom we had much
familiar speech and invited them to supper. But
they refused, promising to repair to us after we had
supped ; who did so, and Mr. Persons took Powell
in hand, and other of us took one Mr. Browne, tutor
unto young Hastings who shall be heir to the Earl
of Huntingdon, a notable Puritan and Master of Arts
of Oxford. With these we disputed in the streets of
Geneva almost until midnight, and challenged, by
them, Beza and his fellow -ministers to dispute in
all controversies, with this condition, that he that
was justly convicted should be burnt in the place:
which Mr. Browne promised, but God knoweth
durst not perform, nor show himself to us any more.
At length we went to bed, and in the morning
Powell came to us again (he was of Corpus Christi
College in Oxford) and broke his fast with us, and
used us lovingly and brought us out of the town on
our journey. All this while Mr. Campion played the
serving-man ; and because he would not be known
to Mr. Powell, he walked before, out of the gate of
Geneva, alone ; and there by chance met with one
of the nine ministers of Geneva, and by-and-by
buckled with him in questions about their Church
until he had almost made the fellow mad : for when
Y II.
370 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
we came in sight Mr. Campion went his way and left
the heretic; and when we came to him, he seemed to
be in desperation and told us that there was a fellow
held a strange opinion and had mocked him about
his Church. Then all our company fell upon him,
and shook up the poor shackerel1 before the soldiers
just by the gate ; until Mr. Powell desired us to
leave, lest some harm might grow to us of it.
And then Mr. Powell knew Mr. Campion, and he
took him and catechised him. Who said to us,
' Why would you not stay and dispute with Beza ? '
And then Father Campion told him, if he would
assure us security, that we would return and deal
with all the rabble of their ministers. But indeed
he could not ; and so, leaving him well-minded to
read Catholic books and to visit you in Rome,
we bade him farewell and so passed on our journey
stoutly until the Monday after Whit Sunday, when
eight of our company fell sick in one night ; and
so made small journeys, and all, save Mr. Kemp,
arrived in Rheims in health, the last day of May.
And on this 4 of June, six of our company and of
others here parted towards England, and the rest
all ready to dispose themselves that way in speed.
" Forget us not in your prayers. We are
members of one body, now ready to fall into the
hands of the tyrant. We find all things in this
College poor, but all men religious and zealous.
You must labour lest you come behind them.
The 5th of June, Father Campion made a zealous
1 A shackle, "a feeble, diminutive, half-distorted person."
(Jamieson, Scottish Dictionary.)
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 371
and excellent sermon to the great consolation of all
this company : and the 6th day Father Persons
with four others departed directly towards Calais.
Mr. Paschal and I were appointed to assist my Lord
Bishop, and accompany him into England. But
he suddenly fell into an ague,1 and we, with Dr.
Brombrecke, on the loth of June, are travelling to
our country with all speed. Mr. Kirby cometh
shortly after with other priests of the Seminary,
from whence twenty-two are gone since Easter. Tell
Mr. Gratley and Mr. Harrison and Mr. Tirrell and
Mr. Brucket, that I forgot them not to Mr. President,
who is glad to hear of their zeal, but would have them
come better moneyed than we were. Let all them use
that place virtuously and fruitfully while they are
there ; for I find and well know it is hard to come
in the like. Tell my loving and dear friend Mr. Hart,
your chamber-fellow, that Mr. Bridgwater was
come to the Spa, which we were sorry for. His
things were left with Dr. Allen. Tell him that if he
remember me in his prayers that I shall hardly
forget him. Tell Isaac that he hath a brother here
at Rheims, unto whom I delivered his beads. He
had need to go forward well in virtue, or else this
will over-reach him. Remember my commendations
i The age and infirmities of the good Bishop made it plain that
he was unequal to the mission he had undertaken, the growing
heat of the persecution in England moreover, and the knowledge
that special measures had been taken to seize him on his first
arrival, at length broke down his resolution. He returned to Rome
with the Pope's approval, and died there in 1585. (See Queen
Elizabeth and the Catholic Hierarchy, by Fathers Bridgett and Knox,
p. 240.)
372 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
to all your chamber and your whole house ; no less
to any than to my inseparable friend Mr. Harrison,
whom I shall much look for. It behoveth all my
fellows and yours there of Exeter College, to labour
much, and well to employ their talents, for I hear that
College wholly to be corrupted. I commend me
to you all whose company, to my consolation, I
hope at the least in Heaven to enjoy. Your prayers
I require. Of mine, albeit of small value, account
yourself sure. Let Mr. Barrett and Mr. Middlemore
understand that I remember well what I promised
them and will, by God's grace, perform the same.
Mr. Lyster's business with his friends and Mr.
Hollowell's and all others commended to my
diligence, I shall retain in mind. I pray God they
forget me not in their prayers, which in truth I
cannot distrust. I pray commend me to William
and Gilbert Gifforde, whom God increase in virtue
and learning to the great commodity of our
country, which hath great need of such wits well
trained up in Catholic schools.
" Well, my loving friend Ralph, even while I
wrote these letters, came in Mr. Paschal with the
frip to frenchify me. Oh, miserable time when
a priest must counterfeit a cutter : God give us
still priests' minds, for we go far astray from the
habit here. Mr. Paschal crieth, ' You will never be
handsome,' and I tell him there was never priest
handsome in this attire. Thus, for Christ, we put
out ourselves in colours ... all which imperfec-
tions I hope He hath washed away with His
Blood. My loving Ralph, I request thee once in
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 373
thy greatest fervour to say over thy beads for me,
and procure as many of my friends as you can to
do the same there, and let your petition be this,
that in humility and constancy with perseverance to
the end, I may honour God in this vocation, where-
unto though unworthy I am called. And if God
will use me, by your intercession, for an instrument
of His glory, I shall offer all unto Him in your
behalf, that so pray for me.
" If you write to me as you may by Rheims,
you shall have answer from me out of England.
Forget me not, for I still remember you. I find
Mr. Licentiate (you know whom I mean, Mr. Covert)
not inferior to my opinion which I had conceived
of him. His labour and travail is ready always for
our Catholic countrymen. To some of our Roman
companions he hath showed much friendship, so
that it maketh me marvel to see his charity. To
Mr. Paschal and me he hath let no token of love
escape him. I pray you to thank him no less for
his readiness to perform your desire than for other
friendship showed to us. Mr. Paschal saluteth you
heartily, and Mr. Dr. Brombrouke.
" From your loving companion,
" R. SHERWINE.
" From Paris, the nth of June, 1580."
This delightful letter tells us more of the martyr's
character and of his singular charm than pages of
panegyric could do. It was evidently begun at
Rheims and continued on the journey. Blessed
Ralph left Rheims on June the 8th. The mission-
374 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
aries had separated and taken different routes in the
hopes of baffling the spies of Walsingham.
It is surprising that the martyr could find time
to write such a long letter at a time like this,
especially as Ralph Bickley was not his only corres-
pendent. His loving heart was still with his friends
at Rome, and found its consolation in imparting to
them its joys, and hopes, and sorrows.
Thus, as soon after his arrival at Rheims as
June the 4th, Blessed Ralph began a long letter,
directed to Father Agazzari, S.J., which is still
preserved as a precious relic at Stonyhurst. This
letter is of course in Latin. After describing their
adventures at Geneva much as in the letter already
quoted, he thus continues :
" Oh what a joy to ours from Rome to see the
College full ! Allen the same as ever embraces
us as sons with exultant joy and cherishes us most
tenderly. But we shall soon bid farewell and leave
him, for we are not forgetful of the goal. There is
one thing I especially wish to impress on your
Paternity, that is that all our outfit of clothing is of
no use at all, and unless you provide better for the
others, they will be unable to carry out their mission
as they should. I do not like to say in what great
straits we are placed, but they are certainly very
great indeed, and we hope the Pope will be informed
of it at a fitting opportunity, in order that the others
may be better provided for. Not the double of
what we received for travelling expenses would be
really sufficient. Believe me, everything has to be
BLESSED RALPH SHE R WIN 375
new, from the sole of the foot to the top of the head.
Let it be enough to have mentioned this ; my heart
is broken as I think of the straits we are in, and our
Fathers also, and yet Father Robert [Persons] has
foreseen all and arranges everything with the greatest
zeal and prudence. Paschal would have written, but
he is taken up with other business ; he salutes your
Reverence whom he reveres as a father, as indeed all
the others do. I am yours and shall always be ; I
depend on your prayers, and desire to send my
greetings to all your Fathers and my brethren. In
two days we start for England.
"June the 4th."
The letter was then closed up, but as there
was no opportunity of sending it off before they
left Rheims, they took it with them to Paris.
Here it was re-opened, and Paschal added a post-
script, in which he begged that his old friends might
pray for him as "for an important intention of
Father Rector's." Blessed Ralph also added a long
postscript, dated Paris, June the loth. That the
letter was closed and re-opened appears from the fact
that the writing of the postscripts goes round the
little holes through which the fastener went. It is
all written in Sherwin's cursive hand, and the last
part very hurriedly.1 We quote a part of the
martyr's postscript.
" On June the 4th, Father Rishton and Father
Crane, with Briscoe and two others of the Rheims
1 It may be interesting to note that Sherwin uses very few
capitals, not even after full stops, or for the name of God, &c.
Paschal seems to use capitals instead of any stops.
376 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
Seminary, namely, Doctor Ely and John Hart,
priest, set out for England.1 On the. 5th, Father
Campion preached an excellent sermon in English,
and on the 6th left Rheims with a view to England,
together with Father Robert, Mr. Giblet, the lay-
brother, and Father Robert's brother.2 . . . They
say here that our names are betrayed to the enemy,
but let them say and plot what they like, we shall
take our lives in our hands, and if your prayers are
not wanting to us, we shall break through the ranks
of our foes. Your Paternity knows what power the
assiduous prayer of a just man has with God ; we
ask that this may be offered for us fervently and
constantly. Believe me, that the nearer we get to
the labours and perils of England, the more eagerly
we advance upon the country commended to our
zeal and the burden laid upon our shoulders. Nor
is there any reason why we should fear much as to
a victorious result, for our Master and Redeemer
has conquered the world long ago, has conquered,
I say, and now He calls us, not so much to the
conflict as to the crown."
The blessed martyr then goes on to send loving
salutations to the friends he has left in Rome, to
the Jesuit Fathers in particular, especially to the
Father General, Father Robert Bellarmine, and
others whom he names ; " to all the English, both
ours and yours, among whom John Buxton must
1 The Douay Diaries says June 5, and substitutes Cottam's
name for Briscoe's, p. 166.
2 The Diarist says Briscoe went with this party, but adds
quod existimo. Sherwin is more likely to be correct.
BLESSED RALPH S HER WIN 377
take the first place." He commends his " spiritual
sons, Hodson and Lyster," to the Rector's special
care ; and, finally, " I leave out no one, though I
forbear from prudence to name each one separately."
He then concludes :
" God grant that we may so run that, as we
hope, once the tabernacle of this body is laid
aside, we may obtain. And so farewell meus suavis-
simus Alphonsus, may God grant you an abundant
reward, for only He can give you a worthy one,
and it is not right to hope for it from any but
from Him. . . . One thing I truly and sincerely
desire your Paternity to understand, that we have
made this journey together, with the greatest union
of hearts and an increase of spiritual love, in which
thing your Fathers both by example and help have
indeed acted the parts of true Religious. These
tidings (with our humble greeting, please, from his
and your disciples) we desire should be imparted
to Father General, that in this at least he may
take some consolation, that we are of one mind,
one will, and one counsel in all things with his
Fathers. May God preserve him as long as
possible for the good of England. Again farewell,
and remember your sons.
"Ex latebris Lutetice die 10 Junii"
From Paris the little party made their way to
Rouen, where no doubt they stayed with Sherwin's
uncle, John Woodward, a priest who lived in exile
there, and whom Blessed Ralph loved as a father.
378 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
Their stay was a longer one than was at first
intended. We have a letter which Sherwin wrote
to Father Agazzari, on the day of his leaving Rouen
to continue his perilous journey to England. The
date is August the ist. It is not clear what can
have been the cause of this delay of nearly six
weeks ; for in his letter from Paris, he says :
" We are travelling to our country with all speed."
Probably it is accounted for by the illness of young
Paschal, referred to in the letter, which is as
follows :
"JESUS + MARY.
" My very dear Father Alphonsus,
" Exactly on the feast of St. Peter's
Chains, I left Rouen and started for England,
Paschal being well advanced towards his recovery.
I have no little hope that He who protected the
Prince of the Apostles in his chains will mercifully
defend us in all our miseries. Being on the point of
departure, Reverend Father, because I cannot say
much, in one word I recommend my heart and my
soul and myself to you, as to a most loving parent.
And because I know well with what eagerness your
Reverence seeks after docile young men, who are
not less powerful in intellect than fervent in
religious piety ; lo ! this Edward Throckmorton,1
the bearer of my letter, is of good family and
exceedingly well instructed in polite learning, and,
as I know by experience, very praiseworthy in the
pursuit of virtue and holiness : wherefore I recom-
1 Throckmorton died two years and some months later in the
odour of sanctity at the English College in Rome.
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 379
mend him to your charity no less than myself.
Whatever service you render him, consider that it
is rendered to me, your most obedient son. And
so farewell, my very holy Father, and remember
sometimes your son Sherwin, who never forgets his
Father Alphonsus in his prayers.
" In haste, your most obedient son,
" RALPH SHERWIN.
" Rouen, August i, 1580.
" To the Reverend Father in Christ, Father
Alphonsus Agazzari, Rector of the English College.
(Rome.)"1
Of the martyr's further journey, or how he passed
the first perils of landing in England, we find no
account. Once in this country, the self-sacrificing
devotion of George Gilbert and his friends would
have greatly facilitated the movements and com-
munication of the missionaries. It must have been
by this means, no doubt, that he kept up correspon-
dence with Father Persons, who writes of the holy
priest that he would do nothing without consulting
him.
Of his ministry a priest wrote from England to
Father Agazzari :2 " Your Sherwin who burned with
such zeal at Rome, with no less ardour of spirit
1 The original holograph is at Stonyhurst. (Anglia, i. fol. 32, n. 9.)
It is sealed, and is written in a fine, bold hand, the letters almost
printed. The signature, however, is in a cursive English hand.
2 The writer is evidently Father Persons himself, and the date
must be August, 1581. He is, however, mistaken in saying that
Sherwin's missionary career lasted for six months. We have
seen that he did not leave Rouen till August i, and he was taken
in November.
380 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
spent nearly six entire months preaching in various
parts of the kingdom : in this work he enjoyed a
very special grace and ascendency : and it seemed
as if Divine Providence meant to reward such
great labours by disposing that he should be taken
in the very act of preaching in London."1
In November he met Persons for the first time
since they had parted at Rheims, and the Jesuit
gives the following account of the meeting.
" We met the night that Bosgrave followed me
home from Hogsdon. We passed the night together
in spiritual conference ; wherein he told me of his
desire to die. The next day he came to tell me
what danger we were in, and then went away to
preach. For we had agreed that he should stay in
London for the arrival of a certain gentleman who
had asked for him, and in the meantime should
occupy himself with preaching. And it was while
preaching in Mr. Roscarrock's house that he was
captured. I think he was the first of our confra-
ternity that was taken, though he was not the first
priest caught since our arrival, for Bosgrave and
Hart were already in prison."5
Nicholas Roscarrock3 was a gentleman of
1 Persons' edition of Rishton's Continuation of Sander, Cologne,
1610, p. 405. (Latin.)
2 Simpson's Life of Campion, p. 183.
8 " The family of Roscarrock is populous, but of them two
brothers, Hugh for his civil carriage, and Nicholas for his industrious
delight in matters of history and antiquity, do merit a commending
remembrance." (Carew's Survey, apud J. Morris, Troubles, i. p. 95.)
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 381
fortune, living in London, and a great friend of
priests.
It is not known how or by whom the capture
was effected. But the Council were well informed
as to the missionaries who had succeeded in enter-
ing the country : they were stung by the boldness of
Blessed Edmund Campion's Challenge which was
circulated early in September ; no fewer than four
proclamations had been put forth between the
arrival of the missionaries in England and the end
of November, and the Government spies were
furnished with minute descriptions of the priests.
It is not surprising, therefore, that they succeeded
in tracking down one after another.
Blessed Ralph was committed to the Marshalsea
Prison. Here he was loaded with heavy irons.
The priest (i.e., Father Persons) whose letter has
already been quoted gives a touching account of
this incident in the letter to Father Agazzari already
referred to.
" When Sherwin was taken into the inner court
of the prison, they fastened on him very heavy
fetters, which he could scarcely move. The gaolers
then went away to see in what cell or dungeon he
was to be confined. On this, looking round and
finding himself alone, he gazed up to heaven with
a face full of joy and gave God thanks. Then,
looking down again at his feet loaded with chains,
he tried whether he could move them ; but when he
heard the clank of the chains as he stirred, he could
not help breaking out into laughter, and then again
382 BLESSED RALPH S HER WIN
into tears of happiness, and with hands and eyes
lifted up to heaven betraying the greatness of his
joy. This scene was witnessed by two heretics of
the ' family of love ' who were confined in a
neighbouring part of the prison, and who were
filled with astonishment ; and who have again and
again related it since."
The writer goes on to quote a letter of the martyr
from his prison.
" Two days before his capture Sherwin spent the
night with me, and the cold being very severe (for
winter had set in) slipped himself in with much
difficulty between two or three of us at the very
small fire which we had. He alludes to this in a
letter which he wrote to me six days, I think, after
his arrest.
" ' I have received the alms you sent me yester-
day. May God repay you. I had but very little
before. When it is spent, I shall go down to my
brothers the thieves in the pit, and subsist on the
common basket of alms : and I shall go to it with
more alacrity than ever to any banquet ; for that
bread of charity, for my Lord's sake, will be sweeter
to me than honey or all kinds of dainties.
" ' I wear now on my feet and legs some little
bells,1 to keep me in mind who I am, and whose
I am. I never heard such sweet harmony before.
If I were with you again, they would make room
for me at the fire, and you would not crowd upon
1 His chains.
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 383
me. Pray for me that I may finish my course with
courage and fidelity.' "
Blessed Ralph spent a month in the Marshalsea.
During this interval a message from the Knight
Marshal was brought by the keeper of the prison,
inquiring whether there were any Papists in the
prison who dared accept a challenge to disputation,
and if so, bidding them name the questions they
were prepared to defend. On which Blessed Ralph,
together with Father James Bosgrave, and the
Rev. John Hart, who were in the same prison,
gladly " offered themselves to the combat, drew up
questions, subscribed their names, and sent them
to the said Knight Marshal." Such at least is the
account of the matter given in the Briefe Historic,1
whilst Mr. Simpson, a little less accurately, says
Blessed Sherwin, immediately on his confinement,
gave a general challenge to heretics to dispute
with him. The disputation never came off: for the
very day before that fixed for it he was removed from
the Marshalsea. Before this happened he had the
sorrow of seeing his pupil, young Paschal, brought
to the prison. On the other hand, he had the joy
of carrying on his apostolate within his very prison.
The Diary of the English College of Rome says " he
reconciled many of his fellow-captives to the
Church." Among them there happened just then
to be two members of the disgraceful sect of the
" family of love " who were in prison for heresy.
They made an attentive study of Sherwin, whose
cell was next to theirs. Seeing the joy and delight
1 Life of Campion, p. 183.
384 BLESSED RALPH SHE R WIN
he seemed to take in his fetters, they regarded him
as a lunatic, not knowing that the inward consola-
tion and delight which appeared in his bright and
cheerful bearing sprang from the fact that he was a
" prisoner of Christ," as in his letters he was wont
to style himself. On making closer acquaintance
with him they soon discovered that far from
being a madman, he not only had his senses about
him, but was very learned. Having on one occasion
prolonged the conversation till it was time for
Sherwin to resume his Breviary, he politely begged
to be excused, and kneeling down said his prayers
with all reverence and devotion, at which they were
greatly impressed. At the evening meal they began
to talk about religion, and after a long dispute they
were so won over by Sherwin's reasons that he soon
after reconciled them to the Church. Abjuring
the immoral heresy for which they had been arrested,
they made profession of the Catholic Faith, and
were on that account still kept in prison.
On December the 4th,1 without a word of
previous warning, he was transferred to the Tower
— an ominous change, foreshadowing the infliction
of torture. There were no conveniences for its use
in most of the other prisons. In the long, vaulted
dungeon under the armoury of the Tower, the rack
and the "scavenger's daughter" were always ready
and seldom idle. On the same day, but from other
prisons, there arrived the Blessed Thomas Cottam,
1 See Life of Campion, by Simpson, p. 184, who examined the
Tower bills. The Diarist says the 5th ; he probably heard of their
arrival only on the next day.
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 385
Robert Johnson, and Luke Kirby, and also his
good host, Nicholas Roscarrock. The Diary of the
Tower begins in the winter of this year, and from
it we learn that Blessed Ralph was put upon
the rack for the first time on December the I5th,
and " severely tortured." A list of questions drawn
up by the Council was put to him. Why did the
Pope send him and his companions ? To whom
were they specially directed to repair ? What hopes
had they of an invasion of Ireland ? Why had the
Bishop of St. Asaph, Dr. Morton, and others come
from Rome to Paris? Who had relieved them?
Had the Queen of Scots given them anything ?
'Whom had they reconciled ? What communications
had they had with Campion ? Where was he ?
Had they had any communication with the Bishop
of Ross, or Dr. Sander? Who were the Irishmen
most noted as favourers of the rebellion there ? l
He was also asked whether he had said Mass at
Mr. Roscarrock's, what money he had received from
him, and whom he had reconciled in prison,
It was now the middle of December, and the
snow was falling thick, and after the torture he was
laid out, helpless and in agony, in the snow. The
object of this was the infliction of a piece of
scientific cruelty on his friend, Mr. Roscarrock, who
was thus made to hear, from a cell near the open
courtyard, the martyr's pitiful groans. But this
terrible trial not having overcome his constancy,
Roscarrock was himself racked on January the I4th.2
1 Simpson's Campion, p. 189. Quoted in full in the life of Kirby.
2 Diary of the Tc--.<er.
386 BLESSED RALPH S HER IV IN
On December the i6th, the next day after his
first racking, Blessed Ralph was again put to the
torture. His brother John afterwards testified that
the martyr gave him the following account of his
sufferings, when he visited him in the Tower: "That
he had been twice racked, and the latter time he lay
five days and nights without any food or speaking to
anybody. All which time he lay, as he thought in
a sleep, before our Saviour on the Cross. After
which time he came to himself, not finding any
distemper in his joints by the extremity of the
torture."1 His brother added, " It was offered him
by the Bishops of Canterbury and London, that if
he would but go to Paul's Church, he should have
the second bishopric of England." It was just at
this time that his pupil, Mr. Paschal, was brought
from the Marshalsea to the Tower. He does not
seem to have been tortured, but on January the I5th
was brought handcuffed before Sir Owen Hopton,
Lieutenant of the Tower, at the Guildhall. The
Lieutenant had probably been able to form an
estimate of the unfortunate young man's character ;
and by a skilful mixture of threats and flattery, he
induced him to purchase his freedom by apostasy.
This was no doubt a worse trial to the martyr than
his own racking.
On the same day all the Catholic prisoners were
forced by the military to go to the Protestant
church. This tyranny was repeated on the 26th,
and on February the 5th, from which time until
1 MS. relation of Richard Broughton, in the Archives of the
See of Westminster, vol. iv. p. 119. The passage is quoted by
Challoner.
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 387
"the festival of the following Pentecost we were
dragged," says the diarist, "by the hands of our
keepers and the soldiers, on all Sundays, to hear
heretical sermons ; " but the prisoners interrupted
the preachers, sometimes hooting them away, at
others convicting them of falsehood, or challenging
them to disputation.
On midsummer day they were all summoned
to the presence of the Lieutenant, by a special
commission from the Council, and asked if they
would attend Protestant service. Blessed Ralph
of course refused, and was then told that he would
be indicted, within a few days, on the Statute of
Recusancy which had just been passed. This
circumstance is important, as indicating that the
condemnation of the martyrs, on the grave charge
afterwards brought against them, had not yet been
decided upon.
Our martyr's imprisonment lasted more than
a year. Probably he never doubted from the first
how it would end. He had led a penitential life
before, but now in preparation for his last combat
he was not content with what others inflicted on
him. "The order of his life," says the Briefe
Historic, "in his spare diet, his continual prayer
and meditation, his long watching, with frequent
and sharp discipline used upon his body, caused
great admiration to his keeper, who would always
call him a man of God, and the best and devoutest
priest that he ever saw in his life."
His trial in its general features has been described
in that of Blessed Edmund Campion. All that is
388 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
special to him in the Protestant account preserved in
the Harleian MSS.1 is as follows:
" Evidence was next given against Sherwin, who,
before the Commissioners, had refused to swear to
the Supremacy, neither would answer plainly what
he thought of the Pope's Bull, but confessed that
his coming into England was to persuade the people
to the Catholic religion.
" Queen's Counsel. — You well knew that it was
not lawful for you to persuade the Queen's subjects
to any other religion than by her Highness's instruc-
tions is already professed, and therefore if there had
not been a further matter in your meaning you would
have kept your conscience to yourself and yourself
where you were.
"Sherwin. — We read that the Apostles and
Fathers in the primitive Church have taught and
preached in the dominions and empires of ethnical
and heathen rulers, and yet were not deemed worthy
of death. The sufferance perhaps and the like
toleration, I well hoped for in such a common-
wealth, as where open Christianity and godliness is
pretended. And albeit in such a diversity of religion,
it was to be feared lest I should not discharge my
conscience without fear of danger, yet ought I not
therefore to surcease in my functions; although that
conscience is very wandering and unsteady, which
with fear of danger draweth from duty.
" One of the Judges. — But your case differeth from
theirs in the primitive Church, for that those Apostles
1 B.M. Harleian, 6265, printed in Cobbett's State Trials, vol. i.
1050, and Simpson's Campion.
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 380,
and preachers never conspired the death of the
emperors and rulers, in whose dominions they so
taught and preached.
" The Clerk of the Crown read a letter which
showeth that, by the fireside in the English Seminary
beyond the seas, Sherwin should say that if he were
in England he could compass many things : that
there was one Arundell in Cornwall who, at an
instant, could levy a great power : and that if an
army were to be sent into England the best landing
would be at St. Michael's Mount.
" Sherwin. — I never spake any such matter, God
is my record : neither was it ever the least part of
my meaning."
There was of course, if not justice, at least statute
law for his condemnation, had he been tried upon it.
On the charge brought against him, sentence was
inexcusable. He spoke the simple truth when he
exclaimed, " The plain reason of our standing
here is religion and not treason." The wretched
trumped - up story of a conspiracy would be
laughed or hooted out of court at the present day,
it was not believed then. It was not believed by
Elizabeth, as Camden, her panegyrist, admits.1 It
1 "The Queen, to take away the fear which had possessed many
men's minds that religion would be altered and Popery tolerated,
being overcome by importunate entreaties, permitted that Edmund
Campion aforesaid of the Society of Jesus, Ralph Sherwin, Luke
Kirby, and Alexander Briant, priests, should be arraigned," and a
little further on, " Yet for the greater part of these silly priests (he
is speaking here of the missionaries generally) she did not at all
believe them guilty of plotting the destruction of their country."
(Bk. iii. ann. 1581.)
390 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
was not believed by her Ministers, who thought the
sacrifice of these men necessary to quiet the ferment
to which the report of her intended marriage with
the Duke of Anjou had given occasion.
But his condemnation was the beginning of his
victory, and when it was pronounced he cried,
"This is the day which the Lord hath made, let
us exult and be glad therein." And going back to
his prison he wrote to some of his friends.
"Your liberality I have received and disposed
thereof to my great contentation. When hereafter
at the pleasure of God, we shall meet in Heaven,
I trust you shall be repaid cum fcenore. Delay of
our death doth somewhat dull me. It was not
without cause that our Master Himself said, Quod
fads, fac cito.
" Truth it is, I hoped ere this, casting off this
body of death, to have kissed the precious, glorified
wounds of my sweet Saviour, sitting in the throne
of His Father's own glory. Which desire, as I trust,
descending from above, hath so quieted my mind
that since the judicial sentence proceeded against us,
neither the sharpness of the death hath much terri-
fied me, nor the shortness of life much troubled me.
" My sins are great, I confess : but I flee to
God's mercy. My negligences are without number
I grant, but I appeal to my Redeemer's clemency.
I have no boldness but in His Blood. His bitter
Passion is my only consolation. It is comfortable
that the prophet hath recorded, which is, ' He hath
written us in His hands.' Oh, that He would
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 391
vouchsafe to write Himself in our hearts. How
joyful should we then appear before the tribunal-
seat of His Father's glory: the dignity whereof
when I think of, my flesh quaketh, not sustaining,
by reason of mortal infirmity, the presence of my
Creator's Majesty.
" Our Lord perfect us to that end whereunto
we were created, that leaving this world we may
live in Him and of Him, world without end. It is
thought that upon Monday or Tuesday next we
shall be passible. God grant us humility, that
we, following His footsteps, may obtain the
victory." l
Two days before his death, coming with Blessed
Edmund Campion out of the Lieutenant's hall,
where they had been disputing with some minister,
he looked up at the sun and said, " Ah, Father
Campion, I shall soon be above yonder fellow."
On the eve of his passion he wrote to his uncle,
the Rev. John Woodward, living at Rouen.2
" Absit ut gloriemur nisi in cruce Domini
nostri Jesu Christi.
" My dearest Uncle,
" After many conflicts and worldly
corrasies, mixed with spiritual consolations and
1 Briefe Historic, p. 83.
2 A John Woodward appears as one of a number of English
residents at Rouen who signed a recommendation of the exiled com-
munity of Syon, in 1582. (See Douay Diaries, p. 362.) Thomas
Covert sent a Latin translation of this letter to Father Agazzari, S.J.,
Rector of the English College at Rome, January 25, 1581-2. His
letter is at Stonyhurst. (Anglia, i. n. 3, fol. 38.)
392 BLESSED RALPH SHERW1N
Christian comforts, it hath pleased God, of His
unspeakable mercy, to call me out of this vale of
misery. To Him therefore for all His benefits at
all times and for ever be all praise and glory.
" Your tender care always had over me, and cost
bestowed on me, I trust in Heaven shall be rewarded.
My prayers you have still had and that was but duty.
Other tokens of a grateful mind I could not show,
by reason of my restrained necessity.
" This very morning, which is the festival-day of
St. Andrew, I was advertised by superior authority
that to-morrow I was to end the course of this life.
God grant I may do it to the imitation of this
noble apostle and servant of God, and that with joy
I may say, rising off the hurdle, Salve sancta crux,
&c.
" Innocency is my only comfort against all the
forged villainy which is fathered on my fellow-
priests and me. Well, when by the High Judge,
God Himself, this false vizard of treason shall be
removed from true Catholic men's faces, then shall
it appear who they be that carry a well-meaning
and who an evil, murdering mind. In the mean
season God forgive all injustice, and if it be His
blessed will to convert our persecutors, that they
may become professors of His truth.
" Prayers for my soul procure for me, my loving
patron, and that the Saving Victim be offered to
God the Father again and again for the expiation
of my sins ; and so having great need to prepare
myself for God, never quieter in mind nor less
troubled towards God, binding all my iniquities up in
BLESSED RALPH S HER WIN 393
His precious Wounds, I bid you farewell. Yea, and
once again, the lovingest uncle that ever kinsman
had in this world, farewell.
" God grant us both His grace and blessing until
the end ; that living in His fear, and dying in His
favour, we may enjoy one the other for ever. And
so, my good old John, farewell. Salute all my fellow-
Catholics. And so without further troubling of you,
my sweetest benefactor, farewell.
" Your cousin,
" RALPH SHERWINE, Priest.
" From the Tower of London, on St. Andrew's
day, 1581." 1
When December the ist the day of the martyr's
triumph came, he was tied to the same hurdle as
Blessed Alexander Briant.2 The Diary of the
English College speaks of some Catholics having
prepared a strengthening drink for the martyrs,
which was brought them by a kindly disposed
gaoler. When Blessed Edmund Campion's mar-
tyrdom was over, the hangman, with his bare
arms and hands all bloody, seized hold of Blessed
Ralph, saying to him, " Corne, Sherwin, take thou
also thy wages," but the holy man nothing dismayed*
embraced him and reverently kissing the blood on
his hands, climbed up into the cart beneath the
gallows, where he stood some moments in prayer
with his eyes shut and his hands lifted up to
heaven. Then he asked if the people looked for
1 Brief e Historie, pp. 84, 85.
2 Foley, Records S.J. vol. vi. p. 102.
394 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
any speech from him. Many of the people and
some of the more honourable sort crying out, " Yea,
yea," with stout courage and strong voice, he said,
" Then first, I thank the Omnipotent and most
merciful God the Father, for my creation; my sweet
and loving Saviour Christ Jesus, for my redemption,
and the Holy Ghost for my sanctification : three
Persons and one God."
He was then going on to give an account of his
faith, his condemnation and death, when Sir Francis
Knollys interrupted him and bade him confess his
treason against the Queen. " I am innocent and
guiltless," he replied, and being further pressed, he
said, " I will not belie myself, for so should I
condemn my own soul ; and although in this short
time of mortal life I am to undergo the infamy and
punishment of a traitor, I make no doubt of my
future happiness through Jesus Christ, in whose
Death, Passion, and Blood I only trust."
Upon this the ministers present said he was a
Protestant ; but he took no notice of them, but
went on " with a most sweet prayer to our Lord
Jesus, acknowledging the imperfection, misery, and
sinful wickedness of his own nature, and still
protesting his innocence of all traitorous practices."
When Sir Francis Knollys again interrupted him,
he said, " Tush, tush ! you and I shall answer this
before another Judge, where my innocence shall be
known, and you will see that I am guiltless of this."
Whereupon Sir Francis said, " We know you are
no contriver or doer of this treason, for you are
no man of arms ; but you are a traitor by con-
BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN 395
sequence ; " but the martyr boldly answered, " If to
be a Catholic only, if to be a perfect Catholic, be to
be a traitor, then am I a traitor." Then being
debarred further speech, he only added, " I forgive
all who, either by general presumption or particular
error, have procured my death," and so devoutly
prayed to his Saviour Jesus. After which he was
asked his opinion of the Bull of Pope Pius, to which
point he gave no answer. Then being willed to
pray for the Queen, he said he did so. " For which
Queen ? " said Lord Charles Howard. To whom
Sherwin somewhat smiling replied, " Yea, for
Elizabeth, Queen ; I now at this instant pray my
Lord God to make her His servant in this life, and
after this life co-heir with Christ Jesus." To this
some objected that he meant to make her a Papist,
to whom he replied, " Else God forbid." And so
recollecting himself in prayer, he put his head into
the halter, repeating the ejaculation, Jesu, Jesu,
Jesu, esto mi hi Jesus, the multitude crying out to
him, " Good Mr. Sherwin, the Lord God receive
your soul ; " and so they kept crying, and could not
be stayed even after the cart had been drawn away,
and he had been some time dead.
Dr. Worthington, in his Catalogue of Martyrs,
states that he had the happiness of instructing his
parents in the Faith. He was thirty-one years old.
In a letter to Father Agazzari, in 1583, Dr. Allen
laments that he had been unable, in spite of all his
endeavours, to secure any relics of him.
E. S. K.
ED.
3Q6 BLESSED RALPH SHERWIN
AUTHORITIES. — Briefe Historic, pp. 76 — 84. Concertatio,
fol. 68 A — 82 A. Yepes, pp. 337 — 346. Douay Diaries, passim.
Challoner, i. pp. 39 — 43.
RELICS. — A bone of Blessed Ralph Sherwin is preserved
at Stonyhurst. It is apparently a knuckle-bone or toe-bone
with a piece of tendon attached. There are also five fibrous
pieces of nerve or muscle, and a small piece of cloth. The
last named is labelled " B. Shering, mart.," but is no doubt
a relic of Blessed Ralph. His chief relics are, however, his
letters preserved at Stonyhurst.
XI.
THE BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT,
JESUIT.
Tyburn, i December, 1581.
THE violence of the persecution, it has already been
observed, had greatly intensified in 1580. This was
owing in part to the continually increasing number
of missionaries known to have entered the country
— no fewer than twenty -nine this year — but
especially to the presence of the Jesuits. In the
course of 1581 a new cause inflamed it still further.
This was the publications of Blessed Edmund
Campion and Father Persons. Campion's Challenge
was circulated in manuscript, and as one scurrilous
attack after another was made by the Protestants,
there appeared to their amazement within an incre-
dibly short time — on one occasion within ten days
— trenchant rejoinders from Father Persons, first
against Charke and Hanmer, then against Nichols.
The third, the Reasons why Catholiques refuse to go to
Church, was a cogent but very conciliatory answer to
the new laws against Recusants. The tracts professed
on the title-page to be printed at Douay, but to
practised eyes they were unmistakably English
work.
3Q8 BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT
Moreover, without any visible agency, these books
were found spread abroad not only among Catholics,
but even in Protestant houses, on bookstalls, in the
streets, in shops, and even in the Court. How
could their publication be stopped ? Where was
the press from which they issued ? By what means
were they circulated ? A sense of vexation and
defeat was now added to the religious bitterness.
The persecutors began to do their worst. Searches
and sudden irruptions of pursuivants and priest-
catchers became continual. Again and again Father
Persons had hairbreadth escapes, and sometimes
though he escaped, some one else was taken. Thus
on one occasion he was to meet a brother of Edward
Rishton at midnight at an inn called " The Red
Rose," and receive him into the Church, but could
not identify the inn and had to give up the attempt
regretfully. He had passed the very door, he after-
wards found, without recognizing it, though he had
been there a few days before, and by a slip of
memory had inquired for " The White Rose." All the
while there had been officers in the house waiting
for his arrival to arrest him. They missed their
expected prey, but they captured seven others, and
among them Edward Rishton, the publisher of John
Hart's Diary in the Tower and the continuator of
Sander's History of the English Schism.
Again, Father Persons had hired lodgings " near
Bridewell Church," and close to the Thames, a
most convenient meeting-place for priests and other
Catholics, and also for the work of his publications. It
was more suitable for this purpose because it belonged
BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT 399
to a Protestant bookseller, and so was not likely to
be suspected. Here Father Persons deposited his
stock of rosaries, medals, crucifixes, and pious
objects which he had brought from Rome. Here
too a servant of Roland Jenks (the Oxford book-
seller who for the Faith had had his ears cruelly
nailed to the pillory and had been forced to free
himself by cutting them off with his own hand) had
worked at bookbinding. This man unfortunately
turned against his master and put the Council on
the scent.
Father Persons says : l " While we were together
in a house in a wood [i.e., at Stonor] , one night
Hartley told me casually that he had been at Oxford,
and had heard that Roland Jenks's servant, who
had just before been employed by me at my house
in London to bind some books, had gone over and
had given evidence against his master. I at once
saw the danger, and the first thing in the morning
I sent to London and found that Wilks, the secre-
tary of the Privy Council, and Norton and some of
the Queen's guards, had that very night searched my
chamber and carried off all he found there." Great
must have been the disappointment of Norton and
his party. It was plain they had indeed found the
nest ; but the bird was flown. It was the dead of
night, but they would not give up the chase yet.
Perhaps he was not far off. They made an entry
into an adjoining house. The coveted prize was
not there, but there was something to reward their
pains. First there was money, which, as usual, was
1 MS. Life of Campion; Simpson, p. 201.
4oo BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT
appropriated. Next they found a "trunk wherein
was a silver chalice and much other good stuff."
But a yet greater prize awaited them. The house
was not untenanted. They found a young man of
some seven-and-twenty years, of exceedingly gentle
manner, and a countenance of striking beauty. He
was at once suspected of being a priest and carried
off with the spoils of the two houses.
Norton's prize was the Blessed Alexander Briant.
Born in Somersetshire of a yeoman family,1 he was
early sent to Oxford and matriculated in the year
1574, being then eighteen years of age. Everything
at Hert Hall,2 of which he was a member, was
favourable to his conversion. Philip Roundell, the
head of the house, is said to have taken every
opportunity to guide the minds of those under his
charge in that direction. He had for his tutor
Richard Holtby, who was already a Catholic at
heart, and subsequently became a priest, and
having laboured some time on the English Mission,
entered the Society of Jesus, and succeeded
Father Henry Garnet as Superior in England.
He was also at one time under the influence
of Persons, who writes, " He was my disciple
and my pupil at Oxford and ever inclined to
1 The matriculation list of 1574 describes him as Somersetensis,
plebai filius, at. 18. (Boase, Register of the University of Oxford, II.
ii. p. 38; cf. Wood, Athena, i. p. 479; Father Henry More, p. 104.)
Challoner says he was born in Dorsetshire.
2 Hert Hall was afterwards erected into a College as Hertford
College, which however had but a brief duration, and was merged
in Magdalen Hall. Recently the collegiate foundation has been
again revived under the old title of Hertford College.
BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT 401
virtue."1 But Persons' influence cannot have
lasted long, for he left Oxford in June, 1574,
and indeed surrendered his Fellowship at Balliol
on February2 the I3th of that year, though keeping
his rooms and pupils for some time longer. It
is not surprising then, that after three years spent
at the University, Blessed Alexander followed the
footsteps of so many of its sons to the Seminary at
Douay. The College Diary records his admission
on the nth of August, 1577. Holtby had preceded
him by a few days, having entered the College on
the 3rd. They were both resolved, having themselves
received the grace of the Faith, to devote their
lives to imparting it to their brethren. Together
they became subdeacons on the 23rd of February,
1 From this passage it would seem probable that the martyr, on
first going to Oxford, was at Balliol. How should he have been a
pupil of Persons at Hert Hall ? And in fact this conjecture is
confirmed by a paper in the Public Record Office (Domestic,
Elizabeth, vol. cxlvi. n. 10) of the year 1581, evidently written by
someone intimately acquainted with the University affairs. It
begins thus: " That Balioll Coledg hath not bin free from the
suspicion of papistrie this long time, it appeareth by the men yt have
bin of the sayd house, namlye Brian and Parsons. With Parsons
and since his departure from the College, have Turner, Bagshaw,
Staverton, and one Pilcher bin fellowes : all wch were grievously
suspected of religion. And certayne it is that this Pilcher is gone
this year from thence to Rhems, looking daily for Bagshaw as he
did report to one Caesar," &c. (See Douay Diaries, Appendix, p. 363.)
Indeed the fact is stated positively in a letter written by one of
Father Persons' brothers giving an account of his early life, in which
the writer says, " So that he (Father Persons) had in Balliol College
and Hall more than thirty scholars under him, whereof many
have proved Catholics and some priests, as Mr. Briant, priest
and martyr, and Mr. Powell and others." (Foley, Records S.J.
vol. vi. p. 679.)
2 More, Historia Provincia Anglican^ Soc. Jesu, p. 40.
AA II.
4o2 BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT
1578, deacons on March the i8th, and priests on
the 2gth of the same month, Holy Saturday ; all
the ordinations being at Cambrai. Holtby started
for the English Mission on the 26th of February,
1579 ; Blessed Alexander on the 3rd of the following
August.
He laboured at first in his own county of
Somersetshire. Father Persons speaks of him as
"a priest of the greatest zeal." He reconciled
Persons' father to the Church, and this fact probably
led to the great intimacy and affection between
them — for Father Persons says of the time they
were both in England " he never willingly left my
side."1 It was perhaps the desire to be near him
that led him to choose for his lodging the house
where he was taken.2
On his arrest on the 28th of April, 1581, he was,
after a short examination by a magistrate, committed
a prisoner to the Counter. Some years later
Father Garnet speaks of the Counter in one of his
letters as " a very evil prison."3 Blessed Alexander
was not many days there, but they were days of great
suffering. The persecutors, who had so narrowly
missed capturing Father Persons, and who were
tolerably sure Briant could tell them his where-
1 Simpson's Campion, p. 202.
J One Gilbert Body was taken in Briant's chamber, and was
sent to Bridewell, where he was flogged. (Pollen, Acts, p. 54.)
3 Father Morris's Life of Father John Gerard, p. 186. There
were two prisons of the name in London — the Counter in the
Poultry, close to the parish Church of St. Mildred, and the Counter
in Wood Street. They were under the respective authority of the
two sheriffs. There was also a Counter in Southwark, adjoining
the parish Church of St. Margaret.
BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT 403
abouts, were determined to stick at nothing to
extract information from him. Strict orders were
given to the gaolers that he should see nobody ;
that if any persons came to see him they should
at once be arrested ; and that he was to be entirely
deprived of food and drink. " Who in such order
continued," says the original account of Dr. Allen,
followed by Challoner, " until he was almost famished.
In fine, by friendship, or what means I know not,
he got a pennyworth of hard cheese, and a little
broken bread, with a pint of strong beer, which
brought him into such an extreme thirst that he
essayed to catch with his hat the drops of rain
from the house eaves, but could not reach them."1
The deprivation of food and drink lasted for two
days and nights.2
After six days at the Counter nothing had been
gained, and it was determined to try still sharper
methods. On the day after the Ascension, that
is May the 5th, Blessed Alexander was removed
to the Tower. His Acts say3 "he verily thought
1 Brief e Historic, p. 87.
2 Lord Burghley in his tract, A Declaration of the favourable
dealing of her Majestie's Commissioners, &c., admits this torture by
starvation. " A horrible matter is made of the starving of one
Alexander Briant, how he should eat clay out of the walls, gathered
water to drink out of the droppings of houses." He contends that
he suffered it " wilfully of extreme impudent obstinacy," because
he would not write, no doubt for fear his writing would be the
means of compromising others ; and throws the blame on him for
" persisting so in his curst heart by almost two days and two
nights." Hallam says of this tract that " those who revere the
memory of Lord Burghley must blush for this pitiful apology."
(Constitutional History, i. p. 148.)
3 Briefe Historic, p. 87.
4o4 BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT
he would have been utterly famished, and therefore
carried with him a little piece of his hard cheese,
which his keeper in searching him found about
him, but the martyr humbly entreated him not to
take it from him." From this time he was given
his allowance of food and drink, but only that he
might undergo a far fiercer trial. The Brtefe
Historic says of him that " these torments and the
man's constancy are comparable truly to the old,
strange sufferings of the renowned martyrs of the
primitive Church, . . . which he could never have
borne by human strength, if God had not given him
His singular and supernatural grace."
There is still extant the order of the Council,
dated the 3rd of May, 1581, directing Sir Owen
Hopton, the Lieutenant of the Tower, Dr. Hammond,
and the notorious Norton, " the rack-master," to
examine " a certain seminary priest or Jesuit
naming himself Bryant, . . . and if he shall obsti-
nately refuse to confess the truth, then to put him
unto the torture, and by the pain and terror of
the same to wring from him the knowledge of such
things as shall appertain."1 It was, of course,
1 MSS. Lansd. 1162, fol. yb. Printed by Dasent, xiii. 37, 38.
" 3rd Mail, 1581.
" [Present] Lord Admiral, Earl of Bedford, Mr. Treasurer,
Mr. Vicechancellor, Mr. Secretary.
" A letter to the Lieutenant of the Tower, that whereas there
is presently remaining in the Counter in Wood Street a seminary
priest naming himself Bryant, lately apprehended and committed
to that prison, their Lordships think good to have him removed to
the Tower, thereto be further examined, and have him required to
send for the said Bryant unto the Counter, and to receive him into
his custody to remain close prisoner, and be examined from time
BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT 405
with a view to carrying out these instructions, that
the martyr was removed to the Tower. Two days
after his transfer he was brought before the
three commissioners, who began by tendering to
him an oath to answer all their questions. The
holy priest was, of course, unable to answer
those which would have compromised others,
"and because he would not confess," says the
Brief e Historic, " where he had seen Father
to time, according to such direction as he shall receive in that
behalf from their Lordships, &c.
" A letter unto the Lieutenant of the Tower, Dr. Hammond, and
Thomas Norton, gent., that whereas there hath been of late appre-
hended among others a certain seminary priest or Jesuit, naming
himself Bryant, about whom there was taken certain books and
writings carrying matter of high treason, and is (as may in good
likelihood be conjectured) able to discover matters of good moment
for her Majesty. It was therefore thought good that he should be
for that purpose substantially examined upon such interrogatories as
may be framed and gathered out of the said books and writings,
which their Lordships send them herewith, for the doing whereof
especial choice was made of them three, and thereby authority given
unto them for the drawing the interrogatories and the examining
the said Bryant accordingly. And if he shall refuse by persuasion
to confess such things as they shall find him able to reveal unto
them, then they shall offer unto him the torture in the Tower ;
and in case upon the sight thereof he shall obstinately refuse
to confess the truth, then shall they put him unto the torture,
and by the pain and terror of the same wring from him the
knowledge of such things as shall appertain. And for the rest that
were apprehended with him, as others that upon his examination
shall be touched in like degree, and by their endeavours appre-
hended, their Lordships pray them to examine them and every of
them, by such convenient ways and means as by them shall be
thought convenient and fit for the trying out of the matters where-
with they shall be severally charged. And what they shall find by
their said examinations they are prayed to certify unto their
Lordships in writing, that thereupon such further orders may be
taken with them as shall appertain," &c.
406 BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT
Persons, how he was maintained, where he had
said Mass, and whose confessions he had heard,
they caused needles to be thrust under his nails,
whereat Mr. Brian was not moved at all, but with
a constant mind and pleasant countenance, said
the Psalm Miserere, desiring God to forgive his
tormentors ; whereat Dr. Hammond stamped and
stared, as a man half beside himself, saying, ' What
a thing is this ? If a man were not settled in his
religion, this were enough to convert him.' " His
fellow-prisoner, John Hart, who had the account
of his sufferings from himself, shortly before his
martyrdom, writes: "Alexander Briant, a priest,
was brought into the Tower from another prison,
where he had almost died of thirst, and was loaded
with most heavy shackles. Then sharp needles
were thrust under his nails to force him to disclose
where he had seen Father Persons, which, however,
with unshaken resolution, he refused."1 This
torture is also described in a letter from Father
Persons written early in August, 1581, and on the
27th of the same month it is recorded in the Douay
Diaries. It was openly stated in the True Report
of the Martyrdom of M. Campion, M. Sherwin, and
M. Bryan,2 in the December following, and by the
Briefe Historic in 1582. Moreover, the defence
offered by Norton, to which we shall return imme-
1 Diary in the Tower, [April] 27, and May 6, 1581. There is an
earlier record still in the letter from a prisoner in the Tower, R.O.
Domestic, vol. cxlix. n. 61, of which a translation is printed in Foley,
Records S.J. vol. ii. p. 160.
3 Sander, De Schismate Anglicano, lib. iii. Edit. 1628, p. 319;
Douay Diaries, p. 181 ; True Report, sig. D. 3.
BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT 407
diately, is quite inconclusive, and rather confirms
than invalidates the statements of the Catholics.
It does not appear that any other martyr except
Briant was tortured by pricking — but the punish-
ment was not unfrequently applied to witches, who
seemed insensible to other pain. This perhaps
explains its infliction here. If Briant had remained
unmoved by previous sufferings, it would have
seemed not unnatural to the rack-master to say
that this was due to conjuration, and then to apply
the needles.
Thirteen questions to be proposed to Briant,
regarding the names of Catholics, the whereabouts
of Persons and Campion, &c., are extant,1 but the
martyr's answers seem to have perished. The
Government, however, published such " short
extracts" from a later examination, on the depos-
ing powers of the Pope, as would be most likely to
raise odium against the sufferer.2 The " extracts "
are the following :
" Alexander Briant. He is content to affirm
that the Queen is his sovereign lady : but he will
not affirm that she is so lawfully, and ought to be
so, and to be obeyed by him as her subject if the
Pope declare or command the contrary. And he
saith that this question is too high and dangerous
for him to answer. The 6th of May, 1581. Before
Owen Hopton, Kt., John Hammond, Thos. Norton.
1 R.O. Domestic, vol. cxlvii. n. 97, printed below in the life
of Kirby, and in Foley, vol. iv. p. 348.
2 Declaration of undutiful affection of Edmund Campion and other
condemned priests (1582), reprinted in Cobbett's State Trials, vol. i.
p. 1078, and Tierney-Dodd, vol. i. p. n.
4o8 BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT
" Whether the Pope hath authority to withdraw
from obedience to her Majesty he knoweth not.
"ALEXANDER BRIANT.
"The 7th of May, 1581."
After this the martyr, as Hart records, "was
thrown into the pit," which he describes in the
preface to his diary as " a subterraneous cave,
twenty feet deep, without light." He remained
there eight days and was then drawn out to be taken
to the rack-chamber.
Here, says the Brief e Historic,1 " he was, even to
the disjointing of his body, rent and torn upon the
rack, because he would not confess where Father
Persons was, where the print was, and what books
he had sold, and so was returned to his lodgings
for the time. Yet the next day following, notwith-
standing the great distemperature and soreness of
his whole body, his senses being dead and his blood
congealed (for this is the effect of racking), he was
brought to the torture again, and there stretched
with greater severity than before ; insomuch that
supposing with himself they would pluck him in
pieces, ... he put on the armour of patience,
resolving to die rather than to hurt any creature
living, and having his mind raised in contemplation
of Christ's bitter Passion. He swooned away, so
that they were fain to sprinkle cold water on his
face to revive him again : yet they released no part
of his pain.
1 Pp. 87, 88.
BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT 409
" And here Norton, because they could get
nothing of him, asked him whether the Queen
were supreme head of the Church of England or
not ? To this he said, ' I am a Catholic, and I
believe in this as a Catholic should do.' ' Why,'
said Norton, ' they say the Pope is.' ' And so say
I,' answered Mr. Briant. Here also the Lieutenant
used railing and reviling words, and bobbed him
under the chin and slapped him on the cheeks after
an uncharitable manner; and all the commissioners
rose up and went away, giving commandment to
leave him so all night. At which when they saw he
was nothing moved, they willed he should be taken
from the torment, and sent him again to Wales-
boure ; l where, not able to move hand or foot or
any part of his body, he lay in his clothes fifteen
days together, without bedding, in great pain and
anguish."
Of these terrible scenes, Norton himself admitted
to Walsingham, as we shall see later, that he had
used the inhuman threat that the martyr "should be
made a foot longer than God made him ; " that " he
was therewith nothing moved;" that he was "racked
more than any of the rest, yet he stood still with
express refusal " to comply with the requirements
of his persecutors.2 And Dr. Allen in a letter to
Father Agazzari a few weeks later (the 23rd of June,
1581), says " he laughed at his tormentors, and
though nearly killed by the pain, said, ' Is -this all
1 A dungeon, the locality of which is uncertain, perhaps in the
now destroyed Coleharbour Tower, perhaps under the White Tower.
2 See the extract from his letter below.
4io BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT
you can do ? If the rack is no more than this,
let me have a hundred more for this cause.' " l
Indeed in his first racking the martyr was mira-
culously preserved from the sense of pain during
part of the time. Hart says, " I heard afterwards
from his own mouth, a little before his martyrdom,
that he felt no pain whatever when his body was
extended to the utmost, nor when his tormentors
with savage barbarity endeavoured to inflict upon
him the greatest pain."2 He gave a more exact
account of this grace in a letter to the Jesuit
Fathers in England.3
In this long letter, which we quote verbatim
from the Briefe Historic, he begs for admission into
the Society with touching earnestness and humility.
" Yet now, since I am by the appointment of
God, deprived of liberty, so as I cannot any longer
employ myself in this profitable exercise, my desire
is eftsoons revived, my spirit waxeth fervent hot, and
at the last I have made a vow and promise to God,
not rashly (as I hope) but in the fear of God, not
to any other end, than that I might thereby, more
devoutly and more acceptably serve God, to my
more certain salvation, and to a more glorious
triumph over my ghostly enemy, I have made a
vow (I say), that whensoever it shall please God
to deliver me (so that once at the length it like Him)
1 Knox, Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, p. 95, and R.O.
Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxlix. nn. 51, 52.
a Diary in the Tower, May 6.
3 Briefe Historic, pp. 89 — 92.
BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT 411
I will, within one year then next following, assign
myself wholly to the Fathers of the Society, and
that (if God inspire their hearts to admit me) I will
gladly, and with exceeding great joy, thoroughly
and from the bottom of my heart, give up and
surrender all my will to the service of God and in
all obedience under them.
" This vow was to me a passing great joy and
consolation in the midst of all my distresses and
tribulations. And therefore with greater hope to
obtain fortitude and patience, I drew near to the
throne of his Divine Majesty, with the assistance
of the blessed and perpetual Virgin Mary and of all
the saints. And I hope verily this came of God,
for I did it even in the time of prayer, when
methought my mind was settled upon heavenly
things. For thus it was.
" The same day that I was first tormented on
the rack before I came to this place, giving my
mind to prayer, and commending myself and all
mine to our Lord, I was replenished and filled up
with a kind of supernatural sweetness of spirit ; and
even while I was calling upon the most holy Name
of Jesus, and upon the blessed Virgin Mary (for
I was in saying the Rosary), my mind was cheerfully
disposed, well comforted, and readily prepared and
bent to suffer and endure those torments, which even
then I most certainly looked for. At the length my
former purpose came into my mind, and therewithall
a thought coincidently fell upon me to ratify that
now by vow, which before I had determined. When
I had ended my prayers, I resolved these things
4i2 BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT
in my mind deeply, and with reason (as well as I
could) I did debate and discuss them thoroughly.
I judged it good and expedient for me, I accom-
plished my desire, I put forth my vow and promise
freely and boldly, with the condition aforesaid.
" Which act (me thinketh) God himself did
approve and allow by-and-by. For in all my
afflictions and torments, He of His infinite goodness
mercifully and tenderly did stand by and assist me,
comforting me in my trouble and necessity ; deliver-
ing my soul from wicked lips, from the deceitful
tongue, and from the roaring lions, then ready
gaping for their prey.
" Whether this that I say be miraculous or no,
God knoweth. But true it is, and thereof my
conscience is a witness before God. And this I say,
that in the end of the torture, though my hands arid
feet were violently stretched and racked, and my
adversaries fulfilled their wicked lust, in practising
their cruel tyranny upon my body, yet notwith-
standing I was without sense and feeling well-nigh
of all grief and pain ; and not so only, but as it were
comforted, eased and refreshed of grievous [ness] of
the torture bypast. I continued still with perfect
and present senses in quietness of heart and tran-
quillity of mind ; which thing when the commis-
sioners did see, they departed, and in going forth of
the door they gave orders to rack me again the next
day following, after the same sort. Now when I
heard them say so, it [came into] my mind by-and-
by, and I did verily believe and trust, that with the
help of God, I should be able to bear and suffer it
BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT
patiently. In the meantime (as well as I could) I
did muse and meditate upon the most bitter passion
of our Saviour and how full of innumerable pains it
was. And whiles I was thus occupied, methought
that my left hand was wounded in the palm, and
that I felt the blood run out, but in very deed there
was no such thing, nor any other pains than that
which seemed to be in my hand.
" Now then that my suit and request may be
well known unto you, for so much as I am out of
hope in short time to recover and enjoy my former
liberty, so as I might personally speak unto you ;
(and whether happily I shall once at length speak
unto you in this world no mortal man doth know)
in the mean season I humbly submit myself unto
you, and (suppliantly kneeling) I beseech you to do
and dispose for me and of me, as shall seem good
to your wisdom. And with an humble mind most
heartily I crave that (if it may be in my absence)
it would please you to admit me into your Society
and to register and enroll me among you, that so
•with humble men I may have a sense and feeling
of humility, with devout men I may sound out aloud
the lauds and praises of God, and continually render
thanks to him for his benefits ; and then after being
aided by the prayers of many, I may run more safety
to the mark which I shoot at, and without peril
attain to the prize that is promised.
" As I am not ignorant that the snares and wiles
of our ancient enemy are infinite, for he is the sly
serpent which lieth in the shadow of woods, winding,
whirling and turning about many ways ; and with
4i4 BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT
his wiles and subtle shifts he attempts marvellously
to delude and abuse the souls of the simple which
want a faithful guide ; insomuch as it is not without
cause that we are admonished to try the spirits if
they be of God.
" To you, therefore, because you are spiritual,
and accustomed to this kind of conflict, I commend
all this business, beseeching you even by the bowels
of God's mercy that you would vouchsafe to direct
me with your counsel and wisdom. And if in your
sight it seem profitable, for more honour to God,
more commodity to his Church, and eternal salva-
tion to my soul, that I be preferred to that Society
of the most holy Name of Jesus, then presently
before God, and in the court of my conscience, I do
promise obedience to all and singular Rectors and
Governors established already, or to be hereafter
established ; and likewise to all rules or laws
received in the Society to the uttermost of my
power, and so far as God doth give me grace ; God
is my witness, and this my own handwriting shall
be a testimony hereof in the day of Judgment.
" As for the health of my body you have no
cause to doubt, for now well near I have recovered
my former strength and hardness. By God's help
I wax every day stronger than [the] other.
"Thus, in all other things commending myself
to your prayers, I bid you farewell in our Lord,
carefully expecting what you think good to deter-
mine of me. Vale."
The reader may wonder how this letter, written
BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT 415
by a close prisoner in the Tower, found its way to
those for whom it was destined. Father Persons
has answered this question. In his tract, De Per-
secutione Anglicana,1 he tells us that an opportunity
was found by certain Catholics, during the disputa-
tions held by Blessed Edmund Campion in the
Tower, to visit the other prisoners for the Faith
who were concealed in that gloomy fortress. The
disputations were held in public, and probably the
golden key was freely used to obtain access to the
dungeons, where the confessors of Christ were
languishing. In this way our martyr not only
obtained the necessary writing materials, but was
enabled to deliver his letter into safe hands. No
doubt in this way also the priests were supplied with
the means of offering the Holy Sacrifice, for the
corporal, on which Briant and his companions said
Mass, is still preserved.
Father Persons says that he prints the letter to
show that the hand of the Lord is not shortened,
and that He still comes to the help of His confessors
in their need, and is with them even in the dense
darkness of their dungeons.
We have still something to add about Norton's
atrocious cruelty. When it became known, an
outcry was raised, and the Government was shamed
into putting him into prison for a few days, though
apparently on some other plea, to make believe that
they were not responsible for him. To this occasion
we are indebted for his avowal and confirmation
of the facts related as to the martyr's torture.
1 First Edition, published in 1581, p. 98.
416 BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT
Walsingham sent him a tract about the late
martyrs,1 upon which he wrote the following attempt
at a defence of himself.2
" I find in the whole book only one place
touching myself, fol. ult. pa. 2. ' One (meaning
Briant) whom Mr. Norton, the rack-master, if he be
not misreported, vaunted in the court to have pulled
one good foot longer than ever God made him, and
yet in the midst of all he seemed to care nothing,
and therefore out of doubt, said he, he had a devil
within him.' Surely I never said in that form, but
thus. When speech was of the courage of Campion
and some other, I said truly that there appeared
more courage of a man's heart in Briant than in
Campion, and therefore I lamented that the devil
had possessed poor unlearned Briant in so naughty
a cause : for being threatened by those who had
commission (to the intent he might be moved to
tell truth without torment) that if he would not for
his duty to God and the Queen tell truth, he should
be made a foot longer than God made him, he was
therewith nothing moved. And being, for his
apparent obstinacy in matters that he well knew,
racked more than any of the rest, yet he stood still
1 The passage referred to by Norton is found at the end of the
account given in the Concertatio. But this of course was a transla-
tion printed considerably later. It is not quite clear what the
original tract was, of which Norton speaks. The True Reporte and
the first edition of the Epistola de Persecutione Anglicana would suit
the date, but the examples of those works in the British Museum
do not contain the page in question.
2 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. clii. n. 72 (March 27, 1582).
BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT 417
with express refusal that he would not tell the truth.
When he setteth out a miracle that Briant was
preserved from feeling pain, it is most untrue. For
no man of them all, after his torture, made so
grievous complaining and showed so open sign of
pain as he."
Mr. Simpson has pointed out Norton's care to
say that after torture the martyr had shown great
signs of pain. This does not contradict the martyr's
words, which limit the favour granted him to a
certain occasion and a certain part of the time.
Our martyr was in the dungeon or on the rack
during the month of May, while his fellow-prisoners
were being dragged to sermons in the Church of
St. Peter's ad Vincula. This insensate violence
ceased at Pentecost, and on June the 24th in-
dictments for recusancy since May the 26th were
presented at the Middlesex Sessions against the
Catholic prisoners. The list of names, however, is
sadly decayed, and though the names of Cottam,
Robert Johnson, and Sherwin are legible, that of
Briant has not been deciphered.1 We have already
heard how he communicated with his fellow-
Catholics at the time of the disputations in August
and September.
The Blessed Alexander was arraigned on the
same indictment as Blessed Edmund Campion,
Ralph Sherwin, and Thomas Cottam, but on the
following day, Wednesday, November the I5th,
together with six others, four of whom were
1 Middlesex County Records, Edit. Cordy Jeaffreson, vol. i. p. 124.
BB II.
4i8 BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT
martyred. The trial took place on the i7th, the
day after that of the first three.1
" When he went to Westminster Hall," says the
Briefe Historic, " to be condemned, he made a cross
of such wood as he could get," apparently a wooden
trencher, small enough to be covered by his hand,
and upon it he drew with charcoal a figure of our
Divine Lord. This rough crucifix "he carried
with him openly. He made shift also to shave his
crown because he would signify to the prating
ministers (which scoffed and mocked him at his
apprehension, saying that he was ashamed of his
vocation) that he was not ashamed of his Holy
Orders, nor yet that he would blush at his religion."
We are also told that Blessed Alexander took the
most humiliating place, which was here the first,
and kept looking down " at the palm of his hand,
in which he held the little crucifix." When the
ministers reproached him and bade him cast it
away, he answered, " Never will I do so, for I am a
soldier of the Cross, nor will I henceforth desert this
standard until death."2 Another pressed forward
and snatched the cross from his hands, upon which
he said, " You may tear it from my hands, but you
cannot take it from my heart. Nay, I shall die for
Him who first died on it for me." This cross was
bought by some Catholics and afterwards taken to
1 The record of the trial is on the Coram Rege Roll, and gives
the dates printed above, whereas the printed authorities place the
trials on the 2Oth and 2ist.
2 Morris, New Witness about Campion (see above), p. 6, and the
MS. Life of Campion in the Archives of Westminster, vol. ii.
p. 229.
BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT 419
the English College at Rome together with the ropes
used in racking Campion, by one who had been
in prison with them. He had been arrested for
printing Catholic books, and was probably Mr.
Stephen Brinkley.1 George Gilbert died holding
the cross in his hands and kissing it with tender
devotion.2
Of the trial itself few details have been preserved.
It must have been as nearly as possible a repetition
of the previous day's proceedings. One contem-
porary writer notes that the martyr, who in his
University days had been called " the handsome
boy of Oxford," still preserved in his countenance
after so many inhuman and horrible tortures in
the Tower, "a serenity, innocency, and amiability
almost angelic." When sentence was pronounced
he appealed to God's judgment, in the words of the
Psalm, Judica me Dens, et discerne causam meam de
gente non sancta. When they were back in the
Tower, Briant was punished for having carried
the crucifix, by being loaded with fetters for two
days.
He was the third of those singled out for execu-
tion, and whose martyrdom, as already related, was
1 Foley, Records S.J. vol. vi. p. in. Brinkley was a young man
of position and means who had devoted himself to the work of
printing Father Persons' books. He was seized with the press at
Stonor Park on August 13, 1581, — a month after Father Campion's
arrest — and committed to the Tower, where he suffered much
for nearly two years, when by the influence of friends he was set at
liberty on June 24, 1583. He went to Rome shortly after with
Father Persons, and later settled at Rouen, and there continued his
old work of printing for Father Persons.
2 Letter of Father Agazzari. Foley, Records S.J. vol. iii. p. 700.
42o BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT
finally fixed for December the ist. When he had
witnessed the glorious death of the Blessed Edmund
Campion and Ralph Sherwin, and was placed in the
cart beneath the gallows, he began to speak to the
throng, of his early religious education and of his
manner of life at Oxford, when he was cut short
by some one crying out : " What have we to do
with Oxford ; come to the purpose and confess thy
treason." He answered with great vehemence :
i( I am not guilty of any such thing, nor am I
deserving of this kind of death. I was never at
Rome, nor was I at Rheims at that time when
Dr. Sander came into Ireland " (the time of the
pretended conspiracy).1 "He spake not much, but
being urged more than the other two to speak what
he thought of the Bull of Pope Pius V., he said he
did believe of it as all Catholics did, and the
Catholic faith doth."2 He then went on, with an
expression of great joy in his fair and innocent face,
to say what exceeding happiness it gave him that
God had chosen him and made him worthy to
suffer death for the Catholic faith, and especially
in company with Edmund Campion, whom he
revered with all his heart. Then, as he was
saying Miserere met, Deus, the cart was drawn
from under him, and he was, like his two fellow-
martyrs, left hanging until he was dead, though
from the negligence of the hangman in adjusting
the rope, he suffered more pain than either of the
others.
1 Briefe Historie, p. 86.
2 MS. Life of Campion. Archives of Westminster, vol. ii.
BLESSED ALEXANDER BRIANT 421
The Briefe Historic records an apparently
miraculous circumstance following his death.
" After his beheading, being dismembered, his
heart, bowels, and entrails burned, to the great
admiration of some, being laid upon the block, his
belly downwards (he) lifted up his whole body then
remaining upon the ground. And this, I add," says
the author, " upon report of others, not my own
sight." l
Father Persons, in a letter written shortly after,
says of this martyr, " Our adversaries hated this
young priest chiefly on account of his intimacy with
the Fathers of the Society, about whom he would
not utter a word in the extremest torments ; and in
a letter secretly conveyed out of his prison, he
ardently begged to be received into the Society,
relating the miracle by which God assisted him
in the midst of his sufferings. I think you have
already received a copy of this letter." 2 Father
More, the historian of the English Province of the
Society, adds that " he may well be counted among
the Fathers of the Society, seeing he had engaged
himself to their fellowship and institute by the bond
of so solemn a vow."3 In effect, not only the Society
of Jesus, but also the Holy See, has endorsed this
judgment. The former has always honoured the
Blessed Alexander with a place in its histories and
1 Briefe Historie, p. 86.
2 H. More, Historia Provincia Anglicana Soc. Jesu, p 109.
3 " Merito inter Societatis Patres numerandus quorum se con-
sortio et institute voti adeo solemnis religione obstrinxerat."
(Ibid. p. 1 06.)
422
BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT
menologies ; while Apostolic briefs have enumerated
him among the martyrs of that Order, and allowed
his feast to be celebrated by its members.
E. S. K.
J. H. P.
AUTHORITIES. — Briefe Historic, pp. 85 — 91. Persons, De
Persecutione Anglicana (1581), and MS. Life of Campion. True
Report of the death of M. Campion, M. Sherwin, and M. Briant
(1582), Concertatio, Yepes, &c., as for Campion and Briant.
H. Foley, Records S.J. vol. iv. pp. 343 — 367.
PORTRAIT. — There is a picture of Blessed Alexander
Briant at the Gesu, and a copy of it, made by the late
Mr. Charles Weld, now hangs at Stonyhurst. It represents
the martyr holding a crucifix, the rope is round his neck, and
the knife buried in his breast. The face is seen in profile. He
wears a moustache and very slight beard.
RELICS. — i. A very touching relic of Blessed Alexander
and four of his fellow-martyrs exists to this day. It is now at
Stonyhurst. It consists of a corporal of very fine linen.
There is a minute hem round the sides and bottom, and a
cross worked in red silk at each corner. There is apparently
none in the centre, unless it is hidden by the inscription which
runs thus: Corporate usnrpatum a quinque martyr ibus. Below
this are worked, very finely in red silk, the names of the
martyrs. Each is surrounded with a border. They run as
follows :
LUCAS . KIRBEUS
ROBERTUS . IONSONIUS
ALEXANDER . BRIANUS
IOANNES . SHIRTUS +
THOMAS . COTTAMUS
This corporal was used by the five Beati whose names are
embroidered on it while they were prisoners in the Tower of
London awaiting their martyrdom.
It is a consolation to have this evidence that they were
permitted the supreme joy of celebrating the Holy Sacrifice
before their cruel deaths. The corporal was secured by their
BLESSED ALEXANDER B RIANT 423
fellow-prisoner, Arthur Pitts, a priest, who was afterwards
banished (January, 1585), who sent it through Dr. Allen
to Father Alphonso Agazzari, S.J., at the English College,
Rome, whence it was transferred to Liege, and ultimately to
Stonyhurst, which is the history of many others of the
wonderful treasures there preserved. (For this corporal, see
Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, p. 202.)
2. Mr. Berkeley, of Spetchley Park, Worcestershire,
possesses a Roman Missal which has been ascribed to this
blessed martyr. It contains the words, Alexandra Brianto
Alexander Farnesius. If this is a true signature, the book would
seem to have been presented by the famous Duke of Parma
to his humble namesake. It has also some Collects (among
them that of St. Augustine of Canterbury) written at the end
of the book in the same handwriting, but whether this is the
martyr's handwriting is not yet proved.
XII.
THE BLESSED JOHN PAYNE,
SECULAR PRIEST.
Chelmsford, 2 April, 1582.
SIR WILLIAM PETRE, father of the first Lord Petre,
was a typical instance of a class which was the
calamity of England at a time when the lusts of
her ruler and the religious fanaticism of his tools
could only have been remedied by a large fund of
steady principle in the nation at large. He was a
man of some learning, and as Dr. Petre, was Fellow
of All Souls and Principal of Peckwater's or Vine
Hall. He was an excellent man of business, a good
master, a kind neighbour, and very charitable to the
poor. But he acted as a Visitor and Commissioner
in the dissolution of monasteries under Henry VIII. ;
he presided over the Bishops as proxy for Cromwell
in his capacity of the King's Vicar General ; and
became one of the Secretaries of State to Henry in
1543. He continued in this office under Edward VI.,
and in both these reigns enriched himself out of
the spoils of the Church. Under Mary he was
Secretary of State again, and was such a good
Catholic that his church plunder was confirmed to
him by a special grant from Pope Paul IV. Stranger
BLESSED JOHN PAYNE 425
still, he was one of those charged to transact all
business previous to Elizabeth's coronation, and was
still employed on various State affairs. However,
as age increased, his attendances at the Council
became less frequent. They ceased altogether after
1566, when Petre retired to his manor at Ingate-
stone, Essex, where he died the I3th of January,
1571-2. His widow, however, Anne, daughter of
Sir William Browne, Lord Mayor of London, was
a fervent Catholic, and Ingatestone became a
devoted Catholic house and a refuge for the hunted
priests. In 1855 a priest's hiding-place was acci-
dentally discovered. " The entrance to this secret
chamber is from a small room attached to what
was probably the host's bed-room. In the south-
east corner the boards were found to be decayed ;
upon their removal, another layer of loose boards
was observed to cover a hole or trap-door two feet
square. A ladder, perhaps two centuries old,
remained beneath. The hiding-place measured
fourteen feet in length, two feet one inch in
breadth, and ten feet in height." This house was
the chief residence of the Blessed John Payne
during his missionary life.
Of his origin we only know that he was born
in the diocese of Peterborough.2 He had a brother,
a zealous Protestant, but there is nothing to show
whether he was himself a convert. He made his
way to the Seminary at Douay in 1574, among
a great many others — no less than twelve arriving
1 Buckler's Churches in Essex.
* Douay Diaries, p. 6.
426 BLESSED JOHN PA YNE
by a single ship — and at once commenced his
theological course ; though he found time also to
take part in the administration of the College as
(Economus.1 He was ordained priest on Sitientes
Saturday, the 7th of April, I576,2 and after making
the Exercises under the Jesuit Fathers in prepara-
tion for his mission, left for England on the 24th
of the same month in the company of Blessed
Cuthbert Mayne. Before separating they had a
narrow escape of the loss of their theological note-
books and all their pious treasures, as already
mentioned. Then Blessed Cuthbert went to Devon-
shire and Cornwall, and Blessed John to Essex.
Though he usually lived at Ingatestone, he also
seems to have worked and even had a lodging in
London. Thus the Rev. Henry Chaderton, in his
autobiography, says : " Arriving in London we hired
a lodging in the house of a very pious Catholic
woman, who was very often visited by one of the
Fathers of the Society of Jesus, and by the grace
of God he received my sister into the Church. In
the same house also dwelt Mr. Payne, a priest,
afterwards a martyr."3 One of the first fruits of
his apostleship was the priesthood of George
Godsalve. " On the I5th (of July, 1576) there came
to us," says the Douay Diary, " sent by the Rev.
1 Douay Diaries, p. 289.
2 Dr. George Oliver has been too easily misled by the coinci-
dence of name into identifying our martyr with an old Marian
priest, against whom he found a certificate of recusancy, dated
April 19, 1581, in the act-book of Woolton, Protestant Bishop of
Exeter at the time. See Collections illustrating the History of the
Catholic Religion in the Western Counties (Dolman, 1857), pp. 3, 4.
3 Foley, Records S.J. vol. iii. p. 551.
BLESSED JOHN PAYNE 427
John Payne, priest, who not long since left us for
England, a distinguished man, and of varied learn-
ing, Mr. Godsalve, who has endured with constancy
prolonged imprisonment, besides many other bitter
trials, for the Catholic faith. While the faith still
flourished among Englishmen he had advanced in
Holy Orders as far as the diaconate ; and all his
anxiety this long time past had been to receive the
priesthood, and so carry out his original purpose. He
is accordingly admitted amongst us here, to return
later to England for the good of many."1 He was,
in fact, made priest before the end of the year, and
went to England in June, 1577. He seems to have
kept close to Blessed John, and partaken of his
fortunes. He was betrayed with him, and shared
his imprisonment and torture. After long imprison-
ment, he was exiled in 1585, and died at Paris.
He brought with him to Douay a letter from
Blessed John, which is summarized in the Diary.
" ' On all sides,' wrote the holy priest,2 ' in daily
increasing numbers, a great many are reconciled to
the Catholic Church, to the amazement of many
of the heretics. And when any of them (as does
happen) fall into the hands of the raging heretics,
with such fortitude, with such courage and
constancy do they publicly profess the Catholic
faith (especially those who are gentlemen) that the
heretics are fairly dumbfounded with astonishment,
and already begin to give up all hope of putting
1 Douay Diaries, p. 107.
3 Ibid.
428 BLESSED JOHN PAYNE
them down by violence. Greatly also are they
troubled by the very name of the Douay priests
(now talked of through the whole of England),
which on the other hand fills all Catholics with
consolation and the greatest hope of the recovery
of the Catholic religion. They lay snares, therefore,
for all priests, but especially and most eagerly
for those sent from thence.' He writes also that
the daily increasing number of Catholics makes
them already earnestly look for more priests from
us. He says the name of the Calvinistic ministers
has fallen into the deepest hatred and contempt
with nearly all. Finally, both he and other priests
sent from us earnestly beseech us in their letters to
commend them earnestly every day to God, that
they may persevere in the work they have entered
on, with fortitude and zeal, against all the storms
of the heretics ; and especially that they may not be
infected by the vices that abound there, nor polluted
with the filth around them, and the like ; in such a
dreadful and unheard of way does the medley of all
vices now reign in that unbelieving and unhappy
kingdom, as to fill those who are animated with
any zeal for God's service, with shuddering
horror."
The holy priest's ministry was not long without
interruption.1 On the gth of February, 1577, news
reached the Seminary that he had shortly before
been arrested at Lady Petre's and thrown into
prison for the Faith. But this time he was not
1 Douay Diaries, p. 115.
BLESSED JOHN PAYNE 429
detained long. On March the loth, the diarist notes
that two new-comers brought word " that the anger
of the heretical magistrates lately roused against the
Catholics, especially those returning from (Douay)
had somewhat cooled, and Mr. John Payne, priest,
and Mr. Dryland had been discharged from prison."
As the year advanced, however, the storm broke
out again and much more violently. It was to
this storm that Blessed Cuthbert Mayne, Blessed
Thomas Sherwood, and Blessed John Nelson fell
victims. Blessed John, perhaps yielding to the
times, left England and arrived at Douay on the
I4th of November, 1577.
When he returned again does not appear. But
whenever it was he found a home once more at
Ingatestone. "Judas" Eliot,1 in his evidence at
the trial of Blessed Edmund Campion and his
companions, stated that he had become acquainted
with Payne at Christmas, 1579, at "my Lady Petre's
house ; " and it may perhaps be taken as probable
that he would not have chosen for his story a period
when it could have been shown that the martyr was
out of England. The missioner passed as a steward
of Lady Petre. But whatever precautions might be
used against other perils, there were none that could
protect the servants of God against the " perils from
false brethren " with which the wiles of Cecil
and Walsingham surrounded them. George Eliot,
with whom the reader has already made acquaint-
ance, was really a Catholic, and was successively
employed in positions of trust in the household of
1 Cobbett, State Trials, vol. i. p. 1067.
430 BLESSED JOHN PA YNE
Lady Petre, Mr. Roper, and others, where he became
acquainted with many priests, of whom he gave
afterwards a list to the Government, to the number
of thirty. But he was a profligate and a thief. He
embezzled sums of money that came into his hands
in transactions with which he was entrusted by
Lady Petre : and among other immoralities he
enticed a young woman away from the Roper
household. He then applied to Blessed John to
marry them, and on his refusal determined to be
revenged. This was unfortunately easy and at the
same time profitable. His evil courses had culmi-
nated in a murder, which Blessed Campion publicly
declared in court that he had confessed. With
accusations of murder and dishonesty hanging over
him, and under the pinch of need, he saw his way
to immunity, to profit, and to revenge at a stroke ;
and accordingly the Blessed John Payne was
arrested in the county of Warwick, and examined
by Walsingham at Greenwich, where the Court
was then staying. Walsingham, " so far as he could
gather by the examinations that he had taken,"
thought the charge of conspiracy " would prove
nothing. And yet it was happy that the parties
charged were taken, for they be runagate priests
bred up at Rome and Douay," and so he committed
them to the Tower on the I4th of July, 1581. The
diarist recording the fact adds that it was "by the
betrayal of a certain Eliot, whom he had loaded
with many benefits."1
1 Diary of the Tower, July 14, 1581. Walsingham wrote to
Burleigh the same day, " I have been all this day by her Majesty's
express commandment set at work about the examinations of
BLESSED JOHN PAYNE 431
The same day his friend George Godsalve was
likewise examined and committed to the Tower,
and we may take it that Eliot was at the bottom
of this too, for the following information to the
Government, somewhat later, is signed with his
initials, " G. E." " Oxfordshire. — John Payne said
Mass at Mr. William Moore his house at Haddon,
upon Sunday, being the 2nd of July, anno Reg36 23.
At which Mass were the said William Moore
and his wife. . . . Godsalve said Mass there on
Tuesday the fourth of the said month, at which
Mass were all the persons aforesaid, the said
William Moore excepted."1
We have already heard Walsingham's real
opinion on the case. That the only valid objection
to Payne was his being a " priest bred at Douay,"
and that the charge of treason would " come to
nothing." But it was by no means his intention
to insist on the true charge and to drop the false
one. The martyrdoms of 1577 and 1578 had
brought great odium on the Government at home
and abroad, and a way must be found of basing
the butchery of priests on some more presentable
certain persons charged to have conspired to attempt somewhat
against her own person. But as far as I can gather by these
examinations that I have already taken I think it will prove
nothing. And yet it is happy that the parties charged are taken,
for that they be runagate priests, such as have been bred up in Rome
and Douay, and seek to corrupt her Majesty's good subjects within
this realm." (R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxlix. 6g.) On July 15
there is an entry in the Treasurer of the Household's Accounts of
£12 to John Cooper, under-sheriff of Warwick, for his charges in
apprehending Payne and Godsalve and bringing them to the
Court at Greenwich for examination. (R.O.)
1 Foley, Records S.J. vol. ii. p. 589.
432 BLESSED JOHN PA YNE
charge. If Eliot, Munday, and their like were not
told this, they easily came to understand it, and
Eliot was soon ready with a new and enlarged
edition of his accusation. Here is the precious
document, part of a long paper, headed " Certain
notes and remembrances concerning a reconciliation
by me exhibited to the Rt. Hon. my good the Earl of
Leicester," and endorsed in Burleigh's hand, " Payne
to be examined."
" The said priest Payne went about once to
persuade me to kill (Jesus preserve her) the Queen's
Majesty, and said that there were divers matters
from the Pope published against her, that it was
lawful to kill her Highness without any offence to
Godward. And said unto me that he had talked
beyond the seas with the Earl of Westmorland,
Dr. Allen, and divers others Englishmen touching
that matter, who let him to understand that the
Pope would yield as much allowance of money as
would fully furnish fifty men, to every man a
good horse, an arming sword, a privy coat, and
a pocket-dagge. These men should be had in
readiness against some convenient time that her
Majesty went in progress, not all in a livery, but
in sundry sorts of apparel. And, for that it was
supposed your honour, my Lord Treasurer, and
Mr. Secretary Walsingham were like to be there,
and that you were all thought to be enemies to the
papists, it was appointed that four or five should
set upon her Majesty's royal person, and so upon
the sudden to destroy her Highness; three upon
BLESSED JOHN PAYNE 433
your Honour, three upon my Lord Treasurer, and
three upon Mr. Secretary Walsingham, all which in
a moment even at one instant, [were] to be destroyed
as aforesaid. The rest of the said company of fifty to
be ready when the deed were done, to come to and
fro with their horses amongst the people to dash
them out of countenance, that they should not know
what part to take." l
For eight long months the holy confessor was
kept a close prisoner without being brought to
trial. During this time he was more than once
cruelly racked. There is a minute in the Council
book on August the I4th,2 ordering his torture, and
at the end of the month the news of his racking
had reached Douay and is recorded in the Diary.
On October the 2gth, another minute in the Council
book orders "the examining of Edmund Campion,
Thomas Ford, and others, prisoners in the Tower,
upon certain matters, and to put them unto the
rack," 3 and on the 3ist, the Diary of the Tower
records " John Payne, priest, was most violently
tormented on the rack.1'
It was on one of these occasions after his
racking that Sir Owen Hopton sent his servant to
him with this letter.
" I have herewith sent you pen, ink, and paper,
and I pray you write what you have said to Eliot
1 B.M. Lansdowne MSS. vol. xxxiii. n. 61 ; Foley, Records S.J.
vol. ii. p. 588.
2 Jardine, Appendix, p. 88 ; Dasent, Privy Council, xiii. p. 172.
* Jardine, p. 89 ; Dasent, p. 249.
CC II.
434 BLESSED JOHN PAYNE
and to your host in London, concerning the Queen
and the State ; and thereof fail not, as you will
answer at your uttermost peril."
The martyr's hands were crippled by the torture,
and he was obliged to dictate his answer to the
servant.
" Right Worshipful,
" My duty remembered, being not able
to write without better hands, I have by your
appointment used the help of your servant. For
answer to your interrogations I have already said
sufficient for a man that regardeth his own salvation,
and that with such advised asseverations uttered,
as amongst Christian men ought to be believed.
Yet once again briefly for obedience sake.
" First, touching her Majesty, I pray God long
to preserve her Highness to His honour and her
heart's desire; unto whom I always have and during
life will wish no worse than to my own soul. If her
pleasure be not that I shall live and serve her as
my Sovereign Prince, then will I willingly die her
faithful subject, and I trust, God's true servant.
" Touching the State, I protest that I am and
ever have been free from the knowledge of any
practice whatever, either within or without the
realm, intended against the same. For the verity
whereof, as I have often before you and the rest of
her Grace's commissioners called God to witness,
so do I now again ; and one day before His Majesty
the truth, now not credited, will be then revealed.
BLESSED JOHN PAYNE 435
" For Eliot I forgive his monstrous wickedness
and defy his malicious inventions ; wishing that his
former behaviour towards others being well known,
as hereafter it will, were not a sufficient reproof of
these devised slanders.
" For host or other person living, in London or
elsewhere, unless they be by subornation of my
bloody enemy corrupted, I know they can neither
for word, deed, or any disloyalty, justly touch me.
And so before the seat of God, as also before the
sight of men, will I answer at my utmost peril.
" Her Majesty's faithful subject, and
" Your Worship's humble prisoner,
"JOHN PAYNE, Priest."
" He was once or twice demanded," says the
Briefe Historic, " whether he would go to their
church (for that would have made amends for all
these treasons). 'Why,' saith he, 'you say I am in
for treason. Discharge me of that, and then you
shall know farther of my mind for the other.' " l
The trial and martyrdom of Campion, Sherwin,
and Briant had passed, and Blessed John was yet
left in his cell in the Tower. Another quarter of a year
went by, and still nothing more happened. It seemed
as if, with the utterly discredited accusation of Eliot
only against him, the Government shrank from a
trial. The ninth month of his captivity had begun,
when one night, March the 2oth, he was roused from
bed by a knocking at the door of his room. It was
1 Briefe Historic, p. 128. This is the chief authority for the
martyr's trial.
436 BLESSED JOHN PAYNE
Hopton, the Lieutenant of the Tower, himself, who
summoned him, and he found that officers were
waiting to take him to Chelmsford gaol by orders
of the Council.1 With very gratuitous brutality he
was refused leave to dress himself, for he had
nothing on but his cassock, which he had thrown
about him to open the door. He was not allowed
even to take his purse, and the Briefe Historic
affirms that Lady Hopton, with that incredible
mixture of meanness, cruelty and injustice, of
which instances abound at the period, took care to
secure it for her own use.
On the following Friday, the 23rd, the martyr
was arraigned at the Assizes, together with a
number of thieves and felons. The indictment
simply recited Eliot's accusation which has been
given.2
That worthy personage of course made no
difficulty about swearing to his tale. He had found
it profitable already. " Of George Eliot," says
Mr. Simpson, " and the charge of murder against
him, I have already spoken. That charge had,
however, now been entirely wiped out by his good
service. He had captured Campion, and had been
1 The letter to the Lieutenant of the Tower from the Council
ordering him to hand over John Payne into the charge of the
sheriff of the county of Essex is dated Greenwich, March 12,
1582. Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council.
3 George Eliot, "one of the ordinary yeomen of her Majesty's
chamber," and Ralph Hill received £$ " for their charges in being
sent by commandment of the Lords of her Majesty's Council from
Greenwich to Chelmsford in Essex upon special business of her
Majesty." Treasurer of the Household's Accounts, April 2, 1582.
BLESSED JOHN PAYNE 437
the means of taking nine other priests; he had been
made a yeoman of her Majesty's guard, and had
come flaunting into court with his red coat. He
had shown too well how intimate he was with
the secrets of priests, and his testimony, though
evidently forged, was too valuable to lose. Campion
took nothing by his impeaching this man's witness." l
Blessed John Payne also gained nothing by impeach-
ing it. He probably knew well that this would be the
case. He did impeach it, nevertheless, that he
might not neglect any proper defence of his life.
" He refelled Eliot's deposition. First, taking
God to witness on his soul, that he never had such
speech with him. Secondly, he brought two places
of Scripture 2 and a statute to prove that without two
sufficient witnesses no man should be condemned.
Thirdly, he proved Eliot insufficient to be a
witness for having been guilty, ist. Of oppression of
poor men, even unto death. 2ndly. Of a rape and
other notorious lewdnesses. srdly. Of breach of
contract and cozening the Lady Petre (widow of
Sir William Petre) of money. 4thly. Of changing
oft his religion. 5thly. Of malice against himself,
adding that he was also attached of murder and
such-like acts, and was a notorious dissembler," &c.
No attempt was made to corroborate Eliot's
story. The counsel for the Crown urged as pre-
sumptions against the accused, that he had "gone
beyond the seas and been made priest by the
Bishop of Cambrai," and consequently, as he falsely
1 Simpson, Life of Campion, p. 312.
2 John viii. 7; Deut. xvii. 6.
438 BLESSED JOHN PAYNE
inferred, taken an oath to the Pope; "that he
had speech with traitors in Flanders, with the
Earl of Westmorland, Dr. Allen, and Dr. Bristow,
and had travelled with a traitor's son, Mr. William
Tempest." It is needless to say what short work
a modern counsel for the defence would have made
of all this, but in those days no such " indulgence "
was accorded to the accused ; however, the holy
priest answered that " to go -beyond the seas was
not a sufficient token of a traitor, neither to be
made priest by the Bishop of Cambrai, for so were
many others, nothing at all thinking of treason.1
That for his part he was not the Pope's scholar,2
neither had any maintenance of him ; for when he
was at the College it had as yet no pension from the
Pope.3 That he had never talked with the Earl of
Westmorland ; and that Dr. Allen and Dr. Bristow
had never talked, to his knowledge, of any such
things. That Mr. Tempest was an honest gentle-
man, and never talked to him about treason ; neither
was it unlawful for him to keep him company,
seeing that he was a servant to a Right Honourable
Counsellor, Sir Christopher Hatton."
The jury gave the verdict expected of them, and
the next day Blessed John was brought up for
1 The Act of Parliament deciding that ordination over seas
should be regarded as treason was not passed till 1585.
2 The Pope's scholars took an oath to labour on the English
Mission when sent by their Superiors.
* Gregory XIII. granted an allowance to the College of 100
crowns a month, in 1575, which he afterwards increased. See
Douay Diaries, Introduction, p. Ixxiv. Blessed John, however, left
early in 1576.
BLESSED JOHN PAYNE 439
judgment. He was asked according to the usual
form whether he had any reason to offer why
sentence should not be given. But he answered
that he had said sufficiently, " alleging that it was
against the law of God and man that he should be
condemned for one man's witness, notoriously in-
famous." He excused the jury as " poor, simple
men, nothing at all understanding what treason
is," and lastly added, " if it please the Queen and
her Council that I shall die, I refer my cause to
God."
The Judge (whose name was Gaudy) then pro-
nounced sentence, and afterwards exhorted the
martyr to repent himself, " although," said he, "you
may better instruct me herein."
The execution was fixed for eight o'clock in the
morning of Monday, April the 2nd. Like most of
the martyrs of this period, he was harassed in his
closing days by the importunity of the Puritanical
preachers. The whole of Sunday, April the ist,
till five o'clock, two ministers, named Withers and
Sone, were with him, urging him to give up his
religion, "the which," said they, "if you will alter,
we doubt not to procure mercy for you." So that
" by their foolish babbling," as he said, " they did
much vex and trouble him." On the other hand, in
the town and in the county, where he had long lived
and seems to have been well known, the general
feeling towards him was one of good -will and
sympathy. " All the town loved him exceedingly,"
says the Brief e Historic, "so did the keepers and
most of the magistrates of the shire. No man
440 BLESSED JOHN PA YNE
seemed in countenance to mislike him, but much
sorrowed and lamented his death." The writer of
this touching account adds, " I, amongst many,
coming unto him about ten of the clock with the
officers, he most comfortably and meekly uttered
words of constancy unto me and with a loving kiss
took leave of me."
At the place of his martyrdom he knelt down
and prayed for nearly half an hour. He smiled as
he went up the ladder, and kissed the gallows. He
then addressed the people, and made a full declara-
tion of his faith in the Most Holy Trinity and the
Incarnation, for the strange reason that the common
people, as he was told, thought him to be a Jesuit ;
and the report had been sent about that " the
Jesuits' opinion was that Christ is not God." He
then forgave all, and Eliot by name, and prayed
for him, and solemnly protested his complete inno-
cence of every treasonable act or word.
Then followed the usual wrangle to induce him
to acknowledge some guilt. He answered Lord
Rich that to confess an untruth was to condemn his
own soul, and " Sweet my lord," he went on,
" certify her Majesty thereof, that she surfer not
hereafter innocent blood to be cast away." At this
a preacher who stood by cried out that by these
words alone he proved he was a notable traitor, since
he dared to accuse the Queen's Majesty of shedding
innocent blood if ever she touched one of those
anointed by the Pope of Rome. The martyr
meekly answered, " Verily you treat me unkindly,
for I did not say this, but only asked his Lordship
BLESSED JOHN PAYNE 441
to beg the Queen not to let innocent blood be shed."
Some said he was a traitor like Campion, who
had been convicted by several witnesses, to which
he replied that he had asked Campion and his
companions, a little before their death, if they had
really committed the crimes they were charged with,
and with one voice they had answered " No." One
of the ministers insisted that Mr. Hart had disclosed
the whole conspiracy, to which Blessed John replied
that he was there to answer for himself, not to
defend others. Someone else said he had acknow-
ledged his guilt to a certain Lady Pole : but he
declared he did not even know any such person.
Then one of the ministers " said that Mr. Payne's
brother confessed to him in his chamber seven
years ago that he talked of such an intention. To
this he answered, being somewhat moved, ' Bone
Deus ! my brother is, and always hath been, a very
earnest Protestant ; yet I know he will not say so
falsely of me ; ' and then he desired his brother
should be sent for." The brother was not at hand,
and the sheriff would not delay ; when he was found,
soon after the execution, he swore, of course, that
the whole thing was a fabrication.1 Next came the
usual pressure on the martyr to pray in English and
to join with the ministers, to which he replied " that
he prayed in a tongue which he well understood."
And they went on to ask if he did not repent of
1 " He swore unto us with great admiration that it was most
false, and told us that he would so certify my Lord Rich. Imme-
diately he was sent for to my Lord, and I took horse to ride away,
and thereof as yet hear no more." (Briefe Historie, p. 127.)
442 BLESSED JOHN PA YNE
having said Mass, but his soul was now raised by
our Lord into the peaceful region of contemplation,
and he no longer heard them.
As they turned the ladder, he was heard to
pronounce again and again the holy name of Jesus,
and he died without any convulsive movement of
hand or foot. The kindly feeling of the crowd inter-
fered to prevent the infliction of the last barbarities
until he was dead. " They very courteously caused
men to hang on his feet, and set the knot to his ear,
commanding Bull, the hangman from Newgate, to
despatch in the quartering of him, lest, as they
said, he should revive ; and rebuked him that he did
not despatch speedily."
E. S. K.
AUTHORITIES. — Briefe Historic, pp. 131 — 140; Concertatio,
ft. 81 — 84 ; Diary of the Tower in Rishton's Sander.
XIII.
THE BLESSED THOMAS FORD,
SECULAR PRIEST.
Tyburn, 28 May, 1582.
OF the little. group of friends, who in 1569 and
1570 left Oxford and what the world had to offer
them, to embrace the Faith and give their lives
to God in the priesthood, two had now won
the martyr's crown ; first Cuthbert Mayne, then
Edmund Campion. The Blessed Thomas Ford l
was now to join their glorious company. We have
seen how even while a Protestant he was the means
of saving Blessed Cuthbert Mayne from a premature
imprisonment, a trial which might have altered the
whole subsequent course of his life. Perhaps it was
this charitable deed which obtained for Thomas
Ford the grace of conversion and of martyrdom.
Like his friend, he was a native of Devonshire.2
He entered Trinity College, Oxford, where he was
a contemporary of George Blackwell, afterwards
1 He was also known as Saltwell and Harwood.
2 He is called " Fourde of Lye " in Domestic, Elizabeth, Addenda,
xxviii. 59, iii. Lye is an Oxfordshire hamlet, and Catholic Fords
lived at Shifford close by in 1608, but the family came from Devon
444 BLESSED THOMAS FORD
Archpriest. l He became a fellow of his College,
and Wood says was made President.2 Even while
at the University he had the strongest Catholic
sympathies and openly expressed them. Father
Warford3 says of him :
" He was a man of most unblemished character,
of excellent life, and most fervent zeal. I have often
heard it related of him, amongst other things, that
when one of his fellow-masters in the ordinary theo-
logical disputations of the College gave in to the
fashion of the times, and spoke somewhat insolently
of the Sovereign Pontiff, he boldly began his answer
to the discourse with the words : ' I cannot endure
such disrespect towards co virtuous and holy a
father.' As he put no restraint on his feelings, he
was at last compelled by this and the like outbursts
to abandon the College and all its advantages,
though indeed he rather hastened eagerly to the
priesthood."
It was in the course of the year 1570 that he
broke away from every tie and went to the recently
established Seminary at Douay, where Gregory
Martin, Blessed Edmund Campion, and other
friends, had preceded him. He was one of the first
three of its students ordained, the other two being
1 " Thos. Forde or Fourde, supplicated for B.A. and disp. May 8,
1563, adm. May 13, supp. for M.A. April 18, 1567, licensed April 21,
incepted July 14." (Boase, Register of the University of Oxford, i. 251.)
2 Fasti Oxonienses, April 21, 1567.
3 MS. Relation in the Archives of Westminster, vol. iv. 65
(printed in Pollen's Acts of English Martyrs, p. 251).
BLESSED THOMAS FORD 445
Gregory Martin and Richard Bristow. They went
to Brussels for their ordination, and received the
tonsure, minor orders, and the three Sacred Orders
on different days in March, 1573. He remained
another three years in the College and had the
happiness of welcoming a continual succession of
University men, many of whom must have been old
friends ; — William Weston, the intimate friend of
Campion ; William Sheprey, of Corpus Christi ; his
colleague at Trinity, George Blackwell ; Thomas
Worthington, Edward Rishton, and Lawrence
Johnson, the martyr, of Brasenose ; Robert Turner
and Blessed Ralph Sherwin, of Exeter; Henry
Shaw, Henry Holland, Jonas Meredith, and Blessed
Cuthbert Mayne, of St. John's; almost all destined
to take an important place in the Catholic annals
of England.
He left Douay for England on the 2nd of May,
1576, a few days after Blessed Cuthbert Mayne and
Blessed John Payne. He was able to work in our
Lord's vineyard for five years without interruption,
a long career if we look at the average of the mis-
sionaries at that time. Father Warford says he
laboured chiefly in Oxfordshire, and though known
to many at the University, such was the regard
which his character inspired that no one thought
of betraying him. After a time he appears to have
become resident chaplain at Lyford, in Berkshire,
where, it will be remembered, the Yate family gave
shelter to some of the Bridgettine nuns of Syon,
who had returned to England in order to obtain
pecuniary aid for their exiled and destitute com-
446 BLESSED THOMAS FORD
munity. He thus found at Lyford work sufficient
both for himself and for his colleague, John
Collington.
Here it was, on the I7th of July, 1581, that he
was captured by "Judas" Eliot, in the little hiding-
hole where he lay with Campion and Collington.
Father Warford says that in the crisis of their
danger Blessed Thomas wanted to give himself
up to the searching party in the hope of saving
Campion, who, however, would not hear of it.
Probably, besides his generous charity, Ford was
actuated by the feeling that it was he who had
been the means of bringing Campion into their
common peril. For he it was who had ridden
after the two Jesuits when they had quitted Lyford,
on the I2th, and after a hard struggle, brought them
back from the inn near Oxford in triumph.
With the holy Jesuit and Collington he shared
the three days' journey to London, and the glorious
dishonour of the progress through the city, "their
elbows tied behind them, their hands in front, and
their legs under their horses' bellies,"1 and on
Saturday, July the 22nd, was committed a close
prisoner to the Tower.2
There are three entries in the Council book
1 Simpson's Campion, p. 228.
2 There exists an Order from Council (July 30, 1581) to the
Knight-Marshal to remove Ford, alias Saltwell, and Collington, alias
Peters, from the Tower to the Marshalsea ; and not to allow them
speech with any other prisoner for religion. (Dasent, Acts of the
Privy Council, vol. xiii. p. 147.) But if this order was carried out,
both sufferers must have been brought back again later on, for the
record of their trial states that they came from the Tower.
BLESSED THOMAS FORD 447
directing his torture, dated July the 3<Dth, August
the I4th, and October the 2gth. The commis-
sioners were instructed to extract from him and
his two companions, "where they have layne, and
whether there were a mass said in Mrs. Yate's
house or no at their last being there ; '' and again,
"to examine Campion, Peters [Collington], and
Ford, who refuse to confess, whether they have
said anie masses or no, whom they have confessed,
and where Persons and the other priests be, touch-
ing those points, and to put them to fear of torture,
if they shall refuse to answer directly thereto." ]
He was one of the seven priests tried the day
after Blessed Campion and his companions on the
same charge of conspiracy against the Queen.
The verdict had been given against all seven,2 when
one, Mr. Lancaster, came forward and declared to
the court that he was in company with Collington,
Ford's fellow-chaplain at Lyford, in Grey's Inn,
on the very day that he was charged with plotting
at Rheims, where indeed he had never been in
his life. In the face of this evidence from a man
of position known to the judges, Collington was
not sentenced ; but he was not discharged, and
after nearly three years more of imprisonment in
the Tower, he was banished the country. As to
the rest of the accused, there was no evidence
against them but that which had thus been proved
and acknowledged to be untrustworthy, but neither
1 Jardine, pp. 87 — 89, and Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, vol. xiii.
pp. 171 and 249.
2 The indictment, trial, and sentence of Ford, Filbie, Briant,
Hart, Shert, and Richardson, Coram Rege, 23 and 24 Eliz., Mich., 3°.
448 BLESSED THOMAS FORD
Crown lawyers, nor witnesses, nor judges appear to
have been in the least abashed, or to have hesitated
a moment about the fate of the prisoners. Indeed,
among the spectators of the trial was a priest of
the name of Nicholson, who was able to make a
declaration about Blessed Thomas Ford similar to
that which had saved Collington's life ; seeing the
success of Mr. Lancaster's intervention he came
forward in his turn to offer his evidence. But the only
result was, that the judge immediately ordered his
arrest and committal to prison, where he was well-
nigh starved to death. As to the Blessed Thomas
Ford, whether he had been at Rheims or in London,
whether the evidence against him was proved false
or not, a traitor he was to be, and so, with the
remaining five of his brethren accused with him,
he received sentence of death on November the T7th.
The execution of the three martyrs, Blessed
Campion, Sherwin, and Briant, took place as we
have seen on December the ist. What the
principle of their selection may have been, at least
as regards the two latter, does not appear. But
weeks and months went by, and the rest heard
nothing more of their fate. The explanation of
this is not difficult. The unscrupulous Ministers
of Elizabeth, unwilling to go on adding to the odium
they had brought on themselves by the martyrdoms
of such men as Nelson, Sherwood, and Hanse, yet
bent on crushing the apostolic movement of the
Seminaries, adopted the expedient of a trumped-up
conspiracy. But, thoroughly well informed as they
were, they must immediately have become aware
BLESSED THOMAS FORD 449
that their expedient had utterly failed. It was not
only abroad that every Catholic land rang with the
story of the sufferers, who were thought and spoken
of and outwardly honoured on the same footing
as the martyrs of old : but in England the general
conscience utterly rejected the pretended plot. The
wretched instruments employed as witnesses, Sledd,
Munday, Caddy, and Eliot ; the cases of Collington
and Ford, proved to have been in London, when
the story of the plot required them to be in Rheims;
the whole character and bearing of the martyrs and
their solemn protestations, left no doubt upon the
public mind as to the merits of their trial and the
cause of their death. The state of public feeling
is shown in various ways, but in none more
plainly than by the first publication put out by
the Government in its own defence. It is
called a " Particular declaration of the traitorous
affection of Campion and other condemned priests,
witnessed by their own confessions, written in
reproof of the slanderous bookes and libels delivered
out to the contrary by such as are maliciously
affected towards her Majestic and the State.
Published by authoritie." l In this paper, Simpson
says,2 "the pretended plot of Rheims and Rome is
prudently forgotten " — the very matter of the indict-
ment on which they were tried and put to death !
What was to be done then with the eleven
1 Imprinted at London by Christopher Barker, printer to the
Queene's most excellent Majestic, An. Do. 1582, 4to, 14 leaves.
Printed in J. Morgan's Phoenix Britannicus, p. 481 ; StateTrials, vol. i.
p. 1073, and Tierney-Dodd, vol. iii. Appendix, pp. v. — xvi.
2 Life of Campion, p. 332.
DD II.
450 BLESSED THOMAS FORD
remaining condemned men ? To discharge them
was to give up the battle and to acknowledge that
the martyrs had been murdered. To execute them
on the discredited trial was to court fresh odium.
The Ministers reverted in fact to the course that
had been followed with the earlier martyrs, Nelson,
Sherwood, and Hanse, only in a more elaborate and
methodical way. A paper of six questions was
drawn up and proposed to each of the confessors
under sentence of death by Popham, the Attorney
General, and Egerton, the Solicitor General, with
two civilians, Hammond and Lewis. These questions
bring back the argument from the order of fact
to that of belief, or rather of hypothesis. The
martyrs are not allowed to declare that they accept
Elizabeth as their Queen. There is no question
as to what they have done. They are asked what
they would hold or do in certain contingencies
and under certain circumstances which Catholics
and Protestants were sure to understand differ-
ently. The Government hoped by these means
to cause our martyrs to be suspected of poli-
tical and anti-patriotic conspiracy, to make them
odious by confounding their zeal for the faith with
disloyalty to their Queen and country, and thus
gradually to over-ride and pervert public opinion
with regard to them. Adroit slander was no less
powerful a weapon in such hands than violent
persecution, and the skilful use of both combined
was in the end but too successful. Here are the
questions proposed to the martyrs six months after
their trial and sentence.
BLESSED THOMAS FORD 451
" The Articles ministered to the seven priests and
others with them, with the answers of these seven to the
same.
"i3th May, 1582.
" i. Whether the Bull of Pius Quintus, against
the queene's Majestic, be a lawfull sentence, and
ought to be obeyed by the subjects of England ?
" 2. Whether the queene's Majestie be a lawfull
queene, and ought to be obeyed by the subjects of
England, notwithstanding the bull of Pius Quintus,
or any bull or sentence that the Pope hath pro-
nounced or may pronounce against her Majestie ?
" 3. Whether the Pope have or had power to
authorize the Earls of Northumberlande and West-
morland and other her Majestie's subjects to rebell
or take armes against her Majestie or to authorize
doctour Saunders or others to invade Ireland or any
other her dominions, and to beare armes against
her : and whether they did therein lawfully or no ?
" 4. Whether the Pope have power to discharge
any of her highness subjects or the subjects of any
Christian prince from their allegiance or othe of
obedience to her Majestie or to their prince for any
cause ?
" 5. Whether the said doctour Saunders, in his
booke of the Visible Monarchie of the Church, and
doctour Bristowe in his booke of Motives (writing
in allowance, commendation and confirmation of
the said bull of Pius Quintus) have therein taught,
testified or maintained a truth or falsehood ?
"6. If the Pope doe by his bull or sentence,,
pronounce her Majestie to be deprived and no-
452 BLESSED THOMAS FORD
lawful queene, and her subjects to be discharged of
their allegiance and obedience unto her, and after,
the Pope or any other by his appointment and
authoritie, doe invade this realme, which part would
you take, or which part ought a good subject of
England to take ? " l
Of similar questions Blessed Campion had said :
41 Since it must be answered, I say generally that
these matters be merely spiritual points of doctrine
and disputable in schools, no part of mine indict-
ment, not to be given in evidence, and unfit to be
discussed at the King's Bench. To conclude, they
are no matters of fact : they be not in the trial of
the country ; the jury ought not to take any notice
of them."
And though there are still writers, like Mr. Froude,
who reject Campion's plea, juster men have come to
acknowledge the iniquity of these proceedings. Thus
Hallam says of Burleigh's tract, " That any matter
of opinion not proved to have ripened into an overt
act and extorted only, or rather conjectured, through
a compulsive inquiry could sustain, in law or justice,
a conviction for high treason, is what the author of
this pamphlet has not rendered manifest."2
Blessed Thomas Ford replied as follows :
" Thomas Forde's Answere.
" Thomas Ford. — To the first, he saith that he
cannot answere, because he is not privy to the
1 Butler's Historical Memoirs, vol. i. p. 200. Also Tierney-Dodd,
vol. iii. Appendix, p. iv.
2 Hallam, Constitutional History, vol. i. p. 150.
BLESSED THOMAS FORD 453
circumstances of that bull : but if he did see a bull
published by Gregory the thirteenth, he would then
deliver his opinion thereof.
"To the second, he sayeth that the Pope hath
authoritie to depose a prince on certain occasions ;
and when such a bull shall be pronounced against
her Majestic, he will then answere what the duty of
her subjects and what her right is.
" To the third he sayeth, he is a private subject
and will not answere to any of these questions.
" To the fourth, he sayth that the Pope hath
authoritie upon certaine occasions, which he will
not name, to discharge subjects of their obedience
to their prince.
"To the fifth, he saieth, that doctour Saunders
and doctour Bristowe be learned men ; and whether
they have taught truly in their bookes mentioned in
this article, he referreth the answere to themselves.
For himself he will not answere.
" To the last, he sayeth that, when that case
shall happen, he will make answere, and not before.
" THOMAS FORDE.
"JOHN POPHAM. DA. LEWIS.
"THOMAS EGERTON. JOHN HAMMOND."1
On the results of this extra-judicial examination
it was determined to proceed to the holy priest's
execution ; though indeed it would seem that the
examination was made as a public pretext, and the
execution had been resolved on already. It is said
that " whilst waiting for execution, Mr. Forde was
1 Tierney-Dodd, iii. p. xiii.
454 BLESSED THOMAS FORD
put into irons during thirty days.1 It was on the
28th of May, I582,2 a fortnight after the examination,
that Blessed Thomas Ford, together with two other
martyrs, Blessed John Shert and Blessed Robert
Johnson, after so long a series of cruel treatments,
and so much art used to make them confess the
feigned treason or deny their faith, were all trailed
upon hurdles from the Tower of London through
the streets to Tyburn, between six and seven of the
clock in the morning.3 A touching incident of the
journey has been recorded for us by a bitter enemy,
the false witness, Munday : " All the way as they
were drawen," he writes, " they were accompanied
with divers zealous and godly men, who in mylde
and loving speeches made knowen unto them how
justly God repayeth the reprobate &c., . . . among
which godly perswasions Maister Sherife himself
both learnedly and earnestly laboured unto them,
. . . but these good endevours tooke no wished
effect : their own evil disposition so blinded them
that there was no way for grace to enter.
" When they were come beyond St. Giles in the
Field, there approached unto the hurdell one of their
owne secte and a Priest, as himself hath confessed,
who in this manner spake unto the prisoners,
1 Note to Challoner, Edition of 1836, vol. i. p. 37.
2 The Privy Council sent a letter to the Lieutenant of the
Tower the previous day " that whereas the Sheriffs of London, &c.,
were to-morrow to receive certain Seminary priests lately con-
demned, he should for certain good considerations stay John Harte,
and signify so much on their Lordship's behalf to the said Sheriffs."
{Dasent, Acts, vol. xiii. p. 428.)
3 Brief e Historic, p. 102.
BLESSED THOMAS FORD 455
* O, gentlemen, be joyfull in the blood of Jesus
Christe, for this is the triumph and joye.' Being
asked why he used such words he said unto the
prisoners againe, ' I pronounce unto you a pardon,
yea I pronounce a full remission and pardon unto
your soules.' Using these and other trayterous
speeches, holde was layde on him . . . and notwith-
standing such means of resistaunce as himselfe
used, he was delivered unto Mr. Thomas Norris,
Pursuivante, who brought him unto Newgate, wher
he confessed unto him that he was a priest." l
When the procession reached Tyburn, " first
Mr. Forde," says the Briefe Historic, "being set up in
the cart, blessed himself with the sign of the Cross,
being so weak as he fell down in the cart ; and
after he was up, he said, ' I am a Catholic and do
die in the Catholic religion.' And therewith he was
interrupted by Sheriff Martin, saying, ' You come
not hither to confess your religion, but as a traitor
and malefactor to the Queen's Majesty and the
whole realm, moving and stirring of sedition ; and
therefore I pray you, go to, and confess your fault,
and submit yourself to the Queen's mercy, and no
doubt but she would forgive you.'
1 A breefe and true report of the Execution of certaine Traytours at
Tiborne the xxviii and xxx dayes of May e, 1582. Gathered by A.M. who
was there present. (Reprinted in Downside Review, December, 1891,
vol. x. no. 3, p. 215.) Bitterly hostile as this narrative is, it gives a
most striking confirmation of the fidelity of the Catholic Acts.
The dedication is to Alderman Richard Martin, then sheriff, and
from it we learn that Munday, who had been a witness at the trial,
was brought to the place of execution expressly that he might be
confronted with the martyrs before the populace.
456 BLESSED THOMAS FORD
" Whereunto Mr. Ford answered, 'That supposed
offence whereof I was indicted and condemned was
the conspiring of her Majesty's death at Rome and
Rhemes, whereof I was altogether not guilty : for
the offence was supposed for the conspiring the
Queen's Majesty's death in the 22nd year of her
Majesty's reign ; at which time I was in England
remaining, and long before that.1 For I have
remained here for the space of six or seven years,
and never during that time departed this realm ;
whereof I might bring the witness of an hundred,
yea, of five hundred sufficient men, and had there-
upon been discharged at the bar, if I would have
disclosed their names with whom I had been.
Which I did forbear only for fear to bring them
into trouble.' Then Sheriff Martin said, ' Here is
your own handwriting, with the testimony of wor-
shipful men, as the Queen's attorney, Dr. Hammond,
Dr. Lewis, and others ; and if that will not serve,
here is one of your own companions (Munday) that
was the Pope's scholar, to testify your offence/
Mr. Ford answered, ' That notwithstanding, I
am altogether not guilty, whatsoever you have
written.'
" He continued for the most part in prayer
secretly to himself, during the time that the sheriff
or any other spoke to him. Then was a scroll of
his examination (of which we have spoken above),
read by a minister. To some articles he said
nothing, but to others he said that the Pope for
1 "Neither was he ever at Rome or Rhemes in all his life."
(Briefe Historic, marginal note, p. 102.)
BLESSED THOMAS FORD 457
some causes may depose a Prince of his estate and
dignity, and discharge the subjects of their duties
and allegiance, 'for' (quoth he), 'this question was
disputed thirteen years since, at Oxford, by the
divines there before the Queen's Majesty, and there
it was made and proved to be a most clear case,
in her own presence.' And here, being interrupted,
Munday, the Pope's scholar, being called as a
witness, said that Ford was privy to their con-
spiracies ; but was not able to affirm that ever he
saw him beyond the seas. This his assertion
Mr. Ford utterly denied upon his death, and being
asked what he thought of the Queen's Majesty, and
withal willed to ask her and the whole realm which
he had stirred to sedition forgiveness, he said that
he acknowledged her for his sovereign and Queen,
and that he never in his life had offended her.1 And
so praying secretly he desired all those that were
of his faith to pray with him, and ended with this
prayer, Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus," and in a
few moments more Jesus had received him into the
glorious ranks of His martyrs.
1 Monday's version is : " ' I have not offended her Majesty, but
if I have, I ask her forgiveness and all the world, and in no other
treason have I offended than my religion, which is the Catholic
faith wherein I will live and die. And as for the Queen's Majesty,
I do acknowledge her supremacy in all things temporal, but as
concerning ecclesiastical causes I deny her ; that only belongeth to
the Vicar of Christ, the Pope.' In brief, he granted to nothing,
but showed himself an impious and obstinate traitor, and so he
remained to the death, refusing to pray in the English tongue,
mumbling a few Latin prayers, desiring those that were ex domo Dei
to pray for him, and so he ended his life." He was allowed to hang
till he was dead.
458 BLESSED THOMAS FORD
In a paper among Father Grene's transcripts at
Stonyhurst1 we find the following story.
" The 28th of March [May], 1582, were martyred
at London Mr. Thomas Ford, and Mr. John Shert,
and Mr. Robert Johnson, priests. The same day
they appeared to Mr. Rowsam [i.e., the Ven. Stephen
Rowsham, Mart.] in the Tower, and let him feel
what pains their martyrdom had been to them, and
with what joy they were rewarded."
" In the eyes of the unwise they seemed to die,
but they are in peace."
E. S. K.
ED.
AUTHORITIES. — Briefe Historie, pp. 102 — 104 ; Concertatio,
ff. 86, 87. The subject of the " Six Questions " is admirably
treated by Allen in the Modest Defence, pp.62 — 71. See also
The Month for November, 1904.
PORTRAIT. — See below.
RELICS. — In the English Convent at Bruges (Priory of
Nazareth of the Austin Canonesses of the Lateran) is pre-
served a finger of Blessed Thomas Ford. It is white as wax,
and is set in a small silver handle, and kept in a glass tube.
This finger was taken over to Belgium by the martyr's
great-nephew, who married and settled at Bruges. It was
given to the convent by Sister Mary Catharine Willis, who
received it from her mother, a descendant of the family,
June 14, 1748.
The family also possessed the knife with which the martyr
was quartered, but it is unhappily lost. This and the finger
are said to have been purchased by the martyr's brother after
the execution.
1 Printed in Pollen's Acts of English Martyrs, p. 334.
BLESSED THOMAS FORD 459
The relic is certified to have worked two remarkable
cures.
The picture of the martyr came with the relic, and was
also a family heirloom. It has the following inscription ;
Thomas Fordus, Exoniensis, Coll. Angl. Duaci Sacerdos, missus
in Angliam, 1576; passtis Londini, 28 Maii, 1582.
There is a scroll painted in the picture with the words,
Catholicus ego sum et in Catholica fide moriar, and Jesu, Jesu,
Jesu, esto mihi Jesus ; his dying words.
There is also a piece of skin (apparently from the inside
of the hand, showing the wrinkles and furrows of the skin)
preserved at Stonyhurst, which is labelled B. Ffordei vel Shertei
vel Roberti Jonsoni, it not being certain to which of the three
fellow-martyrs it really belonged.
Two small fragments of this relic are in Father Morris's
collection at Farm Street.
At Archbishop's House, Westminster, is also a small relic
which may belong to any of the three martyrs, and is labelled,
Ford, Shert, Johnstone incertum cujus. It is a particle of some
hard and dark substance.
XIV.
THE BLESSED JOHN SHERT,
SECULAR PRIEST.
Tyburn, 28 May, 1582.
THE day which had been honoured by the martyr-
dom of Blessed Margaret Plantagenet forty-one years
earlier, and now by that of Blessed Thomas Ford,
was still further glorified by the passion of his two
companions. Of these, the first to suffer was John
Shert. He was a native of Cheshire, and, according
to Dodd, is said to have been born at Shert Hall,
near Macclesfield. He was sent to Oxford, where
he entered Brasenose College, and took his degree
in 1566. l On leaving the University, Wood says
he became a schoolmaster in London and was
" much resorted to for his excellent way of teaching :
but being a Catholic at heart, left his country and
went to Douay."2 We may gather that his life in
London brought him both honour and profit. But
for the sake of the "pearl of great price" he gave
up all he had, and became a penniless exile. From
the Douay Diary we learn that he did not at once
1 John Shirte, or Sherte, sup. for B.A. May 8, 1566, adm.
January 17, 1566-7, disp. February 4.
~ Fasti Oxonienses, January 17, 1566.
BLESSED JOHN SHERT 461
seek admission to the Seminary on his conversion,
but entered the service of Dr. Stapleton, perhaps
as a secretary or amanuensis.1 But at last he
either became clear about his vocation to the
priesthood or saw his way to carrying it out, and
in January, 1576, the following entry occurs in
the Diary : " On January the gth, Mr. J. Shert,
in order to devote himself entirely to sacred
theological studies, set free from all other cares,
commended by that distinguished man Dr. Stapleton,
in whose service he formerly was, was admitted to
our College, and lives as a poor student at the
common expense." For a short time he was the
contemporary of Blessed Thomas Ford,2 one day
to be the companion of his martyrdom. Another
entry in the Diary3 of this year records a short
journey to England, whence he returned after
eighteen days' absence, with two young students for
the College. The fact that the Diarist says he was
" sent " to England, implying that the two youths
were the object of his journey, and that the College
authorities4 sent him for this purpose rather than
avail themselves of one of the many trustworthy
persons continually passing between England and
1 Stapleton, who was one of the most distinguished of the
English exiles for the Faith, was a busy writer and professor. Dodd
says "his reputation was so high that he was looked upon as the
common master of the time" and his works as "a common
storehouse," to which " Cardinal Perron gives the preference
without any exception."
2 The Blessed Thomas Ford left for England on May 2. of this
year.
3 Douay Diaries, pp. 107, 108.
4 Allen was at this moment in Rome.
462 BLESSED JOHN SHERT
Douay, suggests that the two youths were probably
of the number of his old pupils, and were brought
to the Seminary by the happy attraction of his
influence and example.1 By the November following
he was already subdeacon, though the date of his
ordination is not recorded. At this period the first
beginnings of the foundation of the English College
at Rome were being made. William Holt and
Ralph Standish left Douay on August the i6th to
be the first alumni, and four others followed on
October the ist. Pope Gregory XIII. had written
to Dr. Allen, says the Diary,2 " enjoining on him
to send thither a few chosen youths, who would
benefit by this advantage and who were judged
likely to be useful labourers in the English harvest."
Shert was now selected for this honourable mission
and set out for Rome on November the gth. He
made the journey as one of a distinguished
company : — his old patron and friend Dr. Stapleton ;
Dr. Gregory Martin, who was going to the Eternal
City to take part in the organization and studies
of the new College ; Mr. Dr. White, probably the
learned Fellow of New College, who was at this
time a layman, but later, after being twice married,
was by dispensation of Clement VIII. promoted
to the priesthood, made Chancellor of the Uni-
versity of Douay, at the special recommenda-
tion of the Holy See, and Canon of St. Peter's
at Douay ; 3 and lastly, Mr. Sheprey, a priest
1 Douay Diaries, p. 113. Entry of November 9, 1576.
2 Ibid. p. 25.
3 Dodd, ii. 382.
BLESSED JOHN SHEET 463
who had been Prefect of the College of Anchin,
at Douay, and was now going to live in Italy,
where he became chaplain to Cardinal Paleotto
at Bologna.1
On his arrival at Rome he found the new
establishment not yet organized : but Cardinal
Moroni, Protector of England, under whose authority
the old Hospital still remained, now issued a Paper
of Instructions, which gave the first preliminary
Constitution to the College, and a copy of which
exists in the Archives of the see of Westminster.
It nominates the first six students and admits them
to live in the Hospital, and the very first name on
the list is that of Blessed John Shert. The follow-
ing is a translation of the passages most immediately
to the purpose.
"The number of the community for the present,
including the scholars, shall not exceed fifteen, the
right to increase or diminish the number being
reserved to our discretion, as the income of the said
Hospital may require.
" For the present six English scholars shall be
received whose names are as follows, viz. :
"JOHN SHERT [SHARTUS], THOMAS BELL.
Subdeacon. JOHN MUSH.
"JOHN ASKEW. WILLIAM Low."2
" JOHN GORE.
1 Douay Diaries, Appendix, p. 360.
2 Westminster Archives, vol. i. p. 33.
464 BLESSED JOHN SHEET
Blessed John Shert remained at Rome until the
summer of 1578. Of his residence there and his
ordination we have no record, for the existing
Annals of the College only commence in March,
1579, when the Jesuit Fathers took over the
government. He made the return journey from
Rome as he had gone there, with Dr. Gregory
Martin, and they arrived on July the 23rd at
Rheims, whither the College had been transferred in
the interval. He spent a month within its hospitable
walls, and on August the 27th left for England. He
was thus the first missionary to enter England from
the Seminary at Rome,1 and was to be the second
of the forty martyrs, who were trained and sanctified
in that venerable College.
His ministry in England, like his Master's,
lasted nearly three years. Wood and other early
biographers tell us, that he lived and worked chiefly
in his own county of Cheshire. But the State
Papers show that the latter part of his missionary
career was passed in or near London. Our martyr is
generally called Shorte in these documents, and he
was also indicted under this name. The earliest of
1 In the Register, which Foley calls the Diary of the English
College, it is stated that John Askew was " the first labourer
our College sent into the English vineyard." (Foley, Records S.J.
vol. vi. p. 67.) The first Douay Diary also (p. 26) records in 1579,
"Joannes Ascuus, qui anno 77 missus erat Roman diaconus, hoc anno
redit sacerdos et in Angliam mittitur, primus ex Anglorum Collegia de
Urbe." The rightful place is, however, given to Shert in a document
of the later years of Elizabeth's reign (Douay Diaries, Appendix,
p. 290), where the martyr is thus described : " D. Joannes Shertus,
martir, 1582 ; de quo vide Concert., fol. 87. Hie fnit primus Romani
Seminarii alumnus qui Angliam ingressus est."
BLESSED JOHN SHEET 465
these references is in a list of priests drawn up by
" A. B., late servant to the Earl of Westmorland,"
and who had now turned traitor. The third name
in his list, which is dated i8th of August, 1580,
is, " Shorte, otherwise Stalie, in Holborn."1
The next reference occurs just a year later, that
is, in August, 1581, when Eliot, the betrayer of
Campion, mentions his name among the " Popish
priests I have been acquainted withal."2 It would
seem that almost all the priests Eliot mentions, lived
in the vicinity of London.
On the 4th of August, 1581, moreover, we read in
the Privy Council Registers, that the Council ordered
Martin, Hammond, and Norton, the inquisitors who
were examining the Catholic prisoners in the
Tower, "to inquire after one Nashe, &c. . . . and
what is become of one Shorte a priest, who resorted
to the said Nashe's house, and what other Jesuits
or priests have been harboured there," &c. From
other passages in the same Registers it appears
that the John Nashe, who is here named, lived in
Lawrence Lane, and that Father Campion was
supposed to have visited the house. John Nashe,
however, does not seem to have been a Catholic.3
1 R.O. French Correspondence.
2 Foley, Records S.J. vol. ii. p. 586.
3 On March 19, 1583, a John Nashe, who had been committed
by the Bishop of London, was sent from the Marshalsea to
Newgate " for causes of religion as a precisian," i.e., a. Puritan
(R.O. Domestic, vol. clix. nn. 32, 35, 36.) There was, however, a
Michael Nash, a Catholic, living in the county of Oxford in 1574.
(Ibid. vol. xcix. n. 55.) Thomas Nashe, the satirist, who is some-
times so favourable to Catholics, must at this time have been a
mere boy.
EE II.
466 BLESSED JOHN SHERT
The last reference perhaps seems at first sight
to prove too much, for according to the Diarium
Turris for the I4th of July, 1581, Shert was " brought
to the Tower " on that day together with Payne
and Godsalve. There is no reason to question
the correctness of this entry, which we know to
be accurate so far as Payne and Godsalve were
concerned. Consequently the Privy Council must
have forgotten for the moment the name of one
of its victims, or Shert may have been consigned
to prison under a different name. There is no doubt
that his right name was soon found out, for it appears
among the Tower Bills from Christmas, 1581, till his
death in the following May.1
We have none of Blessed John Shert's examina-
tions, though we may conclude, from his having
come to the Tower with Payne, that he was one of
those "runagate priests from Douay and Rome,"
to use Walsingham's phrase, whom that official " by
the Queen's express commandment " examined the
whole day long, on the charge of having conspired
" against her Majesty's person," and then sent to
the Tower, while to Lord Burghley he confessed
that he thought the charge " will prove nothing."
The martyr's name does not appear in con-
nection with Campion's disputations in September,
though he may have been there.
Our next information is that he was included in
the list of those indicted for the ridiculous " con-
1 The Catholic Record Society is preparing to print these Bills.
As the Bills from June to December are wanting, we cannot learn
the date of Shert's committal from this source.
BLESSED JOHN SHEET 467
spiracy of Rheims and Rome," though he had been
in England the whole of the time in which it was
pretended to have been concocted, and though the
witnesses had never seen him in their lives before
the trial. He received sentence on November the
lyth, with Blessed Thomas Ford and his com-
panions. He was one of those respited until the
following May, and whom the Privy Council required
to give a written answer to the "six ai tides" or
questions already mentioned, in order to find some
new pretext for their execution. He altogether
declined, however, to entangle himself in the
questions.1 His answer was as follows :
"John Shert. To all the articles he saith that
he is a Catholique and swarveth in no point from
the Catholique faith. And in other sort, to any of
these articles, he refuseth to answer.
"JOHN SHERT.
" JOHN POPHAM. DA. LEWIS.
"THOMAS EGERTON. JOHN HAMMOND."
From his words at Tyburn, it appears that
he and his fellow-martyrs underwent some other
examination, not otherwise recorded, and also that
he was racked either before or after his trial. The
above answer bears date May the I3th, and on the
28th, after ten months' weary imprisonment, he was
drawn along that Via dolorosa of so many of our
1 Butler's Memoirs of English Catholics, vol. i. p. 204, and
Tierney-Dodd, iii. p. xiii. (Appendix).
468 BLESSED JOHN SHERT
English martyrs, from the Tower to Tyburn,
between six and seven o'clock in the morning.
He was made to look on at the ghastly process of
Blessed Thomas Ford's martyrdom, in the hope
of breaking down his courage. But the grace
of martyrdom was strong in him. While his
old friend was hanging from the gallows his
face was bright and smiling, and with his hands
lifted up,1 he cried, aloud : " O happy Thomas !
Happy art thou that didst run that happy race !
O benedicta anima : O blessed soul, thou art
in a good case ! Thou blessed soul, pray for
me." Then standing himself in the cart beneath
the gallows, and turning (by command of the
sheriff) towards the place where his friend was
being cut into pieces, he went on praying aloud
to him as a martyr just crowned : " O Thomas,
O happy Thomas ! O blessed soul, happy art thou !
O blessed soul, pray for me." These prayers were
too much for the Puritans present — it was generally
the " ministers" who interrupted on these occasions
— but his only answer to their protests was to add :
" O blessed Lady, Mother of God, pray for me,
and all the Saints of Heaven, pray for me." Then
the sheriff, in his turn, reproached him with " false
doctrine," but he answered that it was sound and
true doctrine, and he was about to seal it with his
blood. And then he went on to thank God aloud,
•enumerating His mercies.
" First, I give Thee most hearty thanks, for that
1 " Holding up his hands as the Papists are wont to do before
their images." (Munday, op. cit.)
BLESSED JOHN SHERT 469.
Thou didst create me out of nothing to Thy likeness
and similitude. Secondly, for my redemption by
the death of Thy sweet Son, Jesus Christ my
Saviour and Redeemer. And lastly, that thou
wilt bring me, Thy poor servant, to so happy and
glorious a death for Thy sake ; although in the eyes
of worldlings contumelious and reproachful, yet to
me most joyful and glorious, and for the which
I yield Thee most hearty thanks." At this point
the sheriff interrupted him again and called on him
to ask the Queen's forgiveness for his treasons.
"The asking of forgiveness," the martyr replied,
" doth imply an offence done ; and for me to charge
myself, being innocent, it were not my duty. We
have been racked and tormented for these things
and nothing hath been found. We have also been
twice examined since our condemnation, which
hath not been seen heretofore in any malefactor.
Those supposed treasons for which I am con-
demned, I leave between God and myself; and,
upon my death, I am altogether innocent and
faultless ; and I utterly refuse to ask her forgiveness
for this fact whereof I am condemned, for that
I am not guilty. But if in any other private matter
I have offended, I ask her and all the world
forgiveness. For it is impossible for me to be
guilty of the conspiracy at Rheims and Rome,
being in England long time before the said sup-
posed treasons were committed, and continuing here
ever since."1 And this, adds his biographer, his
accuser Munday did not much deny, for he said
1 Briefe Historie, p. 106.
47o BLESSED JOHN SHERT
he never knew him beyond the seas, neither at
Rome nor at Rheims.
The sheriff called on one of the ministers who
stood by to read the martyr's examination. For
in these strange executions the authorities, as we
have seen in the case of Blessed Thomas Ford,
had recourse to the novel device of producing the
witnesses and the records before the assembled
crowd ; a striking evidence of their consciousness
that the judicial trial and sentence were estimated by
the popular sentiment at their true worth. In this
case the minister could only answer that, " as the
man is obstinate now, so upon his examination was
he as obstinate, for he uttered nothing that is to
be read." On this the sheriff went so far as to
declare that, if the holy priest would only acknow-
ledge himself guilty, he had authority himself to stay
his execution and to return him back without more
ado. No wonder the Government would have paid
a good price for such an acknowledgment, for it
would have freed them from the disgrace of these
judicial murders, which would have thus acquired
a justification. But the martyr answered : " Should
I, for saving this carcase, condemn my soul ? God
forbid."1
His tormentors had not yet done. He was
asked what he thought of the Queen. " I acknow-
1 Munday's charitable comment is : " Whereto with an hypo-
critical outward boldness, but an inward fainting fear (as after-
wards everyone plainly beheld), he gave this answer : ' What,
Master Sheriff, shall I save this frail and vile carcase and damn
mine own soul ? No, no, I am a Catholic, in that faith I was born,
in that faith will I die, and here shall my blood seal it.' "
BLESSED JOHN SHERT 471
ledge her," he said, " for my sovereign lady and
Queen, for whose prosperous estate and well-doing
I did always pray." Next they asked him if he
thought her to be supreme governor, under Christ,
of the Church of England. He answered : " I will
give to Caesar that which is his, and to God that
which belongeth to God. She is not, nor cannot
be ; nor any other but only the supreme pastor."
" What ! " broke in the sheriff, " do you mean
that whore of Babylon, the Pope ?" "Take heed,
Mr. Sheriff," rejoined the martyr, " for the day will
come when that shall be a sore word for your soul !
And then it shall repent you that ever you called
Christ's Vicar upon earth, the whore.1 When you
and I shall stand at one bar, before that equal
Judge who judgeth all things aright, then, I say,
will you repent your saying ; and then I must give
testimony against you."
This constantly recurring wrangle of the dis-
putatious and offensive Puritan zealots, ministers,
and others, within a few minutes of the martyrs'
deaths must have been no small aggravation of
their passion. In the present instance, it might
have gone on for some time longer had not the
people begun to clamour to the hangman " to
despatch, saying that he had lived too long."
The man beginning therefore to do his office,
1 " ' Oh, Mr. Sheriff, you little remember the day when, as you
and I shall stand both at one bar, and I come as witness against
you, that you called that holy and blessed Vicar of Christ, the
whore of Rome.' At which words the people cried again : ' Hang
him ! Hang him ! Away with him ! ' " (Munday, op. cit.)
472 BLESSED JOHN SHERT
the martyr gave him his handkerchief and two-
shillings, saying : " Take this for thy hire, and
I pray God forgive thee," and then turning to
the people on all sides, and with his hands raised
up to draw their attention, he cried out, with a loud
voice : " Whosoever dieth out of the Catholic
Church, dieth in the state of damnation." The few
moments that still remained were for God alone.
His last words were, " Domine Jesu Christe, Fill Dei
vivi, pone passionem, crucem et mortem tuam inter
judicium tuum et animam meam, with his Pater
noster and Ave Maria and other like prayers; " and
he was still praying aloud when the cart was
drawn from beneath him.1 His hands instinctively
clutched at the rope, and were pulled down by the
officers ; and the circumstance suggested to the
mind of the Puritan sheriff the characteristic
remark : " Notwithstanding his obstinacy, see how
willing he is to live ! "
Yes! he was "willing to live," so willing that
he did not grudge in that cause to die. He had
learned his Master's lesson and practised it to the
end : " He that loveth his life shall lose it ; and
he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto
life eternal."2
E. S. K.
1 " He began his Pater noster in Latin, and before he had fully
ended two petitions of it, he fell into the Latin Creed, and then to
the Paternoster again : afterward he said the Ave Maria, which done,
knocking himself on the breast, he said, Jesus, esto mihi Jesus."
(Munday, op. cit.)
2 John xii. 25.
BLESSED JOHN SHEET 473
AUTHORITIES. — The Brief e Historic, pp. 104 — 108, with the
parallel passages in the Concertatio, fol. 87, Yepes, fol. 377.
Munday, &c., as above. The deaths of those who were
alumni of the English College, Rome, were. commemorated
in the Annual Letters of the Society of Jesus for 1582 (Edit.
1584), p. 16, and in the Letters of the English College for the
same year, in Foley, vi. p. 86, where, however, Shert is erro-
neously reckoned among the martyrs of May the soth, and
Richardson (vere Laurence Johnson) is named instead of
Robert Johnson. Father Christopher Grene's Collectanea N,
at Stonyhurst, is largely devoted to notes on the martyrs from
the English College, Rome. For Shert see i. 23, ii. 56. See
also Worthington's Catalogue (1614), p. 25.
RELICS. — The only relic of Blessed John Shert is the
corporal already described, and the uncertain relic, mentioned
in the last section (p. 459).
XV.
THE BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON,
SECULAR PRIEST.
Tyburn, 28 May, 1582.
THE third of that day's glorious victims was the
Blessed Robert Johnson. We have no notices of
his earl}' life except that he was born in Shropshire,
and that in his youth, as Challoner says, he was in
the service of a gentleman's family. He seems to
have left England about the time of the great
increase of persecution which followed the Northern
Rising in November, 1569. At all events, he entered
the German College, Rome, the English College
not being as yet founded, on the ist of October,
1571, and his written undertaking, made on that
occasion, to accept the discipline of the house, is
still extant among the records of that Seminary.1
1 "Ego Robert** Jonsonus Anglus.diau. Cestrcn ad proposita per R*"*
patrem Jacob*m Gennens nomine vtneralilium patrnm superior** Colltgii
Germanifi, his meis serif tis responded, ac in primis quantum ad socros or dines
attixft, paratus sum initiari q*ando R*" patribus placuerit ; ac in quam-
cunque ptrtem ab eis mittar, hbenttr me itnrum promitto : lectiones etiam
qmas miki /?*' patres proponent diligenter (deo favente) visitabo. Demum
regmlms. observftionts, ac mom pmdicti colltgii sum ma obtdientia observa-
turus, R*" patribns debitam obedientiam ac rnerentiam spondee me exhibi-
turum.pmsentibms Carole Vienens, Veto MOeto et Baltkasar Kdnig, die
BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON 475
He left before ordination, and betook himself to the
Archbishop of Cambray, from whom he passed to
the Seminary at Douay before 1576. In the begin-
ning of April of that year he was made priest,
being sent to Brussels for his ordination. He made
the Exercises with the Jesuit Fathers at Louvain
in preparation for his ministry, and then set out for
England.
After an interval of more than three years,
we find him mentioned in the Douay Diary, as
arriving at the Rheims Seminary on the 28th of
September, 1579, on a pilgrimage to Rome. He
was accompanied from England by a youth of
nineteen, named Robert Charnocke, afterwards a
student at the English College at Rome, and later
a well-known priest, and a layman named Hyde.
At Rheims Charnocke parted company with his
companions and went to the school of the Jesuits
at Douay, an indication that he was not yet formed
enough to begin his theology, while the other two
" having been to confession and communion," as
the Diary goes out of its way to note, "continued
the journey towards Rome which they had begun,
on October the 3rd. Mr. [Henry] Orton and his
pupil, Price, had started the day before." It is
probable therefore that Johnson and Orton often
met on their way Romewards, and this is interesting,
primo Octobris, 1572. Ego Robert** Jonson*s man* fropria." (Ex MSS.
Coll. Germ. Ungar. p. 55.)
"Robert** Jonsontts AngJ*s ingress** est in Collegium i Octobris,
anno 1572.
" Discessit mense Aprilis, 1574, ad Archiefm. Cameracenseia. [Alia
man*]. Fuit afect*s martyrio, in Anglia, anno 1582."
476 BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON
since they were destined ere long to be fellow-
prisoners, and to be condemned to death together,
though Orton eventually escaped Tyburn and was
sent into banishment. Orton's pupil, Price, is
perhaps to be identified with Isaac Price, who
entered the English College, Rome, on the 8th of
December, 1579, a date which would well accord
with the time usually spent in those days on the
journey from Rheims to Rome, and which we may
provisionally accept as being also about the date
of our martyr's return to the Eternal City. Unfor-
tunately the "Pilgrim Book" of the English
Hospice, at which they would have stayed, can give
us no information on this head, for it does not begin
until the following year.
In Rome our pilgrim doubtless visited the Holy
Places with a fervour increased by the pains and
perils of the long journey from England. The one
incident, which is recorded of him while there, gives
us a very high idea of his spiritual life. He spent
" some weeks," that is, no doubt the full comple-
ment of forty days, in making the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Father Persons
writes :
" Mr. Robert Johnson, a very good and godly
man, who a little before our departure from Rome
[Easter, 1580] came thither for his devotion out of
England, where he had laboured faithfully some
years before. Being in Rome with intention to
return back to England very shortly, presaging,
as it were, that some great affliction would fall upon
BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON 477
him ere it were long, for service of his Master, and
for better bearing of the same, he earnestly desired
to arm himself with spiritual arms, and requested
Father Persons, that he 'might retire himself into
some solitary place of the Jesuits, for some weeks,
to make the spiritual exercises and meditations of
Father Ignatius de Loyola, founder of the same
order, for his better help ; and so he did." l
From the dates and papers which will follow
we gather that the martyr started off on foot on his
journey homeward almost immediately after the
end of his long retreat, having received from the
ever-generous Pope Gregory XIII., the sum of fifty
crowns for his travelling expenses. His travelling
companion at the outset was Dr. Allen, who had
been to Rome that winter to settle the affairs of the
newly established English College, and to arrange
for the mission of the Jesuits, and who wrote
back, on the 2Qth of February, 1580, from
Sienna to Father Agazzari a letter, of which some
extracts are happily preserved in Father Grene's
Collectanea A/".2
He says, after describing the worries of travelling
with a bad horse, " I say this in order that those
whom you are going to send may know that travellers
on foot are freed from much solicitude, labour, peril,
and loss. Johnson and the other, who left Rome on
1 Life of Campion, cap. xxiii. This was written in 1594, before
St. Ignatius was beatified.
2 Stonyhurst, Collectanea M. fol. 113. This is not included in
Father Knox's Edition of Allen's Letters.
478 BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON
foot at the same time as we did, have outstripped
us now for some time."
Allen arrived in Rheims on the 2nd of April,
1580, with Bavand, Saunderson, and Ely, Doctors
of Theology or of Law, Mr. Orton, Gabriel Allen,
and Father Thomas Darbishire, S.J., and under
the date of the nth of April, 1580, the Diary
records that the Blessed Robert, together with his
future fellow-martyr, Thomas Cottam (who had
come from Lyons only), " came to us about this
time." x We may presume that these were the
names of our martyr's travelling companions during
certain stages of the journey, at any rate, for they
did not all come from Rome.
On their journey an incident occurred which was
to have a decisive influence on Blessed Robert's
fortunes. He was joined on the road by one Sledd
or Sleydon, who had been a serving-man to Dr.
Saunderson in Rome, but was now a spy for the
English Government. At Rome, and afterwards at
the Seminary at Rheims, he simulated the greatest
piety, whilst he was taking notes of the Seminarists
and other exiles, to be duly transmitted through the
Ambassador at Paris, for the use of the priest-
catchers and officers of the ports in England.
To his fellow-travellers he spoke as an enthusi-
astic Catholic ; but his conduct hardly bore out
the character, and Blessed Robert found it necessary
to reprove him for his loose behaviour. The
wretched man was so incensed at this that he
thought, as he himself afterwards avowed, of
1 Douay Diaries, pp. 162, 163, April 2 to n, 1580.
BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON 479
murdering the holy priest.1 But he determined to
be revenged in another way.
A few weeks later, unsuspicious of his danger,
Blessed Robert started, on May the 2nd, to
return to England, leaving behind him his com-
panion, who was still only a deacon. From the
story told by Eliot at his trial, it would appear
that he made his home in Lady Petre's house at
Ingatestone.2 It was but a short time, however,
before he fell into the toils. A little synod or
meeting of priests and laymen was held in a
house at Southwark, in the summer of 1580. It
happened whilst it was assembled that Sledd was
loitering about London on his treacherous mission,
when he caught sight of the Blessed Robert, with
whose appearance he was but too familiar. He
was going through Smithfield in company with
Sir John Petre's sister, Catherine, wife of John
Talbot of Grafton, on his way to the meeting at
Southwark. " Sledd followed him," as Simpson
relates, following Father Paolo Bombino, " till he
saw a constable, whom he charged in the Queen's
name to arrest Johnson as a priest and traitor.
The constable, at heart a Catholic, made all
1 Persons' Life of Campion, cap. 23. Allen's Briefe Historic,
Introduction, p. 6, or Apologia Martyrum, in the Concertatio, p. 221,
Edit. 1588. Sledd's true character was discovered at the Rheims
Seminary a fortnight after Johnson's arrival. (Douay Diaries,
p. 164.)
2 A spy's report, dated August 18, 1580, as to the where-
abouts of various priests, says: " Jhonson lying at the Spyttle with
Mr. Hare, and that same Hare is he which conveys over to Rheims and
Douay at the least £400 every year."
480 BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON
sorts of excuses ; but on Sledd's threatening to
report him to the Recorder, he took up his staff,
and told Sledd to show him the man who was
to be arrested. Sledd did so, and was about to
depart, when the constable told him he must
follow to give the man in charge, and to bear
the possible consequences of a false arrest and
imprisonment. The true motive, however, was to
expose Sledd, as an informer, to the mocks and
gibes of the people and to make his trade known
to the world. So Sledd and the constable dogged
Johnson's steps till he came to the Thames, and
saw him hire a wherry to convey him over to
Southwark, where Persons and Campion were in
council with several other priests. Sledd told
the constable to take another boat, and row after
Johnson ; but the constable, guessing something of
the errand on which the priest was bound, told his
companion that he could not spend all the day
dodging a man in a boat, perhaps to miss him at
last ; so he cried out to the bystanders to stop the
traitor, and arrested him then and there. And
though Johnson was taken and thrust into a prison,
from which he only emerged to pass through
Westminster Hall to the scaffold, yet the lesson
was not lost. Sledd was at once noted and expelled
from Catholic society before he had time to do
much more mischief. A report of the capture soon
reached the assembled priests, who broke up in
disorder."1 They were saved by the constable's
quick-wittedness and the martyr's capture.
1 Simpson's Life of Campion, p. 128.
BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON
Mr. Simpson's story is founded on the authority
of Father Bombino,1 who took the greatest pains
in hunting up fresh details about the period he was
studying, but he is not always trustworthy in the
way he pieces his facts together. Father Persons 2
briefly recounts the incident of the constable
following the intended prisoner, but joins it with
the arrest of Orton, while no special details are
recounted about the capture of Johnson. Dr. Allen3
dwells on Sledd's unwillingness to accompany the
constable, but the circumstances are different and
the arrest is again that of Orton. Both, as we
shall see, were arrested about the same time.
Upon the whole it would seem wise not to rely
implicitly on the details of the story, though the
substance is undoubtedly true.
Blessed Robert, we learn from a list of Catholic
prisoners among the State Papers,4 was committed
to the " Compter in the Poultrie ... on the
I2th of July, 1580, upon my Lord Mayor his
commandment by John Smith officer," probably the
constable before mentioned, " and after his com-
mitting was examined before Mr. Dr. Hamonde, and
Mr. Norton, whose examination was sent to her
Majesty's Council."
From this examination, a list of the matters
wherewith he could be charged was drawn up, and
this is still extant.
1 Vita Campiani, 1620, p. in.
2 Life of Campion, 1594, cap. 21 and 23.
3 Briefe Historic, 1582, Introduction, p. 6.
4 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxl. n. 37; vol. cxlix. n. 81.
FF II.
482 BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON
Robert Johnson chargeable with : —
" Going out of the realm for religion, and without
licence (In his answer to interrogatories i, 2, 3).
" That he cannot answer touching the lawfulness
of the oath of obedience to her Majesty (To interro-
gatory 6).
" Making conscience to come to our common
prayer (To interrogatory 7).
" That he knoweth not whether that Bull of
Pius 5 were lawful or no (To interrogatory 24).
" Receipt of 50 crowns from the Pope's gift."
There is an obscurity in the second clause.
When on the scaffold Blessed Robert, like his com-
panions, acknowledged Elizabeth as his Queen r
while he refused her the title of supreme head.
But here he neither rejects the Royal Supremacy,
nor accepts the Queen as Sovereign. It is therefore
evidently reported wrongly. If we had the question
put to him, and his own answer, the obscurity
would doubtless be cleared up. Unfortunately both
of these are missing. Probably the question was
put in a hypothetical form, to which a direct
answer was impossible. Cottam and Kirby, it will
be seen, are reported to have answered in the
same way.
For some months we hear of no further pro-
ceedings, but on December the ist the Council
informed the Lieutenant of the Tower and other
commissioners, in terms very characteristic of the
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. clx. n. 43.
BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON 483
Tudor tyranny and without reference to any
offence committed, that " considering the number
of priests and Jesuits, as they be termed, to come
into this realm, and of other persons their con-
federates, her Majesty's meaning is to make example
of some of them by punishment to the terror of
others." So on December the 4th, Johnson
was sent to the Tower, together with the future
martyrs Sherwin, Cottam, and Kirby, and Johnson's
old companion, Henry Orton. About Christmas
they were joined by John Hart, Christopher Tomson,
James Bosgrave, priests, and by Thomas Briscoe
and John Nichols, who fell and caused much trouble
to the rest. Father John Hart, who was eventually
banished and joined the Jesuits, drew up a kind of
journal of their sufferings called the " Diary," or
Day book, of the Tower, which has been mentioned
many times. From this book, and from a letter
smuggled out of the Tower about the month of May,1
we learn that Johnson was " most severely " racked
on December the I5th, and after that cast into a
"very deep cavern (specu), absolutely dark, and
shut in on all sides," probably the same as that
which Allen describes as " the grisely dongeon called
Whalesboure."2 After this he was probably among
the prisoners who were dragged to the Protestant
sermons, but we know no details.
As we hear nothing more of our martyr after
May, 1580, we may conjecture that he, having
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxlix. n. 61. Foley, Records S.J.
vol. ii. p. 160.
2 Briefe Historic, Introduction, p. 19.
484 BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON
established a character for courage, was left in
solitary confinement, while the torturers were
essaying the constancy of fresh captives.
At last his trial came on, Blessed Robert being
brought up with Blessed Edmund Campion and the
first batch of confessors on November the I4th
and i6th. The only attempt at evidence against
him appears to have been Eliot's story about
Blessed John Payne's treasonable proposal to him
at Ingatestone. " After which communication,"
says this notorious villain, "Pain, finding this
deponent not so conformable unto him as he hoped,
and receiving a bitter and flat refusal of his
ungracious proffer, conveyed himself away, and
was no more to be heard of. Whereupon this
Johnson, now arrived, came to the deponent and
enquired what was become of Pain, to whom he
answered that he knew not. Then, said Johnson,
' he is gone beyond the seas, fearing lest you would
discover his secrets ; and, therefore, I forewarn and
conjure you not to disclose anything that Pain hath
told you, for if you do, you stand in state of damna-
tion.' " The martyr could only reply : " I never in
my life had any such talk with him, nor uttered
any such speeches tending to any such matter."1
He was sentenced to death with the rest of his
companions, but was not executed at that time, and
at the close of the year Hopton was anxious to be
rid of him. There is among the State Papers
a document2 endorsed by Walsingham, " Lieut. 's
1 Cobbett's State Trials, vol. i. p. 1067.
a Foley, Records S.J. vol. iii. p. 291.
BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON 485
note of certain priestes in his custody." Blessed
Robert is one of them. The Lieutenant adds, after
the list: "All these have bin prisoners above xi
monethes. Maye it therefore please your Honrs
for the lessning of the Queene her Maies chardgis
that these persons maye be transferd into some
other prison."1 But no notice seems to have been
taken of this representation.
The martyr was one of those required in the
following May to answer the inquisitorial and
entangling questions of the Privy Council already
given. The holy confessors, having no opportunity
of consultation together, it was of course inevitable
that they should take different courses. We have
seen that Blessed John Shert refused all answer
except that he was a Catholic and swerved in no
point from the Catholic faith. Blessed Robert gives
some sort of answer to most of the questions, and
was evidently anxious not to court his own death.
His answer is as follows :
" Robert Johnson. — To the first, he saith, he
cannot answer.
"To the second, he cannot tell what power or
authoritie the Pope hath in the poynts named in
this article.
" To the third, he thinketh that the Pope hath
authoritie, in some cases, to authorize subjects to
take arms against their prince.
" To the fourth, he thinketh that the Pope, for
1 Letter from the Tower, R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxlix.
n. 61.
486 BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON
some causes, may discharge subjects of their
allegiance and obedience to their natural prince.
" To the fifth, the answere to this article
dependeth upon the lawfulnesse of the cause, for
the which the Pope hath given sentence against her :
but if the cause was just, then he thinketh the
doctrine of Doctour Saunders and Doctour Bristowe
to be true. Whether the cause were just or not,
he taketh not upon him to judge.
" To the last, he saith that if such deprivation
and invasion should be made for temporal matter, he
would take part with her Maiestie, but if it were for
any matter of his faith, he thinketh he were then
bounde to take part with the Pope.
" ROBERT JOHNSON.
"JOHN POPHAM. DA. LEWIS.
"THOMAS EGERTON. JOHN HAMMOND."1
However reserved the answer was, it was not of
a nature to obtain any indulgence at the hands of
England's rulers at that day, and a fortnight later
he stood ready at the spot where the blood of so
many martyrs had already been poured out, to
mingle his own with the stream. They made him
look on at the quartering of his companions. Then
he turned to the people and began by signing
himself with the Cross, saying aloud, In nomine
Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. After a momen-
tary interruption of the sheriff, he said, "I am a
1 Butler's Historical Memoirs, vol. i. p. 204, also Tierney-Dodd,
iii. p. xiii. (Appendix).
BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON 487
Catholic, and am condemned for conspiring the
Queen's death at Rheims with the other company
who were condemned with me. I protest, that as
for some of them with whom I was condemned to
have conspired withal, I did never see them before
we met at the bar, neither did I ever write unto
them or receive letters from them ; and as for any
treasons I am not guilty in deed nor thought."
The sheriff here ordered his examination to be read
and his answers to the six articles ; — an appeal to
the hostile judgment of the ignorant Protestant
crowd intended to counteract the general discredit
known to attach to the judicial sentence under
which the execution was legally being carried out.
When the minister who was reading came to the
fifth answer he falsified it, reading out that the
servant of God approved of the actions and writings
of Dr. Sander and Dr. Bristow. Blessed Robert
here protested : " My answer," he said, " was not
what you have read. I answered, and I still say, that
of the doings of Doctor Sander and Dr. Bristow I
am altogether ignorant, neither was I ever privy to
their facts ; and how then could I approve or dis-
allow them ? That was my answer at the time, and
I still say the same." When the answer to the
last article had been read, they asked what he had
to say to that. He replied that he was still of the
same mind and in that mind he would die. The
sheriff said his answer itself was treason, "but you
shall hear," he added, "what your own companion,
Munday, has to say against you." Munday was
called and drew nigh to the cart. " Munday," said
488 BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON
the martyr, " didst thou ever know me beyond the
seas, or was I ever in thy company ? " "I was
never in your company," Munday replied, " nor
did I ever know you beyond the seas, but I was
privy to your most horrible treasons, whereof you
were most clearly convicted ; and this I say with
safe conscience. Why! were not sundry priests
sent from Avignon for that purpose ? I pray God
you may repent you thereof and that you may die a
good subject." " Munday, God give thee grace to
repent thee of thy deeds," the martyr said ; " truly
thou art a shrewd liar ! But there is no time now
to reason these matters with thee. Only I protest
before God I am not guilty of any treason."
Here the sheriff asked, " Dost thou acknowledge
the Queen for lawful Queen ? Repent thee, and
notwithstanding thy traitorous practices, we have
authority from the Queen to carry thee back."
" I do acknowledge her," Blessed Robert answered,
" as lawful as Queen Mary was. I can say no more
than to pray to God to give her grace that she may
now stay her hand from shedding of innocent
blood."
The dialogue went on: Sheriff. — "Dost thou
acknowledge her supreme head of the Church in
ecclesiastical matters?"
Blessed Robert. — " I acknowledge her to have as
full and great authority as ever Queen Mary had :
and more, with safety and conscience, I cannot give
her."
Sheriff. — "Thou art a traitor most obstinate."
Blessed Robert. — " If I be traitor for maintaining
BLESSED ROBERT JOHNSON 489
this faith, then was King Henry and all the Kings
and Queens of this realm, heretofore, and all our
ancestors were traitors, for they maintained the
same."
Sheriff. — "What ! you will preach treason also if
we suffer you ? "
Blessed Robert. — "I teach but the Catholic
religion."
Someone cried out, " What do you mean by the
Catholic religion ? "
" I mean," he said, "that religion of which the
Pope is the Supreme Pastor."
One of the ministers asked him whether St.
Athanasius was a Catholic, and what he held.
" I am not so well read in Athanasius to know all his
opinions," he answered. " What! " said the minister,
"have you not read Athanasius' Creed, Quicumque
vult salvus esse ? " The wearied confessor, with
the moment of his martyrdom at hand, was not
attending; his mind, no doubt, was elsewhere.
But the ignorant minister was not to be baulked
of exhibiting his controversial skill, and returned to
the charge, asking if he had not read the Athanasian
Creed. "Yes," he answered, "that I have, and I
believe it to be good and Catholic." " Well," urged
the minister, apparently proud of his advantage,
" in all that you cannot find the Pope once named."
"No," the patient martyr answered, "it is not
necessary the Pope should be named in everything
that appertaineth to the Catholic Faith."
At this moment the executioner put the rope
about his neck, but not even yet would they let him
490
have peace. For when they heard him praying in
Latin, they called to him to pray in English. He
said, " I pray that prayer which Christ taught, in a
language I well understand." " But we do not
understand it," said the sheriff. " I do think your
worship doth understand it," rejoined the confessor.
"If I do, others do not," said the sheriff. A minister
cried out, " Pray as Christ taught." " What ! "
said Blessed Robert, " do you think that Christ
taught in English ? "
And now at last the weary ordeal was over.
For a few moments the martyr was allowed in peace
to make his immediate preparation for his sacrifice,
which he did by the simple recitation in Latin of
the Pater, A ve, and Credo, and In maims tuas, Domine,
commendo spiritum meum, and then the cart was drawn
from beneath him, and in a few moments he was
with his happy companions in the ranks of the
white-robed army. E. S. K.
AUTHORITIES. — Brief eHistorie,io8 — in, Concertatio,8g — 91,
and others given for his companions. In Father Persons' first
or draft Life of Campion he alludes to Blessed Robert having
made the Exercises in terms worth quoting: "Jonsonus Roma
exercitia spiritualia apud me fecerat, homo doctissimus (soe
I read it, or els it may be sanctissimus) postea martyr." The
parenthesis in English is added by Father Christopher Grene,
who has preserved the passage for us in his transcript, Collec-
tanea P, fol. 150 (Stonyhurst). Father Bombino's account of
Johnson's arrest may have arisen from another passage in
this same draft life.
RELICS. — The only relics known to exist are the corporal
at Stonyhurst used by the five martyrs, and the pieces of skin,
already described, of which it is uncertain, whether they
belong to him or to Blessed Thomas Ford or to Blessed
John Shert.
XVI.
THE BLESSED WILLIAM FILBY,
SECULAR PRIEST.
Tyburn, 30 May, 1582.
Two days after the martyrdom of the Blessed
Thomas Ford, John Shert, and Robert Johnson, four
more of the glorious band were dragged on hurdles
from the Tower to Tyburn for execution.
The first of these to win his crown was a young
man not yet twenty-seven years old. Born in
Oxfordshire, William Filby was early sent to the
University, where he entered Lincoln College.1 He
did not take his degree, but in order to embrace
the Faith left all that was dear to him, and on
the i2th of October, 1579, was admitted to the
Seminary at Rheims, having made the journey
from Oxford with Edward James, a future martyr,
who was bound for the College at Rome.2
1 Philbye, William, Oxoniensis, of Lincoln College, matriculated
in 1575. Described as plebai filius, at. 15. (Boase, Register of the
University of Oxford, II. ii. 67.)
a The examination of Yen. Edward James. (R.O. Domestic,
Elizabeth, vol. clxxxviii. 46.)
492 BLESSED WILLIAM FILBY
Dodd records that Filby's characteristics were
" a singular piety and mildness of temper." He was
ordained subdeacon on the 2ist of February, 1581,
and on the following March the 25th, being Holy
Saturday, with twelve others, several of whom
were afterwards martyrs, was made priest by
the Bishop of Chalons, in the Cathedral of Rheims.
He said his first Mass on April the 3rd, and pro-
bably left for England a few days later, as most
of the companions of his ordination did, though
in his case no record is entered in the College
Diary.
His missionary career was a brief one. On
Thursday, July the 2Oth, about three months after
his return to England as a priest, Edmund Campion,
Thomas Ford, and the rest of the party seized at
Lyford, halted at Henley on their way to London.
Blessed William resided in that town or in its neigh-
bourhood ; l he had been at Rheims when Blessed
Edmund Campion stopped there on his way from
Rome in 1580, and thrilled the hearts of the
students with his ardent words. He could not resist
the chance of seeing and speaking to him now as he
passed. Two or three nights before, he had dreamed
that his body was ripped open and his bowels torn
out, and the terror of his dream caused him to cry
out so loudly that the whole house was raised. But
the impression made on him had not been enough
to teach him caution, and as he approached and
1 Perhaps at Stonor, where the Catholic colony was not broken
up till the next month. In his indictment, however, he is described
as "nuper de London."
BLESSED WILLIAM F1LBY 493
attempted to speak to Campion, he was seized and
added to the company of prisoners.1
There is nothing to show whether he suffered
torture in the Tower, and he was removed to the
Marshalsea after less than a month's imprisonment
there.2 But he was back again before the trial in
November, and the Tower Bills record that he
remained there till his execution.
He was indicted with the second division of the
martyrs on Thursday, November the i6th, and with
the rest received sentence of death on the i7th.
The joy with which his approaching martyrdom
filled him, and which he could not conceal, brought
on him additional suffering. Hart's " Diary," on
November the 22nd, says, "William Filby, because
he appeared after his condemnation to death more
cheerful and firm than usual, was loaded with iron
manacles to the day of his death." He was also
deprived of his bedding, and did not recover it, as
we shall learn from a letter of Blessed Luke Kirby,
until the middle of January.
His reported answers to the "six articles" of
the Council in the following May, are firm and
fearless.
1 This is Father Bombino's account in 1618, but the Briefe
Historic (1582), followed by the Concertatio, &c., says that he was
intercepted while riding to Lyford, and dreamed of martyrdom on
his way to London.
2 The Council Order of August 14, 1581, for the torture of
Campion, Ford, and Collington, orders " Mr. Lieutenant to receive
Philby and Jacob unto the prison of the Marshalsea." (Dasent,
Acts of the Privy Council, vol. xiii. p. 170. Cf. Jardine, On the use of
Torture, p. 88.)
494 BLESSED WILLIAM FILBY
" William Filbee, his answere.1
" William Filbee. — To the first, he saith, the
Pope hath authentic to depose any prince ; and
such sentences, when they be promulgated, ought
to be obeyed by the subjects of any prince. But
touching the bull of Pius Quintus, he can say
nothing ; but if it was such as it is affirmed to be,
he doth allow it and saith it ought to be obeyed.
" To the second, he saith, it is a hard question,
and therefore he cannot answer it ; but upon
further advertisement, he answereth as to the first.
" To the third, he knoweth not what to say
thereunto.
"To the fourth he sayeth that so long as her
Majestie remaineth Queen, the Pope hath no
authoritie to warrant her subjects to take arms
against her or to disobey her. But if he should
depose her, then' he might discharge them of their
allegiance and obedience to her Majestie.
" To the fifth he saith he will not meddle with
the doctrine of doctour Saunders and doctour
Bristowe.
" To the last, when this case happeneth, then,
he sayeth, he will answere ; and if he had been in
Ireland when doctour Saunders was there, he
would have done as a priest should have done,
that is, to pray that the right may have place.
" WILLIAM FILBEE.
"JOHN POPHAM. DA. LEWIS.
"THOMAS EGERTON. JOHN HAMMOND."
1 Tierney-Dodd, iii. p. xii. (Appendix).
BLESSED WILLIAM FILBY 495
When the great day of his sacrifice arrived he
managed to shave his tonsure, to show how greatly
he honoured his priesthood, and also contrived to
make a small cross of wood to hold in his hand
at the time of his consummation.
Munday gives us the following details as to the
passage to Tyburn :
" On the Wednesday following, which was the
thirty day of May, in the same manner as I
have before expressed, Luke Kirby, William Filby,
Thomas Cottam, and Laurence Richardson were
committed from the Tower of London to the place
of execution, and, as the others were on the Monday
before, associated and accompanied with divers
learned and godly Preachers, even so were these,
as to say Master Charke, Master Herne and divers
others, who all the way applied such godly and
Christian persuasions unto them (as had not the
Child of perdition so marvellously blinded them)
were of force to have won them into grace and
mercy. The speeches they used to them by the
way were needless here to set down, for that they
did specially concern causes to root out that wicked
opinion in them, and to establish a sound and
perfect faith in place thereof, but even as it was
in the others, so it did agree in them."
On arriving at Tyburn with his companions, he
" being the youngest," was, as has been said, taken
first from the hurdle and placed in the cart under
the gallows. He began by making the sign of the
496 BLESSED WILLIAM FILBY
Cross, saying aloud : " In nomine Patris, et Filii, et
Spiritus Sancti, Amen," and then to the officers;
" Let me see my brethren," and looking towards
the others, who still lay on the ground bound to
their hurdles, he held forth his hands to them, and
said, " Pray for me." Then addressing the crowd,
he said : " I am a Catholic, and I protest before
Almighty God, that I am innocent of all these
matters whereof I am condemned ; and I hope to
be saved by the merits and death of our Saviour
Jesus Christ, beseeching Him to have mercy on me
and forgive me mine offences."
At this point a proclamation was read for
keeping the peace, ending with " God save the
Queen," to which the martyr said, " Amen."
The bystanders asked him for what Queen he
prayed, under the impression that the hopes of
Catholics must be fixed upon the captive Queen of
Scots. He answered, " For Queen Elizabeth,
beseeching God to send her a long and quiet
reign, to His good will, and make her His servant,
and preserve her from her enemies." Richard
Topcliffe, who about this time began to take a
prominent part amongst the most cruel agents of
the persecution, called out to him to say " God
save her from the Pope," to which he answered,
" He is not her enemy." Thereupon the minister
of St. Andrew's in Holborn said, " Note that he saith
the Pope is not the Queen's enemy." At this
moment one of the sheriff's men standing in the
cart with the martyr caught sight of the little wooden
cross which he held partly concealed in his hand-
BLESSED WILLIAM FILBY
497
kerchief.1 The man snatched it from hinrand held
it up to the mockery of the crowd, repeating several
times, " Oh, what a villainous traitor is this that
hath a cross!" some of the people taking up the
same cry. The holy priest smiled at them, and
made no answer. He was no more ashamed, says
the author of the Briefe Historic, of this his Saviour's
banner, than of his crown, which he had made shift
to shave.
The notorious minister Charke,2 who had been
rebuked by Father Persons in his Censure,
attacked the martyr, accusing him of disobedience
to his natural sovereign in receiving Orders from
the See of Rome ; to which he answered that the
Sacraments and Articles of Religion were no part
of civil allegiance, and that obedience to the Church
could not be esteemed disobedience to the prince.
As in the previous martyrdoms, the answers to
the " six articles " were read out, with a preface
1 Munday says he had two crosses. He adds that the martyr
was asked if he would acknowledge the Queen's Majesty his
sovereign princess and supreme head under Christ of the Church of
England. "No," quoth he, "I will acknowledge no other head
of the Church than the Pope only."
2 William Charke had been a Fellow of Peterhouse, Camb., but
was expelled in 1572 for declaring in a sermon that the episcopal
system was introduced by Satan. He published several tracts
against Campion and the Catholics, which were ably answered by
Father Persons. The first is entitled, An answer to a seditioiis Pamphlet
lately cast abroad by a Jesuit, with a discovery of that blasphemous sect,
1580. He was one of the Protestant divines who disputed with
Blessed Edmund Campion in the Tower (September 18, 23, and
27, 1581). In 1581 he was elected preacher to the Society of
Lincoln's Inn, but was suspended by Archbishop Whitgift in
1593 for puritanism.
GG II.
4g8 BLESSED WILLIAM FILBY
published by the Government to raise odium
against the martyrs. At the last answer, someone
asked him " whether Sanders did well in that
business in Ireland." He replied : " I know not.
I was not privy to his doings. I never saw or
spoke with him. Let him answer for himself."
Sheriff Martin now had his turn. Having made
the hangman put the rope about the martyr's neck,
he said, " Filby, the Queen is merciful unto you,
and we have authority from her to carry you back,
if you will ask her mercy and confess your fault.
Do not refuse mercy offered. Ask the Queen
forgiveness." " I never offended her," answered
the martyr. " Well then," said the Sheriff, " make
an end." And this sort of public disputation being
at length over, Blessed William had time to say
aloud a Pater and Ave, and In manus tuas, Domine,
commendo spiritual meum, and was pronouncing the
words " Lord, receive my soul," as the cart was
drawn away. Several times, as he hung, he struck
his breast, until someone pulled down his hands,
and so his brave and gentle soul won its victory.
E. S. K.
AUTHORITIES. — Brief e Historic, pp. in — 113. Concertatio
(1588), ff. 90, 91.
RELICS. — At Stonyhurst is a piece of frayed rope labelled
ex laqueo B. Philbei.
There are also some small particles in a paper at
Archbishop's House, Westminster, bearing the inscription
Philbie.
It is indeed extraordinary that there are not more relics
of Blessed William and his companions, for in a volume of
BLESSED WILLIAM FILBY 499
MSS. preserved by the Jesuits at Rome we find a letter from
William Gifford, Professor of Theology at Rheims, dated
October 28, 1582, which informs us that the bodies of
these four martyrs who suffered on May 30 did not
endure the usual fate. It was thought that the people might
murmur at seeing so many limbs exposed on the City gates,
and so the bodies were buried under the gallows, as was
usually done in the case of felons. Some Catholic gentlemen
from the Inns of Court however came by night and stole
away the sacred relics. "Jamque per totam Angliam," con-
tinues the writer, " imo Franciam et Italiam thesaurus iste
diffiisus est."
The same writer adds a story that the death-warrant of
these seven holy priests was brought for the signature of the
Queen while she was engaged in dancing. She at once
signed it, and then took to dancing again. Quid crudelitati
cum deliciis ? quid cum funeribus voluptati ?
XVII.
THE BLESSED LUKE KIRBY,
SECULAR PRIEST.
Tyburn, 30 May, 1582.
WHILST Blessed William Filby was still hanging,
the officers brought the next martyr, Blessed
Luke Kirby, from the hurdle, on which he lay
bound, to witness his holy companion's death and
the butchery that was to follow.
This holy priest was perhaps born near Richmond,1
in Yorkshire, and from his age as entered in the
Diary of the English College at Rome, when he
took the oath, his birth must have been about the
year 1549.
He is said to have taken his Master's degree in
•one of the Universities, presumably at Cambridge,
as he is not mentioned by Wood nor in the Oxford
Register. Of his conversion we learn incidentally,
from his examination printed below, that he was
1 The Douay Diaries enter him as " Cestriensis ; " the Diary of
the English College, Rome, as of the diocese of Durham. Dodd
says Richmond. Though the three statements cannot be recon-
ciled, the difference between them may amount to very little.
BLESSED LUKE KIRBY 501
" reconciled at Louvain, by Father Laurentius, a
Norman."
In 1576 he entered the College at Douay. In
August of the next year he is mentioned in the
Diary as making a journey to Cambrai on the eve
of the Assumption and returning the day after the
feast. The diarist calls him a deacon at the time.
He was ordained priest at Cambrai on the Ember
Saturday of the next month, but out of devotion
to his patron saint did not say his first Mass until
St. Luke's feast, October the i8th. He started
from Rheims for the English Mission on a fitting
day for a martyr, the Invention of the Holy Cross,
the 3rd of May, 1578. What led to a change in
his designs we have no means of knowing, but on
July the i5th he was back at the College at Rheims,
where he remained over the feast of the Assumption,
and started on August the I7th for Rome, of course
with the approval of Dr. Allen, " partly for devotion,
and partly for further improvement in learning,"
as Challoner says. He entered the English College,
and amongst the other students who were there
when the Jesuit Fathers took over its government,
is registered as taking the College oath on the 23rd
of April, 1579. During his stay at the College he
practised great charity towards his countrymen in
Rome who needed help, Catholic and non-Catholic.
He helped them from his slender purse, he won
friends for them among members of the Pope's
Court, he gave away the shirt off his own back, and
once went forty miles out of Rome to see some
safe on their way. We have these facts from his
502 BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
own avowal, wrung from him at the moment of
his martyrdom, by the treacherous ingratitude of
his accuser, Munday, to whom he had shown
especial kindness in Rome, though, even at the
time, he saw through his insincerity.
This holy priest was chosen to be the companion
of Blessed Edmund Campion and Blessed Ralph
Sherwin on their way to England, and the three
future martyrs travelled together to Rheims, with
the rest of the party enumerated in Blessed Ralph
Sherwin's Life, leaving Rome on the i4th of
April, 1580, and arriving at Rheims on the last
day of May. In Father Persons' Life of Campion
we read that the Blessed Luke had shown such
fervour in preparing himself during Lent for the
mission to England " as was a matter of edification
to all Rome." Also that he had been one of
those, who, with an ardour characteristic of the
Elizabethans, challenged Beza to dispute, on the
condition that the losers should suffer death.
On June the i6th he set out from Rheims for
England once more, together with the Ven.
William Hartley. His companion was to follow
him a few years later in the glorious path of
martyrdom, his mother looking on at his death
and thanking God that she had brought forth a son
to die for Him. They made the journey to the
coast, by Douay and Dunkirk, after the apostolic
fashion, on foot.
On landing in England the martyr was imme-
diately seized, for, as we shall see, he was arrested
at Dover, and had been re-examined (probably as
BLESSED LUKE KIRBY 503
soon as he was sent up to the court) on July the
i6th. A list of prisoners among the State Papers1
shows where he was at first confined. He is
thus referred to : " Gatehouse ; Lucas Kirky, priest,
now in the Tower." The Gatehouse at Westminster
was, at this time, a comparatively comfortable
prison, and the martyr would perhaps be allowed to
enjoy the society of the venerable Father Lawrence
Vaux, who was seized and committed to the
Gatehouse about the same time, and of the many
good Catholics whom it held captive.2 It must have
been during this imprisonment that the following
paper was drawn up from examinations, which are
now no longer forthcoming.
" Lucas Kirby chargeable with,
" Departing out of the realm without licence
upon misliking of religion here established. (In answer
to the four first interrogatories.)
" Refusing to answer the sixth interrogatory, of
the lawfulness of the oath of obedience.
" With being reconciled at Louvain to the Church
of Rome by one Father Laurentius, a Norman. (In
answer of the i8th.)
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxlix. n. 83. Printed by Foley in
Records, S.J., vol. iii. p. 290.
1 "Ad carcerem igitur Westmonasteriensem bonus Senex (Vaux) cum
Tichboyne mittitur, qiti captivis abundat et multis et bonis, quorum primus
Townlius est, vir sc. nobilis, deinde Mra Heth, fcemina nobilis, ejusque
filia, multi praterea gravissimi et optimi sacerdotes, multi valde pii laid."
(Douay Diaries, p. 171.) One cannot help wondering whether this
Father Lawrence may not be the same as he who (though described
in the following examination as " a Norman ") reconciled our
martyr to the Church at Louvain.
504 BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
"With confession that he heard of an excom-
munication being in Paris a month since, lately
gotten out by a Cardinal at Rome. (Answer to the
24th.)1
" He cannot answer whether the Pope's excom-
munication be lawful and according to the word of
God. (To the 2$th.)
" Confession of advice received at Rome (sic) of
the Rector of the English Seminary there, to do
what he could at his coming into England for stay
or persuasion of others (meaning in the Pope's
religion). (In a re-examination on the i6th of July,
1580.)
" Confession that he thinketh the Pope only hath
power in ecclesiastical causes, and none other. (In
his examination taken at Dover.")-
At the beginning of December, as we have
already seen, the Privy Council resolved to send
some priests to the Tower, where they might be
tortured " for the terror of the rest," and Kirby,
being chargeable with the above-mentioned crimes
against their persecuting laws, was selected, with
Sherwin, Cottam, and the rest, to be one of the
first victims. He was conducted thither on the 4th of
December, and at the same time the following inter-
rogatories were drawn up to assist the Protestant
inquisitors in their wicked work.
1 Cardinal Alessandrino is said to have reprinted the Bull of
Excommunication about this time, to show at Paris, where
Catherine de Medicis was negotiating a marriage between Elizabeth
and the Duke of Anjou.
9 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxl. n. 43.
BLESSED LUKE KIRBY 505
"Articles to be ministered to Cottam, Kirby, and others
of late committed to the Tower.
" i. What was the principal cause why you were
sent into this realm by the Pope or by some [other]
minister of his ?
" 2. To whom were you specially directed to
repair unto within this realm ?
"3. What hope before your departure were you
put in, of somewhat to be attempted both against
Ireland and England ?
"4. Upon what comfort did the late B. of
St.Asaph, D. Morton and the rest of the principal
persons, that remained before at Rome, repair
upon a sudden to Paris with intent to have come
into England, and upon what cause did stay to
repair hither ?
" 5. What relief have you received since you were
committed to prison, and from whence and by
whom came the same relief?
" 6. Whether was there not some relief delivered
you as sent from the Scottish Queen, and by whom
was the same delivered ?
" [7.] How many have you reconciled to the
Church of Rome since your imprisonment, and
what be their names ?
" [8.] How many have you heard of late to have
been reconciled to the Church of Rome by others,
what be their names, and by whom were they
reconciled ?
" [9-] What conference have you had with
Campion, since his coming over, or what message
or letters have you received from him ?
506 BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
" [10.] Where do you know, or have heard, that
Campion is ?
" [n.] Whether have you not heard of some
Catalogues of names of the principal favourers of
the Romish religion within this realm have been
delivered to the Pope, and what principal persons
do you remember to have been contained in the
said catalogue ?
" [12.] What acquaintance have you with the
Bishop of Ross, or what letters or messages have
you received from him since your return into this
realm ?
" [I3-J What letters or messages have you
received from D. Saunders in Ireland ?
" [14.] What principal persons in Ireland are
noted to be favourers of the rebellion there, and
have given their promise to join with such persons
as should be sent from the Pope?"1
It is unnecessary to comment on the animus
that inspired these questions. It is reckoned a
crime, forsooth, to reconcile a man to the Church,
a crime to supply poor prisoners with alms, a crime
to withhold the names of Catholics from their perse-
cutors, a crime for a Catholic Bishop to come to
England, a crime to carry or receive a message
from a Catholic missionary. It is taken for granted
that Catholic priests are in connection with the
insurgents of Ireland. No priest could in conscience
answer these questions, and the next thing that we
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxlvii. n. 97. Printed also by
Foley, Records S.J., vol. v. p. 348.
BLESSED LUKE KIRBY 5o7
hear about Kirby is that five days after his arrival in
the Tower he was subjected to the cruel torture of
"The Scavenger's Daughter."1 This horrible instru-
ment Lingard describes as " a broad hoop of iron
. . . consisting of two parts, fastened to each other
by a hinge. The prisoner was made to kneel on the
pavement and to contract himself into as small a
compass as he could. Then the executioner, kneeling
on his shoulders, and having introduced the hoop
under his legs, compressed the victim close together,
till he was able to fasten the extremities over the
small of the back. The time allotted to this kind
of torture was an hour and a half, during which time
it commonly happened that from excess of compres-
sion the blood started from the nostrils ; sometimes,
it was believed, from the extremities of the hands
and feet." 2 The martyr underwent this cruel inflic-
tion for more than an hour. As we afterwards hear
no more of tortures inflicted on the martyr, we
may hope that his courage under his dreadful ordeal,
warned the persecutors that it was no use harassing
him by further violence.
From the 5th of February 1581, to Pentecost,
May the i4th, he was, with the rest of the Catholic
1 The invention of Sir William Skevington, Lieutenant of the
Tower in the reign of Henry VIII., and called Skevington's Irons,
then Skevington's Daughters, and by degrees The Scavenger's
Daughter.
2 History of England, vol. vi. note U. Hart, in his "Diary,"
writes briefly, "The Scavenger's Daughter — a name derived, as I
think, from its inventor — consists of a hoop of iron, which fastens
together hands, feet, and head into one ball." The implement now
shown under this name at the Tower must be a later and more
humane form of this instrument of torture.
5o8 BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
prisoners, " dragged by the hands of the keepers and
soldiers," as the diarist says, to hear the sermons
of John Nichols, a Calvinist minister, who had been
converted at Rome, and then relapsed. We shall
meet him again. The sermons were full of invec-
tives against the Faith and abuse of the confessors,
who were called rebels, seditious men, idolaters, and
traitors; while they on their part interrupted, exposed
his false assertions, challenged him to disputation,
and after the discourse hissed him away, in spite of
the threats of Hopton, who was present. Blessed
Thomas Cottam distinguished himself especially on
this occasion.
Blessed Luke was arraigned with Campion
and the rest, on Tuesday, November the i4th,
and tried on Thursday the i6th. In the report
of the trial printed in Cobbett's State Trials,1 it is
recorded that " Kirbie, in his examination for the
Supremacy and the Pope's authority, was of no
other opinion than was Campion."
" Sledd, a witness, deposed against Kirbie, that
being sick beyond the seas, this Kirbie came unto
his bedside and counselled him to beware how he
dealt with any matters in England, for there would
come a great day wherein the Pope, the King of
Spain, and the Duke of Florence should make as
great an alteration as ever was. He deposed that
Kirbie was at a sermon of Dr. Allen's, who then
persuaded the priests and Seminary men to take
1 Cobbett, State Trials, vol. i. p. 1069 ; Harleian MSS. 6,265,
P- 234-
BLESSED LUKE KIRBY 509
their journey into England to remove the English-
men from their obedience to her highness, and to
persuade them to aid the Pope and his confederates.
He deposed moreover that beyond the seas he spake
with one Tedder, a familiar friend of Kirbie's, of whom
he, deponent, demanded whether he were of kin to
her Majesty, for that his name was Tedder. Where-
unto he answered that if he knew himself to be kin
to that whore of Babylon, that Jezebel of England,
he would think the worse of himself, as long as he
lived. But one day he would make a journey into
England, and if it were possible despatch her out
of the way.
" Kirbie. — ' As I hope to be saved at the last
doom, there is not one word of this deposition that
concerneth me, either true or credible. Neither
at any time made I the least mention of that
alleged day : neither was I present at any sermon
so preached ; but I always bore as true and faithful
a heart to her Majesty as any subject whatsoever
did in England ; insomuch that I never heard her
Majesty evil spoken of but I defended her cause, and
always spake the best of her highness. It is not
unknown that I saved English mariners from
hanging only for the duty I bore to her Majesty,
with the love and good-will which I bore to my
country. But you that have thus deposed, when
was this sermon that you talk of, so preached ?
at what time of the day ? '
" The witness answered that the same day there
were three philosophical disputations, after the which
the sermon was preached."
5io BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
Though the holy priest was declared guilty of
high treason and received sentence, his martyrdom
was delayed, as in the case of many of his com-
panions, for several months. On the 2gth of
April, 1582, the Diary of the Tower states that he
was put into irons, and so continued till his execu-
tion. It was during this time that he was required
to answer the "six articles" of the Council, which
he did as follows :
" Luke Kirbye's Answere.1
" Luke Kirbye, to the first saith, that the resolu-
tion of this article dependeth upon the general
question whether the Pope ma}', for any cause,
depose a Prince ; wherein his opinion is that for
some causes he may lawfully depose a Prince, and
that such sentence ought to be obeyed.
" To the second he thinketh that in some cases,
as infidelitie or such like, her Majestic is not to be
obeyed against the Pope's bull and sentence ; for so
he saith he hath read that the Pope hath done,
de facto, against other Princes.
" To the third he saith he cannot answer it.
" To the fourth that the Pope, for infide-
litie, hath such power as is mentioned in this
article.
"To the fifth he thinketh that doctour Saunders
and doctour Bristowe might be deceived in these
points of their bookes. But whether they were
deceived or not he referreth to God.
1 Tierney-Dodd, vol. Hi. p. xii. (Appendix.) For the questions,
vide supra, p. 451.
BLESSED LUKE KIR BY 5n
" To the last, he sayeth that when the case shall
happen, he must then take counsel what were best
for him to doe.
" LUKE KIRBYE.
"JOHN POPHAM. DA. LEWIS.
"THOMAS EGERTON. JOHN HAMMOND."
Whilst Elizabeth's Ministers were thus intent
on casting new odium upon the martyrs, one of
their miserable instruments was seized with remorse
for his share in this very work. John Nichols, a
Welshman by birth, scholar of Brasenose, Oxford,
a curate in Somersetshire, went abroad in 1579, was
converted, but, so he afterwards said, was not fully
convinced. He was admitted as a student at the
English College at Rome, and afterwards at Rheims,
and returned to England in 1581, where he was
arrested at the end of a week, and sent to the
Tower. There, partly from want of principle,
partly through fear of torture, partly through the
flatteries of the Lieutenant, Sir Owen Hopton, he
made a solemn recantation of Popery, and wrote,
under the inspiration of his host, and with the help
of the Puritans Stubbs and Wilkinson, three books,
his Pilgrimage, his Recantation, and his pretended
Oration and Sermon before the Pope and Cardinals.
These three publications were rilled with vile
slanders against the Pope, the Cardinals, Bishops,
clergy, and Seminarists, and helped to foment the
persecuting spirit, by representing them as busied
with nothing but hatred and machinations against
the Queen. For a time Nichols was made much of
5i2 BLESSED LUKE KIRDY
and subsidized. But an exposure, immediately
printed and circulated by Father Persons, effectually
pricked this windbag.1 It is noticeable that he kept
out of the way during the trials of Campion and the
rest in November. He declared afterwards that he
did so purposely, that he might not bear false
witness against any of them individually. Then
in the first days of January, 1582, that is a month
after the martyrdoms of December the ist, he came
to Blessed Luke Kirby's cell under the pressure of
remorse. The martyr describes the interview in a
letter written three or four days later, January the
loth.
"A true copy of a letter sent by Mr. Kirby to some of
his friends.
" My most hearty commendations to you and
the rest of my dearest friends. If you send any-
1 A correspondent of Father Agazzari, who, as was shown before,
must be Father Persons himself, though he is named in the third
person, writes: "It can scarce be believed what praises are lavished
on this gull. He is the most learned Jesuit of them all, the Pope's
scholar, the Cardinals' preacher, a theologian, philosopher, Grecian,
Hebraist, Chaldaist, a perfect master of all languages and every
science. He has printed his renunciation of the faith in which he
tells enormous lies about Rome, the Pope, your College, the Jesuits,
the scholars, and all orders of monks and priests. The book was
received and distributed by the heretics with mighty triumph ; but
next month or so there came out another book, A Discovery of Nichols,
proving clearly that he was neither Jesuit nor priest, theologian nor
philosopher; that he had never preached before Pope or Cardinals,
except when he abjured the heresy of Calvin before the Inquisitors ;
that he knew nothing of any learned language or science, but was
merely a relapsed minister, an ignorant grammarian, a vagabond
tramp, and an egregious liar." (Persons' edition of Sander's De
Schismate Anglicano, Cologne, 1610, p. 397, translated in Simpson's
Life of Campion, p. 204.)
BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
513
thing to me, you must make haste, because we look
to suffer death very shortly, as already it is signified
to us. Yet I much fear least our unworthiness of
that excellent perfection and crown of martyrdom
shall procure us a longer life.
" Within these few days John Nichols came to
my chamber window with humble submission, to
crave mercy and pardon for all his wickedness and
treacheries committed against us, and to acknow-
ledge his books, sermons and infamous speeches to
our infamy and discredit, to be wicked, false and
most execrable before God and man : which for
preferment, promotion, hope of living, and favour
of the nobility, he committed to writing and to the
view of the world. Whereof being very penitent
and sorrowful from his heart, rather than he would
commit the like offence again, he wisheth to suffer
a thousand deaths. For being pricked in con-
science with our unjust condemnation, which hath
happened contrary to his expectation, albeit he
offered matter sufficient in his first book of recanta-
tion for our adversaries to make a bill of indictment
against us, yet he minded [expected] then nothing
less, as now he protesteth. He knoweth in con-
science our accusations and the evidence brought
against us to be false and to have no colour of
truth, but only of malice forged by our enemies.
And for Sledd and Munday he is himself to accuse
them of this wicked treachery and falsehood and of
their naughty and abominable life, of which he is
made privy and which for shame I cannot commit
to writing. In detestation of his own doings and of
HH II.
514 BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
their wickedness, he is minded never hereafter
to ascend into pulpit nor to deal again in any
matter of religion, for which cause he hath forsaken
the ministry and is minded to teach a school, as I
understand by him, in Norfolk. In proof whereof
he showed me his new disguised apparel, as yet
covered with his minister's weed.
" I wished him to make amends for all his sins,
and to go to a place of penance, and he answered
me he was not yet conformable to us in every point
of religion, nor ever was : but lived at Rome in
hypocrisy, as he hath done ever since in his own
profession. Again, he thought that if ever he should
depart the realm, he could not escape burning.
" He offered to go to Mr. Lieutenant and to
Mr. Secretary Walsingham and declare how injuri-
ously I and the rest were condemned, that he
himself might be free from shedding innocent blood ;
albeit he was somewhat afraid to show himself in
London, where already he had declared our innocent
behaviour, and his own malicious dealing towards
us in his book and sermons.
"To give my censure and judgment of him, certain
I think that he will within a short time fall into
infidelity, except God of His goodness in the mean-
time be merciful unto him and reclaim him by some
good means to the Catholic faith. Yet it should
seem he hath not lost all good gifts of nature,
when as in conscience he was pricked to open the
truth in our defence and to detest his own wicked-
ness, and treacheries of others practised against us
to our confusion. Now I see, as all the world
BLESSED LUKE KIR BY
515
hereafter shall easily perceive, that rather than God
will have wilful murder concealed, he procureth the
birds of the air to reveal it.
" I am minded to signify to Sir Francis Walsing-
ham this his submission unto us, except in the
meantime I shall learn that he has, as he promised
faithfully to me, already opened the same. Mr-
Richardson and Mr. Filbie have now obtained some
bedding, who ever since their condemnation have
laid upon the boards. Mr. Hart hath had many
and great conflicts with his adversaries. This
morning the loth of January he was committed
to the dungeon, where he now remaineth. God
comfort him ; he taketh it very quietly and patiently :
the cause was, for that he would not yield to
Mr. Reynolds of Oxford in any one point, but still
remained constant the same man he was before and
ever. Mr. Reynolds, albeit he be the best learned
of that sort, that hath from time to time come
hither to preach and confer, yet the more he is
tried and dealt withal, the less learning he showed.
Thus beseeching you to assist us with your good
prayers, whereof now especially we stand in need,
as we by God's grace shall not be unmindful of you,
I bid you farewell this loth day of January, 1582.
" Yours to death and after death,
" LUKE KiRBY."1
What happened afterwards we learn from
Nichols himself.
1 Brief e Historic, p. 118.
5i6 BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
" When I had declared to Mr. Luke Kirby in
the Tower of London that I repented of having
written those books, which were contrary to truth,
he related my words to Mr. Reynolds of Oxford,
who in turn told Sir Francis Walsingham. He, on
hearing this statement, told the Lieutenant of the
Tower to examine me, in presence of Mr. Luke
Kirby, whether the statement reported to him was
true or not. I accordingly went to the Tower to be
examined as to what I had said, when Mr. Kirby
thus addressed me: 'Tell the truth, Nichols, and
shame the devil.' ' I will, indeed,' I freely answered ;
* have no doubt about it.' Mr. Kirby was examined
separately : I too would have manifested the truth,
if the Lieutenant of the Tower had allowed me.
But when I said, ' I declared to Mr. Kirby that I
wrote those books from ambition,' he said, ' Don't
say that,' and turning to the secretary told him to
write, ' He declares that he said to Mr. Kirby he was
sorry he wrote those books in such a rough and un-
polished style.' And when Master Reynolds, in
presence of Dr. Humphrey, told me he would prove
before him and Mr. Kirby that I had declared my
repentance for having published my books, because
they contained more lies than truth, and that
I was resolved not to speak any more against the
Papists either in the pulpit or the press, the
Lieutenant of the Tower commanded Master
Reynolds to say no more about the matter."
So the incident was suppressed, and the martyrs
were sent to Tyburn. But the Government well
BLESSED LUKE KIRBY 517
knew the truth, and Nichols testifies that on the
following All Saints' Day, still urged by his
remorse, he declared to the Lord Treasurer his
repentance for the falsehoods he had published.
Burleigh answered that the Papists had exposed his
lies long ago.
Nichols kept his resolution of giving up the Pro-
testant ministry, and soon after went abroad. Early
in 1583 he was arrested and imprisoned at Rouen,
but through the influence of Dr. Allen, whom he
had grossly slandered, regained his liberty. Before
his discharge he wrote a confession in which he
professes himself a Protestant, but fully acknow-
ledges his offences against Catholics. He declares,
however, that his books were written at the instiga-
tion, and even under the dire threats, of Hopton.
After his liberation he confirmed his confession
before many Catholics. It was printed by Allen
at Rheims in 1583, l and from it most of the facts
here related are taken. They are a specimen of the
way in which the great Protestant tradition about
Catholics was created in Elizabeth's reign.
And now we come to the last scene of the holy
martyr's conflict and victory. On being placed in
the cart under the gallows, he addressed the people,
declaring that though he was condemned for pre-
tended treasons, he was really about to be put to
death for his religion ; and then made a touching
1 Report of the late apprehension, confession, and answers of J . Nichols,
&c., J.Fogny, Rhemes, 1583. A Latin translation in Concertatio,
Edition of 1588, pp. 231, seq.
5i 8 BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
prayer to our Blessed Lord, aloud, for salvation
through His Death and Passion, and for forgiveness
of "manifold sins and offences." Then followed a
long altercation with Munday, who repeated the
story which he and Sledd had told at the trial, that
the hoi}' priest had advised him and another young
man, named Robinson, to stay in Rome and not
come to England, because shortly some stir or
trouble was like to come, and to persuade their
friends to become Catholics against " the great
day." The martyr not only once more denied this
lying invention, but published what had taken place
at an examination of Munday in the Tower, similar
to that we have seen described by Nichols. Blessed
Luke declared that when hard pressed before Sir
Owen Hopton, and a keeper named Cowdridge,
Munday had acknowledged that he could charge
him with nothing, and that Cowdridge had said that
" upon that confession he might take advantage."
But Munday, unlike Nichols, had hardened his con-
science against remorse. He admitted the interview
and its purport. " When as I came unto the Tower
and made known to Master Lieutenant for what
cause I was sent to speak with you, you were
brought into a chamber by your Keeper; "x he also
relates the martyr's account of it : " Oh, Munday,
consider with thyself how untruly thou hast charged
me with that which I never said nor thought.
1 Report of the Execution of Tray tours, 1582, by A.M., in "John a
Kent and John a Cumber," printed for the Shakespeare Society,
p. 119. Reprinted in the Downside Review, with a valuable intro-
duction, vol. x. No. 3 (December, 1891), p. 215.
BLESSED LUKE KIRBY 519
Besides, thou knowest that when thou earnest to
the Tower to me, before Master Lieutenant and
other who was there present, then thou wast
demanded what thou couldest say against me ?
When, as thou madest answer, thou knewest no
harm of me, neither couldest thou at any time
say otherwise of me than well. Whereupon thou
wast asked wherefore thou reportedst otherwise
at my arraignment ? " * Munday, however, now
boldly denied that he had ever made the acknow-
ledgment affirmed by the martyr, who appealed in
vain to him, by the memory of the kindnesses he had
done to him and other Protestants in Rome, to tell
the truth in the fear and love of God.
The answers to the "six articles" already
related, were now read over by the preacher Field,
and a long discussion ensued with him and with
another minister, Crowley, who seldom lost an
opportunity of attacking the martyrs in prison or on
the scaffold. " I do acknowledge," the martyr
declared, "to my Queen, as much duty and
authority as ever I did to Queen Mary, or as any
subject in France, Spain or Italy doth acknowledge
to his King or prince." And thereupon Topcliffe
demanded, " What ! if they all be traitors, will you
be traitor too ? " To which he answered, " What !
1 Ibid. p. 118. The martyr had entrusted Munday at Rome with
some " Silke Pictures halowed by the Pope" to give to his friends
in Rheims and England, one of which, representing the Crucifixion,
he gave to Munday himself. He also gave him " two Julyes " to
buy more pictures. After he had left Rome, he sent him fifteen
shillings to Rheims, but Munday had already left for England
before the money came.
520 BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
be they all traitors ? God forbid ! For if all they
be traitors, then all our ancestors have been traitors
likewise. And as for Dr. Sander and Bristow, they
might err in their private opinions, the which I will
defend no farther than they do agree with the
judgment of Christ's Catholic Church."
Sheriff Martin here broke in, to say " the Queen
was merciful and would take him to her mercy, so
he would confess his duty to her, and forsake that
man of Rome, and that he had authority himself to
stay the execution and carry him back again," who
answered that to deny the Pope's authority was
denying a point of faith, which he would not do for
saving of his life, being sure that this would be to
damn his soul. Then was it tendered to him that if
he would but confess his fault and ask the Queen's
forgiveness, she would yet be merciful to him. He
answered again, that his conscience did give him
a clear testimony that he had never offended ; and
therefore he would neither confess that whereof
he was innocent, nor ask forgiveness where no
offence was committed against her Majesty. '"Well
then,' said Sheriff Martin, ' do but acknowledge
those things which your fellow Bosgrave1 hath done,
1 James Bosgrave had been a Jesuit missionary in Germany and
Poland. He was sent back to his native country to try the effect
of his native air in restoring his health, and arrived during the
summer of 1580. He knew nothing of the controversies raging in
England, and had almost lost the use of his native tongue. He
was arrested on landing, and having been examined by the Bishop
of London, gave great scandal by professing his readiness to go
to church. Bosgrave afterwards explained that in Germany and
Poland any learned man might go freely to the meetings of the
Calvinists, Lutherans, or other sectaries, and hear their folly and
BLESSED LUKE KIRBY
such as appeareth by his examination, and I will
yet save your life ; ' who denied likewise to do
this. By these numbers of proffers it is plain they
judged (the martyrs) innocent in their conscience
of those pretended treasons." l
One last effort was made by the preachers to
induce him to yield something to their importunity.
" Then preparing himself to his prayers," Munday
writes, " the preachers desired him to pray in
English with them, and to say a prayer after them,
wherein, if he could find any fault, he should be
resolved thereof. ' Oh,' quoth he again, ' you and I
are not of one faith, therefore I think I should
offend God, if I should pray with you,' at which
words the people began to cry, 'Away with him! '
So he saying his Pater noster in Latin, ended his
life."
blasphemy in order to refute it. This is why he offered to go to
the Anglican churches, just as in Constantinople he would have
been willing to go to the mosque. When he found that this was
regarded as an act of apostasy in England, he at once retracted his
consent, was sent to the Marshalsea, and afterwards to the Tower,
and was condemned with Campion as a traitor.
He was, however, reprieved in consequence of his answers to
the "six questions," in which he declared his allegiance in spite of
the Bull, said that he thought the Bull was "at no time lawful,"
nor to be obeyed, and that the Pope had no authority to release the
subjects of a sovereign from their allegiance. If the Pope invaded
the realm he would take part with her Majesty against him.
It must be remembered that Bosgrave, though an Englishman,
had lived so long abroad that he was totally unprepared to face
questions of such difficulty, and knew nothing of the true condition
of things in England. He was afterwards banished, and returned
to his mission in Poland. (Simpson's Life of Campion, pp. 133, 134,
333 ; Tierney-Dodd, iii. p. xv. Appendix.)
1 Brief e Historie, p. 117.
522 BLESSED LUKE KIR BY
The writer of the Briefe Historic adds, " After
that he had ended his Pater noster and began his
Ave, the cart was drawn away, and there he hanged
until he was dead, and until his two fellows Richard-
son and Cottam did take the view of him. His
speeches were very intricate, for that many did
speak unto him and of several matters, but here are
the principal things by him uttered to my remem-
brance."
The blessed martyr had argued in defence of his
life, as St. Paul did, for the honour of the truth, and
in order that he might not co-operate towards his
own death. But death for our Lord had long been
his desire, and, as we have seen, he wrote some
months before, " We look to suffer death very
shortly, as already it is signified to us. Yet I much
fear lest our unworthiness of that excellent perfection
and crown of martyrdom should procure me a longer
life."
E. S. K.
J. H. P.
AUTHORITIES. — Briefe Historic, pp. 113 — 120, Concertalio,
(1588) ff. 91 — 93. Cobbet, State Trials, i. pp. 1068, 1069. Grene,
Collectanea, N.I., i. 19, ii. 6, 57. (Stonyhurst MSS.)
RELICS. — There are two relics of Blessed Luke Kirby
at Stonyhurst. One is a phalanx bone of the foot, the other
is inscribed, Pars manus carnis et planete B. Kirbei. The
corporal with which he and four other martyrs said Mass in
the Tower has been already described in the life of
Blessed Alexander Briant.
XVIII.
THE BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON
(vcn JOHNSON),
SECULAR PRIEST.
Tyburn, 30 May, 1582.
IMMEDIATELY the cart was drawn from under the
Blessed Luke Kirby, Blessed Lawrence Johnson,
and Blessed Thomas Cottam were brought to
witness his death, and as soon as his body was cut
down to be quartered, they were made to get up
together into the cart beneath the gallows.
Blessed Lawrence was of a Lancashire family
of considerable antiquity, which suffered greatly for
its religion, and it was only on his entering the
English Mission as a priest that he took the name
of Richardson. His father was Richard Johnson,
of Great Crosby, son of Nicholas Johnson and
Margaret, daughter of Robert Blundell of Ince
Blundell. Helen Johnson, who was imprisoned
in Salford gaol for recusancy, in 1582, was pro-
bably the martyr's sister. The family remained
Catholic all through the times of persecution. Our
martyr, after studying at one of the local grammar
schools, in due time was sent to Brasenose College,
524 BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON
Oxford, where he was the contemporary of Blessed
Ralph Sherwin, of Edward Rishton at his own
College, and of several other martyrs and confessors.
Anthony a Wood says, under the date of the 5th of
December, 1572 : " The Principal and Fellows of
Brasenose College gave leave to Lawrence Johnson,
one of their Society, to take the degree of Bachelor
of Arts in the University, with certain conditions to
be by him performed ; but whether he took the said
degree, it appears not."1 Considering the circum-
stances of the times, we may conjecture that
Lawrence had now drawn very near to the Faith
of his fathers, and that the conditions required by
the Principal and Fellows were such as brought
the struggle within his conscience to a crisis, which
ended in his leaving the University.
In 1573 we find him at Douay following the
courses, first of philosophy and then of theology.
He was ordained priest at Cateau-Cambresis by
the Bishop of Cambrai on Sitientes Saturday, the
23rd of March, 1577, with Blessed Ralph Sherwin
and several others. He said his first Mass on
Sunday, April the 2ist, St. Anselm's feast. His
friend, Edward Rishton, had been ordained a fort-
night after him, and said his first Mass on the same
day ; the solemnity being increased by a sermon on
the dignity of the priesthood, preached in the
college chapel by Dr. Richard Hall, who was at
that time lecturing on Holy Scripture. On July
1 Wood, Fasti Oxonienses. "Johnson, Lawrence of Brasenose,
suppl. B.A. November 25, 1572 (he was a fellow of Brasenose in
)-" {Boase, Register of the University of Oxford, II. iii. 18.)
BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON 525
the 2yth he left the College to begin his missionary
life.
He went to his own part of England and
resided chiefly it would seem in the family of a
Lancashire gentleman, Mr. Houghton, of Park Hall,1
county Lancaster, by whom, as well as by all the
neighbourhood, the holy priest was looked upon as
a man of extraordinary zeal and piety. Of the
early fruits of his labours we have probably a
trace in a letter, which fell into the hands of the
Government, and is now among the State Papers
in our Record Office. It is dated from Venice,
April 12, I58o,2 and addressed to L. Johnson. It is
from a Mr. Christopher Hodgson, who writes :
" It was not as Mr. Johnson3 that I addressed
you, but as my father, who brought me out of
Egypt and slavery. If a man is not plain with you,
he does not love you ; and if a man is not so with
another, it is either because he is afraid to displease,
which is not love but fear, or because he looks for
some commodity from him, which is also not love
but courtesy. Whatsoever I said therefore came of
love ; and if I said you had forgotten me, it was
1 Among the State Papers printed in Gibson's Lydiate Hall, is
one of 1592, headed " A note of keeping of scholemasters," in which
occurs the following passage: " Mr. Richard Houghton, of the
Park Hall, hath kepte a recusant scholemaster I think this twentie
yeares. He hath had one after another — the name of one was
Scholes, of the other ffawcet, as I remember, but I stand in doubt
of the name."
2 Domestic Calendar, Addenda, vol. xxvii. n. 9.
3 Among friends in his own county the martyr would be known
by his true name.
526 BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON
because I thought so, and that I might get you to
write. I am sorry I was so vehement. I doubt not
you will interpret both what I have said and now
say, and pray God to speed you. I mean to adven-
ture the best joint I have with you one day. I do
not desire you to help my parents, as they do not
need it. I have sent you 1,000 grains,1 five gilded
crosses, the pardon whereof the bearer will tell you,
and three A[gnus Deis] . I have sent you all I could
get, as I shall not have so good an occasion here-
after."
This affectionate convert of the Blessed Lawrence
was a young man named Christopher Hodgson, who
had entered the English College at Rome, and had
taken the College oath there on the 23rd of April,
1579, being then eighteen years of age. He was
ordained priest in 1583, and afterwards taught
philosophy and theology at Rheims, and later in
some monastery in Lorraine.
It was perhaps partly in consequence of this
very letter that the Bishop of Chester was ordered
by the Council to call up certain Lancashire gentle-
men whose sons were being educated in parts
beyond the sea, and Mr. Hodgson among them.2
It is also noteworthy that this letter was the
occasion for the first written accusation against
the martyr, which survives among the State Papers.
In a document concerning Catholics who are to be
proceeded against, we find his name fifth amongst
1 Rosary beads.
s T. E. Gibson, Lydiate Hall and its Associations, 1876, p. 218.
BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON 527
" Persons of evil disposition, come [to] or being in
England." The note includes an indication of his
whereabouts, viz., " Lawrence Johnson. He is to
be found by Mrs. Garnet, by Kendall, and by
William Ffurth, son to Alexander Ffurth."1 The
conclusion one would draw from these names is that
the martyr occasionally lived with all of these
persons. The Ffurths at least were a Lancashire
family, and are described as "of Swindley," but
where Kendall and Mrs. Garnet lived does not as
yet appear.
For some four years in all, Blessed Lawrence
like so many of his faithful and heroic brethren, lived
a hidden life, and was occupied in a work which
has left no record, that of strengthening the weak,
bringing back wanderers, giving the sacraments to
famished souls ; and thus keeping .alive the brave
and patient perseverance of Catholic Lancashire.
Dr. Thomas Worthington, in his Relation of
Sixtene Martyrs, published in 1601, gives an instance
of the dismay felt by the governing powers when
they first heard of the arrival of the priests from
the Seminaries. Edmund Fleetwood, who had
most unjustly seized upon Rossall Grange, the
property of Mrs. Allen, sister-in-law to the great
Cardinal, was at this time one of the most promi-
nent persecutors in Lancashire. He was a justice
of the peace, writes Worthington, and "when
sitting upon causes of religion, he heard that there
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxlvi. n. 137. The entry is
followed by another stating that Christopher Hodgson had "sent
in grains, gilt crosses, and Agnus Deis."
5a8 BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON
was one Mr. Lawrence Johnson, a young man and
a Seminary priest (afterwards a martyr), come
into the same province. ' Nay then,' saith he,
' we strive in vain. We hoped these old Papistical
priests dying, all Papistry should have died and
ended with them. But this new brood will never be
rooted out. It is impossible ever to be rid of them
nor to extirpate this Papistical faith out of the
land.'"
During his abode with Mr. Houghton, Blessed
Lawrence met with a great trial, which prepared
him for sufferings of an even graver nature. By
a former wife, Mary, daughter of Ralph Rishton of
Pontalgh,1 Richard Houghton had three children,
a son and two daughters, who, upon his marrying,
as his second wife, "a young gentlewoman very
virtuous and wise," dared to insinuate that the holy
priest was unduly familiar with their step-mother.
What follows is best told in the words of the sub-
contemporary document, which is our authority for
the whole incident.
"As soon as Lawrence heard this, he comforted
the gentlewoman by exhorting to patience, and
continuance in virtue, and immediately departed
from the house with intention to go over seas. But
before he took that journey in hand, he made one
Mr. Blundel 2 acquainted thereof, whose eldest son
1 Gillow, Dictionary, iii. p. 636.
2 This was presumably Robert Blundell of Ince-Blundell, who
died three years later. His third son, Richard, may have been
the Blundell who visited the College at Rheims in June, 1580.
(T. E. Gibson, Lydiate Hall and its Associations, 1876, pp. 84, 85, and
106 — no; Douay Diaries, p. 166.)
BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON 529
the said Mr. Blundel had sent by him before into
France. Therefore, understanding his intention,
he desired him either to bring back or send back
his son, because now he began to be very aged,
and for that purpose gave him some money in
Lancashire, and appointed him to take others of a
kinsman of his at London.
" So Lawrence departed and came to London,
where not long staying, but he went to see a country-
man, one Francis Goare, a tailor, and of old
acquaintance. Here he met by chance the afore-
said gentleman, and after saluting of one another,
Lawrence said unto the gentleman : ' Sir, your
cousin Blundel sent me unto you for such or so
much money.' To whom he answered : ' 'Tis true
I owe my cousin some money — but, I pray, sir,
was't not you that carried my cousin, Richard
Blundel, overseas ? ' ' Yes, indeed,' said he, ' it was
I that took him over, and it is I, if God spare my
life, that will bring him back again.' 'Faith,' said
the gentleman, ' I am very glad : therefore, I pray,
expect here awhile, and I'll presently return, and
despatch your business,' — and so departed.
" Lawrence supposed the gentleman had meant
that he would have brought in the money at his
return. But the event was contrary, for, instead of
money, he brought two Serjeants [" Sagants"], who,
apprehending, carried him before the Magistrates.
And being accused to be a priest was committed to
prison, &c.
" But that we may see what became of the rest,
we will first return to the gentlewoman who was
ii ii.
530 BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON
accused. She therefore lived many years very
piously without all suspicion of disloyalty towards
her husband, and died very blessedly. So that the
virtuous lives, both before and after the accusation,
and the happy deaths of both these two did plainly
demonstrate their former innocency.
"But the accusers, neither in life nor death, had
any such tokens to prove their false and detestable
assertions but plain contrary."
The narrator then gives many particulars of
their misfortunes. The son was disinherited. One
of the daughters had a child by her father's groom,
and was reduced to beggary. The other also lost
her reputation, and married a "strolling fellow,"
and fled with him to Ireland.
" All that knew these three did greatly wonder
to see them all fall into so great misery, especially
that they all were so notorious unchaste : but those,
who before had known of the slander, imputed it as
a just revenge of Almighty God." l
But to return to our martyr. We seem to know
nothing of his examinations. He was committed
to Newgate, and as the record of his trial shows,
he was brought up from that prison to his arraign-
1 This seems a fitting place to note another rash accusation of
this class, and the only other one which is recorded as having been
brought against any of the martyrs whose lives we have been
studying. While the Blessed Thomas Cottam was on the scaffold,
a Protestant minister reproached him with " lewd behaviour" in
Fish Street four years previously. But another minister at once
interposed, and said that it was not this Cottam, but his brother,
and the martyr proved the falsity of the charge, by showing that
BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON 531
ment at Westminster Hall, " on Thursday next
after the eve of St. Martin . . . under the custody
of Richard Martyn and William Webbe, Sheriffs of
the City of London, in whose custody he had been
committed by virtue of letters of our Lady the
Queen de Habeas Corpus." After his indictment,
" the aforesaid Lawrence Richardson was com-
mitted to the Marshal" of the Queen's Bench prison.
Next day, " Friday," he was brought back by the
Marshal for trial, and was condemned in company
with Ford, Filby, Briant, Hart, and Shert, as has
already been described. The sentence of death
again changed Richardson's prison. It consigned
him to the custody of the Lieutenant of the Tower,
and specified that he was to be drawn to the place
of execution from that prison. To the Tower he
was therefore now taken, as the Diary of the Tower
correctly states. We have already heard from
Kirby's letter, that he on his arrival was left
without bedding for some two months. Four
months later still he was dragged to Tyburn with
the three companions of his martyrdom on May the
3Oth, as we have seen.
The fact that the Blessed Lawrence was selected
to be tried and executed among the more notable of
he had not been in London for seven years. Then two or three
bystanders also affirmed that the person in question was not
Thomas, but his brother ; and the matter dropped. (Briefe Historic,
p. 129; Concertatio, S. 94 and 216 b.)
It is to be noted that Munday, in his Execution of Certaint
Traytours, passes over the incident in silence. As he was favourably
placed for hearing, and gives publicity to all that can discredit the
martyrs, we have here a fresh proof that the refutation of the
calumny was complete.
532 BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON
the imprisoned priests, whilst others were left to
languish untried, makes it probable that the Govern-
ment had some special suspicion or gravamen against
him, and, though the matter is not clear, it would
seem that they believed him to be some one else,
whom they were eager to punish for having dis-
tributed Campion's books. This, or something like
it, seems to be implied in Dr. Allen's introductory
chapter to the Briefe Historic,1 when he says, " If
Mr. Richardson, whose name and person were
wholly mistaken even till his death, had been
arraigned the former day, as he was the latter,
Mr. Campion might belike have discharged him."
That is to say, if the formal evidence against
Richardson (which seems unfortunately to be no
longer on record) had been given in Campion's
presence, during his trial on the i6th, instead of at
the trial of the second group of martyrs on the lyth,
Campion would have been there to prove its irrele-
vance, and Richardson might have been acquitted,
as Collington actually was acquitted in a parallel
case. But so effectually was the evidence mangled,
that Richardson's identity was mistaken, and he
was condemned for some one else.
As soon as he and Blessed Thomas Cottam were
in the cart, " with cheerful countenances," Challoner
says, " they signed themselves with the sign of the
Cross, saying, In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus
Sancti. Mr. Cottam turning him about said, ' God
bless you all. Our Lord bless you all,' with a
1 Briefe Historic, p. 10; Concertatio, p. 219.
BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON 533
smiling countenance. Mr. Richardson being com-
manded by the sheriff's man to look upon his
companion who was in cutting up, said : ' Oh! God's
will be done.' With that, one Field, a preacher, said,
Despatch, despatch ! To whom Mr. Cottam said,
with smiling countenance, ' What, are you an
executioner or a preacher ? fie, fie ! ' A minister
standing by said, ' Leave off those jests, it is no time
to jest; he is a preacher and not an executioner;
he cometh to exhort you to die well.' Mr. Cottam
replied, ' Truly by his word he seemed to be an
executioner ; for he said, Despatch, despatch.' '
At this point a number of persons began to
attack Blessed Lawrence on various subjects, and
he was obliged to say, " I pray you do not trouble
me. If you demand any questions of me, let them
be touching the matter whereof I was condemned,
and do not move new questions." On this they
made him turn round to see the butchery which
was being carried out on the body of Blessed Luke
Kirby. When the venerable head was cut off and
held up before the people, and the hangman accord-
ing to the custom cried out, " God save the Queen,"
they asked the martyr what he said to that. He
answered, " I say, Amen ; I pray God save her."
Then he went on to say to the people, " I am come
hither to die for treason, and I protest before God,
I am not guilty of any treason, more than all
Catholic bishops that ever were in this land, since
the conversion thereof till our time ; and were they
alive, they might as well be executed for treason as
I am now."
534 BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON
For a time the attacks of the ministers were
directed against Blessed Thomas Cottam, but they
returned to the charge against Blessed Lawrence
by reading out the "six articles," and his answer
to them, which was as follows :
" Lawrence Richardson. To the fifth article he
answered, that so far as Doctour Saunders and
Doctour Bristowe agree with the Catholique
doctrine of the Church of Rome, he alloweth that
doctrine to be true. And touching the first and
all the rest of the articles, he saith that in all
matters not repugnant to the Catholic religion,
he professeth obedience to her Majestic, and
otherwise maketh no answer to any of them, but
believeth therein as he is taught by the Catholique
Church of Rome.
" LAWRENCE RICHARDSON.
"JOHN POPHAM. DA. LEWIS.
"THOMAS EGERTON. JOHN HAMMOND."
Topcliffe, who was present, and some of the
ministers cried out that he built his faith on
Saunders ; to whom he answered, " I build not
my faith on any one man whatsoever, but upon
the whole Catholic Church."
When the rope was fixed upon the neck of each
of the confessors, the sheriff made a last attempt
to overcome their constancy. " Now, Richardson,"
he said, " if thou wilt confess thy faults and
renounce the Pope, the Queen will extend her
mercy towards thee, and thou shalt be carried
BLESSED LAWRENCE RICHARDSON 535
back again." " I thank her Majesty," the martyr
answered, "for her mercy; but I must not confess
an untruth, or renounce my faith." The same offer
was made to Blessed Thomas, and either mistaking,
or feigning to mistake his answer, they loosed the
rope from the gallows and removed him from the
cart. On this they again pressed Blessed Lawrence
to confess and ask pardon of the Queen, to which
he could only answer again that he had never
offended her to his knowledge. At this Topcliffe
cried out in a rage, "The like mercy was never
shown to any offender, and if you were in any other
commonwealth, you should be torn in pieces with
horses." Finally, when he had asked all Catholics
present to pray with him, and had recited the
Pater, Ave, and Credo, the cart was drawn away,
whilst he was heard saying : " Lord, receive my
soul ; Lord Jesus, receive my soul."
E. S. K.
AUTHORITIES. — Besides those mentioned above, the
chief general authorities are Briefe Historic, pp. 121 — 124.
Concert atio (1588), ff. 93 — 96, 219.
The Annals of the English College, Rome, are apparently
in error when they state that this martyr aliquandiu commoratus
est (" was sometime a resident," Foley, vi. 86), in that College.
Dr. Worthington's Catalogus Marty nun in Anglia, 1614, denies
it, but says that he had had the intention of going to Rome
for the sake of devotion. It is probable that the mistake
arose from a confusion between the two Johnsons; for,
whereas Robert Johnson did go to Rome, this is not
mentioned in the Annual Letters.
XIX.
THE BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM,
JESUIT.
Tyburn, 30 May, 1582.
LANCASHIRE, with most of the north, had been
comparatively little affected by the Reformation
when Elizabeth came to the throne. But amongst
those who had been seduced from the faith of their
fathers were Lawrence Cottam and his wife Ann,
daughter of a Mr. Brewer or Brewerth, of Brindle,
in the same county. Lawrence Cottam possessed
some property at Dilworth and Tarnaker, on which
he lived himself, as his family had done for many
generations. Their son Thomas was born there in
the year I549-1 He was early sent to Oxford and
entered at Brasenose College, and will most
probably have been there with Blessed John Shert,
at least when he first entered. He took his degree
as Bachelor on the 23rd of March, 1568. 2 On leaving
1 Gillow, vol. i. p. 574 ; Bartoli, Inghilterra, lib. iv. cap. iii. p. 260.
2 " Cottam (Cotam and Cotton) Thomas supplicated for B.A-
March 22, 1568-9, admitted March 23, determined in Lent,
supplicated M.A. in June, licensed for M.A. July n, 1572,
incepted July 14." (Boase, Register of the University of Oxford, I. 274
and II. iii. 21.)
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 537
the University he was appointed to the mastership
of a free grammar-school in the city of London,
where he became " well known and beloved," says
Arther Pitts, long afterwards his fellow-prisoner in
the Tower. At this time he had the happiness to
meet with Thomas Pound of Belmont, one of the
noblest of the many heroic confessors of those days.
For God's sake Pound gave up the royal favour,
a large fortune, and his liberty for some thirty years.
During this space he was committed to gaol sixteen
several times, passed through ten or eleven different
prisons, and was three times tortured, yet he
never lost courage, cheerfulness, or even playfulness.
Pound converted Cottam to the holy faith, and at
the same time to a holy life. It does not appear at
what exact time his conversion took place. In a
letter full of gratitude to Pound, dated the I2th of
May, 1575, he speaks as though it had happened
some time before :
" Your charity like its Author is eternal, and as
there is no comparison between things eternal and
perishable goods, between time and eternity, so am
I neither able by word or writing to express
sufficiently the testimony of gratitude I owe you.
I remember when you were to me a consoler in my
solitude, the guide of my path, my helper in my
afflictions, and my refuge in need. Through you
the divine mercy recalled me from my wanderings,
raised me up when fallen, sustained me in my
wavering, preserved me in my trials, restored me
when lost. So great a thing is it to possess a
538 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
faithful friend. Such you have been, and have
shown at the same time how far one, whose
Christianity is pure and sincere, excels ordinary
men, and those devoted to pleasures. I had already
begun to know vice, which I deeply lament. Now
I follow virtue, and wonderfully does it refresh
my soul, which is now freed from earthly cares,
safe from enemies, and in no great fear of hell.
These are great things indeed, and for all of
them I am indebted to you. But that is by
far the greatest of all, which the Holy Ghost
by the mouth of the Apostle saith, Testimonium
reddidit spiritui nostro quod sumus filii Dei. I
beseech you by the same Holy Spirit, by Christ
this day ascending into heaven, by the Eternal
Father, at Whose right hand He sitteth, by the
Omnipotent and Immortal God, Three in One, that
you be always mindful of me, and sometimes solace
me by your letters. I will implore this same God,
even to my latest breath, that He may long preserve
you safe, with the highest increase of His honour
and glory, and at last crown you with a holy end.
Farewell. This feast of the Ascension of our Lord,
in the year 1575. "1
The presumption is that, when this letter was
written, our martyr had already given up his
school, and had gone to Douay. The tone of the
writer leaves no room for doubt that his reception
into the Church had already taken place, and in
1 H. More, Historia Provincia Anglican^ Soc. jfesu, IV. vii. p. 127 ;
Bartoli, Inghilterra, lib. iv. cap. ii. p. 261.
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 539
his examination, printed below, we hear that he
was received at Douay. How he was occupied
there we do not know, probably making some
preliminary studies outside the College, for when
he was eventually admitted there as a student
for the priesthood, on the 22nd of May, 1577,
his ordination as subdeacon and deacon followed
very shortly. He received both Orders at Cambrai,
the first in August and the second in December,
of the same year. The College Diary records
a journey to England in the following month,
January, 1578, and his return from England on
May the I4th with five Oxford students. It may be
conjectured, as in the similar case of Blessed John
Shert, that these were some of his old pupils, for
whose sake he had expressly gone to England.
This was just at the time of the troubles at
Douay and the transfer of the College to Rheims.
From Rheims, on the i6th of the February follow-
ing, 1579, Blessed Thomas, still only a deacon, set
out for Rome. He was one of a party of nine,
seven being students of the College, and they are
said in the Diary, without distinction, to have gone
"partly for devotion, partly for study." When he
arrived in the eternal city, he probably entered the
German College,1 for its historian speaks of him
as an alumnus. But as his name is not on the
College Register we may surmise that he was only
there for a short time, as a probationer. He soon
felt himself inflamed with the desire to embrace the
1 Historia Collegii Germanici et Hungarici MS. Auctore P. Gul.
Fusbano, 1580.
540 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
religious life, asked to be admitted into the Society,
and was received into the Novitiate at Sant Andrea
on April the 8th. His holy desires grew with each
step, and now he longed to devote himself to the
missions in India, and, though only a novice, begged
his Superiors to send him there. But the heats of
his first and only Roman summer brought on " a
consuming and lingering sickness, and he was by
his Superiors sent to Lyons to try if, by change
of air, he might be recovered." As he left the
Novitiate, and passed out of the gates of Sant
Andrea the Brother Porter, bidding him adieu, said,
"Cave ne alius accipiat coronam tuam" — "Beware
lest another receive thy crown," and the words
remained deeply impressed in his tender conscience,
as we shall see.1
Cottam must have arrived at Lyons early in
December, 1579, for on the 2ist of January, 1580,
a letter was sent by the Father General to Father
William Crichton, then Provincial of the Jesuits in
that part of France, and afterwards a well-known
missionary in Scotland, in which the following
clause occurs :
" Father Maionus writes that one Thomas
Cottam, an Englishman and a novice, has come
to you. Your Reverence must know that he was
sent thither to make trial of his health, for here in
Rome he was sick. Wherefore, if he does not
get better there, your Reverence is empowered to
1 Brief e Historic, p. 127, and MS. Relation of Arthur Pitts,
Westminster Archives, vol. i. p. 5, printed in Pollen's Acts of
English Martyrs, p. 281.
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 541
dismiss him, as he is a novice, and was sent there
on this condition. He is, moreover, not a man of
great, or perhaps even, of average talents."1
The reader will, doubtless, not lose his respect
for the future martyr, by learning that he was made
of the same clay as most of us, but we must all
regret that we have not got Father Crichton's
answer, and cannot say what he thought of Cottam's
talents, or what the conditions were, under which
he sent him back to Rheims in the following spring.
But at all events we do know how the Blessed
Thomas understood the terms on which they
parted. He considered himself accepted for the
Mission of India, if his health should sufficiently
recover for him to go there, and the doctors decided
(rightly for a wonder), that a return to England
would give him his best chance of a permanent
recovery. The martyr therefore accepted the situa-
tion, with all the duties that followed from it. He
would return to England despite the dangers of so
doing, and as the reception of priestly Orders would
also facilitate the end in view, he would apply for
these at once.
Blessed Thomas therefore turned towards his
old home, the College at Rheims, and made the
journey with his future companion in prison and
martyrdom, Blessed Robert Johnson, with whom
the cunning Sledd, as has already been related, had
associated himself on the road from Rome. The
two martyrs arrived at Rheims on the nth of April,
1580, while the spy made a detour to Paris, to give
1 Archives S.J. Ep. ad Galliam, 1576 — 1579, f. 41.
542 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
the English Ambassador a minute description of
their persons and plans. Having done this he went
back to Rheims, where he arrived on the 24th. of
the same month. Blessed Thomas's health was
too much broken to allow of his continuing his
studies any further, but " being a deacon and a
good preacher long before," it was resolved to allow
him to receive the priesthood at once and then to
go to England.
Accordingly on May the 25th, the Wednesday of
Whitsun week, he left the College for Soissons for
his ordination, which no doubt took place on the
28th, the Ember Saturday. His last days at the
College were memorable ones, the whole house
being thrilled by the presence of the missionary
party just arrived from Rome, Campion, Persons,
Sherwin, Kirby, and the others, and on June the 5th,
he set out for England with one of them, Edward
Rishton, and three other companions, Dr. Humphrey
Ely, John Hart, and Thomas Crane. They arrived
at Dover about the i6th or i8th of June, sufficiently
disguised, as they supposed, to be safe. But Sledd's
work had been but too well done. After they had
landed and gone to their inn, they were searched
to their skins, and though nothing suspicious was
found about them, Cottam was at once recognized
and arrested. Hart also was stopped, being taken
for Orton, who was afterwards captured. Rishton
escaped for a time, but fell into the hands of the
London officers in the course of a few months, as
we have seen. The Mayor, Mr. Allen, and the
searcher, Stevens, now held a consultation, and as
543
a way of saving expense, proposed to Dr. Ely, who
passed by the name of Havard, and had come and
gone repeatedly by the same name without exciting
suspicion, to take charge of their prisoner to London.
He would only have to hand him over, with a letter
from the Mayor to Lord Cobham, the Warden of
the Cinque Ports. Dr. Ely agreed, and his host of
the inn made himself responsible for the faithful
fulfilment of his undertaking.
But the good lawyer had no idea of keeping
his promise. He was a religious man, and had
himself ten years before sacrificed his prospects and
taken the road of exile for his faith.1 And no sooner
were they well out of the town than he said to his
prisoner, " I cannot in conscience, nor will not,
being myself a Catholic, deliver you, a Catholic
priest, prisoner to my Lord Cobham. But we will
straight to London, and when you come there,
shift for yourself, as I will do for myself." So, on
arriving in London they separated.
But Cottam, "a man of marvellous zeal and of
1 Dr. Humphrey Ely, of Brasenose and afterwards of St. John's,
on declaring himself a Catholic, was obliged to leave Oxford and
betook himself in 1570 to Douay. Here he devoted himself to the
study of law, in which he graduated, and obtained a professorship.
He also took a convenient house, where he boarded English students
in the University, of whom there were a good many besides those
at the English College. (See Douay Diaries, March, 1576.) From
March, 1577, he became a member of the College, and followed its
fortunes to Rheims. After the committal of his friend, Blessed
Thomas Cottam, Ely retired to Spain, but returned again imme-
diately to Rheims, and became a priest. He received the three
sacred Orders in March and April, 1582, and said his first Mass on
St. George's Day. He became Professor of Civil and Canon Law
at Pont-a-Mousson in 1586, and died there in 1604.
544 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
a timorous conscience," could not enjoy in peace a
liberty which might cost others dear. He went
immediately to one of the prisons to consult a
Catholic friend, probably Pound, who at that time
was in the Marshalsea,1 in Southwark, and asked
his advice on the whole case. His friend told him
"that in conscience he could not make that
escape," and urged him to give himself up to the
authorities, and so secure Ely against harm.
Blessed Thomas at once went to Ely and asked
him for the letter from the Mayor of Dover to Lord
Cobham. "Why, what will you do with it?" said
his friend. " I will go and carry it to him," answered
the holy priest, " and yield myself prisoner ; for I
am fully persuaded that I cannot make this escape
in conscience." "Why," said Ely, "this counsel
that hath been given you, proceedeth, I confess,
from a zealous mind ; marry, I doubt whether it
carrieth with it the weight of knowledge. You
shall not have the letter, nor you may not in
conscience yield yourself to the persecutor and
adversary, having so good means offered to escape
his cruelty." The martyr persisted ; Ely, unwilling
to yield, proposed that they should consult with
"one newly come over, whom Mr. Cottam greatly
honoured and reverenced for his singular wit and
learning, and for his rare virtues."
It is clear that Persons or Campion is meant,
1 He was there till September 18, when the Bishop of London
sent him heavily ironed to solitary confinement in the half-ruined
episcopal castle at Bishop's Stortford, where he remained until
he was brought to the Tower on August 17, 1581.
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 545
and Persons has left a record of what actually
happened : " The Fathers, consulting the case with
some other priests and discreet Catholics, all were
of opinion that, his case standing as it did, and
the obligation of his appearing lying rather upon
another than himself, he was not bound to offer
himself to so manifest danger. Which determina-
tion, though he were content to accept and follow
for the time, yet seemed he still rather to incline to
offer up himself, if he might be permitted."
After this, Dr. Ely sent back the Mayor of
Dover's letter to its writer, and before long the
host of the inn there, who was held responsible for
the loss of the prisoner, came up to London to
search for him, and meeting Dr. Ely, insisted on
having either him or Cottam, and thus Dr. Ely
had no choice between going to prison himself or
finding his friend. So, meeting Blessed Thomas in
Cheapside, he said : " Mr. Cottam, such a man is
come to town and hath so seized upon me for your
escape, that you or I must needs go to prison. You
know my state and condition, and may guess how
gently I shall be treated, if once I appear under my
right name before them. Now it is in your choice
whether of us shall go ; for one must go, there is
no remedy ; and to force you I will not, for I had
rather sustain what punishment soever."
Mr. Cottam, lifting up his eyes and hands to
heaven, said: "Now God be blessed! I should
never, while I lived, have been without scruple
and grudge of conscience, if I had escaped them.
Nothing grieveth me, but that I have not despatched
JJ n.
546 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
some business that I have to do." " Why," said Ely,
" it is but ten of the clock yet, and you may
despatch your business by four of the clock, and
then you may go to them." " Whither is it,"
said he, " that I must go ? " " To the sign of the
Star," quoth Ely, " in New Fish Street ; and there
you must enquire for one Mr. Andrews, my Lord
Cobham's deputy. To him you must yield yourself."
Arthur Pitts adds that, as they parted, the
martyr spoke these words, which show that he
was actuated not by a timid scrupulosity, but by
a holy ambition for the crown intended for him.
" Now God be thanked," said he, " for I was never
quiet in my minde since you let me go ; still
it ran in my head that which the porter of
St. Andrew's sayd unto me."
Father Persons here takes up the story again.
"As soon as ever Mr. Cottam understood that the
inn-holder at Dover and Mr. Dr. Ely were called
in question about his escape, and that one of them
was necessarily to come in trouble, he returned to
consult the case again with the said Fathers, who
upon this new accident inclined more to his desire.
And so with a merry countenance, he went of
himself and all alone, and offered himself prisoner."1
And now began his long martyrdom, which
lasted nearly two years. We might have expected
1 It is characteristic of the dishonesty prevalent among
Elizabeth's officials that Andrews, who had taken over Cottam
in New Fish Street, should have applied for and have received,
on July the 4th, the then considerable sum of £5 for bringing up
Cottam from Dover. (R.O. Treasurer of the Chamber's accounts.)
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 547
that his chivalrous self-surrender would have won
for him some sort of consideration, but in fact he
suffered more than the rest of the glorious band,
presumably because of the informations brought
against him by Sledd, or some other spy. He was
first carried to the Court, which was then at
Nonsuch or Oatlands, and there a number of
ministers plied him with arguments and per-
suasions for five days, and then he was committed
to the Marshalsea, " close prisoner by the com-
mandment of the Hon. Council, the 27th of June,
for papistry ; anno 1580." 1
"Close-prisoner" means one who is deprived
of all intercourse with his fellow-captives. This
must have been very galling to Cottam, as there
were in that prison many Catholics, Pound amongst
them, whose company would materially have light-
ened the sufferings of confinement. Still, means
were found by the others to communicate with him,
and in the Gesta of the Rheims College for 1580,
an extract is given of a letter from a priest, who
was his fellow-prisoner. It runs thus, somewhat
obscurely, " Cotmus is in close-custody next to me.
He will say his first Mass in my cell. . . . We make
nothing of these dangers."2 Thus it would seem
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxl. n. 40.
2 Gesta Seminarii Pontificii Anglorum apud Rhemos, 1580. (Clergy
Brotherhood MSS. vol. iii.) "Cotmus est in arcta custodia proximus
meus, qui faciet primitias apud me (hie ordinatus presbyter statim ex qui-
busdam causis migravit in Angliam, licet tamen sub obligatione pecuniaria
dimissus sit, iste eo tempore adveniens captus est) nos de istiusmodi periculis
nihil curamus." It is probable that some words have fallen out
between Angliam and licet.
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
that Cottam never had the consolation of saying
Mass in a Catholic church or chapel, but only
in the narrow prison-cell, and amid the terrible
risks which celebration under those circumstances
involved.
Without a doubt he needed all the spiritual
assistance he could obtain, for, as we have already
seen, the cruel and remorseless persecutors had
singled him out to be a special victim of their
malice.
Writing on the iyth of November, 1580, from
London, to Father Agazzari, Father Persons sends
him greetings from Father Sherwin, Father Luke
[Kirby], Father Johnson, Father Hart, Paschal and
Orton, all of whom were in prison, Sherwin having
been captured only four days before. " We expect,"
he adds, " that two priests will be publicly executed
ere long, Cottam and Clifton." l
Though Cottam was not executed at that time,
there is no reason to doubt that Father Persons
had good foundation for what he said, and that
his death was actually under discussion. The
following paper, which from various circumstances
we conclude to have been drawn up during this
month, gives us the points, with which he might
be charged, the matter contained in them being
amply sufficient for a capital conviction in those
days.
" Cottam chargeable with
" Departing the realm without licence for satis-
fying his conscience, misliking religion here now
1 Stonyhurst MSS. Collectanea P. fol. 299.
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 549
established. (In his answers to the four first
interrogatories.)
" Refusing to answer the 6th interrogatory of
the lawfulness of the oath of obedience to her
Majesty.
" Refusing to conform himself to the religion
now here established. (In his answer to the 7th.)
" With being reconciled at Douay to the Church
of Rome by a priest whom he will not name, as also
with refusing to declare, who be the reconcilers to
the Pope within the realm. (In his answer to the
i6th and 17th.)
" Refusing to confess her Majesty to be a godly
Princess, though lawful. (In answer to the 23rd.)
" Refusing to answer whether the Pope's excom-
munication of her Majesty be lawful, and according
to God's Word.
" Refusing to answer anything before confessed
upon oath, or to take any oath therein.
" [Second Interrogatories.'} Receiving out of
England £20 for scholars of Rheims, but refusing
in conscience to confess who sent the said money.
(In answer to the third interrogatory.)
" With receiving the book of seditious questions
of an Englishman at Rheims, to be brought over to
one herein this realm, but saith he remembereth
not the names of either of those men, but refuseth
on his oath to make this answer."1
If this paper should not be connected with a
plan to prosecute Blessed Thomas to the death,
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cxl. n. 43.
550 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
then it will be one of the papers prepared for an
ordeal even more painful than death. Early in
December, as we have seen, the Privy Council
resolved " to make an example of some by punish-
ment to the terror of others," and Cottam was
perhaps the first picked out for the torture.
On December the 4th, he was transferred to
the Tower. On the loth he was subjected to the
horrible invention of Sir William Skevington l for
upwards of an hour, the blood flowing freely from
the nostrils. It would appear that at some other
time he was racked. Besides the questions which
we have seen were prepared for him and others by
Elizabeth's Council,2 he himself declared at his trial
that he was asked, under threat of torture, what
penances had been given him in confession. In
order to escape from their cruelty, he told them,
with a jest. They then required him to say for what
sins the penances were given him, and because he
would not answer, they applied the torture. When
he complained of their inhuman cruelty, they gave
him blows, and then he protested that, though they
killed him by their torments, he would never disclose
any such thing whether about himself or others.
Upon this open declaration in court, Hopton
got up and had the effrontery to deny the whole
story. But the martyr was not to be cowed, and
answered : " And is not this true ? Here is present
Dr. Hammond and the rest of the Commissioners
1 i.e., the instrument of torture known as "The Scavenger's
Daughter."
2 See the Life of Blessed Luke Kir by, above.
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 551
that were at my racking, to whose consciences
I appeal. God is my witness that it is most
true."1
Neither infirm health, nor the sufferings of
prison and torture, broke down the courage of the
martyr. In the spring of 1581 he was one of
the Catholic prisoners, who were dragged to hear
the sermons of Nichols, and who boldly reproved
him. On March the loth, in particular, when a
number of courtiers and magistrates were present to
give greater importance to the preacher, the diarist
-of the Tower records, that Blessed Cottam " with
wonderful courage most seriously admonished them
of their duty, which circumstance is thought to
have been the means of accelerating his death.
From that day forward, however, Nichols was held
in utter contempt."
The dragging to sermons ceased, as we have
heard, after Pentecost, and at midsummer the
prisoners were indicted for recusancy, Cottam's
name being still legible on the sessions roll.2 God
gave His servant a great desire of martyrdom ;
yet at his trial he did his best to defend himself
against the unjust charge brought against him.
" You came into England at or near the time
that the rest came," said the prosecuting Queen's
Counsel, " so that it must needs be intended a
1 Cardinal Allen, Sincere and Modest Defence (1584), pp. n, 12,
gives the whole incident, saying that it was " verbatim left behind
in writing." (Latin translation, Ad Persecutores Anglos pro Catholicis
Responsio, in the Concertatio, 1588, f. 297 ; also More's Historia
Provincice Anglicans Soc. Jesu, p. 128.)
a See above, pp. 387, 417.
552 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
match between you, for the furtherance of those
affairs which were then a-brewing, and how answer
you thereunto ? "
Cottam. — " It was neither my purpose nor my
message to come into England ; neither would I
have come, had not God otherwise driven me ; for
my journey was appointed to the Indians : and
thither had I gone, had my health been thereto
answerable. But in the meanwhiles it pleased God
to visit me with sickness, and being counselled by
the physicians, for my health's sake, to come into
England, — for otherwise, as they said, either
remaining there or going elsewhere I should not
recover it, — I came upon that occasion, and upon
no other, into this realm."
Campion. — " Indeed the physicians in Rome do
hold for a certainty that, if an Englishman shall fall
sick amongst them, there is no better nor scant any
other way for his health, than to repair into England
there to take his natural air, which agreeth best with
his complexion."
Cottam. — " And that only was the cause of my
coming, and not any determinate intent either to
persuade or dissuade, being otherwise by my Provost
charged to the Indians. Neither after my arrival
here did I hide myself, nor dealt otherwise than
might beseem any man that meddled no more than
I did. I lay for the most part in Southwark ;
I walked daily in Paul's ; I refrained no place,
which betokened my innocency."
Queen's Counsel. — " Did you neither persuade nor
dissuade ? Was there not a book found in your
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 553
budget, the contents whereof tended to no other
purpose ? The which book was made by one
d'Espignata, entitled Tractatus Conscientice, contain-
ing certain answers to the Supremacy, and how
sophistically to frustrate any kinds of demands ;
with a further method how you ought to demean
yourself in every sort of company, whether it were
of Protestants or Puritans, and what speeches you
should use to convert them both : — as, unto the
Protestants, highly commending them and showing
them that they are far nearer the right way than
the Puritans, and whom you should utterly dispraise
unto the Puritans ; likewise in commending the
Protestants and persuading them to the obedience
of the Pope. To what end then should you carry
this book about you, if you were not purposed to do
as it prescribeth ? "
Cottam. — " I protest before God I knew nothing
of that book, neither how nor when it came to
me."
" Then Campion, seeing him driven to so narrow
an exigent as to deny that which was manifest,1 said :
" Many casualties and events may happen,
whereby a man may be endangered, ere he beware,.
by the carrying of a thing he knoweth not, as
either the malice of others, that privily convey it
among other his provisions, or his own negligence
or oversight, which marked not attentively what
he took with him. Whereof both are to be judged
errors, yet not deemed an offence ; and therefore
this cannot be maintained to be done by Mr. Cottam
1 This of course is only the Protestant reporter's gloss.
554 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
on purpose, which we see flatly to be out of his
knowledge. But suppose that purposely he brought
the book with him, yet what can that make against
him for treason? It treateth of conscience; it
toucheth good demeanour ; it showeth how to make
the unbelieving faithful, — matters wholly spiritual,
points of edification, preparing to Godwards.
Where is then the treason ? But were these reasons
impertinent, yet it is a custom with all students
beyond the seas, when any man learned or well
thought of draweth a treatise touching either
conscience or good behaviour, to copy it out and
carry it about with them, not aiming at any faction
or conspiracy, but for their own proper knowledge
and private instruction." l
The martyr was taken back to the Tower after
sentence, and probably there suffered an increase
of severity, such as we know was inflicted upon
several of his fellow-sufferers.
We get a passing glimpse of Cottam in a letter
written from the Tower by John Hart, whose
Diarium has been so often quoted, and who was
afterwards a Jesuit. His letter was in fact a
petition to the Society, like those of Woodhouse and
of Briant mentioned above, to be received even
while in prison. Hart says that he has asked
Cottam's advice, and that Cottam had encouraged
him to consider his desire for the religious life as
a genuine vocation from God. Considering the
1 Harleian MSS. 6,265, printed in Cobbett's State Trials, 1809,
p. 1065. The merit of Campion's answers is enhanced, when we
remember that the reporter was decidedly hostile.
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 555
complications of the case,1 this showed no small
discernment on the future martyr's part, and his
judgment was verified by the event.
Some months after Blessed Cottam's condem-
nation, he was amongst those examined again by
the " six articles " of the Council. But like his
brothers in martyrdom, Blessed John Shert and
Blessed Lawrence Richardson,- his answer kept to
the one point of his agreeing in all things with the
teaching of the Church.
"Thomas Cottam. — To the first; in this, and
all other questions he believeth as the Catholique
Church (which he taketh to be the Church of Rome)
teacheth him. And other answer he maketh not
to any of the rest of these articles.
" By me, THOMAS COTTAM, Priest.
" JOHN POPHAM. DA. LEWIS.
"THOMAS EGERTON. JOHN HAMMOND."2
On May the zgth, Tuesday in the octave of the
Ascension, the martyr " received a bill from the
1 J. Morris (Troubles, ii. 30 — 34) prints the important passages of
Hart's letter to Walsingham (R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cl. 80), in
which pleading for his life, he offered terms which were very dis-
honourable, though Foley (Records S.J. vii. 338) is mistaken in
calling the letter an act of apostasy. On May 12, 1582, he wrote
the letter alluded to in the text, begging for admission into the
Society, and his courage rising, took of his own accord the vows
of religion. (Archives S.J. Anglia, ii. fol. 731 a.) After this his
constancy fully atoned for his previous weakness. He was next
year admitted to the Society in prison, and after banishment in
1585, died in 1586, in a College of the Society in Poland.
- Butler's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 202 ; Tierney-Dodd, vol. iii. p. xii.
Appendix.
556 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
Lieutenant of the Tower," says Arthur Pitts in his
relation, " that the next daie he should suffer.1
Whereupon he came to his window, over againste
my doore, saying with a joy of heart and voice,
' Give God thankes with me, for to-morrow is my
day. And now I hope I shall not escape the happy
houre, which I have earnestly so long desired,
because I finde my name first in the rovvle of the
four assigned to dy to-morrow.' The next daie
he departed joyfully. But arriving to the place of
his martyrdom, he was quailed againe : for albeit he
was first taken up, yet the officer, fearing that his
example might draw many to be of his Religionr
because he was well known and beloved in the
cittie, having been before a schoolmaister there,
they, desirous to save his life, solicited him earnestly
to recant his Religion ; in which he persisting,
they take him downe, to see if the death and
torments of the other his brethren could move him.
But when they perceived that his courage by their
blood encreased, he had his desired crowne of
martyrdom. The occasion that he had so much
this crowne printed in his head, and the fear of
losing it was this." And then follows the story of
the Brother Porter's farewell at Sant Andrea at
Rome, which has been related before.2
Far, indeed, from being overcome by the spectacle
of the death and butchery of his brethren, which he
1 It is curious that his diet in the Tower was only charged for
till May 27, as he suffered three days later. (Pollen, Acts of English
Martyrs, p. 280, note.)
2 P. 540. Westminster Archives, vol. ii. p. 5, printed in Pollen's
Acts of English Martyrs, pp. 280 — 282.
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 557
had been forced to witness, the martyr, whilst it
was in progress, and whilst the discussion between
the ministers and Blessed Lawrence Richardson
was going on, tried to make a good impression on
Bull, the hangman. Taking him by the sleeve, he
said : " God forgive thee, and make thee His
servant : take heed in time and call for grace, and
no doubt God will hear thee. Take example by the
executioner of St. Paul, who, during the time of the
Saint's execution, a little drop of blood falling from
St. Paul upon his garment, white like milk, did
afterwards call him to remembrance of himself, and
so he became penitent for his sins and became a
good man : whose example I pray God thou mayest
follow ; and I pray God give thee His grace."
" What ! " cried one of the ministers, who had
caught the last words, " do you believe he was
saved by the blood that fell on him ? " And so they
continued for some time to cavil against him on this
new score.
When they returned to the charge, calling on
him to confess his treasons, he said : " How willingly
would I confess, if I did know anything that did
charge me. And if we had been guilty of any such
thing, surely one or other of us either by racking
or death would have confessed it, or else we had
been such people as never were heard of. And I
protest that before my coming into England I was
prepared to go into the Indies, and if I were to be
set at liberty, I would never rest on the journey
towards those countries." " The Queen will be
merciful to thee, if thou wilt thyself," said the
558 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
sheriff. Upon which the martyr answered, " I thank
her Grace; do with me what you think good." And
then it was that, affecting to see some sort of yield-
ing in these words, and with the hope of entrapping
him into some expression of disagreement with his
fellow-martyrs, the sheriff ordered Blessed Thomas
to be removed from the cart as we have seen.1
On this, the martyrdom of Blessed Richardson was
carried out, Blessed Cottam repeating again and
again, " O good Lawrence, pray for me. Lord
Jesus, receive thy soul."
They all now clustered round Blessed Cottam,
urging their arguments and persuasions, and the
witness, whom Challoner quotes from the Briefe
Historic, says he heard him well utter these words :
" I will not swerve a jot from my faith in anything.
Yea, if I had ten thousand lives, I would rather lose
them all than forsake the Catholic faith in any
point," and the sheriff, despairing of any success,
said, " Despatch him, since he is so stubborn," and
he was once more lifted into the cart.
Another witness explains that the martyr was
at first under the impression that he was really
pardoned, because of the entire blamelessness of
his return to England, even from the point of view
1 Munday's version is : " But Cottam seemed to utter such words,
as though there had been hope he would have forsaken his wicked-
ness, so that the halter was untied and he brought down out of the
cart again. In which time Lawrence Richardson prepared him to
death, confessing himself a Catholic, and that he would believe in
all things as the Catholic Church of Rome did, unto the Pope he
allowed one only Supremacy. In which traitorous opinion, after
certain Latin prayers, he was committed to God."
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
559
of his adversaries. " At length they said it was
requisite he should stand up, and speak a few words
to the people, to signify that he was sent for no
such ill-purpose [as the rest], and that he misliked
much the Pope's doings in these matters. . . . But
God gave him grace to see their legerdemain, and
to stand upon the truth and innocence, and so he
was executed with more despite than the rest." l
All the time that they made him look on at the
quartering of Blessed Richardson, he continued
praying aloud. " Lord Jesus, have mercy on them !
0 Lord, give me grace to endure to the end ; Lord,
give me constancy to the end. Good Lawrence, thy
soul pray for me.2 O Lord, what a spectacle hast
thou made unto me ! " The head of his friend was
held up by the executioner with the usual words,
"God save the Queen," and the martyr added,
" God save and bless her, and with all my heart
1 wish her prosperity as my liege and Sovereign
Queen and chief governess." But when they once
more tried to get him to add, "and supreme head
in matters ecclesiastical," he said, " If I would have
put in those words, I had been discharged almost
two years since. You say I am a traitor if I deny
that. No, that is a matter of faith, and unless it
be for my conscience and faith I never offended her
1 Briefe Historie, p. 26. Munday says: "Then was Cottam
brought up to the cart again, and the good opinion had of him
afore, changed into that obstinate nature, that was in them all."
2 " For which words both the Preachers and the people rebuked
him, telling him he ought to pray to none but to God only, all help
of man was but in vain. Whereto he answered, he was assured
that he could pray for him." (Munday.)
560 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
Majesty," and looking up to heaven he cried: "In
te Domine speravi, non confundar in atermim" and
" Domine, tu plura pro me passus es," three times
repeating "plura." For some time longer they let
him continue praying ; he recited some verses of
the Miserere, he asked pardon of all he had ever
injured, and pardoned all in turn, praying God
mercifully to turn away His anger from this country,
and call its people to repentance ; then he begged
all Catholics present to join in prayer with him,
and after a last Pater and Ave, his sacrifice was
completed.1
When his body was stripped for quartering they
found next his skin a rough canvas cloth like a sack,
the best substitute he could procure for a hair-shirt.
We have already heard from the Annual Letter for
1582, of the English College at Rome, that the
mangled bodies of the martyrs of May the 3Oth,
instead of being as usual fixed in various parts of
London, were buried under the gibbet, on account
of the murmurs which began to be heard among
the people, and that certain Catholics removed the
relics during the night.2
That Blessed Thomas Cottam never ceased to
belong canonically to the Society of Jesus, as other
novices do, is clearer to us than it was to his
Catholic contemporaries, who had no access to
the Protestant and comparatively full report of the
statements made by Cottam during his trial, which
1 Munday adds that "as the cart was drawing away, he said,
'In mantis tuas Domine commendo spiritum meum.' "
2 Foley, Records S.J. vol. vi. p. 86.
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 561
have been printed above. The compilers of the
Briefe Historic, chief of whom was Dr. Allen, knew
that he was not sent away from the Society, at the
time he left the Novitiate, though several Jesuit
historians, amongst them Father More and Father
N. Southwell, have stated that he did leave the
Order at that time. This inaccuracy we have
seen corrected by the letter of Father General
Everard Mercurian. Of the conditions on which
Cottam eventually parted from the Provincial,
Father Crichton, at Lyons, we have no official
record. But Father Persons tells us that Cottam
"accounted himself still of the Society," because
he had " express promise to be received again,
whensoever his health should serve him for the
same," and now we know that the undertaking on
the side of the Society was even more explicit. The
Order had agreed to receive him, no longer on trial,
but for the missions. In his own words, " he was
by his Provost charged for the Indians," when
his health should be restored. But his convales-
cence had certainly been effected by his native air,
the agreement with the Order had therefore clearly
taken effect. On the scaffold he declared that his
obligation to go to the Indies was so great, that
" if liberty be allowed me, I shall never rest till I go
there." The Society, on her side, has fully acknow-
ledged her bond of attachment to him, through her
historians and martyrologists, and he is reckoned a
member of the Order in the Brief of Beatification.
It is uncertain whether it was in Blessed
Cottam's lifetime or at what period, but his brother
KK n.
562 BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM
John, who succeeded to the estates, and his wife,
Catherine, became Catholics, and frequently appear
in the recusant rolls.1 Their only child was a girl,
Priscilla ; but in the Register of the English
Catholic non-jurors2 in 1715 appears a " Lawrence
Cottam, of Dilworth, Gent.," so that through some
other branch the martyr's blood had obtained
perseverance in the faith for a Catholic succession
up to that time.
E. S. K.
J. H. P.
AUTHORITIES. — Briefe Historic, pp. 12, 26, 124 — 131;
Conccrtatio,ft.93 — 96,224,226; Yepes; Gillow; The Dictionary
of National Biography, &c.
For Cottam's arrest we have three primary authorities,
(i) The Briefe Historic, p. 127, &c. As this was composed at
Rheims, at a time when Dr. Ely was residing there, we may
take it that he is responsible for its accuracy. In effect it
touches on those points, on which Ely, and Ely alone could
then have given evidence, and on no others. (2) Father Persons,
MS. Life of Campion (1594), cap. xxiii., wrote with this
earlier account before him, and supplemented it from his
own personal knowledge. (3) Arthur Pitts' relation seems to be
independent of both (Pollen, Acts of English Martyrs, pp. 280
—282).
H. Foley, Records of the English Province S.J. vol. ii.
pp. 145 — 177, contains some useful documents, and a list of
the older writers and historians who have commemorated the
martyr.
In the Vatican Archives, Castel S. Angelo, Caps. XIV. ii.
1 Gillow's Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics, vol. i.
P- 574-
3 The Catholic Non-Jurors of 1715. E. E. Estcourt and J. O.
Payne, p. 106.
BLESSED THOMAS COTTAM 563
36, there is an undated letter, sent to Father Agazzari from
England about April, 1581, in which there is a full account of
Cottam's courage in speaking against Nichols in the Church
of St. Peter ad Vincula.
PORTRAIT. — At the Gesu, with those of other Jesuit
martyrs. A copy by the late Mr. Charles Weld, at Stonyhurst.
He is represented three-quarter face, with rope round his
neck, and knife and palm in his right hand.
RELICS. — The only relics of this martyr are the corporal
at Stonyhurst, on which he and four other martyrs said Mass
in the Tower (see Life of Briant), and possibly a particle of
his heart preserved by the Archbishop of Westminster in his
private chapel (see Life of Ford). There is also at Stonyhurst
a piece of bone, perhaps half a carpal, in Case I. n. i, marked
Ex sept em martyribus Anglis. The martyrs of the 28th and
3oth of May, 1582, form the only group of seven who suffered
at this period.
XX.
THE BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY,
SECULAR PRIEST.
York, 22 August, 1582.
THE city of York had long formed the seat of a
distinct government for the northern counties,
under a Lord President and his Council. On the
ist of December, 1572, Elizabeth appointed as Lord
President of the North, Henry Hastings, Earl of
Huntingdon ; a fanatical Puritan filled with venom
and hatred against everything Catholic. Alas ! his
mother was Catherine Pole, grand-daughter of the
Blessed Margaret Plantagenet ! Lord Huntingdon's
Council was of one mind with the Lord President,
and it seems as though the Tyburn martyrdoms
had roused their emulation, and within a few
months the blood of five martyrs consecrated the
northern capital.
The first victim was William Lacey. He was born
in Yorkshire, at " Hauton," Challoner says. Some
fifteen years before his consecration he held an im-
portant position in York of a judicial character,
which brought him in a good income. He was of a
good stock, and connected with the chief families
BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY 565
of the county. He was married to the widow of
a Yorkshire gentleman named Creswell, the mother
of a son, Arthur (afterwards called Joseph), who the
year after his step-father's martyrdom, entered the
Society of Jesus, and eventually became Rector of
the English College at Rome, and held many posts
of importance. Blessed William was particularly
zealous in keeping all belonging to him from going
to the Protestant services, and he was one of the
first and foremost to give a shelter and a welcome
to the priests, who came from the seminaries abroad
to devote themselves to the souls of their brethren
in England.
This was of course noticed before long and occa-
sioned much animosity against the servant of God
in various quarters. One who had for some time
coveted Lacey's office, now saw his opportunity, and
on a certain day, when the future martyr was
going to his tribunal to hear the causes waiting
for him, his enemy went to make an application to
the Archbishop to put the laws in force against him.
Blessed Lacey, hearing in time what had taken
place, gave up his office and even paid a large sum
of money to escape further molestation. But the
heavy fines levied upon him for the recusancy of
himself and his family, and continual summonses
before the magistrates and other vexations, obliged
him to take to flight with his wife and children,
leaving his house to the care of servants.
Step by step God continued graciously to use
the cruelty of his enemies and the afflictions which
overtook him, in order to detach him more and
566 BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY
more from the world and prepare him for the grace
of martyrdom. No sooner had he left the city
than his servants were evicted, and his house
pillaged, as if he were a public enemy. Wherever
he took refuge, the persecutors tracked him down
with the skill and sagacity of bloodhounds, and
denounced him to the Bishop of the place, so that
he might be arrested and thrown into prison. And
thus for many years he wandered with his family
from place to place, without a settled home or a
moment's security. Once, 'arriving at Beverley he
was received by a relation. He did not stay,
however, but left his horses and his servant and
went to a friend's house not far off. Scarcely
had he done so when his kinsman's house was
surrounded by the magistrates with a posse of
men ; his horses were carried off, and his servant
was thrown into prison and severely examined
about the houses his master had frequented, and
where he now was. This was in the year 1579,
and at this very time the holy confessor's wife,
under the pressure of so many trials, fell grievously
sick. The Bishop, as usual, informed of her where-
abouts, was about to arrest and imprison her, in
spite of her sex and illness, when death released her
from his malice.
His wife dead, his children provided for, himself
a wanderer, there were no ties to hold him back, and
he determined to devote himself to the service of
God and of souls in the holy priesthood. He went
to Rheims, where he was received into the College
on the 22nd of June, 1580. Here the grey-haired old
BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY 567
man, with touching humility, took his place with
the young students in the theology class, wrote
down the dictations and went through the other
exercises with quite a youthful ardour. In September
of the same year he went to continue his studies
at Pont-a-Mousson, and then, after a short stay,
-went to Rome to visit the Holy Places, and to apply
for the dispensation necessary for his ordination,
on account of his marriage with a widow. Having
obtained the dispensation required by the canons,
he made his retreat for ordination at the English
College, and then successively received the sub-
diaconate, diaconate, and priesthood.
Pope Gregory XIII. was very much struck by
his grey hairs, his prudence, piety, and zeal, and
granted him many unusual Indulgences and other
favours to future penitents. He set out for England
in company with the Jesuit Fathers, Jasper Haywood
and William Holt, who were going to assist Fathers
Persons and Campion. They visited Loreto on
their way, and from thence Lacey wrote the following
letter to " a friend in Rome." l
" I wish to take my leave of you yet once more
with this letter, as I do not know whether it may not
be the last I shall write to you in this life. We
arrived on Tuesday at this Holy House, where my
companions and I served the Lord in His own home,
and at the shrine of His most holy Mother. At this
1 This was probably Father Joseph Creswell, S.J., then a student
at the English College. His "election" will probably signify his
choice of the Society, which he entered a year later.
568 BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY
we all experienced an extraordinary consolation,
though indeed we felt much spiritual joy all through
the journey. I am particularly charmed with the
devotion and zeal of my companions, and with the
holy communings in which we pass our days.
Indeed it seems to me that I take my part with
them in that sweet harmony. I frequently exclaim
in my heart, ' Is Saul also among the Prophets ? ' l
And I remind myself of the disciples' words, ' Was
not our heart burning, when He spoke with us upon
the way ? ' 2 Truly in my measure I feel the truth
of the Prophet's words, ' With the holy, thou wilt
be holy.'8
" For this reason I rejoice with you over the
election you have made. It causes me and will
cause me to think often of you and of the words
which you, or rather Jesus Christ by your mouth
said, Quod ego facio, tu nescis modo, scies autem postea
— ' What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt
know hereafter.' 4 How often did you not repeat
those words to me, when to tell the truth I could
see no signs of the Lord's will, that is when I
was detained in Rome for a longer time than
I wished. But in this space His holy providence
was preparing to give me this admirable company,
et tribuere mihi desiderium cordis met in bonuin — ' to
give me my heart's desire in good,' 5 satisfying
my desires, and putting my affairs into better train,
than I could have imagined — for the greater glory
(so I hope) of His Holy Name for ever and ever.
1 i Kings x. ii. 2 St. Luke xxiv. 32. 3 Psalm xvii. 26.
4 St. John xiii. 7. 5 Psalm xx. 3.
BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY 569
" Give loving messages to all my friends, and
especially to good Father Alphonso Agazzari, to
whom I remain for ever bounden. Father Jasper
and Father Holt commend themselves much to you,
and we all desire that you should remember us in
your holy prayers, which may our Lord hearken to
ad gloriam suam, and that we may serve Him (as in
reason) in the place to which we are going. From
Loreto the loth of May, 1581." 1
He reached England safely,2 and the Concertatio
records that his work was blessed with great fruit,
and that he won many souls to Christ and His
Church. It is also said that he laboured for two
years, but it can have been but little more than a
year, for in the summer of 1582 his career was cut
short.
The circumstances of his capture were very
characteristic of those strange days, at once terrible
and consoling. The prisons of York were crowded
with Catholic confessors. Several priests were in
the habit of visiting these holy prisoners daily to
console and encourage them in their grievous
sufferings, to distribute such help as they could
obtain for their destitute condition, and to admin-
ister the sacraments to them. One of these priests
was the glorious martyr William Hart, and to their
number Blessed William Lacey associated himself.
On Sunday, July the 22nd, he, Blessed William
Hart, and several other priests, managed to meet
1 Yepes, Htstoria Particular, p. 409.
2 Douay Diaries, Appendix, p. 163.
570 BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY
before day-break in the Castle on an exceptional
occasion. Thomas Bell, " the illustrious con-
fessor," as Dr. Bridgwater calls him, had, a good
time before, spent six years in that prison, and in
particular had been cruelly hung up by the feet
for three days, touching the ground with his head
and shoulders only. At that time he was a layman.
In the spring of 1582 he had returned as a priest to
England and, in fulfilment of a vow, was deter-
mined with a holy boldness to sing a High Mass in
the very scene of his sufferings, in thanksgiving
and praise to God. A devout prisoner's room
was chosen, remote from the quarters of gaoler
and turnkey, and as many of the other Catholic
prisoners as were able to assist were admitted to
share the common joy and consolation. The Holy
Sacrifice had just terminated in peace when a
prisoner in another part of the Castle, who could
not come sooner, in trying to make his way to the
little gathering, in haste and in the darkness, struck
against a bench, and with the sound roused the
keepers. The noisy search of these men for the
cause of their alarm quickly showed the company of
Catholics the extent of their danger. The lights
were extinguished and the priests hid themselves
as well as they could. Had they quietly waited
until the disturbance was over they might have
escaped notice. But thinking it their best chance
to try to get away under cover of the confusion, they
left their concealment and began to make for the
outer walls. Blessed William Hart succeeded in
clearing the wall and made his way through a
BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY 571
muddy pool or moat, in which he was up to the
chin in water and mire. Bell also escaped, and the
zeal and fidelity of the Catholic citizens protected
him from the hot search made for him.1 Probably
his age was against Blessed William Lacey, and he
was captured at the foot of the wall.
Early next morning he was brought before the
Lord Mayor of York and Henry Cheke, both of
whom were members of the Council of the North,
and the latter the Secretary. The holy man was well
known in York as a determined Catholic, but he
had only lately returned from abroad, and nothing
else was known about him. The night before,
however, when he saw he could not escape, he
1 There are few more melancholy stories in the history of
our Church than that of this unhappy man. Born about 1551, sent
at an early age to Cambridge, where the heretical spirit was then
supreme, he became a minister while quite a young man. But
in a very short time through his own study of St. Augustine and
St. Jerome, he became convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith,
and embraced it with great fervour. He was soon thrown into the
Ousebridge Kidcote at York, and then transferred to the Castle, where
he suffered a long and cruel captivity with courage and constancy.
Regaining his freedom, he betook himself at once to the College at
Douay, where he was admitted on February 3, 1576. (Douay Diaries,
p. 100.) On October i he started for Rome, one of the first scholars
selected for the new foundation in the "English Hospital; " and
his name is found among those of the six first students admitted by
Cardinal Moroni (see p. 463). He had been only a few months in
England as a priest at the time of the event related in the text ;
but for several years he laboured indefatigably in Lancashire and
Yorkshire, and was made Superior of his brethren in the latter
county. And then he fell, with a treachery, a malice, and a shame-
lessness without a parallel in the cases of Tyrrell, Gifford, Langdale,
or the other apostates who were the affliction of the Catholics of that
day. A detailed Report of forty folio pages is extant (Westminster
Archives, vol. iv.), addressed by him to Henry, Earl of Derby, who
572 BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY
threw away a bag, which he had about him, con-
taining his certificate of ordination with other papers
and pious objects. In the morning it was found
and brought in, and became the chief evidence
against him. After a long examination he was
committed to the Castle, and as if he were some
great criminal, loaded with heavy irons, which he
kissed with great devotion when they were brought
in to be riveted upon him.
It was determined to make the most of this
capture, both to degrade the priesthood, and to
terrify Catholics. So the servant of God was next
marched as a criminal along the road to Bishop-
thorpe, about two miles distant, bearing his heavy-
chains which almost prevented him from walking.
died in 1593, furnishing the Government with a mass of information
against all the Catholic families of Lancashire, and the priests
who laboured amongst them. He had already been a hypocrite for
some years, for he writes: " Every priest, as well old as Seminary,
useth ordinarily to say Mass every day and three upon the day of
Christ's Nativity ; which myself have not done of latter years because
my mind was altered, though to them unknown." And two letters
among the State Papers (R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. ccxliii. nn. 51,
71) of October and November, 1592, from the Queen to Lord
Derby, and from Lord Derby to the Council, confirm his odious
treachery. The Queen speaks of his disclosures to Lord Derby
and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and " thinks it meet that Bell
should be returned thither to be used as Council advises, for better
searching and apprehending of Jesuits and Seminaries." And Lord
Derby regrets that " the apprehension of priests did not take such
good effect, because Bell's first repair to their Lordships and their
conversation being generally known, bred suspicion." When he
could no longer play the spy and traitor, he became a public enemy.
Father Persons replied to one of his attacks with The doleful Knell
of Thomas Bell, and Dr. Richard Smith, afterwards Bishop of
Chalcedon, published an answer to his Downfall of Popery in 1605.
BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY 573
What passed at his examination before the Arch-
bishop did not transpire. But he was not likely
to receive much indulgence from a man like Sandys;
and on his return to the city he was put into an
underground hole, and rigorously deprived of all
communication with outsiders, and even with his
fellow-prisoners. His zeal found means however
to write an earnest appeal to a gentleman whom
he knew to be in great danger and temptation
with regard to his faith, and Bridgwater says the
letter contained powerful arguments from Holy
Scripture and the Fathers, and would have amply
sufficed for any man who cared for his salvation.
But the holy confessor had the sorrow to learn
before his martyrdom that his zeal had been without
success.
During the three weeks which intervened before
his trial, the martyr was several times called before
the Council, and the charge on which he was
indicted was no doubt framed on the information
obtained from him. The trial took place on
Saturday, August the nth. The court was crowded
with Catholics full of concern and sympathy. There
is a letter of Henry Cheke's to Lord Huntingdon,
written the next day, in the collection of State
Papers,1 in which he says " the assembly at the
arraignment of the priests2 was very great, espe-
cially of Papists ; so that the court was in great
disorder, and the justices of assize forced to make
room for themselves like ushers." Bridgwater,
1 R.O. Domestic, Elizabeth, Addenda, August 12, 1582, vol. xxvii. n. 107.
- Blessed Richard Kirkman was tried on the same day.
574 BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY
followed by Challoner, says Blessed William was
indicted for having been ordained at Rome, but he
must have been mistaken, as the Act which made
it high treason for any priest ordained abroad to
come into the realm, and under which so many
martyrs afterwards suffered, was not passed till
three years later. But the letters of Orders found
in his bag, and publicly read in court, and the
blessed and indulgenced objects also found, and
which were held up to the derision of the people,
were probably held quite sufficient matter for a
conviction under the existing statutes. He openly
acknowledged his priesthood, and was then asked
by one of those on the bench why he was so
imprudent as to carry his letters of Orders about
him; to which he answered, that it was to satisfy
all men that he really was a priest as he professed
to be ; for it was a difficult matter to convince
many of his acquaintances, especially Protestants,
that he was in Orders, having lived in a married
state so long, and having been absent from his
country so short a time. He had been asked, when
before the Council, how he could be ordained, as
they were aware the sacred canons do not allow
of the ordination of one who has either been twice
married himself, or whose wife has been twice
married. And no doubt he was either asked again at
the trial or evidence was given of his previous answer,
which was, of course, that the impediment had been
removed by the authority and dispensation of the
Holy Father. Finally, he was asked what the Con-
certatio calls "that murderous question," whether
BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY 575
he would acknowledge the Queen as supreme head
of the Church, to which he answered very calmly,
" About this and all other things I hold with the
Catholic Church and all good Christians." Dodd
says his confession was very surprising to the
court, especially when they saw so little concern
in him for the consequences.
There was no hesitation on the part of judge or
jury, and the verdict having been given, sentence
was at once pronounced. The martyr listened
without a change of countenance, and then said,
"God be for ever blessed. I am now old and by
the course of nature could not expect to live long.
This will be no more to me than to pay the common
debt a little before the time. I am rejoiced there-
fore at the things that have been said to me, we
shall go into the house of the Lord, and so we shall
be with the Lord for ever."
Being remanded to prison, several gentlemen of
the county, some of whom were his relations, came
to visit him and offer their sympathy and condolence.
He thanked them, but gave them to understand that
what was a subject of grief to them, was a happiness
to him. Some interest was made by the neighbour-
ing gentlemen for his pardon, and it would seem as
if there was some doubt about the carrying out of
the sentence ; for Cheke, in the letter of the next
day above quoted says, "The attainder of these
traitors [Lacey and Kirkman] has done some good,
but their present execution would do more. Pray
labour with Council for it as soon as may be, or, at
the least, that of one of them."
576 BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY
Cheke had his way, and the execution of the
venerable and innocent priest was ordered for the
22nd, the octave of the Assumption of the Blessed
Mother of God, the Queen of Martyrs.
He was drawn from the Castle on a hurdle,
together with his fellow-priest and martyr, Blessed
Richard Kirkman, to the usual place of execution,
in the Knavesmire, about a mile outside the city.
As they went, unhindered by the jolting of the
rough way and the gibes of a rabble who accom-
panied them, each made his confession and received
absolution from his companion, in preparation
for the last conflict. At the place of execution
Blessed William was allowed to spend some time
in prayer, and then began to speak to the people,
earnestly exhorting them to shun heresy as a
pestilence. But he had not gone far when some of
the ministers who were present, afraid of the effect
of his words, were urgent with the executioners to
turn the ladder on which he stood beneath the
gallows, and so, without further warning, his happy
martyrdom was completed.
E. S. K.
AUTHORITIES. — For the history of the persecution in the
North, which presents some points of difference from those
in the South, the reader should consult Father J. Morris's
Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, vol. iii., which is entirely
devoted to this subject.
The Life of Lacey and the three subsequent martyrs was
put together by Thirkeld, but his manuscript fell into the
hands of the persecutors at the time of his arrest, and it does
BLESSED WILLIAM LACEY 577
not appear to be still extant. Knox, Letters of Cardinal Allen,
p. 203.
The fullest account of the martyr is that given by Yepes,
Historia Particular de la persecution de Inglaterra, 1599, pp. 404
— 413. We may presume that he was supplied with informa-
tion by Blessed William's stepson, Father Creswell, who was
living in Madrid at that time, and to whom the letter printed
above was most probably addressed.
For Lacey's stay in Rome see Father Grene's Collectanea N.,
I. i. 25 ; ii. 47, 58 (Stonyhurst MSS.).
See also Concertatio, f. 96 ; Historia di Sedici Sacerdoti
(1584), p. 192 ; Worthington's Catalogue (1614), p. 28, &c.
There is a eulogy of Lacey's wife in Cornelius a Lapide's
commentary on Hebrews, cap. x. vers. 34.
LL II
XXI.
THE BLESSED RICHARD KIRKMAN,
SECULAR PRIEST.
York, 22 August, 1582.
BLESSED RICHARD KIRKMAN was born of a gentle-
man's family at Addingham in the West Riding of
Yorkshire, five miles south-east of Skipton. He
had already made good progress in learning when
he went abroad to the English College at Douay in
1577, in order to study for the priesthood. From
Douay he was transferred, with the rest of the
College, to Rheims, in 1578. He was ordained
subdeacon at Rheims on the i4th of March, 1579,
together with sixteen other students of the English
College, among whom was Blessed Richard Thir-
keld, who was to tread so closely in his footsteps.
On Holy Saturday in the same year fifteen of these
seventeen were ordained priests, and among them
the future martyrs. There were about sixty
students at this time in the Seminary, and their
growing numbers caused some anxiety to the
authorities of the city. On April the 28th, Blessed
Richard Thirkeld and William Hanse, a brother of
the martyr Blessed Everard Hanse, said their first
BLESSED RICHARD KIRKMAN 579
Masses in the college chapel, and two days later
Blessed Richard Kirkman and another newly-
ordained priest celebrated the Holy Sacrifice for
the first time in the Abbey Church of the
Benedictine nuns of St. Peter's. During the first
week of May, 1579, almost every day saw the glad
celebration of a first Mass in the college chapel, and
stirring indeed it must have been to assist at the
Sacrifice thus offered by young men, full of generous
ardour for the glories of martyrdom, who with
joyous hearts offered up their own lives to God
together with the Immaculate Victim of Calvary.
Our martyr stayed on at Rheims till August the
3rd, when he left for the English Mission, in the
company of Blessed Alexander Briant and three
other young priests.1
On reaching this country Blessed Richard
appears to have found a retreat at Scrivelsby Court,
in Lincolnshire, the home of the Dymokes, here-
ditary Champions of England. Scrivelsby was then
in possession of Robert Dymoke, Esq., who was to
shed a new lustre on his name and family by the
glory of martyrdom, becoming the champion of the
King of kings against the usurpations of his earthly
sovereign. Scrivelsby is situated about two miles
from Horncastle, which had been one of the centres
of the Lincolnshire rising in defence of the ancient
faith. Sir Edward Dymoke, the martyr's father,
who was sheriff of the county, and his brother
Thomas, were actively concerned in it. Their banner
bore on it the figure of a plough, to encourage the
1 Douay Diaries, pp. 152, 153.
58o BLESSED RICHARD KIR KM AN
husbandmen, the Chalice and Host, and the Five
Wounds. The " articles of grievance " devised by
the insurgents were drawn up by the Dymokes.
Unhappily, at the suppression of the insurrection,
the brothers proved but time-servers, and even gave
evidence against the venerable Abbot Mackarel, of
Barling, whom they had forced to supply their men
with victuals.
The faith of many grew cold during the first
sixteen years of Elizabeth's reign, and numbers fell
off altogether under the pressure of the persecution.
But fervour was re-kindled by the arrival of the
Seminary priests in 1574, and when the first
Jesuits, Blessed Edmund Campion and Father
Persons, landed at Dover in June, 1580, they
found the ground well prepared for a great religious
revival.
It would appear that Robert Dymoke, the
Champion, although he welcomed Blessed Richard
to Scrivelsby in 1579 and harboured him there
under the guise of schoolmaster to his sons, had
not yet found courage openly to declare himself an
adherent of the proscribed faith. He had yielded
to the pressure of the laws by attending the
Protestant service, with the natural result that his
mind was utterly confused by the various doctrines
of the heretical preachers whose sermons he
attended.1
But the generous reception he gave to our
martyr doubtless won for Robert Dymoke the grace
of true conversion, and that steadfast constancy in
1 Simpson's Life of Campion (Edit. 1896), p. 241.
BLESSED RICHARD KIRKMAN 581
the faith by which he was to be so greatly
distinguished.
Scrivelsby Court is a Tudor house now un-
fortunately much modernized. It is still inhabited
by the family of the Champions, who acquired the
office on the marriage of Sir John Dymoke, temp.
Edward III., with the heiress of the Marmions,
lords of the feudal manor of Scrivelsby, to which
the Championship was attached. The right con-
sisted in riding completely armed upon a barbed
horse into Westminster Hall during the coronation
festivities, and there challenging combat with whom-
soever should dare oppose the King's title to the
crown. The right was last exercised at the corona-
tion of George IV. Robert Dymoke, however, had
never exercised it, though his father, Sir Edward,
who died in 1566, had been Champion at the
coronations of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth.
Robert Dymoke married Bridget, eldest daughter
and co-heiress of Edward Baron Clinton, Lord High
Admiral, who was created Earl of Lincoln in 1572.
They had several children, their eldest son Edward
being about twenty-one years of age at the time
that Blessed Richard Kirkman came to Scrivelsby.
The names of the other sons, to whom he acted as
tutor, were Robert, John, and Nicholas.1
On the 24th of July, 1580, both Robert Dymoke
and his wife, the Lady Bridget, were indicted for
hearing Mass, and for not coming to the Protestant
service, together with thirty-three other Lincolnshire
1 Inquisitio post mortem, taken January n, 1581. (R.O. Court of
Wards, vol. xx. n. 175.)
582 BLESSED RICHARD KIRK MAN
Catholics.1 The presence of a priest in the house,
had, it would seem, been detected by the vigilant
spies of the Government, who were at that time
actively engaged in tracking down Father Campion.
It is asserted indeed by Mr. Simpson that this
glorious martyr actually visited Scrivelsby, and
reconciled Mr. Dymoke to the faith of his fathers.
Whether this be so or no, Mr. Dymoke was
cited to appear before the Protestant Bishop of
Lincoln, on the charge of recusancy and of con-
cealing a priest in his house. He was quite unable
to obey the summons, as for some years past he
had been stricken with paralysis, which completely
confined him to his house ; indeed he was unable
to move hand or foot without assistance. He tried
to excuse himself by letter, but was unable to
appease the fanatical fury of Bishop Cooper, who
was one of the most zealous of Elizabeth's per-
secuting prelates.2 The Bishop himself came to
Scrivelsby, but the sight of Mr. Dymoke's helpless
condition did not move him to compassion. On
the contrary, he ordered him to be carried at once
to prison, in spite of his pitiable state. In the
miserable gaol at Lincoln the poor old man soon
fell dangerously ill, but even when dying he was
not left in peace. As usual in such cases, he was
tormented with ministers endeavouring to perplex
him and force their prayers upon him. " For they
1 B.M. Lansdowne MSS. 30, 75.
2 He wrote to Walsingham urging that Catholics should be
compelled not only to attend church, but also to receive the
Sacrament. " To the Lord's table they must go, or else to her
Majesty's gaols." (White, Lives of Elizabethan Bishops, p. 190.)
BLESSED RICHARD KIRKMAN 583
come," writes Father Persons, " when he is extreme
sick, they come when he is wrestling with the
pangs of death, they come whilst he is passing out
of this life, they come whilst he is yielding up the
ghost. Even then they do not suffer him to rest,
nor permit him to die in such sort as he desired
to die, for his desire was to die according to the
custom of the universal Christian Church. Even then
the ministers flock about him. Even then they urge
him to pray such sorry prayers of their own making
as in health he contemned, in sickness with open
voice he rejected, and now, dumb and half-dead,
by his countenance, by signs and tokens, and by
gesture of his body, he did utterly contemn and
abhor/' Robert Dymoke, having resisted their
efforts to his last gasp, died in the Lord, the
nth of September, 1580. l
When his host was thrown into prison, Mr.
Kirkman had, of course, to take to flight. He went
to the north country and pursued his apostolic
labours in various parts of Northumberland and
Yorkshire. He was finally arrested about two miles
from Wakefield by Francis Wortley, of Wortley,
a member of the Council of the North and one of
the most active persecutors of the Catholics. A
contemporary writer called by Father Morris
"A Yorkshire Recusant,"2 thus comments on the
incident :
1 Persons, De Persecutions Anglicana, p. 30; Inquisitio. ut supra.
Robert was buried in Scrivelsby Church.
a J. Morris, Troubles, iii. (The Catholics of York under Elizabeth),
p. 68. The MS. is at Oscott College.
\
584 BLESSED RICHARD KIRKMAN
"Some of our knights and justices are so vain-
glorious, rude, uncivil, and uncourteous, that no
stranger almost can pass or travel unexamined by
them ; who is he, from where he came, whither he
goeth, yea, and what affairs and business also in
particular he hath. They have conceit that to be
thus inquisitive and busy in other men's matters,
how clownish and rude soever it be among civil
men, yet it be a good gentleman-like quality, for
hereby they may be known to have authority and
to be diligent and serviceable for the preservation of
the State. . . . These uncivil gentlemen do not so
vaingloriously practise this in the highways and
abroad, where they might meet with passengers ;
but the hungry catchpols and bailiffs, yea the
tipplers and innholders, use it as braggingly in
towns also, especially nigh to the houses of such
justices, hoping not only for lucre and bribes, but
also desiring to pick thanks of their masters for the
imitating of their malapert and undecent manners.
This point of rudeness is not in all, nor in the best
and wisest sort of our knights and gentlemen, but
in some few haughty-minded and busy-headed men,
which have great conceit of themselves as pillars
of the present State, and God be thanked we suffer
not so much harm by this kind of discourtesy and
clownishness, as many honest men are molested
and many times horse-stealers and such like com-
panions of their own religion are apprehended,
hereby also the justices themselves are not a little
discredited and misliked among their neighbours, and
condemned as rude, troublesome and toto-officious.
BLESSED RICHARD KIRK MAN 585
By these means I have known divers Catholics in
danger and partly affrighted, but not many appre-
hended, besides Mr. Kirkman, a priest, and now
martyr, and with him a virtuous layman, in the
way, by Mr. Wortley."
The Justice not being satisfied with our martyr's
answers, was for sending him and his companion
to prison, as vagrants and disturbers of the peace.
Whereupon Mr. Kirkman, foreseeing the inevitable
results, thought it best to acknowledge what he was,
and to leave the issue to Providence. Accordingly,
calling for a pen, he wrote that he was a Catholic
priest. After this Wortley ceased to question him,
but ordered his baggage to be searched, in which
a chalice and other things necessary for Mass were
found. Thereupon the Justice at once committed
his prisoners to the Castle at York, to which city
indeed he was on his way at the time, with a large
following, to attend the assizes there. On their
way they passed the night at Tadcaster, where the
prisoners had to lie on the bare floor.
They arrived at York next day, and the assizes
having just commenced, Blessed Richard was
straightway brought to the bar. To the various
questions put to him, he replied with prudence and
constancy, denying that he had come over to seduce
the people from their allegiance to the Queen, but
rather to persuade them to embrace the true religion
and administer the holy sacraments according to
opportunity. He confessed his relations with
Mr. Dymoke, since that good man was already
586 BLESSED RICHARD KIR KM AN
out of his enemies' power, and that he had said
Mass in Northumberland, but refused to say where
or in whose presence.
An indictment was then drawn up against him,
and a jury impanelled, who brought him in guilty
of high treason, first, for being a priest of the
Seminary of Douay or Rheims, and secondly, for
persuading the Queen's subjects to the Catholic
religion. He was then carried to gaol, where he
was again examined by Justice Wortley and Justice
Mainwaring, the former of whom, unable to extort
from him what was wanted, flew into a passion,
calling him Papist and traitor, and loaded him with
abuse. To this the blessed martyr calmly replied :
" You might, sir, with the same justice, charge the
Apostles also with being traitors, for they taught
the same doctrine that I now teach, and did the
same things for which you condemn me."
After this he was again brought to the bar to
receive sentence, which was . pronounced in the
usual form. With wonderful calmness and modesty,
the martyr thereupon addressed the judge, saying:
" I beseech you to consider well what you do, for
I am an impure man, altogether plunged in the
mire of sin, and therefore infinitely unworthy of so
sublime a grace." The judge, misunderstanding
him, replied : " The sentence that has been passed
upon you is agreeable to what the law directs, and
nothing remains for you but to prepare for death."
The holy man again begged him to weigh well what
he was doing, for he knew that he was unworthy
of so great a favour as a death of this kind, fit
BLESSED RICHARD KIRKMAN 587
only for a holy martyr ; whereupon the judge warmly
replied that his wickedness had well deserved that
kind of death. But the humble servant and disciple
of Christ spoke for the third time : " Must it then
be so ? Am I to be honoured with so sublime a
dignity ? Good God ! how unworthy I am of it !
But since it has thus seemed good to Thy divine
mercy, may Thy most holy Will be done on earth
as it is in Heaven ! " And then, no longer being
able to contain the joy that filled his breast, with a
loud and cheerful voice he burst forth into that
hymn of praise and thanksgiving: " Te Deum
laudamus, te dominum confitemur"
He was then taken back to the Castle, where for
a time he was shut up in a very narrow turret-room
together with Blessed William Lacey. But four
days before his execution he was sent for by the
High Sheriff and two ministers. What passed
between them was kept private ; nor had the
Catholics any opportunity of learning it from the
martyr himself, for from that time he was separated
from his fellow-sufferer, and kept in a dark under-
ground dungeon, which was wont to be reserved
for the greatest criminals. Here, deprived of bed,
food, light, and of every necessity of life, he awaited
with patience the happy day of his departure from
this miserable world.
At length, on the 22nd of August, 1582, he was
pinioned, placed on a hurdle, and drawn \vith his
fellow-collegian and martyr to the place of execu-
tion outside the city of York.
There he remained in silent prayer till his
BLESSED RICHARD KIRKMAN
companion had been executed ; then, upon the call
of the officers, he cheerfully mounted the ladder,
and commenced an exhortation to the vast crowd
which had assembled to witness the martyrdoms.
But when he began to speak of the schism, he was
interrupted and ordered to desist, and so, mounting
higher up the ladder, and raising his eyes towards
heaven, as he pronounced those words of the royal
prophet : " Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus
est : habitavi cum habitantibus Cedar, multum incola fuit
anima mea,"1 he was flung off the ladder, and yielded
his blessed soul to God his Creator.2
ED.
AUTHORITIES. — The same as those quoted at the end of
the Life of Blessed William Lacey.
1 Psalm cxix. 5, 6.
2 Concertatio , ff. 100, 101. The martyr's brother, John Kirkman of
Addingham, gent., suffered a long imprisonment for the faith in
the Castle and in Ousebridge Kidcote, about 1590-1. John's daughter
Alice married Christopher Danby of Knaresborough, gent., about
1584. (Gillow, Dictionary, iv. 55.)
XXII.
THE BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON
(alias HUDSON),
SECULAR PRIEST.
York, 28 November, 1582.
THE next martyr who suffered was also a Yorkshire-
man, the Blessed James Thompson (or Hudson), who
was born in or near the city of York, where he spent
many years of his life and was well known to the
citizens. He was a devout Catholic, and owing to
his fidelity to the old religion, had been deprived,
says his biographer, "of a pension which he had
in the Church of Derun."1 Being desirous of
consecrating his life to God's service, he went over
to Rheims in the summer of 1580. But after a short
period of study, he fell so ill that his life was
despaired of by the physicians. Under these
circumstances he besought Dr. Allen to allow him
to be ordained as quickly as possible, saying that he
confidently believed that God intended to employ
him in His service in England. So a dispensation
was obtained from Rome, and the future martyr,
1 Historia delglorioso Martirio di Sedici Sacerdoti, etc. (1584), p. 197.
Perhaps Durham is meant.
5QO BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON
together with another student named Foxe, received
all the sacred Orders within the space of twelve
days, in May, 1581, at Soissons ; although he was
still so ill that he could hardly put foot to the
ground.
He returned to Rheims on May the 27th, and
on June the 8th he said his first Holy Mass in the
college chapel.1
Two months later, on August the loth, he was
sent on the mission, being accompanied on his
journey by a young student named Cotton, who
was also an invalid, and who hoped to regain his
health in his native air. This was a frequent
occurrence in the days of persecution, and more
than one martyr has gained his crown while he was
seeking to gain health and strength.
James Thompson, after a little rest, regained a
certain amount of strength, and then threw himself
ardently into the fatigues and dangers of the
mission. He was, however, allowed hardly a year
of apostolate, being arrested in the city of York, on
the nth of August, 1582. It is possible that he had
ventured to assist at the trial of Blessed William
Lacey and Blessed Richard Kirkman, which took
place on this very day, and that some circumstance
had then aroused the suspicion of the authorities
against him. Perhaps he had ventured to join his
voice in the Te Deum of exulting gladness intoned
by Blessed Richard after his condemnation. How-
ever this may be, he was arrested on this day in
the house of one Mr. Branton, a Catholic, who was
1 Douay Diaries, pp. 179 and 180.
BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON 591
at the time a prisoner for the faith in the Kidcote
dungeons on Ousebridge. On his arrest he was
taken before the dread Council of the North, which
sat in the Old Palace of the Abbots of St. Mary's,
near Bootham Bar.1
On being examined as to what he was, the
martyr frankly confessed that he was a priest. This
reply astonished his examiners, for as they said, he
had lived a long time in the city and was well
known to all, and they could not imagine how he
1 The Mr. Branton in whose house he was taken, may have
been either William Branton, a locksmith, of the parish of
St. Olave's, or Stephen Branton, probably his brother, both of
whom were prisoners in the Ousebridge Kidcote. William Branton
was kept with ten other confessors in the horrible lower dungeon,
not permitted to come to the grate where the other unhappy
prisoners begged the charity of the passers-by, nor was he allowed
visitors or relief of any kind, not even to have pen, ink, or paper.
(J. Morris, Troubles, ii. p. 307.)
Stephen's career is so characteristic of the time, that we may
give it as a specimen of the sufferings of the humble lay Catholics
of York. He was committed to the Kidcote prison about 1571, and
was kept there a close prisoner for three years. It was a place that '
"would have almost rivalled the notorious Black Hole of Calcutta.
Air, light, and ventilation were absent, and the waters of the river
rushed in when they were above their usual level." (Raine, Deposi-
tions from the Castle of York, Surtees Society, 1861, Preface.) He
was then removed to York Castle, and from thence to Hull, where
he was first imprisoned in the castle. The keeper, John Bisby,
then carried him off to the North Blockhouse, " for that he could
not give so much rent as the keeper asked," and there he was
kept a long space in a low house by himself. After, he was
removed to the South Blockhouse, under Hawcock the tyrant,
where he remained divers years. Lastly, he was removed with
many others to York Castle, where he died July 19, 1591, and was
buried under the Castle wall, after an imprisonment of twenty
years for the simple profession of the Catholic faith. (J. Morris,
loc. cit. ii. p. 322.)
592 BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON
could have been made a priest. To this he replied
that he • had crossed the seas, and had received
sacred Orders abroad. When they asked him how
long he had been in those parts, he replied, " Not
one whole year." " Why then had he come back
so quickly ? " The answer was, that he had suffered
so much from a serious complaint that he had been
forced to return earlier than he had intended.
They bade him tell them sincerely whether he
had not come back to his country in order to
reconcile the Queen's subjects to the Church of
Rome. " The cause of my return," he said, " was
no other than I have already told you, for I was
exceedingly ill from Candlemas day last year till the
beginning of May. But withal," says he, " I will
tell you ingenuously, that I returned in order to do
some service to my country."
They asked him if he had reconciled any to
the Church. He answered that where opportunity
offered, he had not been wanting to his duty. They
asked how many and what persons he had recon-
ciled. He begged to be excused from answering
a question that might bring others into danger.
Then they asked whether he acknowledged the
Queen's Majesty to be Supreme Head of the
Church. He replied that he did not acknowledge
her as such. " Very well," said they, " you need
say no more, for you have now said enough." Then
said he, " Blessed be God."
But not content with this, they asked him
further, whether he would take up arms against the
Pope should he invade the kingdom. The priest
BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON 593
replied, " When that time comes, I will show myself
a true patriot." "But," said they, "will you fight
against the Pope now ? " " Certainly not," he said.
They then began, after their custom, to abuse
him with many injurious words, calling him rakehell,
Papist and traitor, and so brought him to the prison,
where they ordered that he should be loaded with
double irons. The holy priest remained in this
condition for no less than seventeen days. This
was a private prison (the Kidcote, no doubt, or
St. Peter's prison), and when all his money was
exhausted and he could no longer pay the keeper's
extortionate charges, they had to remove him to
the Castle. Yet even then they would not take off
either of his chains, though it was the custom to
do so even for the greatest criminals, but escorted
him through the streets in triumph loaded down
with double irons.
At first the martyr was thrust into the common
side of the prison, where he had to herd with
murderers and criminals of the lowest class, but
afterwards the keeper, moved rather by the bribes
of the martyr's friends than by compassion for his
cruel sufferings, allowed him to be removed to a
chamber, where he had the company of two other
priests, prisoners for the same cause.
On November the 25th, he was brought to the
bar, tried and condemned. When the terrible
sentence of death was pronounced in the usual form
as in cases of high treason, not only was he not
terrified, but he was so transported with joy that he
seemed to have quite forgotten the pains of his
MM II.
5Q4 BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON
disease which had afflicted him so long and so
grievously.
After his sentence he spent his time, night and
day, either in prayer and meditation or in labouring
to gain souls to God and His Church. And in this
by the Divine blessing he had good success, for after
his condemnation he had been put back again
among the felons. Here his virtues so won the
hearts of these poor men, that in spite of the devil
and the devil's ministers, he led not a few of them
from the darkness of error to the light of Catholic
truth, and finally brought them with him to the
glory of Heaven.
His ancient biographer, to whom we owe these
details, tells us that he heard from men worthy of
credit, that ever since he was made a priest
Blessed James Thompson had never worn linen
next his skin. He was wont to exhort his spiritual
children when they visited him, to remain firm and
constant in the faith and never to vacillate under
the tempest of adverse circumstances. The time,
he said, was short, the reward ineffable, and the
victory almost won already. When that happy and
joyous day arrived on which the saintly priest was
to offer his body as a sacrifice holy and acceptable
to God, and the hurdle on which he was to be
drawn to the gallows in the Knavesmire was before
his eyes, he was asked by someone how he felt.
He replied that never in all his life had he felt so
glad and joyful.
Then a certain Anglican minister intruded himself
on him to dispute with him by the way, but the
BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON 595
martyr would have nothing to say to him. And
this example was followed by the others who were
to suffer with him (though not for a like cause),
who plainly told the parson that no consideration
would induce them to give ear to his doctrine.
When he was come to the Knavesmire he gave
himself to prayer, in which he continued for a long
space, praying with exceeding fervour. He finally
mounted the ladder, and turning to the people,
said these words in Latin : Omnes nos manifestari
oportet ante tribunal Christi, ut referat unusquisque
propria corporis, prout gessit, sive bonum sive malum.1
But before he had finished the sentence, one
Lindsay, a minister, interrupting the thread of his
discourse, cried out : " Thompson, speak in the
vulgar tongue, that the people may understand
thee." The priest most meekly replied : " I beg
you to hear me patiently." And then he repeated
in English the text he had already quoted in Latin.
And when he came to the explanation of the words,
" every one shall receive the proper things of the
body," he added : " And I first of all, now already
destined to death, for the crime of treason, as
people think, but really for the profession of the
Catholic religion."
Then the minister again interrupted, since he
could not endure to hear these words. " Thy
treasons and thy plottings," quoth he, " against
1 " We must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of
Christ, that everyone may receive the proper things of the body,
according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil." (2 Cor. v.
10.)
596 BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON
thy prince and country have been sufficiently dis-
covered and laid bare to us ; and, moreover, thou
hast been convicted of them by the verdict of the
jury." "Nay, indeed," replied the priest," "I call
God to witness, that I never plotted in any wise
against my prince or my country."
Then Maude, the vice-sheriff, said : " Thompson,
it is fitting that thou shouldst crave her Majesty's
pardon." " Why should I beg the Queen's pardon,"
he asked, "when I have never done anything against
her ? If I were to do this, I should imply that I
was guilty. But I call God to witness for my
soul, that never have I practised aught against her
Majesty in any thing." He was about to add
more, but the minister, in a rage, shouted out to
the people : " Listen to the villain ! Listen to
him ! Inasmuch as from his boyhood he has lived
wickedly and impiously, so now he has determined
to persist and die in his iniquity." The vice-
sheriff having at last silenced him, the priest said
quietly : " You come to me, as you give out, in
order to teach me patience, but you do not yourself
exercise patience but the contrary. May God
forgive you."
Having said this, he turned again towards the
gibbet, and went higher up the ladder. And then,
after commending to God in silent prayer the
sacred conflict on which he was about to engage,
turning his head a little towards the people, he
said : " I had forgotten one thing. I pray and
beseech you all to bear witness that I here die in
the Catholic faith."
BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON 597
Then, having been cast off the ladder, he seemed
still to act with a certain grave deliberation, so that
one would have thought he was not hanging from
a gibbet, but lying in bed and still fully conscious.
For in the first struggle, as the rope began to
throttle him, he raised his hands to heaven with
great devotion, thus, as it were, pronouncing with
the motions of his limbs : " My help is in the
Name of the Lord, who hath made heaven and
earth." Then he struck his breast with his right
hand, as though to express by this sign, in such
wise as he could, his own unworthiness and
weakness, that the strength of God which is made
perfect in weakness might be made manifest. And
lastly, as he was giving up his blessed spirit he
made a great sign of the Cross with his hand,
forming it most perfectly arid deliberately, to the
great amazement of the bystanders. Thus did the
martyr fortify himself with the glorious sign of
Christ against the spirits of evil, over whose armies
he was now about to triumph most gloriously and
to receive the crown of gold from the hand of
Christ, which He Himself has promised to those
who strive lawfully.1
The blessed martyr was not disembowelled and
quartered according to the barbarous sentence, but
was buried under the gallows with the criminals
who suffered with him. Thus, when the Venerable
Margaret Clitherow made her midnight pilgrimages
to the York Tyburn, she did not merely visit the
place of suffering, but the very tomb of one of those
1 C oncer tatio, fol. 103.
598 BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON
holy priests who had been her consolation and
support in life, and for the crime of ministering
to whom she was in her turn to suffer a cruel and
agonizing death.
The old writers remark that the behaviour of the
authorities in this case showed that they had some-
what changed their tactics. Before this they had
tried to bring the martyrs into discredit by loading
them with every species of calumny ; by publishing
libels and inventing charges of treason and regicide
against them, so that they might first destroy their
reputations and then their lives. But now they
thought it better to adopt a simpler method, that
of condemning and executing them in the company
of criminals of every description, so that it should
be supposed that they were not proceeded against
for religion but, like their companions, for some
crime. This however they were slower to adopt
in London than in the provinces, for their tricks
were almost worn threadbare in the capital, and
were more easily seen through.
The Catholics on their side, seeing that none
of those who fell into their enemies' hands ever
escaped from them except at the price of apostasy,
resolved to reply so clearly and plainly at their trials,
that there should be no manner of doubt possible
as to the fact of their having been condemned for
religion and religion only.
Sarnelli's epigram on Blessed James Thompson
may here be quoted.1
1 Delia Specchio del Clero Secolare, by Mgr. Pompeo Sarnelli.
Naples, 1679.
BLESSED JAMES THOMPSON 599
Castus, inops, humilis, domat, horret, vincit lacob,
Corpus, opes, Satan, verbere, mente, prece.
It may be rendered thus :
Chaste, poor, and meek, he tames, loathes, puts to flight,
Flesh, wealth, and Satan, armed with triple might.
ED.
AUTHORITIES. — The same as those quoted at the end of
the Life of Blessed William Lacey.
XXIII.
THE BLESSED WILLIAM HART,
SECULAR PRIEST.
York, 15 March, 1583.
BLESSED WILLIAM HART is one of the most
attractive figures in the glorious band of our
martyrs. Beloved by all who knew him, his zeal
and eloquence gained for him the title of " a
second Campion." He was born in the beautiful
cathedral city of Wells, in Somersetshire, and his
godfather was William Good, who was a native
of Glastonbury, and afterwards a Jesuit Father, and
for many years confessor in the English College at
Rome.
He was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford,
where he was elected Trappes Scholar on the 25th
of May, 1571, and supplicated B.A. on the i8th of
June, I574.1 His happy disposition and great talents
made him much beloved at Oxford, where a dis-
tinguished career would have been his, had he not
preferred the supernatural benefits of the Catholic
1 Boase, Register of the University of Oxford, II. ii. p. 37.
Cf. Wood, Athen. Oxon. i. 490, and iii. 45. He is the first Trappes
Scholar recorded.
6oi
religion to any honours which the world could offer
him.
In this resolution he was no doubt confirmed
by the example of Dr. Bridgwater, his Rector.
This good man had been chosen Rector of Lincoln
College in 1563, which dignity he held together with
other benefices, but in 1574 (the very year that our
martyr took his degree), " no longer able to support
himself under so notorious a conformity contrary to
his conscience, he quitted his rectorship of Lincoln,
together with all his other preferments, and went
abroad. He first retired to the English College at
Douay, and was followed by several students whom
he had privately instructed in the principles of the
Catholic religion." l
During his term of office Lincoln College had
naturally become a centre for those who were
favourably affected towards the old religion. And
among these students the most prominent was the
future martyr, William Hart, whose glorious conflict
for the faith Dr. Bridgwater himself was one day
to relate in his Concertatio. Indeed, it was difficult
for a talented, and at the same time deeply religious
mind, such as his was, to acquiesce for long in the
miserable compromise established by Elizabeth.
He therefore, like so many of Oxford's noblest
students at this period, left the University and went
to join Dr. Allen and his old Rector at Douay.
Here he became a model to all in the College.
"Although this College," says an eye-witness,2
3 Dodd, Part IV. Bk. II. art. ii. p. 60.
2 Historia del glorioso Martirio di Sedici Sacerdoti, etc. (1584), p. 198.
602 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
" both from being a new foundation, and also on
account of other inconveniences, was ruled rather
by the internal law of charity than by external rules
and constitutions, he nevertheless, directed without
doubt by the Spirit of God, conducted himself in such
a manner that, from the very hour of his arrival,
he gained the hearts of all by his modesty, patience,
and extraordinary devotion. But in particular, God
willed, by continually trying him, that for our
instruction he should give us a signal example of
patience. For he suffered the most acute pains
from the stone, which were almost continual, and
these he endured with such constancy, that he
astonished all those who saw him." Bridgwater
says on this point, that it seemed that the Divine
Providence had sent him to Douay for this very
purpose, to incite his fellow-students to imitate the
extraordinary calmness and patience with which he
bore his pains.
He seems to have been sent back to England for
a time in search of health, as in the Douay Diaries [
we find that William Hart and Mr. Maurice returned
from there on the i7th of June, 1577, bringing with
them two young Throckmortons. But this may
refer to another student of the same name. At any
rate, on July the 22nd of this year, he was sent to
try the waters at Spa, in the hope that they might
give him relief (propter extremum quern patiebatur
vesiccB dolorem ad balneos se contulit}? This hope,
however, proved vain, and he returned to Douay
early in September, little better than when he left.
1 P. 124. * Ibid. p. 125.
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 603
The College was at this time undergoing a time
of great anxiety owing to the intrigues of the revo-
lutionary party in the Netherlands against the King's
authority. The Prince of Orange and the Calvinists
succeeded in spreading distrust and discontent
among the people, and on the 24th of July, 1577,
Don John of Austria, who had lately been appointed
Viceroy, had to withdraw for his own security to the
fortress of Namur. On July the 2Qth the College
diarist writes : " Dr. Bristow admonished us to be
very guarded in our behaviour, and, as far as
possible, to walk less frequently in the streets,
because the common people had begun again, as in
the former troubles, to spread reports and excite
murmurs against us." Dr. Ely was called a traitor
in the streets, and it was reported that arms were
concealed in the College. Agents of the English
Government were active in exciting the popular
suspicion against their countrymen. In January,
1578, civil war broke out once more, and on March
the 2Oth the governor and magistrates, who were
favourable to the English exiles, were summarily
deposed and new magistrates appointed, who at
once proceeded to proclaim that all the English in
the town were to leave the place before five
o'clock next day. Though it was Holy Week,
the students had to set out at once on a four
days' journey to Rheims, where the forethought of
the Superiors had already provided for them a place
of refuge, and where the greater part of them arrived,
on the 27th of March, 1578. l This journey gave a
1 Dovay Diaries, Introduction, pp. liii. liv.
604 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
special occasion for exhibiting our martyr's fortitude.
He made it entirely on foot, although he was in
continual pain, and indeed during the journey under-
went unusually violent paroxysms of the disease, so
that his companions, observing the humility and
constancy with which he endured them, were forced
to confess that they had never witnessed such extra-
ordinary patience under agony so acute.
On reaching Rheims he was employed to give
lectures in logic, which he performed in a way that
gave great satisfaction. But as his disease grew
daily worse, and all the remedies prescribed by the
doctors had little or no effect, he was advised to
undergo an operation at the hands of a surgeon who
had a great reputation for cures of this kind.
Though he felt that death itself would be preferable
to such a remedy, nevertheless he considered that
he ought to take the advice, so that if his life
perchance were to be spared, he might devote it to
gaining souls to Christ and His holy Church. He
resolved, too, to offer up the suffering that the opera-
tion would inflict on him in expiation for the sins of
his past life. And so on the 5th of May, 1578, he set
out with Dr. Humphrey Ely for Namur, where,
apparently, the famous surgeon lived.1 Here he
gave himself up at once to the knife. An operation
in those days, when anaesthetics were unknown, was
a very different ordeal from what it now is, and
William Hart well knew that there was a great risk
that he would not survive it. His first biographer
and Dr. Bridgwater give terrible details as to the
1 Ibid. p. 141.
BLESSED WILLIAM HART
operation, into which we need not enter. The young
man who endured it, went through it deliberately
as a preparation for the greater sufferings of martyr-
dom, for which he yearned. He earnestly besought
God's help, and then endured the frightful operation
with such extraordinary constancy that he never
moved a muscle. So absorbed was he in prayer,
that he seemed scarcely to perceive what was being
done to him, and the surgeon himself was struck
with wonder and admiration. The operation proved
perfectly successful, and when, after some months,
the wound was healed, he returned to Rheims,
the 22nd of November, 1578. l Soon after this he was
sent by Dr. Allen to the new College at Rome.
Here there were about forty students at the time,
under the rectorship of Dr. Maurice Clenock, who
was replaced in April by Father Alphonso Agazzari,
SJ. Our martyr's name is 32nd in the College
Diary, which is headed by the glorious name of
Blessed Ralph Sherwin. He took the college oath,
the 23rd of April, 1579, in presence of the Jesuit
Provincial and the illustrious Father Robert
Bellarmine, afterwards Cardinal. He swore, with
his companions, upon the Holy Scriptures, that he
would ever be ready at the order of the Sovereign
Pontiff or the Superior of the College to embrace
the ecclesiastical state, to take Holy Orders and to
proceed to England in order to aid souls.2
1 Ibid. p. 147.
2 Foley, " Diary of the English College ; " Records S.J. vi. pp. 127
and 136. There was another William Hart in the College at the time.
He is aist on the list in the Diary. He left various MS. books
606 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
His life at Rome, as at Douay and Rheims, gave
the greatest possible edification to all who knew
him. His biographer says that his obedience to his
Superiors, and his trust in them, were only equalled
by his assiduity in study and his devotion to
spiritual things. This was so remarkable that his
whole life could be described as a continual study
in the acquirement of virtues. Such extraordinary
signs of solid virtue were indeed seen in him, that
everyone felt, that he was destined by God to
become a most glorious martyr. He earnestly
begged, while at the College, to be admitted into
the Society of Jesus, but his old infirmity proved
an insurmountable hindrance to his pious desire.
He had an excellent talent for preaching, and
pronounced several public discourses before
Cardinal Buoncompagno, at his first visit as
Protector of the College, and before Cardinal
Moroni and others. But his health was always
feeble, and Dr. Allen hearing that Rome did not
agree with him, asked that he should be sent back
to Rheims.1
He remained however at Rome till March, 1581,
when he was ordained priest, no doubt at the Lent
Ember-tide ordination. On March the 26th he
left Rome, together with three priests and Ralph
Standish, the first student who had entered the
College, but who was obliged, on account of ill-
which also bear the name of Ven. Robert Southwell inscribed in
them. (Grene's Collectanea N at Stonyhurst, quoted below.) This
Hart became a Jesuit, and after serving on the English Mission, died
at Rome.
1 Foley, Records S.J. vol. iii. p. 147.
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 607
health, to leave with them before taking priest's
Orders. Before their departure they went to kiss
the Pope's feet according to custom. His Holiness
received them most graciously, and granted to each
a sum of fifty gold scudi for the journey. Blessed
William Hart made an address to His Holiness,
which both moved and consoled the Pontiff and
all who were with him.1 He warmly thanked His
Holiness for his many benefactions.
" Of all the monuments which your virtues
have raised to themselves throughout Christendom,
none are more glorious, or shine with purer lustre,
than the provision made by you for the welfare
and salvation of the souls of our fellow-countrymen
who are being dragged down to perdition. By your
fatherly tenderness, care, and solicitude, has it been
brought about that those who were children of
wrath have now become heirs of God, fellow-heirs
with Jesus Christ. You have opened up and
cleared of its obstacles the way of return to the
faith and practice of our ancestral religion for all
who are willing to enter upon it and to walk therein,
and have encouraged us to look forward to the
complete re-conversion of our country, by opposing
to the barbarous rage of the heretics those schools
of virtue and learning, the Seminaries of Rome
and of Rheims. . . . Remit not, Most Blessed
Father, your efforts to aid the afflicted and comfort
the wretched, nor withhold that fostering care for
1 Foley, Records S.J. vol. vi. p. 72. He prints the whole text of
the address.
1508 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
our dear England, which it needed no one to inspire
you with, though events prove contrary and the
times evil. This is the prayer addressed to you
by the cries of helpless infants, the meanings of
mothers, the tears of our nobles, the earnest
entreaties of the clergy, the loyalty to this Holy
See, of which so many of our countrymen have
given proof. What they, being absent, are unable to
say, may not be suppressed by us who are privileged
to behold your fatherly countenance."
We do not know how the little band fared on
their journey, but on the I5th of March, 1581, St.
Charles Borromeo had written to Father Agazzari,
promising a hearty welcome to the next company of
scholars which should pass.1 The company in this
case was that of which Blessed William Hart was
spokesman. When they came the Saint was doubt-
less as good as his word, and showed them the
same kindness and hospitality which, as we have
already seen, he had shown to Blessed Edmund
Campion and his fellow-travellers the year before.
Pitts and Standish reached Rheims before their
companions, on April the igth, and left again for
England on the 22nd. The other three, William
Hart, William Harrison, and Hugh Proberts, only
reached Rheims on May the I3th. Perhaps they
had been delayed by sickness. On May the 22nd,
Blessed William and Mr. Harrison left for England,
and on the 24th Mr. Proberts also left. The times
were so dangerous that it was doubtless thought
best that they should not all travel together.
1 Knox, Douay Diaries , p. 340.
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 609
On reaching England Blessed William Hart
directed his steps towards Yorkshire, where he
threw himself into the work of the mission with
characteristic ardour. So great was his fervour
and his success, that it was predicted of him that
he would be the fourth martyr of York. His
sermons were so eloquent and persuasive, that the
people compared him to Father Campion, and
though his missionary labours lasted but little
over a year, he had already won for himself the
title of " Apostle of Yorkshire." He made many
converts, some of whom he sent to Rome. Besides
a singular piety towards God, a great love for
his neighbours, and an extraordinary zeal for the
Catholic faith, which were conspicuous in him from
the beginning, his carriage and behaviour were so
winning that everyone loved him. His devotion
to the august Mysteries of the Altar was so
great, that whilst he celebrated them, he was often
observed to shed an abundance of tears. Above
all else, his charity to the poor Catholic prisoners
was very remarkable. The gaols were full of them,
and they were perishing daily through the many
hardships of their imprisonment. At the risk of
his own life, he visited them daily in their fetid
dungeons, and gave them all the consolation in his
power, hearing their confessions, encouraging them
to constancy, ministering to their temporal neces-
sities, and feeding their souls with the Bread of
Heaven. Many were dying of the filth and squalor
of their dungeons, and these he tenderly prepared
for death. Well he knew that, if he were captured,
NN II.
6io BLESSED WILLIAM HART
he would have to endure an even worse fate than
theirs ; but far from counting his own life precious,
he only longed to gain the martyr's crown. Father
Persons tells us, that when he spoke with Catholics
on spiritual things, he was wont to give them a
crucifix, which he wore, to kiss, desiring that they
should practise so good and Christian a custom.
He was present at the Mass which Mr. Bell
celebrated in York Castle, on the night that
Blessed William Lacey was apprehended, and
only escaped by letting himself down the wall
into the rnoat, where he was up to his chin in
water and mire. But within six months after,
God was pleased that he should fall into the
hands of the persecutors. He was betrayed by an
apostate, who was inflamed with hatred against all
that was Catholic.1 This man went to York, where
the Father usually dwelt (probably in the house
provided by the Venerable Margaret Clitherow,
who was our martyr's penitent), and having dis-
covered his place of abode, obtained from the Earl
of Huntingdon, who was eager to do an ill turn
to Catholics, a posse of officers to arrest the priest.
Taking a number of constables, he went on
Christmas night to the house where the martyr
was concealed, broke down the doors, and made
a forcible entry. The priest was found by some of
these ruffians sleeping quietly in his chamber, for
during the five preceding nights he had been so
1 Many of the following details are taken from the Annual
Letters of the English College, Rome. (Foley, Records S.J. vol. vi.
pp. 103, 104.)
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 6n
busy in hearing confessions and administering the
Blessed Sacrament to his numerous flock, that he
could not obtain more than two hours' sleep. They
roused him and asked him his name. " William
Hart," was his reply. At the first surprise, and
perhaps not yet fully awake, he said to them, with
some emotion : " Beware lest any of you lay violent
hands on me, for I am a priest, anointed with the
holy chrism ; suffer me to rise and dress, and I will
accompany you forthwith."
As soon as he was dressed, they carried him to
the house of the high sheriff, where they kept
him till day, and then brought him before the Lord
President of the North. Here he was strictly
examined, but the details did not come to the ears
of his friends, except that, at the end, a nobleman
who was present said to Lord Huntingdon, who was
accusing the martyr of treason : " This man, my
Lord, seems to me to be altogether guiltless of any
such crime." Another account says that having
begun a theological discussion, the Earl was
driven into a corner by the martyr's arguments,
and was fain to call in some ministers to take
up the disputation, who, finding themselves speedily
worsted, took refuge in abuse. He was then com-
mitted a close prisoner to the Castle, and thrown
into an underground dungeon, in which he remained
till his martyrdom. He was kept on short commons
and otherwise ill-treated. Nevertheless the joy he
felt so transfigured him, that his enemies, on
St. John's day, the second after his capture, put
on him double irons in order, if possible, to depress
BLESSED WILLIAM HART
his spirit by physical burdens. But the result was
quite the contrary, for the more cruel were his
bodily sufferings the greater were his spiritual
consolations.
After a fortnight he was carried before Dean
Hutton, being dragged through the streets in chains,
which chafed his legs and occasioned no slight
suffering. When the Dean saw him, he caused
his fetters to be removed, and in a friendly tone
sought to win him over to his side. But prevailing
nothing by fair words, he took to controversy, and
misquoted a passage of St. Augustine. Hereupon
Hart observed, that if he could have a copy of that
Father's works, he could easily establish every
article of his faith by quoting from his writings.
The Dean thereupon lent him a copy of St. Augustine,
and he was taken back to gaol.
After consulting these volumes in his cell, he
wrote two letters, one to the Council and the other
to the Dean, in which he offered to prove from the
works of the holy Doctor that he upheld the Catholic
doctrine.
We quote these letters, since they have never
before been published. Bridgwater only summarizes
them, but a Latin version of the originals is still
extant in the archives of the see of Westminster.1
"To the Council.
" Most Worshipful, — Now that I have
sufficiently consulted Saint Augustine as to what I
wanted to prove, I think it very important that I
1 Vol. iii. fol. 229.
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 613
should expound to you his words, and that for
various reasons. For he believes in the Real
Presence, he acknowledges the Propitiatory Sacrifice,
he prays for the dead, he implores the intercession
of the Saints, he defends tradition, he asserts the
possibility of observing the commandments. In a
word in everything he is altogether on our side, and
attacks our adversaries. Wherefore let it clearly be
seen from this, that our faith is not so new, nor our
religion so false, nor our doctrine so erroneous, as
our adversaries commonly pretend.
" Wherefore wishing to your Honours grace in
this life and glory in the next, I humbly take my
leave.
" Your Honours' most humble bedesman,
"WILLIAM HART."
"To the Dean.
" Sir, — Since our religion is suppressed
as false, and accounted as erroneous, I beseech you
for the love of Jesus, to deign to answer this one
question either privately or publicly. If Purgatory,
the invocation of Saints, prayers for the dead,
the Real Presence, the Sacrifice of the Mass,
Justification by works, and the like, are errors,
show when, in what way, and by what means,
they crept into the Church ; bring forth one Father
or one historical or authentic testimony, which
informs us as to their origin. If they are errors,
who wrote against them, or what really pious or
erudite doctor contradicted them ? If no one can
be produced, what is there against all these things
614 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
belonging not to condemned error but to the
approved truth ? This is the question, Reverend
Sir, in which I desire so greatly to be satisfied, in
order that the truth, which now lies hidden, may be
made clear. Hoping, therefore, that you will pardon
my boldness, and will deign to answer me as to the
aforesaid matters, I commend you to God from my
heart.
"Yours who prays for you daily,
"WILLIAM HART."
These letters having been read, the Council
summoned him before them, ten days after his
interview with the Dean. Here, in that dignitary's
presence, he made good his promise, and so over-
whelmed the Dean with his arguments, that the
bystanders were put to the blush by the feebleness of
their champion's answers. At last the Dean was
forced to confess that St. Augustine was on the
Catholic side and with him all antiquity also, as
to the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed
Sacrament, and also as to, what he called, the false
doctrine of Purgatory. An impudent, coarse and
ignorant minister was called in to continue the
dispute, but as this brazen-faced man denied even
the most obvious points, there was no making any
progress with him.
The Dean and his assistants, in spite of their
defeat, had had the audacity to proclaim that
the servant of God would prove an easy conquest,
being already half-converted to the new religion. The
martyr, who was much disturbed by the report,
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 615
wrote a long letter to some of his Catholic friends,
giving the true version of what had passed. He
told them how the Dean and the Councillors had
been forced to confess that he had well answered
their objections, and that there was not a word of
truth in their cries of victory. Since that time he
had been constantly visited by ministers, who dis-
puted with him about the doctrine of the Holy
Mass and the Real Presence, and made every kind
of objection to these sacred truths. Among these
divines a Mr. Bunny seemed, in his own opinion at
least, to be the chief preacher of the new Gospel.
A Mr. Palmer had argued that the Mass not being
a public action did not agree with the institution of
Christ, since all those who assisted at it did not
communicate. The martyr's replies had been
twisted and misinterpreted in the usual fashion,
but he had at last silenced his opponents with
the authority of St. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose,
St. Augustine, Gratian, and others. Finally, Palmer
had said, " I allow that the Mass was in use in the
times of those Fathers, but it was a quite different
thing from what the Papists have in use now." The
martyr concluded by saying that if, as Gregory
Martin had shown in his Discoverie of the Manifold
Corruptions of the holie Scriptures by the Heretikes of
our days,1 these men wrested the inspired words in
such a shocking way, it was no wonder that they
should deprave the words of a prisoner to their own
liking, and maliciously misinterpret his arguments.
Yet although the contest was so unfairly conducted,
1 Rheims, John Fogny, 1582.
616 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
and Catholics had no opportunity of replying to the
false reports circulated by their enemies, he did not
despair. Nay, they might piously hope that God
Himself and Christ their captain and standard-
bearer, would again by means of a young David
destroy that fierce Goliath, and by his poor servant
Stephen overthrow the forces of the adversary.
But now the Lent Assizes drew on at which he
was to be tried. He was arraigned for high treason
on two counts, first, that he had brought into the
realm certain writings from the See of Rome ;
secondly, that he had said Mass, heard confessions,
reconciled numbers to the Church, and had seduced
them from their allegiance.
The judge asked him why he had left his native
country to go beyond the seas ? He answered,
" For no other reason, my Lord, than to acquire
virtue and learning ; and whereas I found religion
and virtue flourishing in those countries, I took Holy
Orders (to which I perceived myself called by a
divine vocation), to the end that, renouncing the
world, I might be more at liberty to serve my
Maker." They asked him how he had employed
his time since his return to England. He answered,
" Everywhere I have been, I have tried, as far as
I could, to instruct the ignorant, in order that they
might be more prepared to give an account of the
faith that is in them. I have also fed them with
heavenly Food, in order that being confirmed in
good, they might strive to keep their consciences
pure, and by their pious and religious life stop the
mouths of those who calumniate us." Then the
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 617
judges, as if with one voice, cried out against the
martyr of God as guilty of treason. First, because
he had left the realm without the licence of the
Queen's majesty and attached himself to her chief
enemy, the Roman Pontiff; and next, because he
had induced John Wright and one Couling to abjure
their allegiance to their lawful prince ; as if, forsooth,
civil obedience could not be reconciled with the
profession of the Catholic faith. But the martyr
replied that the obedience which he taught men to
give to the Supreme Pontiff and Vicar of Christ on
earth, not only detracted in nothing from the
complete allegiance due to the prince, but on the
contrary, rather confirmed and increased it. He
called God and the whole company of Heaven to
witness, that he had never in his life entertained so
much as a thought derogatory to the authority of
Elizabeth, whom he recognized as his lawful
sovereign and true queen. As to Mr. Wright and
Couling, neither they nor any one else could say that
he had ever spoken so much as one word to them to
dissuade them from their obedience to her Majesty.
As to his having brought into the country writings
from the See of Rome, he protested that he had
brought nothing from Rome except his Letters of
Orders, and that could not be objected against
him.
He ended by pointedly appealing to the judges
to bear witness to his innocence, showing by the
testimony of Scripture and the Fathers that no one
could be accounted a criminal because he defended
the truth with constancy and fidelity.
6i8 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
After this powerful appeal, a great silence fell on
the court, the judges being unable to say anything
in reply. But fearing that the people would suspect
their injustice, one of the Protestant ministers (who
were ever hounding on the authorities against
Christ's servants) got up and made a foolish speech
which only served to make things worse. The
judges, seeing the bad effect which had been pro-
duced on the people, were forced at last to try
to justify themselves. One of them, therefore, put
forward a statute of Henry VIII., which condemned
to the penalties of high treason any one who should
leave the realm without the royal permission, and
should ask or receive assistance from the Roman
Pontiff. The martyr replied, " My Lord, I confess
that this, if taken literally, is fatal to me. But if
your Lordship be pleased to take into consideration,
as is only just, the sense of the statute and my
intention, you will clearly see that my neck is not
endangered by this statute. For, as I already
confessed, I did not leave England with any inten-
tion of practising treason against my sovereign
or my beloved country, but merely that, like a
good citizen, I might apply myself to study and to
the practice of virtue, so that I might be able to
help you and your children to attain eternal
happiness." Then the judge replied, " Hart, I
acknowledge that your intention was by no means
evil, and I even admit that your desire to acquire
learning and virtue was a laudable one ; but as you
know, in the time of Henry VIII. it was decreed
that if any one should leave the realm without his
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 619
sovereign's permission, he should be accounted
guilty of treason."
No more was said ; for the judge came to a
standstill, owing, as he said, to his having studied
law and not divinity. The jury at once returned a
verdict of guilty, and the terrible sentence was
pronounced. The people openly murmured at the
injustice of the sentence, and many thinking that
he would be privately got rid of, followed the martyr
back to his prison.
Blessed William, however, received the sentence
with unruffled calmness, using the words of holy Job :
Domimis dedit, Dominus abstulit; sicut Domino pi acuit,
ita factum est ; sit nomen Domini benedictum — "The
Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away ; as it
hath pleased the Lord so is it done ; blessed be the
name of the Lord," x adding that he had good hope
that soon his mortal life and all its miseries would
be brought to an end, and that he would obtain
eternal joy.
During the six days before his execution, he
prepared himself by a rigorous fast, taking nothing
but a crust and a little small beer, to which he
sometimes added an apple. The nights he spent
in prayer, as if he had already left the body and
become a fellow-citizen of the saints. His desires
were fixed on Heaven, and with the utmost eagerness
he looked forward to the hour when at length,
released from the bonds of the flesh, he should go
to meet in Heaven the Lord whom he had confessed
so nobly on earth.
1 Job i. 21.
620 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
The letters of farewell which he wrote at the
time breathe this spirit. No wonder that they
were eagerly treasured up by those who had the
happiness to receive them, and that no less than
eleven of them have been handed down to us.
Two of them are addressed to his spiritual
children; they are full of the most tender piety.
He speaks with the deepest humility and com-
punction of his past life, as if he had been the
greatest of sinners, begs them to persevere, and
above all to value and to frequent the sacraments.
He says he would give ten worlds, if he had them,
to obtain the assistance of a Catholic priest, but
none could come to him. Let them take a warning
from him and frequent the sacraments while they
may. He begs them to remain indoors the day of
his execution, unless they can assist at it with a
joyous face and tranquil mien.
Another beautiful letter is addressed to the
afflicted Catholics, urging them to constancy and
patience : to fight till death for the faith, and refuse
to go to church ; if an angel from Heaven preach
another gospel, he says, let him be anathema. If
" Sandys, the ringleader of the ministers," if
Bunny or the Dean teach them another faith and
religion from what they have received, let them be
anathema. They must welcome fines, poverty,
prisons, death, tortures. He then continues as
follows :
" Stand fast, brethren, stand steadfast, I say,
in that faith which Christ planted, the Apostles
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 621
preached, the martyrs confirmed, the whole world
approved and embraced ; stand firm in that faith,
which as it is the oldest, is also the truest and most
sure, and which is most in harmony with the Holy
Scriptures and all antiquity. Stand constant in
that faith, which has a worship worthy of all honour
and reverence, sacraments most holy, abounding
with spiritual consolation. For if ye have remained
constant in this faith, that is in the Catholic Church,
in the ark of Noe, in the house of Rahab, with what
joy and consolation of soul will ye not be flooded :
to you will be imparted the sacrament of penance
for the cleansing of your souls ; to you will be given
the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our
Saviour for the refreshing of your souls ; you will
be partakers of all the satisfactions and merits of
Christ, of the fellowship of the saints, of the
suffrages, prayers, fasts, and almsdeeds of all the
just, whom the Catholic Church diffused throughout
the whole world holds in her bosom. O blessed
they, yea and thrice blessed, who stand firm in the
faith of Christ, according to the Apostle's warning :
especially in this most deplorable time when God
is blasphemed, the priests of Christ are hanged, the
sacraments trampled under foot ; for these will
be partakers of all graces, yea and of eternal hap-
piness. God is my witness that I speak from my
heart, when I say that I would rather be the last
in the family of Christ than be saluted as leader
in the sect of the Protestants. Wherefore again,
I pray you, through Jesus Christ, that ye be firm
and constant, that is in the Catholic faith to which
622 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
you are called. This is the first, the last, the only
request I make, and have yet made or ever shall.
Fulfil these my desires, hear my voice, keep to my
counsel. But why do I, a miserable and unhappy
sinner, beg of you, that in this age most poisoned
and most dangerous to the good, you should per-
severe firm and constant in your confession, when
angels, archangels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles,
martyrs, confessors, virgins, the whole world beseech
it, when the salvation of your souls, and the
good God Himself, make the same entreaty, that
you should remain firm in the faith you have once
received, and in your confession of the truth ? May
God of His infinite mercy help you to do so, and
I, your spiritual father, though weak and loaded
with innumerable sins, will never cease to pray for
you both in this life and in the next. Wherefore,
I entreat you, in every way I can, to be mindful
of me as often as you offer your devout prayers
to God, lest I be like a melting candle, which
giveth light to others, and itself consumeth. Again
and again, farewell, my much desired ones. The
servant of all and every one of you,
" WILLIAM HART."
In a postscript the blessed martyr warns his
children against two Protestant errors : the first
that it was not possible to observe all God's com-
mandments, and the other that a man who had
once been in a state of grace could never fall from it.
He wrote yet another letter congratulating the
Catholic prisoners on their happiness in being
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 623
Catholics. He would give anything to see them
again, for they were his joy and his crown.
" You are a holy nation, a people specially
dedicated to God, that you may be partakers of
His eternal inheritance ; ye are safe in the Ark of
Noe, in a most happy condition, placed on a
mountain which is subject to no evil chance.
Therefore proceed as ye have begun in the ranks
of God's army, remain firm in your holy vocation,
fight to the very end; and heaven, heaven I say,
in which is infinite joy and bliss never to be put
into words, shall be yours for ever. Let this be
your one and only study, to worship God and to
fear Him, and nothing will be wanting to you. He
is almighty, who will defend you ; merciful, who will
rule over you ; rich, who will feed you ; sweet and
loving, who will console and strengthen you. You
will find Him in your doubts a skilful doctor, in
dangers a faithful guide, in labours an ever present
help, in all other troubles whatsoever a most speedy
comforter. . . . You, then, who are in bonds for
Christ and separate'd from the world, are not subject
to those temptations by which the children of this
world are harassed. . . . Take account of time,
and do not let a day pass without fruit ; let all
your thoughts and meditations be on heaven and
heavenly things. Let your prayers be ardent, but
your actions discreet and well considered ; bear
trials with patience. I pray you, for Christ's sake,
that you so live and so bear yourselves in all things
that the enemies of the faith may be forced to
624 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
account you, not as relaxed, but as modest and
religious. But before all things, carefully preserve
unity of spirit in the bond of peace, loving each
other with fraternal charity, let there be no dis-
sensions among you, no discords ; for thus will
God embrace you with His love and the angels
proclaim your praises.
" And I beseech you for Christ's sake, most
beloved brethren, daily, nay every hour, to pray for
me a wretched and needy sinner, in order that I
may finish my course to the glory of God, the
salvation of my soul, and the good of my neighbour.
As for me, be sure that I neither will nor can forget
you in my prayers, for just as while I was with you
I did my best to comfort and help you, so will I do
the same much more powerfully in heaven, if God
grant me that grace. Farewell, my most beloved
sons. I beseech you to pardon me whatsoever I have
done you wrong by offence or by negligence ; so
forgive me as I forgive you. Pray for me, as indeed
I pray and will pray for you. This have I written
to you in greatest haste when almost overcome with
sleep and greatly wearied."
Another touching letter is to a friend. In
this we see, as elsewhere indeed, the playful and
joyous spirit which made him so beloved, and
which sprang from an innocent, childlike heart. He
tells his friend he is about to buy an estate of
immense value, and that his friend must help him.
•" If the day fixed be kept, if the gibbet does not fall,
if by my fault that which has been settled and fixed
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 625
does not come to naught, beyond doubt the estate
is mine." Heaven is the estate, and his friend, if he
will persevere, may win it too.
Yet again he writes to his beloved children in
prison. He tells them that he is their most loving
though unworthy father. He would fain leave them
some last gift, as Elias left his cloak to Eliseus. But
as you can get nothing from a cat but its skin, so
from a poor Hart, naked and bereft of all things, what
more can they expect than his heart ? But that they
have always possessed ever since he knew them ;
and they will have it always for their own, not only
while he lives, but also when by the infinite mercy
of God, he is admitted into the heavenly choirs.
He ends by telling them that if they choose to mount
to Heaven by sufferings and tortures, as by a rope,
they will have him as a companion on the journey.
He writes "to a spiritual son" that though
time, ink, and pen are wanting, he must wish him
and his a happy and prosperous year. Though he
is in pain and darkness, and loaded with heavy
chains, never has he been so flooded with joy, he
seems already to live in Paradise. The only thing
that grieves him is the cunning of the adversary,
which deceives simple souls. To " a noble lady" he
writes, to thank her for her charitable visit and the
other kindnesses she had shown him, although he was
a stranger to her. God will reward her. Her visit
caused him joy in the Lord, but sorrow on one
account, that she seemed so grieved at his sufferings.
She must rather thank God. Is it not a glory and
honour to the servant to follow his lord, to drink
oo ii.
626 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
out of his king's own cup? If the poor man rejoices
who has found a hidden treasure, shall not he be
filled with a like jubilation who has found the
treasure of priceless worth ? Let her rejoice with
him and grieve no more.
These beautiful letters set before us the vivid
picture of a zealous priest, who was surely worthy to
stand beside Blessed Thomas More, so full was
he of heroism tempered with mirth, and a calm,
sweet joy in suffering for Christ. Father Good,
we are told, kept many of his spiritual letters
with great veneration at Rome, and it is probable
that these are the same from which we have quoted.
The most touching of all is that written by the
martyr to his mother, a few days before he suffered.
As this is printed by Bishop Challoner, it should
be well known to all, and so we forbear to quote
more than one passage.
" Be of good cheer then, my loving mother, and
cease from weeping ; for there is no cause why you
should do so. Tell me, for God's sake, would you not
be glad to see me a bishop, a king, or an emperor ?
Yes, verily, I dare say you would. How glad then
may you be to see me a martyr, a saint, a most
glorious and bright star in heaven. The joy of this
life is nothing, and the joy of the other life is ever-
lasting ; and therefore thrice happy may you think
yourself, that your son William is gone from earth
to heaven, and from a place of all misery, to a place
of all felicity. I wish that I were near to comfort
you ; but because that cannot be, I beseech you,
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 627
even for Christ Jesus' sake, to comfort yourself. . . .
I can say no more, but desire you to be of good
cheer, because I myself am well. If I had lived, I
would have holpen you in your age, as you have
holpen me in my youth. But now I must desire
God to help you, and my brethren, for I cannot.
Good mother, bless me, be contented with that which
God hath appointed for my perpetual comfort ; and
now in your old days, serve God after the old
Catholic manner. Cry unto Him daily, beseech
Him heartily to make you a member of His Church,
and that He will save your soul : for Jesus' sake,
good mother, serve God. Read that book that I
gave you, and die a member of Christ's body ; and
then one day we shall meet in heaven by God's
grace. . . . Farewell, good mother, farewell ten
thousand times.
" Out of York Castle the loth of March, 1583.
" Your most loving and obedient son,
"WILLIAM HART."
We cannot forbear from quoting here the prayer
which the holy sufferer composed in prison, and
which he earnestly besought his spiritual children to
say for him daily.
" Grant, sweet Jesu, to Thy most wretched
servant Hart, the grace of finishing his course to
the glory of Thy Name, and his eternal salvation.
Direct his words, thoughts, and works, that every-
thing in him may respond to his priestly vocation
and to his divine office. Give him patience in
628 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
adversity, kindness in his words, wisdom, prudence
and constancy in all his doings, that through his
means Thy glorious Name may be honoured and
our faith upraised. Grant this, sweet Jesu, by Thy
bitter Passion : Who livest and reignest with the
Father and the Holy Spirit world without end.
Amen."
The day before the blessed martyr's execution
the sheriff gave him notice that he was to die on
the morrow ; he received the intelligence calmly,
only asking that he might be allowed to speak to
the people — a petition granted, but afterwards
recalled. On the next morning, the people thronged
the approaches to the gaol. He bade farewell to
the Catholic prisoners and besought their prayers.
Calling the chief gaoler, he humbly thanked him for
his lodging and food, though the man had indeed
shown him scant kindness. Then, like an innocent
lamb, he was stretched out on the hurdle, and
bound to it with cords. The prisoners commended
themselves aloud to his prayers, and he replied with
unruffled countenance, that he would forget no one,
words which greatly moved the bystanders. A
certain noble lady, detained in prison for her faith,
asked him to look towards her and pray for her ; he
gave a sign of consent, and then was dragged to
the place of execution along with some thieves.
All the way he kept his eyes fixed on heaven, and in
silence implored the Divine help. When he had
nearly reached the place of execution, which is
about a mile outside Micklegate Bar, two Anglican
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 629
ministers, Bunny and Pace, drew near to insult and
outrage him, calling out to the people that he was
a villainous traitor against the Queen's majesty,
and was to die for his crimes. The martyr meekly
replied that never had he harboured even a thought
against the Queen, and that it was altogether
repugnant to his sacred office to mix in political
affairs.
On reaching the gallows, a crier gave notice that
it was forbidden under heavy penalties to approach
within forty feet. The martyr at once cheerfully
mounted the ladder, and as he was silently praying
he was asked if he prayed for the Queen of England.
" I have prayed God for her/' he replied, " up to
this day, and while I live I will not cease to pray.
I freely acknowledge her as my sovereign, and am
ready to obey her promptly and gladly in everything
which is permitted by the Catholic Church."
Bunny, a prebend of York and a rabid Calvinist,
at once arose, and began to read in a loud
voice the sentence of excommunication pronounced
by Pope St. Pius V. against Elizabeth, in order to
persuade the people that the martyr had come back
to England to draw her subjects away from her
obedience, and therefore richly deserved his fate.
He, however, replied briefly, " I have ever prayed
for the safety of the Queen, and the good estate of
the kingdom, and I wish her all that I, even at this
moment, can desire for the salvation of my own
soul." Pace interrupted him, telling him to prove
his words by praying God to confound her Majesty's
enemies. To whom the holy man mildly answered,
630 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
" Who is so foolish as not to see what you mean by
this prayer ? " for of course the minister wanted
the servant of Christ to pray that the Pope, as the
Queen's enemy, might be destroyed.
The martyr then began to speak most movingly
to the people on the miseries of man and the end
of his creation. But the ministers again interrupted
him, and charged him openly with ignorance and
stupidity, and with not knowing the grounds of his
religion. He answered calmly and tried to proceed,
but his voice was drowned in their furious clamour.
Bunny and Pace were joined in their abuse and
insults by two of the councillors, by the Lord Mayor
Goodrich, and other principal men ; for God willed
that he should thus be made like to his Divine
Master, against whom the chiefs of the people took
counsel together, and decried as a blasphemer.
Pace was the worst of all, and the nearer he saw
the martyr approach his heavenly crown, the more
furious he grew, shouting out against him every
kind of insult, and using language altogether
unworthy of a Christian man.
But the martyr bore all their bitterness with
great calmness and patience, quietly answering their
calumnies, and pleading with the ringleader after
this sort : " Good Mr. Pace, I beseech you to leave
these my last moments in peace." But this gentle-
ness only excited Pace the more. He shouted to
the people, " This traitor would fain abuse your
simplicity ; he would fain persuade you that he
endures this shameful death for his religion ; but
it is not so, for he goes to the gallows, not as a
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 631
martyr, but as an enemy of his country and an
infamous traitor."
Meanwhile the martyr, with eyes raised to
heaven, commended himself to God, saying: "Ad
te levavi oculos meos" But he was again interrupted by
the furious ministers, who cried out that he should
pray with them. "As I do not belong to your
Church," he replied, " I may not pray with you ; "
adding, " This one request I earnestly make of all
Catholics that they pray for me, and bear witness
to all men that I die a Catholic and for the Catholic
faith, not for any crime or treason."
The hangman then fixed the rope round his neck
and turned him off the ladder. When the assistants
came forthwith to cut him down, in order to dis-
embowel him while still alive, the crowd, disregard-
ing the prohibition already mentioned, hindered
them from doing so. Finally, pressing round the
gallows, some took his shirt, others his clothes,
others his shoes, while portions of his flesh were cut
off by some to be kept as relics. Several of these
persons were arrested and cast into prison for what
they had done. Amongst them two women were
lodged in the very dungeon wherein the blessed
martyr had been confined.
But the martyr's blessed soul was carried by the
angels to the throne of God, there to stand at the
tribunal of a Judge who cannot err, and to receive
from Him the reward of all that he had suffered for
His Name's sake.
His virtues were so illustrious, says Bridgwater,
that they shone as the stars of heaven, and com-
632 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
pelled the admiration, not only of his friends, but
even of his deadly foes. One of the jurymen at his
trial had been so struck by his holiness that he
openly said to his colleagues that he would have no
part in condemning one so innocent and holy, and
he was in consequence thrown into prison, although
he was a man of good name and much respected
in York. Even the porter of the prison, callous
and hard-hearted as he was, was moved to tears
when he saw the holy martyr dragged so cruelly to
death. In spite of all the efforts of the magistrates
the people could not be hindered from carrying
off his sacred relics, and proclaiming aloud his
innocence and sanctity, though many were im-
prisoned for doing so.
Two earls, we are told, attended the execution,
one of whom will have been, no doubt, the fierce
Lord Huntingdon, President of the Council. A
Catholic bought from the hangman his bloodstained
garments, of which portions were distributed among
the faithful, and held in great veneration. A part
also was given to a certain gentleman of great
wealth, who later on suffered death in the same
place and in the same cause, and who whilst in
prison was reduced to great straits, and left destitute
even of clothing.
His glorious martyrdom created a great impres-
sion in his old colleges of Rheims and Rome. Allen
wrote to Agazzari on the loth of June, 1583, that
two Catholics who had just come from England
had brought him various relics of the martyr,
especially the shirt and vest in which he had
BLESSED WILLIAM HART 633
suffered. They also brought the letters he had
written before his death. " He suffered all his pains
most constantly and with most tranquil soul." 1
" The week before Palm Sunday," wrote Birkett
to Allen on April the i6th, " William Hart gloriously
poured out his blood for the Church of Christ and
the authority of His Vicar, a young priest, who (as
you know) was both innocent, modest, learned, and
holy. As he was being carried to execution very
many saluted him with the greatest kindness and
love. Among them were two brothers of the noble
family of Ingleby of Ripley, who are now in prison
on this charge." These were no doubt brothers of
the martyr, Ven. Francis Ingleby, who was ordained
priest this year at Rheims.
Unhappily, none of Blessed William Hart's relics
seem to have come down to us. More precious,
however, than any material relics are the records of
his life and virtues, the letters he has left us so full
of noble resolution and joyous conformity to the
Divine Will, and finally his example, the example of
a saint of our own race consumed with the sacred
passion of the love of God and the love of his
brethren.
ED.
AUTHORITIES. — Hart's speech before Cardinal Moroni, June
6> 1579) is preserved in MS. in the Annales, of the English
College, Rome, pt. ii. p. 3. The speech before Cardinal
Buoncompagno, December 29, 1580, Ibid. p. 13. Speech
before the Pope, Ibid. p. 15, and in an English translation
(made from the Stevenson Transcripts (R.O.), vol. xiii.)in Foley,
1 Letters and Memorials, pp. 196, 197.
634 BLESSED WILLIAM HART
Records S.J. vi. p. 72. See Grene, Collectanea N.I. i. 2 (Stony-
hurst MSS.)
A Latin translation of his letters is in Concertatio, ff. 105
and no — 116, Westminster Archives, vol. iii. pp. 228 — 234.
The letter which comes sixth in the above collections, and is
there headed Ad afflictos Catholicos, is also found in the original
English (but with many faults of transcription) in R.O.
Domestic, Elizabeth, Addenda, vol. xxviii. n. 58, iv.
The Life of Hart, given in the Historia di Sedici Sacerdoti
(1584), pp. 198 — 202, is jejune, but a much better one was
supplied by Dr. Ely to Dr. Bridgwater for the Concertatio,
ff. 104 — 116. An interesting letter from Dr. Ely about it has
survived (B.M. Lansdowne, xcvi. 26), which is cited by Father
Morris, Troubles, ii. p. 20.
See also Father Warford 's Relation of the Martyrs ; Pollen,
Acts of English Martyrs, p. 252; Allen's Letters, pp. 113, 163,
172, 181, 197, 203; and the letters of Dr. Barrett and George
Birkett (afterwards Archpriest) in the Douay Diaries, pp. 327,
328, 349, 353. The letters of Doctors Allen and Barrett are
quoted by Father Persons in his Punti della Missions d'lnghil-
terra (Stonyhurst, Collectanea P. ff. 33, 40, 44), and he adds
his praises of the martyr.
Father Grene has been very diligent in gathering refer-
ences concerning this martyr from various authors in his
notes, Collectanea N.I. i. 70 ; ii. 8, 36, 59.
XXIV.
THE BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD,
SECULAR PRIEST.
York, 29 May, 1583.
BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD (whose name is spelt
variously Thirkill, Thrilkelde, Thirkell, Trelcell)
was born at Cunsley in the bishopric of Durham.
Bishop Challoner did not know " where or what
education he had at home," but the Oxford
Registers show that he was a student (probably a
scholar) of Queen's College in 1564-5. x
He was one of the numerous Oxford men who
went abroad to study for the priesthood at Douay
or Rheims. He was ordained subdeacon at Rheims
together with Blessed Richard Kirkman and fifteen
others, on the I4th of March, 1578-9, and was
ordained priest on Holy Saturday of the same year.
On April the 28th the future martyr said his first
holy Mass in the college chapel, together with
another new priest, William, brother of Blessed
Everard Hanse. The two were sent over to England
1 Reg. Oxon. ii. 23. His name is No. 36 on the list, in the third
division, which is probably that of the scholars. From this it
would appear that he was not so old at his martyrdom as has been
supposed.
636 BLESSED RICHARD TH IRK ELD
together, and left Rheims on the 23rd of May, I579-1
They passed through Douay on their way.
Blessed Richard had the greatest possible vene-
ration for the sacerdotal character, and his ordina-
tion filled him at once with joy and with confusion.
We are told that as he was coming home from the
place where he had been ordained, lifting up his
hands to heaven with astonishment, he cried out,
" O good God ! O good God ! " and then turning to
one of his companions, he said, " God alone knows
how great a gift this is that hath been conferred on
us this day! " " He considered," wrote one of his
intimate friends,2 " how excellent and singular a gift
it was to offer up daily to God for his own and the
whole people's salvation, the spotless and undefiled
Lamb ; and the frequent meditation of this gift
produced in his soul that daily increase of divine
love and heavenly courage, that there was nothing
in life he desired more, than in return for what
Christ had done for him, to shed also his blood in
Christ and for Christ." The same writer adds that
he had often heard him say that for eight whole
years he had made it the subject of his prayers that
he might one day lay down his life for his faith.
His mission was chiefly in and about York, and
he carefully compiled the Acts of the blessed
martyrs who glorified that city with their blood
1 Douay Diaries, pp. 151, 152, 153. A Henry Therkell of the
diocese of Durham, who was probably a relative of the martyr,
received the tonsure and minor orders at Rheims, February 24,
1592, and was sent to the Seminary of Valladolid on June 30 of the
same year.
2 Quoted by Challoner (Edit. 1874), p. 77.
BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD 637
during the time he lived there. He was often an
inmate of the house which Venerable Margaret
Clitherow kept for the use of the persecuted priests,
and he succeeded the martyrs Blessed William
Hart and Blessed James Thompson as confessor
and spiritual director to that valiant woman.
Unhappily at his arrest his papers fell into the
hands of the persecutors, and so his history of
the martyrs of York perished, a disaster much
regretted at the time by Dr. Allen,1 and now entirely
irreparable.
Blessed Richard Thirkeld's hour came in due
time. On the night of March the 24th, the eve of
the Annunciation, he went to visit a Catholic
prisoner who was lying in one of the loathsome
dungeons of the Kidcote prison on Ousebridge. It
was a great feast of the Church (" our Lady's day
in Lent," as it is called in the contemporary account
of the apprehension), and no doubt the holy priest
went to strengthen and console the confessor with
the sacraments of God's Church. He fell, like
Blessed William Lacey before him, a victim to his
heroic charity.
While he was conversing with the captive, three
pursuivants burst into the room, and on seeing him,
instantly suspected that he was a priest. When
challenged, he answered without any hesitation,
" I will never deny my vocation ; do with me what
you will." He said this with great courage and
resolution, clapping one of the officers on the back
with his hand, as though to encourage him to do
1 Knox, Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, p. 203.
638 BLESSED RICHARD TH IRK ELD
his worst. "What," said the man, "dost thou
strike me ? " " Nay," said he, " nothing was further
from my thoughts. But relying on the divine grace,
I wished to show to thee and to all of you that I
was a priest, and that I could never be deterred
by any of your words, blows, prisons, chains or
tortures from defending so glorious a cause even
until death."
The man of God then took the pursuivants aside ;
he began to entreat them to conceal from the
authorities the place in which he had been taken,
promising them all the money he had if they would
not tell that he had been captured in a private
room. The martyr's friends could not find out for
certain whether the men promised this or not ; but
it was generally believed that they took the money
and then carried him off to the Lord Mayor's house.
Here he again acknowledged himself to be a priest,
with a frankness and courage which made all present
marvel.
The Lord Mayor sent him for that night to the
house of Standeven, the high sheriff. This man
made it his first business to rob the martyr of all he
possessed. He began by questioning him closely as
to where he lodged, as he hoped thereby to get
possession of his horse and anything else that might
belong to him. But the martyr steadily refused to
answer any questions that might bring others into
trouble. The sheriff therefore ordered his underlings
to thoroughly search his person, and having done so
they found on him two keys, one being that of his
room and the other of his chest. Thereupon the
BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD 639
high sheriff was much delighted, and he imme-
diately caused inquiries to be made among the
locksmiths of the city, until he at last found one
who recognized the keys and admitted that he had
made them. Taking this man for guide, the sheriff
at once set out for the place, which was the house
of a poor Catholic widow, and having opened the
good priest's chest, he found there a great store of
sacred vestments, pious books and other things, all
of which he sacrilegiously carried off.
He also visited the house of William Hutton, a
well-known Catholic then in prison for the faith,
where his search was rewarded by the discovery of
a secret hiding-place which contained a trunk full
of Catholic books. These were seized upon as
contraband, and carried off to the market-place,
where they were publicly burned.
We have most of these details from Hutton
himself, who was at that time a prisoner in the
Ousebridge Kidcote, where indeed he languished
for over twenty years.1 It seems very probable that
it was he whom Blessed Richard was visiting at the
time of his arrest.
Blessed Richard was himself committed to one
of the most dreadful Kidcote dungeons on the day
after his arrest. Here he remained until the gaol
delivery, the week after Whitsun week, when he was
removed to the Castle for his trial, which took place
on May the 27th. In the meantime he was twice
examined by the Dean of York and three members
of the Council concerning his character and func-
1 J. Morris, Troubles, ii. p. 307.
640 BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD
tions, and he was very free in his answers, except
where other persons were concerned. They asked
him his reasons for going beyond the seas, and with
what design he had returned to England. He
answered that it was for conscience sake, that he
might serve God the better, and that he had
returned to his own country in order to gain souls
to God and the Church. He confessed that he had
said holy Mass, and administered other sacraments
as occasion required. They touched also upon
the crucial question of the Supremacy, though the
Dean seemed unwilling to have that matter pressed
home ; however, the martyr himself volunteered the
statement that he believed the spiritual jurisdiction
did not belong to the Queen, but to the Pope.
The time he spent in the subterranean dungeon
on Ousebridge was given almost entirely to prayer
and spiritual exercises. How heavenly were his
dispositions may be learned from the beautiful
letters which he wrote at this time, and of which
Dr. Bridgwater has preserved six. We shall quote
from them later on.
The venerable priest was brought, as we have
said, on May the 27th to the Castle. By some
means he had obtained a cassock and a priest's cap,
and these he wore, much to the displeasure of his
persecutors. But the sight of his priestly garb
filled the Catholics with consolation, which was
still more increased by his demeanour. His
countenance and whole bearing expressed so much
dignity and courage, mingled with the sweetest
modesty and patience, that the spectators were
BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD 641
touched with admiration. Like a lamb in the midst
of wolves the holy man moved slowly, surrounded
by guards and the high sheriff's officers, his meek-
ness and gentleness rilling even Protestant beholders
with reverence.
Among them was a certain nobleman, who was
himself a prisoner, not indeed for the profession of
the Catholic religion, but because he seemed inclined
to embrace it. When this man saw the priest, thus
attired, being led to the judgment-hall, he humbly
craved his blessing and prayers, and returning to
his chamber, he cried out, "What is this ? Innocent
men are led out to death, and are we most vile of
beings suffered to live? "
Our author complains that he could not learn
the particulars of the trial, so great was the mob of
common people who pressed in to stare at the
martyr, and so tumultuous the noise they made.
But the issue of it was of course a foregone
conclusion, a verdict of guilty was brought in on
his own confession. The statute which made the
mere fact of being a priest a treasonable offence was
not passed till three years later, but Blessed Richard
was indicted and condemned for having sacra-
mentally absolved and reconciled the Queen's
subjects to the Church of Rome.
The jury having brought in their verdict, the
martyr was carried back to the Castle and put
down into the condemned hole among the felons.
He managed, however, by raising his voice, to
make himself heard by the Catholic prisoners who
occupied the cell above his underground dungeon ;
PP II.
642 BLESSED RICHARD TH IRK ELD
and he cried out to them, " Pray for me, my dearest
sons, for now I cannot pray myself. I am indeed
filled with joy that at length I may suffer for so
good a cause. Had I a thousand lives how gladly
would I give them all for this ! "
He passed all the night in instructing the
condemned prisoners who shared his dungeon how
to make a good death. On the following morning,
May the 28th, he was brought up again before the
court to receive sentence. It was eight o'clock in
the morning. As he stood some little time in the
open air, four Catholic prisoners, who were to
appear at the bar that same morning, took the
opportunity of commending themselves to his
prayers and begging his blessing. This he gladly
gave them, turning towards them, hand upraised.
Then he was taken to the bar, and at first leaned
over it, his head in his hands, his face towards
the judges, but his whole attitude showing that he
was absorbed in contemplation. When, however,
the other Catholic prisoners were called up by
name and arraigned for recusancy, he turned
a little round to hear what they would answer. A
touching scene now took place. Among these
prisoners was a good old woman who was brought
up to receive sentence. As soon as she reached the
bar and perceived the holy priest standing there,
before making any reverence to the judges, she fell
on her knees and humbly asked his blessing, which
he at once gave her with a smile of encouragement.
When the martyr's enemies saw this they began
to murmur, and one of the judges cried out : " He
BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD 643
even usurps the office of Christ Himself." The
venerable priest answered : " No, indeed, but
I have the power from God, and I only do what
belongs to my function." But they blasphemed
the more, saying: "Thou wouldst equal thyself
to Christ." He replied simply : " Let God judge
between you and me. I impart this blessing to
the woman by the authority I bear from Christ."
Among the prisoners was also a gentleman of
great note, who was brought to the bar, together
with his wife, both arraigned for not going to
church, for which same crime they were both
afterwards cast into prison. This gentleman, being
sick and weak, did not answer so loud as to be
well heard by the court, upon which one cried out :
" He looks at the priest," and one of the gentlemen
on the bench said: "This is the traitor who has
persuaded him to all this." Upon which, a third,
who was also one of the bench and a kinsman of
the prisoner, said to him : " Cousin, I beg you
would think seriously on the matter ; now is the
time, before the jury bring in their verdict; your
submission afterwards will come too late. Do not
wilfully fling away your goods and possessions."
Then he added to his fellow-magistrates: " If this
traitor of a priest were not here, no doubt but my
cousin would be much more tractable."
The martyr thereupon interposed : " 'Tis better,"
said he, " to cast away one's goods than to run the
risk of losing one's soul." Then, turning to the
gentleman : " Let your goods go," said he, " stick
you close to God, and bravely confess His holy
644 BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD
Name." The judges angrily bade him keep silence,
but the courageous priest replied : " I am filled
with joy and consolation to see them so brave and
constant in their defence of this most sacred cause,
and I cannot do otherwise than exhort them to
persevere ; for it is altogether my duty to encourage
those who are combating for the faith."
Upon this, one of the judges, filled with fury
at the evident effect his words had made, called
him by name, saying : " Richard Thirkeld, come
up to the bar. What can you say for yourself why
sentence of death should not be pronounced upon
you, as you have been here arraigned and found
guilty of high treason ? "
The martyr replied that he had yesterday
brought forward five proofs from the holy Fathers,
by which he had demonstrated that he was not
guilty of high treason by exercising the power of
the Keys in absolving sinners. They denied that
he had ever found such things in the Fathers,
whereupon he begged them to bring the books, and
if he failed to show them the passages he referred
to, let him lose his credit for ever. But they took
no notice of the challenge, which they were of
course afraid to take up, and at once proceeded to
pronounce sentence, in the usual terrible form.
On hearing it pronounced in all its dread details,
the martyr at once knelt down, crying out with an
accent of indescribable joy : Hcec est dies quam fecit
Dominus, exultemus et Icetemur in ea — " This is the
day which the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and
be glad in it."
BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD 645
Then, that his presence might no longer
encourage the other Catholics, he was hurried out
of the court and thrust into the lowest dungeon
of the Castle.
On the following day, May the 2gth, he was
brought forth to suffer martyrdom. Contrary
to the usual custom, the holy man was suffered
to follow Blond, the under-sheriff, quietly on foot
as far as the Castle gate. Here, however, he was
laid on the hurdle, as usual. The object of this
seems to have been to prevent the Catholic
prisoners who were confined in different parts of
the building from hearing what was passing, lest
they should cry out loudly after him in order to
receive his last blessing.
But as to what happened at the Knavesmire
Tyburn, our author could glean but the scantiest
information. Scarcely any of the citizens were
allowed to come near the place, guards being posted
at the city gates on purpose to prevent Catholics
from passing out. In order further to engage the
public attention elsewhere, the Lord Mayor ordered
that a general meeting of the citizens should take
place that day under pretext of making the drawing
for the militia.
The martyr's friends could only learn that,
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
but bore himself with the dignity of a true Christian
priest. They were assured too that the sentence
was carried out in all its ghastly details while the
martyr was still alive. In order that the faithful
€46 BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD
might not gather up any of his blood, a great fire
of straw was made to consume every vestige of it.
But though men might destroy his sacred relics,
the martyr's blood still cries to Heaven for vengeance,
the vengeance of the saints — the conversion of the
land he loved so well.
His head, so dear to men and angels, was
parboiled in the cauldron, and, it would seem, set
up, beside that of Blessed William Hart, on stakes
fixed on the leads of the Ousebridge prison, where
he had been arrested. Mrs. Hutton, the wife of the
confessor William Hutton, had her chamber next
the leads ; for in those days women had to suffer
imprisonment for their faith as well as men.
Within a few days after it had thus been exposed,
both heads disappeared. Mrs. Hutton was naturally
suspected of having removed these precious relics,
and was threatened with hanging unless she
confessed to the fact. Her poor little children,
who were imprisoned with their mother (the eldest
was less than nine years old), were brought before
the magistrates, who had with them four beadles
armed with great birch-rods to terrify them into
confession. The children were thus forced to admit
that their mother had removed the holy heads.
She was subsequently thrust into the underground
hole called the "low place" of the prison, amongst
the felons. As the place was already infected by a
prisoner who died there, this was tantamount to
a sentence of death. And in fact Mary Hutton
caught the gaol-fever and died in that horrible place
within a month after her incarceration there.1
1 Camm, A Benedictine Martyr in England, pp. 99 — 101.
BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD 647
It is a great pity that these holy relics should
have been subsequently lost. We have, however,
what is perhaps even more precious, the letters of the
blessed martyr, already referred to. In closing this
memoir we may be permitted to make extracts from
documents so full of sacred interest.
The letters are six in number. The first is
addressed, " To the Catholics who were his fellow-
prisoners" It is a fervent exhortation to constancy,
much resembling those written by Blessed William
Hart. He entreats them to bear charitably with the
miserable fall of certain ladies, who had yielded to
the threats and solicitations of the adversary, and
given sad scandal by going to the heretical services.
"Who has now cast you into prison," he con-
tinues, " or who can do so without the permission of
Divine Providence ? Whose cause is it that you
have taken upon you to defend, but that of Christ
Himself? Whose soldiers are you, but Christ's?
Whose is this standard, under which you serve
Christ, but the Holy Spirit's ? Who is the captain
of your warfare, but Christ ? Who is it that will
pay you the reward due to veteran soldiers, but
Christ ? Who is it that will crown you as
conquerors, but Christ ? Who is it that will unite
you to those holy men of God, who have waged
these battles before you, but Christ ? Who is it
that will bring you to the glorious palms of the
martyrs, but Christ ? Who is He, by whose help
and blessing you hope to obtain for your possession
the bliss of eternal glory, together with Blessed
Lacey, Kirkman, Thompson and Hart, and your other
648 BLESSED RICHARD TH IRK ELD
fathers of happy memory, but Christ ? . . . Be brave
and faithful then, and let no torments, crosses, or
afflictions lead you to fail in courage. If the Lord
Mayor should cause you to be committed to yet
closer custody, Christ your captain will bring you
forth into freedom, and will grant you to roam at
your pleasure far and wide in His royal palace of
delights. If the judges and commissioners have
seized unjustly on your goods, Christ your King
will grant you to receive in this world a hundred-
fold for every farthing you have lost, and in the
world to come eternal life and bliss that shall never
know an end. If wicked gaolers use force and
cruelty, continually annoy and torment you,
frequently examine and persecute you, let not
all these things cause you the least trouble of
mind, or make you remiss in the divine service.
You will see that Christ will visit you the more
quickly, that He will give you greater consolations
day by day, and will make His throne in your
hearts with the more frequency and the more
pleasure. Therefore be of good cheer, beloved,
clap with your hands, yea let every member of your
bodies exult with joy, in that you have a cause so
noble, Christ for your captain, the Holy Spirit
for your comforter, and for your advocates and
defenders the Blessed Virgin Mary, the angels,
the holy apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, the
virgins, the blood of your fathers so freshly spilt,
which cries out loudly to Heaven and does violence
to the divine ears that it may obtain for you consola-
tion, fortitude and holy perseverance to the end.
BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD 649
" And so, beloved sons in Christ, since it is yet
altogether uncertain how soon I may have to lay
aside this my tabernacle, how quickly you may be
deprived of your father — an unworthy and wretched
one indeed, but still the only one now left to you, —
and since it is by no means certain what will be my
future fate, when already I am overwhelmed with
so many crosses and afflictions that they seem to
equal or surpass in number the very hairs of my
head ; seeing that I may be thrown into some
underground pit by permission of Divine Providence,
and loaded with chains which to me are dear and
sweet, for I have determined to look upon all these
things as blessings and as special marks of the divine
love; since, I say, I am ignorant how quickly all these
things may come upon me, I wished first to give
you this little token of my love for you (written in
a simple style indeed, but inspired, as I trust, by
God), to console and encourage your hearts to
endure even yet greater afflictions for the sake of
Christ your Saviour, who redeemed you at the cost
of His Most Precious Blood."
A second letter is written to a friend who was
grieving over his capture, probably to him in whose
company he was taken. He tells him that the only
lawful reason for grief is sin, while this event has
caused him joy which he cannot express. Under
all these trials lies hidden a sweet Manna, if they are
received with joy as a chalice which Christ Himself
presents.
To one of his spiritual daughters (possibly the
650 BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD
Venerable Margaret Clitherow) is addressed a
third letter.
" O happy prison," he cries, " O blessed enclosure,
O solitude full of solace, O prison long desired, where
hast thou delayed so long ? O crosses, where have
you lingered up till now ? O solitude, why hast
thou not suffered me to taste thy sweetness long
ago?"
A fourth letter, written to certain friends,
gives some account of what happened during his
examination before Dr. Hutton, Dean of York. The
martyr frankly told that dignitary and his assessors
that they were not in any sense members of the
Catholic Church.
The Dean admitted that the Catholic faith had
flourished in the Roman Church during some
centuries, but asserted that it had afterwards died
out : whereupon our martyr pertinently inquired in
what year, under what Pontiff or Emperor this
change had taken place, who they were who had
attacked the primitive faith, whether all those about
the Apostolic See were so dumb and mute that they
had not attempted to defend the faith in its hour
of danger. The reply naturally seemed to him a
lame one. The Dean could only urge that error
had crept in little by little, so that at first it was
not detected, and that it grew, just as a tree does,
without our observing its growth from day to day.
Then he attacked the invocation of saints, and
the martyr offered to defend it from St. Augustine.
At first the Dean pretended to accept the challenge,
in order to see if the priest really meant it, but
BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD 651
seeing that he was prepared to prove his point,
he changed his ground, and said that this doctrine
was a novelty introduced into the Church but little
before the time of St. Augustine. Then the Dean
began to abuse the Pope, calling him Antichrist.
Thereupon our martyr, filled with holy indignation,
cried out, " The Pope is the Vicar of Christ on
earth, and the Supreme Head of the Church."
The Dean, in a fury of passion, leaped from his
chair, crying that he could by no means suffer such
language. But the priest having declared that he
would never cease from defending the Holy Father
as long as he lived, the Dean was afraid to pursue
the subject, and the matter dropped.
A fifth letter is addressed to one who seemed
likely to fall away from the faith. It is an affec-
tionate and touching warning of the great danger
in which he stood. What is he about to do ? Will
he become the enemy of that God who loves him
so dearly and has given such astounding proofs of
His love ? Will he cause a grievous scandal to the
Church, and bring grief and mourning to the tender
mother who nursed him at her breast ? Who knows
whether, if he falls now, he will ever have the
chance of returning to God ? What evil spirit has
bewitched him to risk his soul for the sake of this
world's joys, or to avoid a little temporal suffering ?
Let him take courage and show his contempt for
the devil and all his satellites, crying out from his
heart :
" O Father of mercies Who didst create me,
O sweetest Son Who didst redeem me, O Holy
652 BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD
Spirit Who didst sanctify me, O blessed Trinity,
Three Persons and One God, preserve, defend and
keep me in the unity of the Catholic and Apostolic
Church, that in her I may deserve to live and die
and at the last to attain to the glory of Thy divine
Majesty."
The sixth letter is addressed to the Catholic
prisoners ; it is a fervent exhortation to them to
embrace and love the Cross. There follows a long
poem written to the same prisoners, and breathing
the same glowing zeal and fervent joy in suffering.1
There is nothing more touching than to see
how, in the midst of their own unexampled trials,
our martyrs were constantly occupied with the
thought of their flocks. They forgot themselves
and their pains, that they might console those who
were committed to their care, and encourage them
bravely to follow in their own footsteps. They had
the hearts of true pastors, of good shepherds who
care only for the sheep. ED>
1 It is not impossible that the martyr wrote his verses in
English, as he did his letters. This, however, is not stated in the
Concertatio, fol. 125, where they begin thus :
Qui mecum, amid, sicut oves neci
Hoc destinata car cere degitis ;
Durate constantes, et aures
His adhibete animosque dictis.
The refrain runs as follows :
Perstate fortes fortiter in fide,
Diri Dathanis cedite semita.
Differt; suum tandem fidelis
Sed reparabit ovile Christus.
BLESSED RICHARD THIRKELD 653
AUTHORITIES. — Historia del glorioso Martyrio di dieciatto
Sacerdoti, Macerata (1585), Concertatio (1588), ff. 116 — 126, and
the authors treating of persecution in the North mentioned
in the four previous Lives.
RELICS. — Only one relic of this martyr is known to exist.
It is preserved at St. Benedict's Priory, Colwich, and consists
of a small piece of coarse linen, with the inscription, " Of ye
shirt of Mr. Thirkeld pl and mart, at York."
ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA.
I. u, line 10 for 29 April read 28 April.
I. 12, n. i, line 5, for pleaded guilty read were found guilty.
I. 90 n. Delete 1535. Ellis is in error here. The Bishop
of Rochester was not Fisher, but Hilsey. (J. Gairdner, English
Historical Review, January, 1905, p. 165.)
I. 145, for Elizabeth read Cecily.
I. 384.— John Rugge was born at Tiverton, his father having
been a tenant of some Winchester College property at Downton,
Wilts. He became a scholar at Winchester in 1488 at the age
of twelve, and was admitted Fellow there, March 5, 1520, having
already taken his M.A. degree from New College, Oxford ; but
he had vacated the Fellowship before 1535. He was the first
holder of the Wickamical Prebend at Chichester, but had a
dispensation from residence, and was living at Reading in 1532.
(Notes and Queries, Series V. vol. xi. p. 350.)
I. 387. Mr. Gairdner, ut sup., says that Abbot Beche's name
is never John in contemporary documents, always Thomas.
I. 491, line 10 for even readonly.
I. 545, „ 24. The date should be, Friday, February
15, 1544. Throughout the article the year should be 1544,
not 1545.
II. in (title), for January 4, 1572, read January 4, 1571.
II. 121, line 20 for Joseph read James.
II. 124. — A further trace of the Earl of Northumberland's
Catholicity at this time was his entertainment of a priest,
Mr. Thomas Mudd, formerly a monk of Jervaulx, and for many
years after a confessor in chains. (J. Morris, Troubles of our
Catholic Forefathers, iii. 319.)
II. 148, 149. — The following additional information about
B. Thomas (here called Sir John) Plumtree and the absolution
during the Northern Rising of priests whohad conformed, is taken
from a violent diatribe against Catholics, published by John Day,
without date (about 1570), in a broadside entitled A bull
graunted by the Pope to Dr. Harding (Vatican Archives, Varia
Politicorum Ixvi., 258). "How notorious is their byeword of
656 ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA
their golden day ! It is known (for the letters be yet extant
in good custody), how one of their Northern Sacrificers, wrote
to another of his own faction, viz Sir John Plumtree, to be
satisfied in a matter that troubled his conscience, which was
that he had at one of the rebellious Earl's commandement said
Masse before absolution obtained from the Pope in such forme
as other had it."
II. 214 n. — B.Cuthbert Mayne's Examination, R.O. Domestic,
Elizabeth, cxviii. 46, calls for further notice. The seventh
answer contains an erroneous statement regarding the third
decree of the fourth Council of Lateran, the well-known
disciplinary measure enjoining the deposition of heretical
princes. In the examination we read that this decree was
"ratified at the last Council of Trent, where there was a
consent of Catholic Princes for [deposing heretical rulers] &c."
There are two errors here. The Council of Trent did not
re-enact the Lateran decree, and much less was any agreement
of Catholic Princes made at that Council for the execution of
the decree. The latter mistake, however, is perhaps only
grammatical. If the relative "where" be referred, not to the
immediate antecedent, "the Council of Trent," but to the
remoter antecedent, i.e., " the Council of Lateran," the truth of
the proposition will be saved. This, we may be sure, was
Mayne's meaning, for the facts themselves were well known to all
Catholic theologians. The Protestants, on the other hand, had
frequently stated that a Papal League for the extirpation of
heretics was agreed to at Trent (see Introduction, p. xxvi.). It
may therefore be that the Protestant reporter of the Examina-
tion was influenced by his prepossessions in setting down
Mayne's words, and this may account for his cautious subscrip-
tion, "These things, affirmed by me, Cuthbert Mayne, I think
to be true."
II. 220, line 28 for George read Henry.
II. 402. — A long and characteristic story of the difficulties
encountered by students on their way to the Seminaries, a story
in which Blessed Alexander Briant plays a part, will be found
in Foley, Records S.J., vi. 89.
II. 483, line 29 for 1580 read 1581.
II. 606 note. „ Richard ,, Robert.
J. H. P.
INDEX.
ABBOTSLEIGH, More's hair-shirt at
I. 241 «.
Abel, B. Thomas, Life I. 462—
483. Degrees at Oxford 462 ;
instructor, chaplain, and advo-
cate of Queen Catherine xxxiii.
67, 462, and «. ; sent to
Charles V., Rector of Bradwell-
on-Sea, appeals for protection
against Henry 463 ; book on the
divorce, 464, and n. I, 466 ; in
Tower, there says Mass before
the Lieutenant, conditionally
released 464 ; again in Tower
465 ; charged with favouring
Holy Maid of Kent 465, 466 ;
"convict" of treason 82, 467;
grounds of attainder 466, 467 ;
sentenced to imprisonment and
forfeiture 467 ; his rebus on the
wall of Beauchamp Tower 467,
468 ; correspondence with Forest
283, 468 — 471 ; refuses the oaths
471 ; expenses in prison 472 ;
pleads for relief 473, 474 ; re-
leased on bail by his keeper 474 ;
his keeper sent to Marshalsea
475, 496 ; succoured in prison by
Bishop Sampson and Dr. Wilson
475 — 477 ; condemned by Parlia-
ment without trial 475, 481 ;
second attainder 477 — 479 ;
brought to Smithfield 479 ;
hanged 480.
Aberdeen, II. 167.
Aberdeen, Old II. 182 n. 2.
QQ
Abingdon, Abbey Church I. 426,
449 ; White Hart Inn 449 ; II.
33.8.
Addingham, Yorks. II. 578, 588.
Agazzari, Father Alphonso, S.J.
Rector of English College,
Rome II. 379, 605 ; letters to
252, 374 — 379 and nn. 381 —
383, 409, 410, 477, 478, 512 «.,
548, 605, 608, 632 ; 563,
569-
| Aleyn, Joan I. 228.
j Allen, Dr., afterwards Cardinal,
William II.So, 100, 205, 314, 362,
364, 432, 477 ; letters from to
Agazzari 477, 478 ; to Campion
307, 308 ; letters to from Henry
Shaw 207, 209.
Alnwick Castle II. 173, 174, 186.
Alva, Duke of II. 52—54, 84, 85,
loo, 167.
j Amiens II. 360.
! Andleby, Ven. William II. 360.
j Antwerp I. 137, 138; II. 53, 56,
68, 69, 76, 77, 99, 108 «. 167,
357-
Ap Rice, John I. 340 n.
Aquaviva, Claudio, General S.J.,
letter to II. 335, 336.
Arche, Richard I. 490.
Arundel, Sir John II. 219.
Arundel, Henry Fitzalan, Earl of
II. 117 ; Percy's proxy 121.
Arundel, Ven. Philip Howard,
Earl of, converted II. 341.
Arundel, Thomas I. xl.
II.
658
INDEX
Arundell of Wardour, Lord, relics
belonging to I. 412.
Aske, Sir Robert I. 369, 370 ;
II. US-
Assenden, Oxon I. 440.
Attainder, Statute of I. xlviii.
379-
Audley, Edmund, Bishop of Salis-
bury I. 485.
Audley, Sir Thomas, complains of |
Fisher I. 70 ; Lord Chancellor
30, 97, 187, 191, 197 ; intercedes ]
for More 193, 197 ; interrogates
More 217 ; intimidatesjury 101 ;
sentence on Fisher 102 ; tries
More 221 ; gives sentence 223;
intercedes for Abbey of Col-
chester 391.
Augustinians (Canons Regular) I.
269, 374 «• i» 514; (Friars or
Hermits) 269.
Ayleworth, Mr. II. 46.
Aylmer, Dr., Protestant Bishop of
London, lauds Anne Boleyn I.
xxv. ; II. 341 ; 544 n. I.
Ayloff, Judge II. 348.
Barker, — , Queen Catherine's
chaplain, in Tower I. 465 ;
examined 473.
Barlow, William, last Prior of
Bisham, surrenders I. 514.
Barnard Castle II. 139, 154.
Barnes, George, heretic I. 164 ;
abuse of the Catholic Church
165 ; burnt 479, 480, 496.
Barnstaple, B. Cuthbert Mayne,
at Grammar School II. 208 ;
220 n.
Barton, Elizabeth, the Holy Maid
of Kent, Benedictine nun I. 80,
189; predictions against the
King, interviews with him,
Fisher and More 8l, 190; her
supporters, confession at St. Paul's
Cross 190 ; attainted 191 ;
hanged at Tyburn 82, 281 n. 2.
Basset, James, Alumnus of Read-
ing Abbey I. 360, 361.
Bath I. 357 and n.
Batmanson, John, Carthusian I.
3, 251.
Battle of the Spurs I. 417.
Beauvale, Charterhouse I. 3, 9,
258 «.
Beatification of English Martyrs
I. xv., xvii., xviii. ; text of the
decrees lix. — Ixvi.
Beatification of Saints I. xi. — xx. ;
meaning of xi. ; process xii., xiii.
Beaufort, Lady Margaret, Countess
of Richmond, mother of Henry
VII., chooses Fisher for con-
fessor I. 48 ; foundations at
Cambridge 49, 51.
Beche, B. John (or Thomas Mar-
shall), O.S.B., at Oxford 387;
Abbot of St. Werburgh's,
Chester 388; of Colchester
363 n. I, 388; takes Oath
of Supremacy 388 ; refuses
to surrender Abbey 392 ; pro-
bably sent to Tower 393 and
n. I ; final arrest, witnesses
against him 393 ; their testimony
to his loyalty to the Holy See
394 — 396; fails 396 and n. i,
397, 409 — 411; tried at Col-
chester 397 ; pleads guilty, con-
victed 398, 409 ; in Tower 384 ;
secretly condemned 350, 351 :
martyrdom 387, 399, 407 ; con-
temporary picture of 399 ; his
case compared with St. Thomas
Becket's 400 ; relic 399, 400,
412. (see Addenda.')
Bedford, Francis Russell, 4th Earl
II. 92, 93, 214.
Bedyll, Thomas, King's Commis-
sary, visits London Charterhouse
I. 37 ; summons Exmew 38 ;
letters to Cromwell 38, 263.
Belchiam, Ven. Thomas, O.S.F.
Observant, dies in prison for
denying Royal Supremacy I.
274.
Bell, Thomas, Protestant minister,
converted and tortured II. 570,
571 ; sings High Mass in York
Castle 570 ; becomes apostate
571 and ;/. I.
INDEX
659
Bellamy, William, of Uxenden Hall
II. 334-
Belsize, Alexander, President of
St. John's, Oxford, deprived II.
269, 270.
Benedict XIV. Pope I. xx. n. 2.
Benson, Abbot of Westminster I.
197, 203, 205.
Bere Court, near Pangbourne I.
372 n. 2.
Bere, B. Richard, Life I. 259
— 267 ; birth 266 ; at Glaston-
bury Abbey School 266, 331 ;
at Oxford 266 ; monk and priest
in London Charterhouse 267 ;
refuses Oath 259 ; never brought
to trial 260 ; starved to death
260, 264 ». i, 267.
Bere, Richard, O.S.B., Abbot of
Glastonbury I. 266, 330 n. 2,
331. 332.
Bergen-op-Zoom II. 56.
Bermondsey Abbey, Cluniac, II.
3 and n. I.
Berwick II. 171, 173.
Beverley I. 47.
Bird, Robert I. 483.
Bisham Priory I. 423 — 425, 514.
Bishop Auckland, St. Helen's
Church, II. 147, 148.
Bishop's Hatfield Church I. 426.
Bishop's Stortford, Bishop of
London's Castle at II. 544 n.
Bishopsthorpe, York, Archiepisco- ;
pal Palace at II. 572, 573.
Black Friars, Convent of, Legatine
Court held at I. xxxiii. 67 ; 183,
423, 444, 445 n.
Blackwell, George, Archpriest II.
443—445.
Bleadon, Somerset I. 484, 492.
Boarstall I. 433.
Bodmin II. 220 n. i.
Body, Gilbert, scourged II. 402
n. 2.
Boleyn, Anne, Queen, her '
marriage the primary cause of:
the Reformation I. xxiv. — xxvii. ,
xxxviii. ; marriage xxxv. 368 ;
coronation xxxvi. 189, 368, 435
n. i ; suspected connivance in
Fisher's attempted murder 77
n. i ; reported insult to his
severed head 115; beheaded
xliv. 448.
Boleyn George I. 12 n. 2.
Bologna II. 313.
JBolton Castle, Yorks II. 128.
Bonner, Edmund, Bishop of
London, character vindicated by
Protestants II. 24, 25, 33 ; in
Marshalsea 48, 127, 128.
Bonvisi, Antonio, of noble family
of Lucca, merchant II. 107 «. I ;
succours More and Fisher I. 90,
232 «. 2, II. 22, 108 «. ; friend
of Storey at Louvain 22, 32 ; his
executor 22, 106 — 108 and nn. ;
death 108 n.
Bosgrave, Father James, S.J.,
arrested II. 520 n. ; in Marshal-
sea 383, 521 n. ; and Tower 341,
483, 521 n. ; indicted 345, 521 n ;
banished 521 n.; 380.
Bouge, Dom John, Carthusian,
priest of St. Stephen's, Wall-
brook I. 132 and «., 155 ; 154.
Bowes, Sir George II. 155, 157.
Boxley, Rood of, destroyed at St.
Paul's Cross I. 307, xlv. 304.
Bradeston, Glos. I. 439.
Bradwell-on-Sea I. 463.
Bragge, Martin II. 56.
Bramber, Sussex II. 39 n. 2.
Brancepeth Castle, Durham II. 137
and «. 2, 139, 143.
Branton, Stephen, Confessor, and
his brother William II. 590, 591
and n.
Brecknock I. 497.
Brentwood I. 393.
Briant, B. Alexander, S.J. Life
IL 397—423 5 family, birth
400 and n. i ; at Oxford 400 ;
at Douay 401 ; ordained, goes
to England, affection for Persons,
reconciles his father 402 ; arrest
400, 402 ; sent to Counter in
Wood Street 402 and n. 3, 404
«. ; nearly starved 403 and n. 2,
404 ; in Tower 403 ; examined
405, 406 ; needles thrust under
66o
INDEX
his nails 406, 407 ; extracts from
examination 407, 408 ; eight
days in the ' ' pit " 408 ; twice
racked 408, 409 ; miraculously
preserved from pain 410, 412,
413, 417, 421; in "Wales-
boure " 409 and n. I : begs
admission into Society of Jesus
410 — 414, 421, and n. 3, 422 ;
indictment 417 ; trial and sen-
tence 418 and M. i, 419, 447 «.
2 ; shaves tonsure 418 ; crucifix
418, 419; martyrdom 351, 393,
420, 421 ; portrait 422 ; relics
415, 419, 422, 423. (See
Addenda. )
Bridgettine Order I. 27, 28.
Bridg water I. 357 and n. I.
,, Dr. John, Author of
the Concertatio II. 601.
Brightwell, Oxon. Church I. 425 ;
Manor 426, 451, 452.
Brinckley, Stephen, Esq. Prints
Persons' books, two years in
Tower II. 419 and «. I.
Brindholme, Edmund, priest I.
483-
Brindle, Lanes. II. 536.
Bristol, Church of St. Mary Red-
cliffe I. 484 ; St. Augustine's
Green 489 bis ; Newgate Prison
488.
Bristow, Richard, Oxford friend
of Campion II. 272 ; one of first
Douay students 205, 272, 444,
451.
Brookby, Ven. Anthony, Obser-
vant, dies in prison 1. 274.
Browne, John, Minor Canon of
Durham, curate of Witton Gil-
bert II. 149 ; reconciled 149,
150.
Bruges I. 141, 266; Augustinian
Convent at, primary relics of
BB. More I. 244 ; Ford II. 452,
Mayne 222.
Briinn II. 293.
Brussels II. 52, 58, 182, 445, 475.
Bruton I. 333, 339.
Brynston, John, O.S.F. I. 346,
347-
Bunny, Mr., Calvinist II. 615, 620,
629.
Buoncompagno, Cardinal II. 606,
639.
Bynche, Belgium II. 224.
Caddy, — , spy II. 449.
Calais I. 141, 427, 483, II. 4, 316.
Cambrai, Treaty of I. 176;
martyrs ordained at II. 402, 501,
539-
Cambridge University, martyrs
educated at I. I, 29, 42, 47,
331, 332, 497, II. 250, 500;
Colleges : I. Christ's 29, 49 and
n. i ; King's Hall 17 n. 2 ;
Michael House (Trinity) 47, 48
and n. i ; Monk's College
(Magdalene) 331 ; Queen's 51 ;
St. John's 51, 267.
Campeggio, Cardinal, Papal Legate,
tries Henry's divorce I. xxxii. 67 ;
Legatine Court of xxxiii. 67 ;
deprived of his See of Salisbury
xxxvi.
Campion, B. Edmund, S.J., Life
II. 266 — 357 ; birth 267 ; parent-
age 268 ; school and college
269; orations 271 — 275; made
Anglican deacon, remorse 278,
302, 303 ; goes to Dublin 279 ;
writes History of Ireland 280,
281 ; date of reconciliation un-
certain 283 ; escapes to England
282 ; at Storey's trial 80, 282 ;
at Douay 80, 209, 282, 283,
292 ; letter to Cheney 283 — 291 ;
enters the Society of Jesus 293 ;
at Briinn and Prague, fervour in
spiritual exercises, letters to
novices 293 — 299 ; discourse De
juvene Academico 299 and ;/.,
301 ; sent to England with
Persons 308, 309; aliases 311,
312 ; devotions 312, 313 ; in-
cidents of the journey 313 — 318,
365 — 370 ; temporary arrest at
Dover 318 ; writes the so-called
Challenge 319—321, 325, 326 ;
missionary work 323— 333, 335,
336 ; writes Decent Rationes
INDEX
661
333—335 5 taken at Lyford 338 ; .
brought to London 338, 446, j
493 ; in "Little Ease" (Tower)
339, 446 ; secret interview with
Elizabeth 339 ; racked 340, 344,
433, 447 ; conferences with
Protestants 341, 342, 415, 417 ;
examined, asserts loyalty to
Elizabeth 343, 344 ; indictment
345. 433, 447, 552—554 ; trial
346 — 349 ; sentence 349 ; Via
Dolorosa 350, 351; martyrdom
351, 352; asks Catholics to say
Creed for him, protests loyalty to
Elizabeth, not cut down alive
352 ; honoured after death 352,
353 > conversions and miracles
353 ; relics 352, 353, 356, 419 ;
portrait 357.
Canonization, process of I. xi. —
xiv.
Canterbury, Religious Houses I.
80, 269 ; Churches : St. Dunstan
242 ; St. George, St. Gregory
269 ; Dane John 272 ; William
Roper's house 243.
Canterbury Cathedral I. 176.
Capgrave, John, Austin Friar I.
269, 270.
Carew, Sir Nicholas, in Tower
I. 518 ; arraigned 520 ; executed
521 ; 514-
Carlisle II. 124, 128, 157.
Carthusian Martyrs, Lives I.
I— 16, 35—46, 116, 239, 247—
268.
Carthusian Priors, of London,
Beauvale, and Axholme I. I —
1 6 ; in Tower 9 ; refuse Oath of
Supremacy, indictment xlii., n,
19; trial, sentence n, 12, 35;
More's comment on 15, 219 n. I ;
their exhortation and martyrdom
12, 25, 26, 35.
Carthusian Rule I. 2, 3.
Casale, Sir Gregory I. xxxi.
Castle Farley, Somerset I. 502.
Catesby, Sir William II. 323.
Catherine of Arragon. Marriage
to Prince Arthur I. 415, 507;
marriage to Henry VIII. xxix.
508 ; goes to the Field of the
Cloth of Gold 427 ; affection for
B. Margaret Pole 508 ; and
her children 5IO5 l°ve f°r the
Observants 276 ; divorce xxx. ;
visited by Campeggio xxxii. ;
shows copy of brief, sends B.
Thomas Abel for original xxxiii.
463 ; refuses to enter a nunnery
xxxii. ; cited before the Legatine
Court, appeals to Rome xxxiii.
487 ; patience and firmness
xxxv. ; King separates 276 ;
marriage declared null by
Cranmer xxxvi. ; refuses to give
up title of Queen 464; household
broken up 465 ; letters to her
daughter 497, 512; correspond-
ence with Forest 283 — 287 ;
death xliii. 287 n. i, 448.
Cavendish, William I. 391.
Caversham, Our Lady of, chapel
I- 373, 374-
Cecil, Sir William (first Lord
Burleigh), packs Parliament II.
x- 38> 39 5 schemes to entrap
Storey 53 ; at his martyrdom 93 ;
his spies 253, 254 ; Campion's
chief persecutor and judge 274,
275 ; letters to 62 — 66, 122,
I31— !35, MS, 15°, !56 "•> I6o>
172, 191, 201, 430 n., 466;
roo, 123, 128, 157, 158.
Chalfont St. Giles, parsonage II.
38.
Chapman, Thomas, O.S.F. 1.267,
290, 296.
Chapuys, Charles V. 's ambassador
in England I. 12 n. 2 ; letters
to Emperor 12, 13 n. 2, 21, 74,
75 n. 2, 79, 80 and n. I, 117
n. I, 471, 472, 498, 512, 513 ;
veneration for B. Margaret Pole
521 ; describes her martyrdom
533—5355 77, 92, 98 n. 2,
112 n. 2, 184, 278 n. I, 464, 465.
Charke, William, Protestant min-
ister II. 495, 497 n, 2.
Charles V., Emperor I. 141, 237,
428.
Charnocke, Robert II. 475.
662
INDEX
Chauncy, Maurice, Carthusian I.
8, 258, and n. I, 259, 266.
Chedsey, William, Archdeacon
II. 46.
Cheke, Henry II. 571, 573, 575.
Chelmsford, B. John Haile, vicar
I. 17 ; B. John Payne in gaol at,
tried at Assizes II. 436 ; mar-
tyred at 424.
Cheney, Richard, Protestant Bishop
of Gloucester II. 278; letter
to, from Campion 283 — 291 ;
death 292.
Chester, B. John Beche, twenty-
sixth Abbot of St. Werburgh's
I. 388.
Chester-le-Street II. 148.
Christchurch Priory, Hants, B.
Margaret Pole's chantry at I.
539, and n.
Circiniani, Nicholas, frescoes of
I. xvi. Ix.
Clark, Griffith, Vicar of Wands-
worth I. 453.
Clarke, John, Bishop of Bath and
Wells I. 174, 179, 189, 362.
Clement, Dr. John, tutor in More's
family, married to Margaret Giggs
I. 145, 261 ; their children 241
«. I, 261, 262.
Clement, Margaret, see Margaret
Giggs.
Clement VII. Pope, besieged in
Rome I. 176; Brief of reproof
xxxv. ; excommunicates Henry
xxxvi. ; pronounces validity of
first marriage xxxvi. 91, 197,
282, 350 ». I.
Clenock, Maurice II. i, 361,
605.
Clifford of Chudleigh, Lord, relic
belonging to I. 399, 412.
Clifford Moor, Yorks. II. 154.
Clitherow, Ven. Margaret II. 597,
610, 637.
Colchester I. 397 — 399.
Colchester Abbey I. 391.
Coldingham II. 171.
Cole, Henry, Dean, in Tower
II. 46, 48, 49.
Colet, Dr. John I. 124, 127.
Colley, Dorothy I. 145, 227, 228,
240.
Collington, John, alias Peters,
priest, taken with Campion
II. 336 — 338, 446 ; tortured,
escapes death, banished 447.
Colnbrooke (Colebrook), Bucks. I.
437, 445, II. 339 bis.
Colte, Joan, More's first wife I.
131, 132, 137, 243.
Colwich Priory relics I. 411, II.
652.
Common Prayer, First Book of
II. 18, 19.
Compton Chammerleyn, Wilts.
I. 491.
Convocation I. xxxiv. 63, 64, 71 —
79, 36i, 362.
Cook, B. Hugh see Faringdon.
Cook, Laurence, Carmelite prior
I. 313, 464, 480 n. ; attainted
477 — 480 n. ; hanged at Tyburn
313, 480 n. 483; Prtetermissus
478 n.
Copley, — , priest II. 125, 136 «.
Cort, Ven. Thomas, Observant,
dies in prison I. 274.
Cottam, B. Thomas, S.J., Life
II. 536 — 563 ; at Brasenose,
degrees 536 ; master of Grammar
School in London 537, 556 ;
converted 537, 538 ; at Douay
538 ; and German College,
Rome 539 ; Jesuit novice
540 ; priested at Soissons 542 ;
sent to London with Dr. Ely
543 J gives himself up 546 ;
harassed by Protestant ministers
547 ; in Marshalsea 482 ; his
first Mass 547, 548 ; charges
against him 548, 549 ; trans-
ferred to Tower 482, 550 ;
racked, tortured by " Scavenger's
Daughter" 550 and «. i ; dragged
to sermons 508, 551 ; indicted
for recusancy 417, 551 : tried
for conspiracy 345 ; sentenced
554 ; examined 555 ; brought to
Tyburn 495, 556 ; martyrdom
556—560 ; blesses the people
532 ; tries to convert hangman
INDEX
663
557 ; profession of faith 558 ;
protests loyalty to Elizabeth, but
rejects Royal Supremacy 559 ;
last prayers 559, 560 ; buried
under scaffold 560 ; portrait
and relics 563 ; brother, and
descendants 562.
Council of the North II. 564, 591 ;
tries Lacey 573; Thompson 591 ;
and Hart 614.
Cowdray Park, near Midhurst
I. 524—527.
Cox, Dr., Protestant Bishop of Ely
II. 39, 40, 235.
Cox, Leonard, schoolmaster I. 360.
Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop of
Canterbury I. xxxii. xxxiv.
xxxvi. 79, 511 ; tries Fisher and
More 84, 197 ; perhaps sent to
confess Fisher on the scaffold
117 and ;/. ; tries Forest 308,
310 n. I ; letters to Cromwell 33,
86 n. 2, 87, 301— 303; 191,205,
206 and n. I, 217, 254, 281 ;
trial of II. 34.
Creswell, Father, S.J. II. 565 ;
letter to 567—569 ; 577.
Croft, Sir James II. 121 — 123.
Crome, Dr. Edward II. 254.
Cromwell, Thomas, character I.
xli. ; originates the schism and
becomes Henry's Vicar General
xxxiv. xliii. xliv. xlviii. 9, 191,
197, 340 ; persecutes Fisher and
More 93, 94, 96. 217, 218, 221 ;
and Forest 319; and Benedictine
Abbots and monks 338 — 341,
340 and «., 343 and ««. I and 2,
35°. 35 !> 384; suggests Pole's
assassination 516; injustice to B.
Margaret Pole 528 ; created Earl
of Essex 450 ; attainted xlviii. ;
of heresy and treason 450 ;
executed xlviii. 265, 450, 480 ;
his Remembrances 297, 349, 351,
354, 383, 384, 475 »-, 532 «. i;
letter from to Whiting 347, 348 ;
letters to 38, 86 «. 2, 87, 89 «.,
114, 115, 190, 194, 250 «.,255,
259 n. I, 260, 263 and w.,277,
278, 280, 297, 301, 304, 312,
313- 339, 340 «-, 34i «• 2,
342—345. 356 «. I, 368, 369,
37i, 374, 375. 382 and n. 2,
383 «•» 389, 398, 473, 474, 476,
477, 490, 5*4, 522—527, 539 « 5
9— 11, 80, 189, 255, 265, 273,
307, 364-
Crowley, — , Protestant minister
II. 259 «., 264, 519.
Cumnor II. 271.
Cunsley, Durham II. 635.
Cupham, Oxon. I. 420.
Curwin, Dr. Richard I. 278.
Dacre, Leonard II. 55-
Darbishire, Father Thomas, S.J.
II. 478.
Darlington II. 153, 174.
Dartford I. 90.
Daunce, Elizabeth, see More.
Davy, B. John, Carthusian I. 259 ;
not tried 260 ; starved to death
260, 263, 264, n. I.
Decim Rationes, by Campion,
printed at Stonor Park I. 414,
415, II. 334, 335.
De Marillac, French Ambassador
I. 480 ; letters : to De Castillon
405 and n. ; to Francis I. 265
and «., 346, 480—483, 535, 536.
De la Quadra, Alvarez, Bishop of
Aquila, Spanish Ambassador,
letters to Philip II. II. 48 — 50,
126, 127 and «.
Devil's Advocate (Promoter of the
Faith) I. xiii.
Dilati, why so called I. xv.
Dingley, Ven. Thomas, Knight of
St. John I. 437 ; attainted 452,
528, 529 n. ; beheaded 453.
Divorce, Henry VIII. 's first I.
xxiv. — xxxiv.
Doncaster I. 313, 464, 480 n. I,
II. 113.
Dorchester I. 492.
Dormer, Jane, Duchess of Feria,
sister of B. Sebastian Newdigate
I. 43, II. 91.
Douay Seminary, foundation of II.
205 — 207 ; first ordinations 444,
664
INDEX
445 ; transferred to Rheims 250,
464, 539, 603.
Douay University II. 462.
" Double-hood " I. 352 n. 2, 353 n.
Dover II. 282, 316, 318, 502, 542.
Downton, Wilts. II. 39.
Dublin, Campion at II. 279 — 281.
Dunstable I. xxxvi.
Durham, during the Northern
Rising II. 138, 139, 144—150;
City mentioned 131, 152, 159
ter., 222 ; Castle 157 ; Churches :
St. Giles 145 ; St. Margaret 145 ;
St. Nicholas 145 and «., 158;
St. Oswald 144, 145 ; Elvet
Bridge 144 n. 2 ; Palace Green
144.
Durham Cathedral, St. Cuthbert's
shrine in I. xliv. xlv. ; Catholic
worship restored II. 138 et seq.,
144 — 146, 155 > public absolu-
tion of the people 147, 155.
Dymoke, Robert, of Scrivelsby,
Champion, B. Richard Kirkman
tutor to sons, indicted II. 579 —
581 ; dies in Lincoln Gaol 582,
583.
East Bergholt, Benedictine Abbey
II. 182.
East Grinstead II. 39 «. i.
East Hendred House relics I. 1 1 1
n. 2, 122, 244.
Edgbaston I. 44.
Eliot, George ("Judas") spy II.
429 ; betrays Payne 430 ; and
Godsalve 431 ; his accusations
432, 433 ; Yeoman of the Guard
436 n. 2, 437 ; takes Campion
337» 338 5 false witness of 347,
484 ; forgiven by Campion 350.
Elizabeth, Queen, her settlement
of religion II. x. xi. ; excom-
municated and deposed by St.
Pius V. xv. — xvii. I ; kindness
to Mrs. Felton 12 ; irreverence
of 39 ; bribes the Scots 123
n. i, 128, 164, 170, 172 ; signs
death-warrant at a dance 499.
Ellingham, Northumberland II.
no.
Elstow, Henry I. 278.
Eltham I. 545.
Ely, Dr. Humphrey, alias Howard
II. 543 n. ; Cottam's companion
376 and «. i, 543 — 546, 562;
603, 604.
Emerson, Ralph, lay-brother S.J.
II. 317, 318, 336, 365.
Empson, — , O. S. B. , martyr, wears
his habit I. 265.
Englefield, Sir Francis II. 36, 91,
1 66.
Erasmus, Desiderius, friend of More
and Fisher I. 133 ; testimony to
Fisher's sanctity 52 > visits to
More 133, 134; describes his
life 131, 132, 143 — 145 ; writes
Moria Encomium 134 ; letters
from More's daughters 145, 146;
237.
Erdington Abbey, relic at II. 222.
Esh Hall, Durham II. 160.
Esher I. 543.
Essex (Henry Bourchier, fifteenth
Earl of) tries Beche I. 397 — 399 ;
friend of the Fortescue family
450 and n. I.
Evingham, Richard, Douay stu-
dent II. 211.
Exeter, St. Peter's Church, Mayne
monument in II. 208 n. I ; city
131-
Exeter (Henry Courtenay, first
Marquess) I. 371 ; sent to Tower
518 ; arraigned 520; executed
521, 530; his son Edward in
Tower 521, 530, 532 n. I. ; his
widow attainted 452, 528, 529 ;
attainder reversed 452 n. \ .
Exmew, B. William, Carthusian, I.
39 ; discussions with Bedyll 37,
38 ; his great humility 39, 40 ;
in Marshalsea and Tower, trial
40 and n. ; indictment, martyr-
dom at Tyburn, 41, 221.
Eyemouth II. 171.
Eynon, B. John, probably Bene-
dictine, priest of St. Giles',
Reading I. 371, 384; copies
Aske's proclamation 369, 371 ;
abused by "the Libeller" 378
INDEX
665
w. i. ; martyred 384, 386; last |
words 387.
Faringdon (or Cook), B. Hugh,
O.S.B., Life I. 358—387;
sometime partizanof Henry VIII. .
359 ; qualified subscription to i
Oath of Supremacy 338, 367 ;
charged with reporting the King's
death, pardoned 372 ; loyalty to
the Pope 366 ; seized at Reading,
sent to the Tower 382, 384 ;
examined by Cromwell 350,
351, 384 ; tried at Reading with
Eynon and Rugge 384 ; their
loyalty to Pope and King 385 ; :
all hanged before Abbey gates
386, 405 «., 406 — 408 ; Faring-
don's last words 386.
Farm Street Church, London,
relics II. 356, 357.
Fast Castle, near Dunbar II. 160,
162.
Feckenham, John, O.S.B., Abbot
of Westminster, intercedes for
heretics II. 34, 90 ; at Eliza-
beth's crowning 39 ; speech of
41 ; in Tower 46 ; with Storey
83 ; in Wisbeach Castle 322.
Felton, B. John, Life II. 1—13 ;
publishes Bull, 3, 4, 7, 8 and
n. i, 10, 281 ; seized, thrice
racked 5 ; order for torture
5,6; three months in prison 5 ;
Newgate and Tower 6 and n. l ;
condemned on religious grounds
6, 7 ; his faith in the Pope's
supremacy 8, 9 ; martyrdom 8 —
1 1 ; tormented by heretical •
preachers 8, 9 ; recites Peniten- \
tial Psalms 9 ; scaffold in St.
Paul's Churchyard 8 n. I, 9, IO ;
his momentary fear 10 ; sends
Elizabeth a ring, last words 1 1 ;
property confiscated, portrait 12 ;
dies for prerogatives of the Pope
xix. 13 ; indictment xix. n.
Felton, Mrs. II. 3, 5, 12.
Felton, Yen. Thomas, O.S.F., son
of B. John Felton, martyred
II. 12.
Feria, Duke of II. 39.
Feron, — , priest, turns against
Haile I. 18 — 20, 22, 25.
Fetherston (Featherstone, or Feder-
ston), B. Richard, Life I. 496 —
501 ; probably at Cambridge
497 ; tutor to Princess Mary
471, 497, 510; one of Queen
Catherine's counsel 67 n. i, 498;
first attainder 494, 495 ; in the
Tower 472 ; with Powell 499 ;
prison charges 472 ; assisted by
Wilson and Sampson 475 — 477 ;
second attainder 477 — 479, 497,
500 ; condemned without trial
481 ; hanged 479, 480, 500.
Filby, B. William, Life II. 491—
499 ; birth, college 491 ; with
Campion, arrested 492 ; dreams
of martyrdom 492, 493 ; indict-
ment, trial and sentence 447 n. 2,
493 ; cruelly treated 493 ;
answers to the six articles 494 ;
martyrdom 495 — 498 ; worried
by ministers 495, 496 ; shaves
tonsure and makes small wooden
cross 495 ; professes Catholic
Faith and loyalty to Elizabeth
496 ; denies Royal Supremacy
497 «. i ; last prayers, not cut
down alive 498 ; buried under
the gallows, relics 499, 560.
Fish, Simon I. 162, 163 and n. 2.
Fisher, Elizabeth, Dominican nun
I. 90.
Fisher, B. John, Life I. 47 — 122 ;
birth, parentage, school 47 ;
university career 47 — 52 ; con-
fessor to the Lady Margaret 48
and ». 2 ; advises her to found
Christ's College, Cambridge 49 ;
Bishop of Rochester 50, 52, 53.
60, 6 1 ; sanctity and virtues 52,
54 — 61 ; writes to Henry against
divorce 66 and n. ; counsel to
Queen Catherine 67 and n. i,
486, 487 ; at Legatine Court,
speaks and writes against the
divorce xxxiii. 67, 68, and «.,
487 ; opposes schismatical novel-
ties 69 ; summoned by the King
666
INDEX
70, 72 ; appeals to Rome,
arrested 75 n. ; address to Con-
vocation 73 ; qualified accept-
ance of King's supremacy xxxiv. j
74 ; life twice attempted 76, 77 : !
second arrest 79 ; appeals to j
Charles V. against the King
80; matter of "Holy Maid
of Kent" 80 — 82; attainted,
penalty commuted 82, 83 and
;/. ; last Easter at Rochester 83 ;
bequest to Cambridge, last
journey to London 84, 85 ;
before Commission at Lambeth
85, 200 ; refuses Oath of Succes-
sion 86 and «. 2, 205, 440 ; in
Tower 87 — 109, 206, 440 ; hard-
ships 88, 89 ; illness, writings,
succoured by Bonvisi 90; receives
Bishops 92; treachery of enemies
93» 94> 99 n- '•> finally refuses
Oath of Supremacy 94, 99 «. ;
writes to More, letter intercepted
94, 219; examinations 95, 97;
created Cardinal 95 ; indictment
discussed 98 and n. 2 ; trial 97,
loo — 105 ; without degradation
99; sentence 98 n. 2, 102 ; com-
mutation of 107 ; Via dolorosa
no, in; martyrdom ill — 114;
refuses conditional pardon 112
n. 2, 117; last words to the
people 113, 114 «. I ; last
prayers 114; first burial 115,
119; the story about Anne
Boleyn 115; head set on London ]
Bridge, miraculously incorrupt, i
thrown into river 116; body
buried with More's in the
Tower 119, 120, 239; relics
and portraits 122; writings 121;
II- 55-
Fisher, Robert I. 59, 89.
Fleetwood, Edmund II. 527.
Fleetwood, William II. 238, 239,
254, 262.
Ford, B. Thomas, Life II. 443 —
459 ; college 209, 443, 444 and
11. I ; warns Mayne 209, 443 ; '
at Douay 209, 444, 445 ; chaplain |
at Lyford 336, 445 ; taken with ,
Campion 338, 446 ; in Tower,
perhaps in Marshalsea 446 and
n. 2 ; thrice examined under
torture 433, 447 ; tried and
sentenced 447 and «. 2 ; no
evidence 447 ; questioned 450 —
453 ; execution predetermined
453 ; a month in irons 454 ;
condemned with Shert and John-
son 454, 467 ; absolved on way
to Tyburn 454, 455 ; professes
Catholic faith 455 ; rebuts charge
of disloyalty 456, 457 ; prays in
Latin, with Catholics, last words,
not cut down alive 457 and ;/. ;
appears after death, with his
fellow-martyrs, to Yen. Stephen
Rowsham 458 ; relics and
portrait 458, 459.
Forest, B.John, O.S.F., Observant.
Life I. 274 — 326; warden of
Greenwich 275, 277 ; preaches at
St. Paul's Cross 275, 276; Queen
Catherine's confessor 276, 277 ;
betrayed to Cromwell by Lyst
279; deposed 280, 281; in a
London prison 281, 283 and
;/. 468 ; correspondence with
Catherine, &c. 283—288, 468—
471 ; liberated 291 ; perhaps for
taking Oath of Supremacy 291 —
293» 310 and ;/. 2 ; at Grey Friars'
Convent, Smithfield 283, 290,
294 ; confesses Lord Mordaunt
294 ; writes in defence of Papal
Authority 296 and «. ; second
arrest 296 ; examination 297 —
301 ; tried for heresy 299, 301,
303, 308 ; articles of indictment
302, 303 ; discussed 303 — 308 ;
trial 308 — 311 and «;/.; refuses
to do penance at St. Paul's Cross
311; pronounced a relapsed
heretic 312; in Newgate 312,
313; martyrdom 314 — 321 and
nn.; in religious habit, preached
at by Latimer 315; confutes
him 316 — 318; brave confession
of faith 316; hanged in chains
over a fire 319, 320; statue of
St. Derfel burnt with him xlv.
INDEX
667
320 ; verses set up on the
gallows 305 ; last ejaculations
320 and n. 2 ; miracle 320 ;
burial 321, 326; relics 326.
Forstell, Lewis I. 351.
Forster, Sir John II. 173, 174
«. 2, 176.
Fortescue, B. Adrian, Life I. 413
— 461 ; ancestry 413 ; birth and
marriage 414; daughters 431,
432 ; French campaigns 416,
417, 429 — 431 ; death and
burials of first wife 418 — 426 ;
Dominican con/rater 423, 436 ;
second marriage 433 ; children
434i 455 '•> a' Anne Boleyn's
coronation 435 ; Knight of
St. John 436, 437 ; summoned
to London by Cromwell 439 ;
arrested, examined at Woodstock
442 ; hears Mass at his inn
442, 443 ; in Marshalsea 443 ;
expenses 443 — 446 ; his liberality
446, 447 ; released 448 ; loyalty
to the Holy See 448, 449 ; second
arrest, in Tower, sentenced 450;
attainted without trial 379, 452,
528, 529 «. ; indictment 452,
453 ; beheaded on Tower Hill
453; his cnltiis Ixv. 413, 454,
455 n. 2 ; relics described 455 —
459 ; honours to his widow and
children 459 ; descendants 460,
461 ; extracts from his household
account books 419 — 426, 433 —
443. 446, 447-
Fortescue, Frances, B. Adrian's
second daughter, married to
Earl of Kildare I. 432.
Fortescue, Sir Francis I. 460, 461.
Fortescue, Sir John, B. Adrian's
elder brother I. 415 — 417, 426.
Fortescue, Sir John I. 434, 460.
Fortescue, Margaret I. 432, 459.
Fox, Edward I. xxviii. xxxii.
Fox, John, Carthusian I. 258 n.
259.
Foxe, John, calumnies against More
I. 170; Bonner II. 24 — 26; and
Storey 24 — 26 and n. 36, 43 n.
47-
Frauncis, Dom John, O.S.B. I.
383, 389 and «. I.
Frith, John I. 160, 164, 543, 544.
Fulke, Dr, II. 93, 94.
Fylalle, Jasper I. 255.
Gardiner, B. German I. 543 — 547 ;
letter against Frith 543, 544 ;
evidence against Cranmer 544 ;
veneration for More 544, 545 ;
indicted and tried 542, 545, 546;
martyred at Tyburn 547 (date
should be 1544, see Corrigenda}.
Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of
Winchester, Embassy to Rome
I. xxviii. xxxii.; sent to Fisher in
prison 92 ; 189.
Garret, or Gerard, Thomas I. 479,
480, 496.
Ghinucci, Girolamo, Bishop of
Worcester, deprived I. xxxvi.
Gifford, Gilbert II. 372.
Gifford, William II. 372.
Giggs, Margaret, More's adopted
daughter I. 145, 260, 261 ; dis-
penses his alms 151 ; married to
Dr. John Clement 145, 261 ;
charity to the Carthusian martyrs
in Newgate 151 n. 2, 261, 262;
vision on her deathbed 262 ;
147, 227, 229, 232 n. 5, 240,
241 ; her son 261 ; her daughter
Margaret 241 n. I ; 261, 262.
Gilbert, George, assists Father
Persons II. 316 ; dies holding
Briant's cross 419 ; I. xvi. II. 379.
Gilbert, Dr. William, O.S.B.,
Abbot of Bruton I. 333.
Giles, Peter I. 137.
Glastonbury Abbey I. 327 — 330,
353 5 g°od discipline in 339 ;
Commissioners at 336, 338 — 345,
349 ; plunder of 351 — 354, 358;
ballad on 358 n. I ; Whiting's
head set over gate 357.
Glastonbury, Tor Hill. BB.
Whiting, James, and Thorne,
O.S.B. martyred on I. 356,
357; town I. 408, II. 600.
Gloucester II. 284.
,, Cathedral II. 292.
668
INDEX
Godsalve, George II. 426, 427 ;
betrayed, tortured, and im-
prisoned with Payne 427, 430 «.
466 ; exiled 427.
Godwin, Francis, Protestant Bishop
of Hereford I. 339.
Golden, Cornwall II. 21 1, 214.
Goldwell, Thomas, Catholic Bishop
of St. Asaph, attainted I. 452
and n, 3 ; in Rome II. I ; volun-
teers return to England 364 ;
stopped at Rheims by illness,
death at Rome 371 and «.; 318.
Good, Father William, SJ. I. 408
and n. 3 ; II. 600, 626.
Goodrich, Thomas, Bishop of Ely,
arrests and examines B. Margaret
Pole I. 521, 524.
Graunger, Agnes, B. Thomas
More's mother I. 124.
Gravelines I. 427.
Great Marlow I. 376, 377 «., 424.
Green (vere Greenwood), B.Thomas,
Carthusian, degrees I. 267 ;
refuses Oath 259 ; no trial 260 ;
sufferings and death in Newgate
260—263, 264 n. I, 268.
Greenwich Observant Monastery,
Church of I. 278 ; Princesses
Mary and Elizabeth baptized in
281, 509.
Greenwich Palace I. 276, 418,
435. 447 5 II- 430 and n.
Greenwood, B. William, Carthu-
sian, refuses Oath of Supremacy
I. 259 ; sufferings and death in
Newgate 260 — 263, 264 ?/. i.
Gregory XIII. Pope, sanctions
cultus of English martyrs I.
xvi. xvii. lix. II. 12; founds
English College, Rome 360, 462 ;
liberality to Douay 438 n. 3 ;
and to English priests 477, 482,
567, 607.
Grenville (Greenfield), Sir Richard,
High Sheriff of Cornwall, arrests
Mayne, brutality of II. 212,
213 ; rewarded by knighthood
212 «., 214; intimidates Mayne's
jury 216.
Grey Friars' Convent, Newgate
Street (Smithfield) I. 283, 290,
294.
Grey Friars, Reading, suppressed
I. 374 ; friars sent away in
secular dress 375 ; in Tower,
examined 384.
Grocers' Company II. 268, 279.
Grocyn, William I. 126.
Gueras (or Garcias), Don Antonio
de, Agent for Spain in England
II. 6 n. 3 ; letters from 2 ;/. 2.
8 n. 2, 60, 61.
Gunnell, Mr. letter to More I. 148.
Habberton (or Habberdyne), priest
I. 488.
Haddon, Oxon. II. 431.
Haile, B.John, Life I. 17 — 26; Vicar
of Isleworth 12, 17 ; previously
Vicar of Chelmsford, Fellow of
King's Hall, Cambridge, goods
in college sequestrated 17 and
«. i ; complaint of the King's
wickedness 18 ; arrest 19 ; cause
of death discussed 19 — 22 and
«. ; his words against the King
quoted 20 «. ; letter to the
Council 23 n. I ; tried and
executed in clerical dress 22 ;
martyrdom 25, 26 ; first priest
martyred under Henry VIII.
17 ; suffers with Reynolds and
Carthusian priors 12 ; beatifi-
cation xix.
Hailes, Holy Blood of, relic de-
stroyed I. xlv. 307.
Hair-shirt, always worn by Car-
thusians I. 2 ; worn by Fisher
58, 109 ; by More 128, 155, 214,
228, this now at Abbotsleigh,
one sleeve at Stone Convent 241
n, I.
Hailing I. 54, 77.
Hammon, Elizabeth I. 283 ; corres-
pondence with Forest 287, 288.
Hammond, Dr. John, inquisitor of
Catholic prisoners II. 404 and
n., 405, 407, 450, 453, 456, 465,
481 ; rage at Briant's constancy
406 ; present at Cottam's rack-
ing 550.
INDEX
Hanse, B. Everard, Life II. 249 —
265 ; at Cambridge, takes Angli-
can Orders, popular preacher,
illness 250 ; instructed and
reconciled by his brother, goes
to Rheims 251 ; ordained 252,
263 ; comes to England 252 ;
alias 253, 262 ; labours three
months 254 ; taken in the Mar-
shalsea 249, 254 ; before magis-
trate 250 ; in Newgate 250, 254 ;
harassed by Crowley 259 «., 264;
rejects Royal Supremacy, beaten,
hung up by the feet, tried at
Old Bailey 254; examination
255, 256 ; declares Papal Infalli-
bility 255, 263 ; snared 256 ;
indicted 256, 257, 262 — 264 ;
sentenced 257 ; Stow's account
of trial 257, 258 and «. ; letter
to his brother 258, 259 ; martyr-
dom 258 — 261 ; prays with
Catholics 260, 265 ; last words
260 ; his blood collected, relics
261 ; hostile pamphlet 261, 262.
Hanse, William, convert and priest
II. 250 ; converts his brother
Everard 257 ; 258, 259, 578, 635.
Harpsfield, Nicholas, retires to
Louvain II. 22 ; in Fleet prison
47-.
Harrington, Ven. William, in-
fluenced by Campion II. 332
and n.
Harris, John I. 145.
Harrow (Visitation Convent), relics
at I. 411 ; II. 222.
Hart, John, S.J. priest, at English
College, Rome II. 371 ; on
English Mission 376 ; in
Marshalsea and Tower 383, 406,
483, 515; writes the Diary in
the Tower 406 ; received into S.J.
in prison 555 n. I ; indicted,
tried and sentenced 447 n. 2 ;
reprieved 454 «. 2 ; banishment
and death 555 «. i.
Hart, B. William, Life II. 600—
634 ; priest, birthplace, college,
degrees 600 and «. ; at Douay
and Rheims 601, 603 ; ill-health,
patience 602 — 604 ; operation
and cure 604, 605 ; at Rome,
ordination, eloquent preacher
606, 608 ; work in Yorkshire
609; charity to Catholic prisoners
569, 609, 6 10 ; at Thomas Bell's
Mass in York Castle, escapes
57°> 571* 610; betrayed and
taken 610, 611 ; examined by
Lord Huntingdon, sent to York
Castle 611 ; starved, ill-used, and
doubly ironed 6 1 1, 612; dragged
in chains before Dean Hutton,
letter to him 612 — 614; and to
Catholic friends 615, 616 ;
arraigned 616 ; appeal 616, 617 ;
condemned under statute of
Henry VIII. 618 ; sentenced,
austerities 619 ; farewell letters
620 — 627,633 ; prayer composed
by him 627, 628 ; martyrdom
628 — 631 ; drawn to Knaves-
mire with thieves 628 ; insulted
by ministers, his meek answers
629—631 ; asks prayers of
Catholics, professes loyalty,
crowd prevent his being cut
down alive 631 ; and secure
relics 631, 632 ; head set on
Ousebridge Kidcote, removed
by Mary Hutton 646.
Hart, William, S.J. II. 605 «. 2,
606.
Hartlepool II. 154.
Hartley, Ven. WTilliam II. 502.
Hauton, Yorks. II. 561.
Hawick II. 163.
Haywood, Caspar, S.J. II. 567.
Henley-on-Thames I. 419, 420,
424, 425, II. 339, 492.
Henry I. I. 359.
Henry VIII., early theological
training and devotion I. xxii.
xxiv. ; his book against Luther
xxiv. 486 ; marries Catherine of
Arragon xxix. 64 ; passion for
Anne Boleyn xxx. 177, 178
n. 3 ; his obstinate character
xxii. xxvii. ; his divorce xxiv.
— xxxiv. 65 — 69, 176, 276;
" Supreme Head of the Church "
6yo
INDEX
72, 73, 78, 545, 546 bis; marries
Anne Boleyn xxxv. 511 ; thrice
excommunicated xxxvi. xlvi. :
his cruelty to Princess Mary 498,
511, 512; suppresses English
Observants 282 bis, 290 ; tries
to coerce Carthusians 39, 43 ;
rage against Fisher 96, 97 ;
slanders More 98 n. 2, 239 ;
persecutes his family 237 ; marries
jane Seymour 448 ; perfidy to
leaders of Pilgrimage of Grace
369 ; savage cruelty and tyranny
xlviii. 372, 519, 531 and n. i ;
destroys St. Thomas of Canter-
bury's shrine and relics xlv. ; last
days xlviii. ; death, his will set
aside xlix.
Heron, Ven. Giles, ward of B.
Thomas More, marries his
daughter Cecily I. 145 ; (not
Elizabeth, see Corrigenda) ;
martyred 186 n. 3, 483.
Heywood, John, layman, indicted
of high treason with BB. Larke
and Gardiner and Ven. John
Ireland I. 545 ; recants on the
hurdle, pardoned 547.
Hindon, Wilts. II. 17.
Hodgson, Christopher II. 525, 526
and nn. , 527.
Holmes, William, priest in Durham
(Nov. 1569) nicknamed the
"Pope's Patriarch" II. 143;
absolves conformed clergy 144,
148 ; reconciles five minor canons
149 ; sermon, public absolution,
and High Mass in Durham
Cathedral 146 n. 147, 155 ;
escapes to Scotland 159 ; and to
Louvain 160; letter to George
Smythe 160, 161.
Holmside, Durham II. 114.
Holt, Nicholas, More's school-
master I. 125.
Holt, William, SJ. II. 567.
Holtby, Richard, SJ. II. 400—
402.
Holy Maid of Kent, see Barton,
Elizabeth.
Holyman, Dom John, O.S.B.,
monk of Reading and Fellow of
New College, Oxford I. 363 ;
preaches in St. Paul's against
Luther 363, 364.
Home, Lord, receiver of priests,
Mass in his house II. 160;
shelters Countessof Northumber-
land 162.
Homington, Wilts. I. 491.
Hopton, Sir Owen, Lieutenant of
the Tower, prison accounts II.
65 ; judge and torturer of martyrs
262, 339, 404, 405 and n. , 436 ;
his daughter converted after
Campion's death 353 ; his wife's
theft 436; 83, 386, 433, 484, 508,
511, 516, 517, 550.
Horn, — , Protestant Bishop of
Winchester, letter to Bullinger
II. 6l, 62 ; 127.
Home, B. William, Carthusian,
I. 260, 313 ; refuses Oath 259 ;
in Newgate 260 ; nearly starved
to death 260, 264 ; three years
imprisonment and sufferings 264 ;
persists in wearing habit 265,
483 ; attainted and condemned
264 ; terms of attainder 477 —
479 ; hanged at Tyburn 264 and
»• 3, 313, 483-
Houghton, B. John, Carthusian,
Life I. i — 16 ; proto-martyr of
the persecution, birth, at Cam-
bridge, priest i ; twenty years in
London Charterhouse 2 ; various
offices and virtues 3 — 5 ; person
described 4 ». ; first imprison-
ment in Tower 6 ; warning
dream, prepares his monks 7 ;
miracle at his Mass 8 ; again in
Tower 9 ; finally refuses Oath,
trial, pleads not guilty, (see
Corrigenda), jury intimidated
ii; sentence 12; martyrdom
12 — 14 ; refuses conditional
pardon, speech to the people 13 ;
last words 14; quarter set over
Charterhouse gateway 37 and n. ;
his monks' veneration for him
251.
Hull Blockhouses and Castle II.
INDEX
671
591 «., town 112 ; Charterhouse
1-255-
Hunsdon (Henry Carey, first Baron)
questions Storey as to his
allegiance II. 92 ; letters about
Percy 159, 160, 164, 166, 167,
170, 171 ; Tregian's estate
granted to him 220, 221 ; witness
to Campion's fortitude 345.
Huntingdon (Henry Hastings, Earl
of) President of Council of the
North II. 564, 610, 6n, 632.
Husbands Bosworth, relics at I.
448, 449. 457—459-
Hutton, Dr., Protestant Dean of
York, controversy with B.
William Hart II. 612, 614, 615 ;
examines Thirkeld 639, 640, 650,
651 ; 620.
Hutton, William and Mary, York
recusants, their sufferings II.
639, 646.
Ilchester I. 357 and n. I.
Infallibility of the Pope, enunciated
by More I. 164 «. I ; and by
Hanse II. 255, 263.
Ingatestone Hall, Essex, property
of Petre family, chief home of
B. John Payne II. 425, 426 ;
and of B. Robert Johnson 479 ;
hiding-place described 425.
Ingleby, Ven. Francis, martyr II.
633-
Ingworth, King's Visitor I. 273.
Ireland, Ven. John, priest of
Eltham I. 545 ; tried and mar-
tyred 542, 543, 545, 547.
Isleworth, B. John Haile, Vicar of
I. 12, 17 ; Bridgettine monas-
tery at 27.
James, Ven. Edward, martyr II.
491.
James, B. Roger, O.S.B. of Glas-
tonbury I. 357 ; arrested 352 ;
martyrdom 357-
Jenks, Roland, Catholic book-
seller II. 399.
Jenny, Sir Christopher I. 398.
Jerome, William, apostate, burnt
I. 479, 480, 496.
Jervaulx, Abbot of (Adam de Sed-
bergh), hanged at Tyburn II.
"3-
Jewkes, Simon II. 56, 58.
John XXI. Pope II. 279.
Johnson, Helen II. 523.
Johnson, B. Robert, priest, Life
II. 474 — 490 ; birth, enters
German College, Rome 474 and
n. ; at Douay 360, 475 ; ordained,
makes the Exercises, three years
in England, pilgrimage to Rome
475 ; Exercises 476, 477 ; at
Ingatestone Hall, betrayed by
Sledd 478, 479 ; taken 480 ;
sent to the Counter in the
Poultry, examination 481, 482 ;
racked, in "the pit" 482; im-
prisoned for eleven months before
trial 482, 485 ; indicted with
Campion and others 345, 484 ;
sentenced, not then executed
484; questioned 450 — 452,485;
his answer 485, 486 ; martyr-
dom 454, 486 — 490 ; protests
his faith and innocence of trea-
son 487 ; harassed by ministers
and others 487 — 490 ; refuses to
pray in English, last prayers 490 ;
relics 422, 459, 473, 490.
Johnson, B. Thomas, Carthusian
I. 259 ; never tried 260 ; suffer-
ings and death in Newgate 260
—264 and tin. I, 2.
Julius II. Pope, his Bull of dis-
pensation for Henry VIII.'s first
marriage I. xxxi. xxxiii. 178 n. I,
463 ; 5°. 53-
Kildare (Thomas Fitzgerald, Earl
of) I. 482.
Kimbolton I. 287 n.
Kingston, Sir William I. 418.
Kirby, B. Luke, priest, Life II.
500 — 522 ; probable birthplace
500 and ;/.; reconciled at Lou-
vain, at Douay, ordained 501 ;
at English College, Rome 473,
672
INDEX
500, 501 ; kindness to needy
Englishmen 501, 519; goes to
England with Campion and
Sherwin 311, 365, 502; seized
on landing at Dover 502 ; in
the Gatehouse and the Tower
385, 482, 503, 504 ; exami-
nations 503 — 506 ; tortured by
the "Scavenger's Daughter"
507 and tin. ; dragged to sermons
508 ; arraigned and tried 345,
508 ; in irons for a month 510 ;
answers the " six articles " of
the Council 510, 511 ; letter to
friends 512 — 515; road to
Tyburn 495 ; martyrdom 517 —
522 ; protests his innocence of
treason 517 ; altercation with
Munday 518, 519; refuses to
pray with heretics, or in English
521 ; not cut down alive 522 ;
head cut off 533 ; body buried
under scaffold 499, 560 ; relics
522.
Kirkman, B. Richard, priest, Life
II. 578 — 588 ; birthplace, educa-
tion and order 578, 635 ; lives
at Scrivelsby Court 579 — 581 ;
escapes to the North 583 ; taken
near Wakefield 583 — 585 ; tried
at York Assizes, sent to the
Castle, examined and sentenced
586 ; recites Te Denm, in cell
with Lacey, again examined,
in dungeon till martyrdom 587 ;
suffers with Lacey 576, 587,
588 ; last words 588 ; his brother
John imprisoned in York Castle
and Ousebridge Kidcote 588 «.
Knights of St. John, suppressed I.
437 and n. I.
Knight, William I. xxxi.
Knox, John II. 123, 124.
Lacey, B. William, priest, Life II.
564 — 577 ; birth 564 ; recusancy,
fined 565 ; wanderings, wife's
death 566 ; goes to Rheims and
to Rome, ordained 567 ; letter
Uo Creswell 567 — 569; visits
Catholic prisoners in York Castle
569, 570 ; at Bell's Mass 570 ;
captured 571 ; examined 571,
574 ; sent to the Castle, heavily
ironed, examined by Sandys
572> 573 » m underground hole
at York Castle, examined and
tried 573 — 575 ; martyrdom
576, 587-
Lady-Mass I. 294, 295.
Lambeth Palace, see London.
Lanchester, Durham II. 148.
Lanherne Convent, relics at II.
220, 221.
Larke, B.John I. 541 — 543; priest,
Rector of Chelsea 541 ; affection
for More, tried with Gardiner
and Ireland, indictment 542,
545, 546 ; all condemned and
hanged at Tyburn 543, 547 (date
should be 1544, see Corrigenda}.
Lasborow I. 439.
Latimer,Hugh,Bishopof Worcester,
heretical sermons at Bristol I.
488 ; letter to Cromwell about
Forest 312 — 314; preaches at
his martyrdom 315; 309, 310
n. 2, 311, 365.
Latimer, William, schoolfellow of
More and Colet I. 124.
Launceston, Mayne imprisoned,
tried and executed at II. 213,
214, 219 — 222.
Laurence, John, O.S.F. enemy of
Forest I. 277, 278, 280, 281
;/. 2 ; preaches in favour of the
King's divorce 278 ; leaves the
Order 278, 281 n. 2.
Lawrence, B. Robert I. 9 — 16 ;
Carthusian, Prior of Beauvale,
in Tower 9 ; martyred 14.
Layton, Dr. Richard, monastic
Visitor, at Glastonbury I. 340,
341, 349, 351, 3"52, 383 5 arrests
Whiting 349 ; apology to Crom-
well for praise of Whiting 341
n, 2, 383 «. i ; dissolves Clerken-
well Nunnery, spoils Reading
Abbey 382.
Lee, John, Cecil's spy II. 54, 100,
170; conspires against Storey
56, 57 ; imprisoned by Alva,
INDEX
released at Cecil's request 99,
100.
Lee, Roland, Bishop of Lichfield
and Coventry, marries Henry to
Anne Boleyn I. 368 ; commis-
sioned to dissolve Abbeys of
Colchester and St. Osyth 391.
Lee, William, informer, foreman
of Campion's jury II. 346.
Legh, Dr. Thomas, King's Visitor
to Glastonbury, letter to Crom-
well I. 340 n.
Leicester (Robert Dudley, Earl
of), plots against Storey II. 53 ;
probably at his martyrdom 93 ;
patron of Campion 272, 273 ;
Campion's History of Ireland
dedicated to him 273 ; 65, 70,
75, 76, 274.
Leo XIII., Pope, beatifies fifty-four
English martyrs (1886) I. xvii.
Ixiv. ; and nine others (1895) xvi. ;
signs introduction of cause of
two hundred and sixty-one others
xvii.
Leominster I. 368.
Lewes I. 372.
Libeller of the three Abbots com-
pared with Latimer I. 365 ;
quoted 338, 367 bis, 368, 372,
373, 377, 378 n. i, 385 —
387 n. I, 400, 405.
Lily, William I. 127, 129.
Linacre, Thomas I. 126.
Lincoln Cathedral I. 487 and «. 3.
Lincoln City, Plumtree, master of
school in II. 153.
Lincoln Gaol, Robert Dymoke
dies in II. 583.
Little Malvern I. 266.
Liverpool II. 115.
Llanderfel I. 304, 307 n.
Lochleven Castle II. 165, 171,
182 — 184.
Lollard's Tower of St. Paul's
Cathedral, prison for heretics
II. 62 and n. 2, 63 ; Storey
imprisoned in 63.
London, Dr. John, monastic
Visitor, suppresses shrine of Our
Lady of Caversham, sends her
RR
image to Cromwell I. 373, 374 ;
suppresses religious houses 374,
539 n. ; letters to Cromwell 374,
and n. 2, 375, 376 and «.
London, Dom Nicholas, O.S.B.,
Prior of Glastonbury, takes Oath
of Supremacy I. 336.
London, Dom Roger, O.S.B. ,
Monk of Reading I. 364, 365 ;
in the Tower 364 n. 2, 384.
London — in Volume I.
A. Places in, Beaufort Row,
Chelsea, site of More's house
144 ; Blackfriars 438, 444,
451 ; Black Friars' Church and
convent 423, 444, 445 n. I ;
Great Hall of xxxiii. 67, 183 ;
British Museum xx. 12 n. i,
295 n. 1,411,500; Bucklers-
bury 1 32 ; Charterhouse, More
retires to 127 ; Royal Com-
missaries at 6 ; Mass of the
Holy Ghost in 8 ; one of
Houghton's quarters set over
gateway 37 and n. • Com-
missaries harass monks in
250 — 254; house surrendered
266; Chelsea 137, 140, 144,
152, 180, 192, 307; Clerken-
well 382; Crosby Place 137;
Furnival's Inn 126; Grey
Friars' Church and convent,
Newgate Street, Smithfield,
283, 290, 293, 314 ; Hampton
Court 178; Lambeth Palace
and Chapel 53, 84, 85, 197,
308 ; " La Place," on Lambeth
Marsh (Bishop of Rochester's
Palace) 54, 77, 85 ; Lincoln's
Inn 126, 137; London Bridge
116, 239, 241, 536; Milk
Street, Cheapside 124; Olde-
borne (Holborn) 444 n. I ;
Old Swan Inn 226 ; St.
Anthony's School, Thread-
needle Street 124 ; St.
Bartholomew's Hospital 326 ;
St. Paul's Churchyard 265,
423 ; St. Paul's Cross 190,
275. 276, 3°7, 3", 440;
Southwark 443 ; Stepney 41,
II.
674
INDEX
46 bis ; Wandsworth 453 ;
Westminster Hall II, 41, 97,
106, 182, 185, 221, 227 «. 2,
545 ; Westminster Palace 459 ;
W7est Smithfield 2 ; York
Palace (near Westminster)
185-
B. Churches, All Hallows,
Barking 115, 119; Chelsea
Parish Church 120, 150, 152
and «. 2, 176, 186, 243, 541 ;
St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield
314 ; St. Ethelburga's, Bishops-
gate 541 ; St. Laurence Jewry
127 ; St. Margaret Patens 306;
St. Paul's Cathedral (Old) 255,
361, 364 ; St. Saviour's, South-
wark 307 ; Savoy Chapel 422 ;
Westminster Abbey xxxvi. ;
Chapter House 71 ; Sanctuary
5°4-
C. Prisons, Counter 355 and ».
1 , 407 ; King's Bench 446,
475 n. I ; Marshalsea 40, 43,
443, 446, 475, 496 ; Newgate
151 n. I, 260, 287, 312, 313,
315, 475 n. i, 495 ; the Tower
6, 7, 9, u, 15, 19, 30, 32,40,
43, 86, 87, 97, 98, 104, 131,
136, 155, 157, 200, 206, 214,
215, 217, 220, 225, 232, 350,
353, 364 «• 2, 382, 384, 393,
432, 450, 459, 464, 465, 472,
475, 494, 495, 499, 5°3—
506, 518, 521, 530, 531
n" *> 535, 544 '•> Beauchamp
Tower 207, 465, 467, 469
n. I ; Bell Tower 88, 89, 108 ;
White Tower 89, 494, 499 ;
Church of St. Peter ad Vincula
120, 239, 539; Tower Gate
104, no, 207 ; Tower Wharf
226.
D. Places of Execution, East
Smithfield Green, 533; St.
Thomas Waterings 453 ;
Smithfield xlv. 314, 479, 496 ;
Tower Hill 88, 106, 107, in,
I23> 453, 5°6 5 Tyburn 12, 19,
25, 34, 4i, 93, 1 86 ». i, 264,
3'3, 453, 543, 547-
London — in Volume II.
A. Places in, Aldgate 266 ;
Bermondsey Abbey 3 ; Bishop
of London's Palace, near Old
St. Paul's 2, 4 ; British Museum
97 «. 191 n. i, 261 ; Chancery
Lane 236; Christchurch (Blue-
coat) School 269 ; Crosby
Place 108 «. ; Guildhall 8, 196,
386 ; Holborn 465 ; Hoxton
(or Hogsdon) 319, 380 ; Inner
Temple Library 102 n. I ;
Lawrence Lane 465 ; Lincoln's
Inn 2 ; London Stone 81 ;
Old Bailey 254, 257 ; St.
Paul's Cross 279 ; Smithfield
479 ; Southwark 479 ; Star
Inn, New Fish Street 546 ;
Tothill Street 334 ; Westmin-
ster 334 ; Westminster Hall
77, 113, 282, 345, 389, 418,
531 ; Court of Queen's Bench
in 245 ; \Vhitefriars 334 ;
Whitehall 117.
B. Churches, St. Paul's Cathe-
dral 552 ; Westminster Abbey
39- .
C. Prisons, Bridewell 402 ;/. 2 ;
the Counter (three prisons of
the name) 402 and ;/. 3 ;
Counter, in the Poultry 481 ;
Counter, in Wood Street 402,
404; the Fleet 46, 47, 52,
188, 189, 195, 221 ; Gate-
house, Westminster 239, 482,
503 ; Lollard's Tower (of St.
Paul's Cathedral) 62 and «. 2 ;
Marshalsea 47, 249, 319, 381,
383, 386, 446 n. 2, 482, 493
and n. 2, 521 n. ; Newgate 6
n. I, 197, 198, 226, 250, 254,
263, 264, 351, 455, 530;
Limbo in Newgate 229 ; the
Tower 6, 19, 20, 46, 65, 75,
79, 80, 82, 85, 113, 180 n. i,
197, 239, 242, 247, 267, 350,
384 — 386, 403, 404 and ;/. I,
419 and n. i, 430, 431, 433,
446, 447, 454, 458, 466, 468,
482, 483, 493, 495, 503, 511,
521;;., 531, 550; Beauchamp
INDEX
675
Tower 81 ; Little Ease 339 ;
the Pit 408, 482 ; Walesboure
409 and n.i, 483; Council
Chamber 341 ; Church of St.
Peter ad Vincula 417, 562.
D. Places of Execution, St.
Paul's Churchyard 9 ; Tyburn
So, 85, 95, 98, 113, 231, 234,
247, 258, 332 ». i, 334, 351,
454, 455, 468, 495.516, 531.
Long Newton, Durham II. 148.
Loreto II. 567 and n., 568.
Louvain, English Catholic exiles
at II. 51, 54, 82, 100, io6n., 108
«., 160, 168, 364, 475, 501.
Augustinian Abbey, founded by
Margaret Clement (fills), I.
241 n. I, II. 52.
Carthusians and Franciscans,
B. John Storey's affection
for II. 23, 52, 104, it»5 ;
honoured by them as a martyr,
his relics and pictures over
their altars 98.
Louvain University, visited by
More I. 134; Sander a member
of II. 22 n. 2 ; and Storey 22
n. 2, 88 ; reverence for Storey's
memory 98 ; sends address to
Oxford in 1902, 22 n. 2.
Loyalty to Elizabeth, protested by
the Martyrs II. 260, 343, 348,
352> 395. 434, 457 and «., 470,
471, 486, 488, 496, 519, 533,
559, 596, 629.
Lucas, John I. 398 and n. i.
Ludlow I. 498, 507, 509.
Luther, Martin I. xxiv.
Lyford Grange (the Mote), Berks,
Mrs. Yate's house, B. Thomas
Ford, chaplain II. 336, 445 ;
Campion at 336, 338, 446.
Lyons II. 540.
Lyst, Richard, O.S.F., traitor I.
277 — 281 and n. i (see Laurence,
John).
Madrid I, 454 to.
Malta I. Ixv. 413, 454, 455 n. 2.
Manchester (Collegiate Church)
II. 364-
Manners, Grace I. 461.
Markenfield family II. 133, 137,
n. 2, 139.
Marshall, B. Thomas (j« Beche,
John).
Marshall, William I. 254, 255.
Marshe, Mr., Commissioner II. 87.
Martin, George, son of Lady
Tregonwell, traitor, denounces
Sherwood II. 236 — 238.
Martin, Dr. Gregory, at St. John's,
Oxford, with Campion and
Mayne II. 208, 279 ; tutor to
Ven. Philip Howard, convert
279 ; at Douay 205, 209, 444 ;
letter to Campion 279, 282 ;
helps to organize English
College, Rome 305, 462 ; letter
from Campion 305 — 307 ; 464,
615-
Martin, Richard, Sheriff of London
and inquisitor II. 455 — 457, 465,
469 — 472, 487 — 490, 498, 520,
531, 558.
Martinengo, Girolamo II. 187 and
n. I.
Mary, Queen of Scots II. 121, 123,
128, 129.
Mary I., Queen, birth, baptism
and confirmation I. 509 ; Court
at Ludlow 498, 509 and n. 4 ;
her learning and high character
497) 5IQ n- J j her father's
cruelty 511 — 513. Her counter-
reformation II. x. ; State entry
into London, Campion's oration
at II. 266, 267 ; esteem for B.
Thomas Percy 116, 117.
Maydwell, John, apostate friar I.
254.
Mayne, B. Cuthbert, Life II.
207 — 222 ; priest, proto-martyr
of Douay, birth, baptismal
register 207 and n. 4, 221 ; at
Barnstaple Grammar School,
Protestant minister at nineteen
208 ; at Oxford 208, 209 and nn. ;
escapes arrest, goes to Douay
209, 445 ; ordained 210 ; lives
with Francis Tregian 210 — 212 ;
seized, examined, sent to
676
INDEX
Launceston Gaol 213 ; sufferings
213, 214 ; indictment and defence
214—216 ; jury intimidated,
sentence, five months longer
in prison 217 ; last days 217,
218; martyrdom 218 — 220;
brutality of Justices 219 and
n. I ; speech to the people, last
words 219; quarters distributed,
head at Wadebridge, rescued
220 ; portrait and relics, family
arms 221, 222, examination (see
Addenda}.
Mechlin II. 235.
Melksham (Milksame), Wilts. I.
492.
Melton, William de I. 47, 48;
Mercurian, Everard, General of
S.J., letters to from Campion
II. 316, 324 — 327 ; 561.
Mershe, John, spy II. 54, 56, 57,
65 ; bill of charges 65 — 69 ; 58,
70, 72—74-
Metham, Sir Thomas, recusant,
many years prisoner in York
Castle II. 175 «., 176; 233.
Middlemore, B. Humphrey, Life
I. 37 — 46; family 44, 45 and
«. 2 ; procurator and subprior
of London Charterhouse 39 ;
with Houghton in Tower 6, 39 ;
disputation with Bedyll 37 ;
tried, imprisoned, and martyred
with Newdigate and Exmew
40 and «., 41, 221.
Middleton, Alice, More's second
wife I. 137, 146; visits him in
Tower, urges him to yield 212 —
214; twice petitions for his
release 215 ; sells her clothes to
help him 215, 216 ; her daughter
Alice 145.
Milan II. 313, 365.
Milton Abbas, Dorset. II. 237 it. 2.
Monasteries, visitation of, calum-
nies against I. xliii.; true reasons
of suppression xliii. 393, 394 ;
smaller suppressed (1536) xliii.
346, 34$; greater (1538) xliv.
348, 451 ; dissolution completed
(I539)xlvi.
Monkwearmouth II. 148.
Montague (Henry Pole, Baron)
B. Margaret Pole's eldest son
I. 513 ; sent to the Tower on
charge of treason 518 ; arraigned
520, 528 ; executed 520 n. 2 ;
516, 519 n.
Montague (Anthony Browne, First
Viscount) II. 117, 127.
Moore, William, a blind harper,
messenger between the Abbeys
!• 376, 377, 383 n. i ; in Tower
384; abused by "the Libeller"
377, 378.
Mordaunt, Lord, confession to
Forest I. 294 ; alms to friars
294, 297 ; his deposition 293 —
295-
More, Cecily, I. 132, 145, 228 (see
Addenda).
More, Cresacre, B.Thomas's great-
grandson, his Life of More quoted
I. 128 — 131, 150 n. I, 151,219,
542, 545 ; 229 n. 4.
More, Elizabeth (Daunce) I. 132,
145, 228, 229.
More, Sir John, B. Thomas's father
I. 124; in Tower, fined 136;
lives with his son at Chelsea 144 ;
judge of the King's Bench 185.
More, John, the martyr's son,
birth I. 132 ; imprisoned 229
n. 3 ; his children 229 n. 4 ;
145, 147, 229.
More, Margaret (see Roper,
Margaret.)
More, B. Thomas, Life I. 123 —
248 ; birth, parentage, school
124; page to Cardinal Morton,
life at Oxford 125 n. i ; study
of law and the Fathers 1 26 ;
lectures in St. Laurence Jewry,
friendships with Lily and Colet
127 ; uncertainty as to vocation
127, 129; austerities 128, 129;
Con/rater O.S.B. 332 ;/. ; devo-
tion to Holy Mass 130, 152,
153; religious exercises 130;
marries Joan Colte 131 ; their
life described by Erasmus 131,
132 ; children 132, 144, 145 ;
INDEX
677
his wife's death, second marriage I
132, 137 ; home in Bucklersbury
132 ; visits Trom Erasmus 133,
134; incurs the displeasure of
Henry VII. 136; bencher and
reader of Lincoln's Inn, Under-
Sheriff, moves to Crosby Place,
embassy to Flanders 137 ; re-
presses "Evil May-day" riot
139 ; knighted, Privy Councillor,
Henry VIII. 's love for him 140 ;
honours 141, 143, 159; foreign
embassies 141, 143, 176 ; Court
life 143, 144 ; home life at
Chelsea 144 — 151 ; household
and private devotions 150 and
«.,I5I, 153; charity to the poor
151, 152; turns W. Roper from
heresy 153, 154; Bouge's
witness to More's sanctity 155 ;
his conduct towards heretics dis-
cussed 167—173 ; visits Fisher
at Rochester, signs treaty of
Cambray 176; Lord Chancellor
181, 182; his filial piety 185;
diligence and integrity 185, 186 ;
horror of Royal Supremacy 75
11. ; opposes schismatical bills
185 ; resigns office xxxv. 185
— 187; poverty 187, 188 ; tried
formisprision of treason 191, 192 ;
his views on Papal Supremacy
194 — 196 and itn. • before Com-
mission at Lambeth 197 — 205 ;
refuses Oath of Succession 199,
201, 206; sent to Tower 206,
207, 440 ; visited by his wife
212 — 214; and daughter Mar-
garet 15, 208, 219 11. • sickness
and privations, austerities 214 ;
attainted of misprision of treason
215 ; examined 94, 217, 218
and 11. I, 220, 221 ; books taken
away 219, 220; indicted of
high treason 221 ; his defence
222 — 225 ; sentence 223 ; com-
muted to beheading 230; last
meeting with Margaret 226 ;
last morning 230 — 232 ; martyr-
dom 232 — 235 ; protests his
faith and loyalty, last prayers
234 ; head on London Bridge
1 16, 239 ; bought by his daughter,
buried at Canterbury 241 — 243 ;
body buried in St. Peter ad
Vincula 120, 139 ; relics 241 —
244 and nn. ; portraits 248.
Letters to Colet 127 ; to Crom-
well 190, 194; to Gunnell 148;.
to his children 146 — 149, 209,
219, 228, 229. Writings, early
126; controversial 134, 160 —
166 and mi. ; devotional 131,
156, 157 — 159, 218, 235 and
«. I, 245 ; Translation of Picus'
life and writings 131 ; Utopia
1.37, 138-
Moritz Encomium, by Erasmus I.
134, 135-
Morlaix, sack of I. 429.
Moroni, Cardinal II. 463, 606.
Morton, Cardinal I. 125 and n.
Morton, Dr. Nicholas II. xv. I, 133,
364-
Moyle, Thomas, Cromwell's Com-
missary at Glastonbury I. 349;
382, 383 ; at Reading 382 and
n- 3, 383 and nn. ; at Colchester
399; 351-
Munday, Government spy and
false witness II. 432, 449, 454,
455 n. 456, 457 and «., 468 n.
469, 471 n., 472 n. I, 487, 488,
495, 497 n. i, 502, 513, 518,
519 n., 521, 558 n., 559 and nn.
Murray (James Stuart), Earl of,
Regent of Scotland, hunts down
refugees of Northern Rising II.
162 ; sells Percy to Elizabeth
170.
Mush, John, priest II. 463.
Namur II. 182, 603, 604.
Nelson, B. John, priest, Life II.
223 — 233 ; birth 223 ; studies and
ordination 224 ; work in England
and exorcisms 225, 226 ; arrest
226 ; examination 226, 227 ;
refuses Oath of Supremacy 226,
228 ; last Mass 227, 228 ; in
Limbo 228, 229 ; last hours 229 ;
farewell to his brothers 230 ;
678
INDEX
harassed by ministers 230, 231 ;
martyrdom, prays with Catholics,
words to the people 231, 232
and n. ; name in Jesuit Office
and Martyrology 202 ; 450.
Nelson family II. 224 and it. 2.
Nevill, Amphelys I. 42.
Nevill, Christopher and Cuthbert
II. 137 n. 2, 139, 144.
Nevill, Sir Edmund, in Tower I.
518; arraigned 520; executed52i.
Nevill, Isabel I. 502.
Nevill, Sir John I. 532.
Nevill's Cross, Battle of II. 141.
Newburn, Northumberland II. 1 1 1.
Newcastle II. 155, 174.
Newdigate, John I. 42.
Newdigate, B. Sebastian, Carthu-
sian, birth, at Cambridge I. 42 ;
in the King's household 40 ;
Privy Councillor, marriage,
daughter, life at Court 42 ;
cautioned by his sister, retires
to Charterhouse 43 ; arrested,
in Marshalsea and Tower, treat-
ment in prison 40 and «. ; visited
and threatened by the King 43,
44 ; trial, indictment, martyr-
dom 41, 221.
New Hall, Essex, built by Henry
VIII. I. 428 ; Princess Mary at
512; now a convent of Sepul-
chrine nuns 512 n, 2.
Nicholas, Mr. I. 147.
Nichols, John, pervert and in-
former, his career II. $08, 511
— 517; heretical sermons in the
Tower 508, 551, 563.
Nicholson, Mr. II. 448.
Nieuport Charterhouse I. 266.
Nonsuch Palace II. 547.
Norfolk (Thomas Howard, Ninth
Duke), tries More I. 191, 221 ;
and BB. Rochester andWalworth
255 ; at martyrdom of Carthu-
sian Priors 12 ;/. 2; and Forest
314, 319; 182, 194, 224.
Norfolk (Tenth Duke) II. 1 13, 1 14.
Norton, Francis II. 137 «. 2, 139.
Norton, Richard (the elder) II.
137 n. 2, 139; bears standard
of Five Wounds 152; flies to
Antwerp, friend of Storey 55, 76,
77, 89; 133-
Norton, Thomas, Rack -master of
the Tower, examines and tortures
Briant II. 404 and «., 405 ; his
brutality 409, 416, 417 ; short
nominal imprisonment for it 415 ;
examines Johnson 481 ; 465.
Northumberland, Countess of, wife
of B. Thomas Percy II. 118;
rides with the troops in the
Northern Rising 156, 161 ;
escapes to Scotland, adventures
162, 167 ; vain efforts for her
husband's release 164, 165, 167,
168 and n. 170; lives in Flanders
55, 118, 128, 167; letter to her
husband 168 n.
Nostell Priory, Vorks. I. 248.
Nottingham II. 234, 235.
Nuthake, Thomas I. 394, 395.
Oatlands Palace II. 547.
Observant Friars (English), fervour
in religion, reject the Royal
Supremacy I. 274 ; support
Queen Catherine 277 ; sup-
pressed by Henry VIII. 282 bis,
290 ; houses emptied, two
hundred imprisoned, fiftydie from
hardships 274, 282 ; one hanged
453-
Ortiz, Dr., Charles V.'s agent at
Rome, pleads for B. Thomas
Abel I. 463 ; letters to the
Empress 98 «. 2, 104 n. I, 472.
Orton, Henry, goes to Rome II.
475 ; in Tower 476, 483, 548 :
tried and condemned 345, 476;
banished 476 ; 478, 481.
Oxford, City of I. 438, 439, 442.
Bodleian Library, MS. book by
Fortescue in, described and
quoted 434, 455—457. H. 22
n. 2.
Congregation House (in St.
Mary's Churchyard) I. 484.
St. Mary's Church, Campion's
Decem Rationes distributed in
II. 334-
INDEX
679
Oxford University, martyrs who
were members of I. 125, 266,
267, 275, 387, 462, 484, 510;
II. 15, 1 6, 153, 208, 235, 269,
400, 444, 445, 460, 491, 524,
536, 600, 635. Colleges, All
Souls' II. 424; Balliol II. 358,
401 ; Brasenose II. 445, 460,
524, 536, 543 11. ; Broadgates
Hall (Pembroke) II. 15 ; Can-
terbury (Christ Church) I. 125
and n. ; Corpus Christi I. 408 ;
II. 153, 445; Exeter II. 358,
445 ; Gloucester Hall, or St.
Benedict's (Worcester) I. 388 ;
Hert Hall (Hertford College)
II. 400 and n. 2. ; Hinksey
Hall II. 15; Lincoln II. 491,
600, 601 ; Martin College II.
274 ; New II. 462 ; Oriel I.
484; II. 205; Peckwater or
Vine Hall II. 424 ; Queen's II.
635 ; St. Alban's Hall II. 208 ;
St. John's II. 208, 269, 279,
445, 543 n. ; St. Mary's Hall II.
205 ; Trinity II. 209, 443, 445.
Pace, Mr. II. 629 — 631.
Padua I. 510.
Palmer, Mr., Protestant minister,
vexes Percy II. 177, 178, 179;
and Hart 615.
Paris I. 134.
Parker, William, brother to Matthew
Parker II. 53 and n. ; entraps
Storey 53, 54, 56-59, 65, 77,
98, 99
Park Hall, Lanes. II. 525 and «. I.
Parkminster, Carthusian Monas-
tery, relic II. 222.
Parliament, abolishes Annates (25
Henry VIII. c. 20) I. xxxv.
xxxvi. 185 and n. I ; forbids
appeals to Rome (24 Henry VIII.
c. 12) xxxvi. 79 ; abolishes
Peter's Pence, annuls Heresy
Act of Henry IV. (25 Henry
VIII. c. 21) xxxvi. ; passes Act
of Succession (25 Henry VIII.
c. 22) xxxvii. 83, 196, 439, 440 ;
of the Royal Supremacy (26
Henry VIII. c. i) xxxvii. 440,
447 ; of the Six Articles (31
Henry VIII. c. 14) xlviii. 379,
451 ; of Attainder xlviii. 379,
451 ; the greater monasteries
(31 Henry VIII. c. 14) 347
n. 4, 348, 451 ; suppresses
all religious houses 379, 451 ;
(1549): passes -first Act of
Uniformity (2 and 3 Edward
vi. c. l) II. 17—19; (1559) =
called the " Beardless," only ten
members Catholic II. 39 ; passes
new Act of Supremacy (i Eliz.
c. i.) 41, 119; and second Act
of Uniformity (i Eliz. c. 2) 119;
its treatment of Catholic bishops
119, 120, 122; (1563): Act for
" assurance " of the new religion
(5 Eliz. c. 1)11.48, 1265(1566):
Act to remedy defective con-
secration of first Protestant
bishops II. 127; (1571): Acts
against bringing in Bulls, &c.
(13 Eliz. c. 2) II. 206; (1581):
makes reconciliation to Rome
high treason II. 256 ; Statute of
Recusancy (23 Eliz. c. 2) 387,
3975 (I585): the return of
priests to England made treason
(27 Eliz.) II. 438 n. i, 574, 641.
Parpaglia (Abbate) II. 188.
Paschal, John, Sherwin's pupil at
Rome II. 365 — 373 ; passes as
Campion's master 367, 368 ; in
Marshalsea 383 ; and Tower,
terrified by Hopton into apostacy
386 ; 378, 548.
Patenson, Henry, More's jester I.
145, 151, 187.
Paul III., Pope I. xlv. xlvi. lix. 95,
118, 119, 236, 515—517, 530
n. 2.
Payne, B. John, Life II. 424 — 442 ;
birth II. 425 ; at Douay 210,
425 ; CEconomus of College,
ordained 426 ; goes to England
with Mayne 210, 426 ; works in
Essex and London 426 ; taken
at Ingatestone Hall 428 ; short
68o
INDEX
imprisonment, returns to Douay,
back at Ingatestone 429 ;
betrayed by Eliot, arrested,
tried 430 and n. ; in Tower
430, 466; for eight months
433) 435 5 accused of plotting
Elizabeth's death 432, 433 ;
twice racked 433 ; Hopton's
letter to Payne 433, 434 ; his
answer 434, 435 ; sent to
Chelmsford 436 ; trial 436 —
438 ; sentence 439 ; harassed by
ministers 439 — 442 ; martyr-
dom 440 — 442 ; protests his
faith and innocence, forgives
Eliot 440 ; refuses to pray in
English 441 ; 484.
Penizon, Sir William I. 382 «. 2.
Percy, Eleanor Lady, mother of
B. Thomas Percy, her children
taken from her II. 114 ; removes
to Preston Tower 115 n. 2, 118.
Percy, Elizabeth Lady, eldest
daughter of B. Thomas II. 182.
Percy, Henry (eighth Earl of North-
umberland), younger brother of
B.Thomas II. 114, 115, 117;
apostatizes 123, 124 ; against his
brother in Northern Rising 163 ;
returns to the Catholic faith,
persecuted, and murdered in the
Tower 180 n.
Percy, Mary Lady, O.S.B. II. 182
and n. 2.
Percy, Sir Thomas, father of B.
Thomas, a leader of Pilgrimage
of Grace, hanged at Tyburn II.
113; his children 114.
Percy, B. Thomas (seventh Earl
of Northumberland) Life II.
in — 186 ; birth and parentage, !
early home in, 113 ; restored,
and knighted 115; takes Scar-
borough Castle, created Earl of
Northumberland 116; Warden-
General of the Marches, conquers
Scots 117; marriage 118; con- [
eludes treaty with the Queen of '
Scots 121 ; nominally ordered to ,
repress Scottish insurgents 122,
123 ; resigns Wardenship of the
Marches, suspect on account of
his religion 124, 125 ; speaks
against new Supremacy Act
(1563) 126; sympathy with Mary,
Queen of Scots 128 ; heads
Rising of the North with
Earl of Westmoreland 132 ;
loyalty to Elizabeth 135 and ;/. 2 ;
conference at Brancepeth 137
and 11. 2 ; restores Catholic
worship in Durham 138, 139;
holds council of war, advises
submission 1 56 ; escapes to
Scotland 156, 161 ; betrayed and
taken 162, 163 ; imprisoned at
Lochleven 165 ; patience, gen-
tleness, austerities, constancy
against heretics 165, 166 ; his
MS. prayer-book 166, 183 — 185 ;
twice refuses conditional pardon
166, 167, 176 and ;/. I ; delivered
to Lord Hunsdon 171 ; examined,
imprisoned in Berwick 172 ;
illness 173; taken to York for
execution 173 — 175: interview
with Methain in the Castle 175,
176; harassed by ministers,
prays throughout last night 177 ;
martyrdom 177 — 181 ; speech to
people 178 — 180; repudiates the
Church of England 120, 178 ;
buried in St. Crux Church, head
set on Micklegate Bar 181 ;
portraits 186 ; Beatification I.
xviii. ; his cause II. xviii.; his
chaplain (see Addenda).
Persons, Robert, S.J., Briant's
tutor II. 401 and n. i ; his father
reconciled by Briant 402 ; his
defence of Storey 42 n. 2, 43,
44 ; sent from Rome to England
with Campion 308, 365 ; dis-
guise 316 ; labours and converts
323 ; books 344 ;/. 397 ; defends
Catholic loyalty 344 n. ; escapes
arrest 399 — 440 ; returns to
Rome 419 n. I ; his Life of
Campion 267 ; dies wearing
Campion's halter 352, 353, 356 ;
316, 497, 512 and ;/.
Peto, William (Cardinal), Obser-
INDEX
68 r
vant, Guardian of Greenwich
Monastery I. 275 ; sermon
before Henry VIII., imprisoned
278 and n. ; attainted 452.
Petre, Sir William, of Ingatestone,
his career II. 424 ; widow a
fervent Catholic, and receiver of
priests 425 ; Payne taken at her
house 428.
Petworth, Sussex II. 124, 186.
Philip II. II. 48—51, 52, 54,
83, 84, 96, 97, 167.
Pickering, John II. 113.
Picus, John (Count of Mirandula)
I.I3I-
Pierson, John, Minor Canon of
Durham II. 143 ; dies in prison
159-
Pierson, Robert, priest of Brance-
peth II. 143 ; sings High Mass
in Durham Cathedral 146.
Pierson, B. Walter, Carthusian
lay brother, refuses Oath of
Supremacy I. 259; net tried
260 ; sufferings and death in
Newgate 260, 263, 264 «. I.
Pigotte II. 56, 71, 72.
Pilgrimage of Grace, its objects,
banners II. 112; suppressed I.
xliv. 369, II. 112, 113.
Pilkington, Dr., Protestant Bishop
of Durham II. 131, 141 ; his
blasphemous words 141.
Pishull, Oxon. I. 440.
Pius IV., sends envoys to Elizabeth
II. xvi. 188.
Pius V., St., his Bull against
Elizabeth II. xv. — xvii. I, 2, 4,
8, 10, 281 ; 82, 205, 342, 344,
351, 358, 388, 395, 420, 451.
453, 482, 494, 504 ;/., 629.
Plantagenet, Arthur (sixth Viscount
Lisle) I. 360, 450, 529 n.
Plantagenet. Edward (nineteenth
Earl of Warwick) only brother
of B. Margaret Pole I. 502, 503 ;
proclaimed heir to the throne,
then set aside, in Tower 505 ;
executed 506.
Plantagenet, George (third Duke
of Clarence), father of B.
Margaret Pole I. 502 ; put to
death in the Tower 503 and //. 2.
Plummer, Christopher I. 494, 495.
Plumtree, B. Thomas (? John) II.
152 — 159; priest, college and
degree, rector of Stubton, master
of a school in Lincoln 153 ;
chaplain to Northern insurgents
152 — 155 ; taken, imprisoned
in Durham Castle 157 ; refuses
conditional pardon, martyrdom
158, 159 ; quarters left on the
gibbet for ten days, grave under
present market-place, portrait
159 ; old ballad on his death
153 n. i (see Addenda).
Pole, Sir Geoffrey I. 518, 520 and
n. 2.
Pole, Henry, B. Margaret Pole's
grandson, sent to the Tower
when a child I. 521, 530, 532
n. i ; more closely imprisoned
535-
Pole, B. Margaret, Life I. 502 —
540 ; birth, parents, and brother
502 ; childhood at Shene 503 ;
and Warwick 504 ; probably in
ward at Sheriff Hutton Castle
505 ; marriage, her five children,
widowhood 507 ; styled Countess
of Salisbury 508 ; sponsor and
governess to Princess Mary 509
and n. 3, 510; dismissed for
siding with the Queen 51 r, 512 ;
lives at Bisham 513, 514;
arrested at Warblington, taken
to Cowdray Park, twice
examined, her goods seized 521
— 524 j ill-treatment by Lord
Southampton 526, 527; attainted
of high treason 379, 451, 528,
529 n. ; never brought to trial
533 ; removed from Cowdray to
the Tower 530; sufferings 531
and «. i ; two years in prison,
excepted from general pardon
532 n. I ; martyrdom 533—53°
and n. ; burial, chantry 539
and «. ; portrait 540 ; descend-
ants 538, 540, II. 564.
Pole, Reginald (Cardinal) I. 506 ; at
682
INDEX
Oxford and Padua 510; bene-
fices,sides with Queen Catherine,
leaves England 511; grief for
M ore's death 231 n. ; rebukes
the King xlvii. 519, 520 «. ;
Defence of the Church's Unity
515; created Cardinal, his
assassination attempted 516 and
n. 2 ; proclaimed traitor, price
set on his head 518 ; persecution
of his family xlviii. 518, 520,
521 ; attainted without trial
451, 452; abused by "the
Libeller " 385, 386 ; heroic de-
tachment and charity 536 — 538 ;
letters from 105, 530 ; 35, 36,
517.
Pole, Sir Richard, husband of B.
Margaret Plantagenet I. 507
and «. 4.
Pollard, Richard, monastic visitor,
his doings at Glastonbury, Read-
ing, and Colchester, 349, 351,
354 and «. I, 383 and //. i,
399-
Pont-a-Mousson II. 543 «., 567.
Pope, Sir Thomas I. 230, II. 3
«. i.
Pound, Thomas, layman, in prison
over thirty years, thrice tortured,
converts Cottam II. 537 ; ad-
mitted in prison into S.J. 233 ;
319, 544-
Powell, B. Edward, Life I. 484—
496 ; priest, native of Wales, at
Oxford 484 ; benefices 484, 494 ;
his first book 484 — 486 ; counsel
and advocate of Queen Catherine
67 n. i, 462, 463, 486, 487 ;
answers Latimer at Bristol 488,
489 ; summoned before Crom-
well 490 — 492 ; treatment in
Dorchester Gaol 492, 493 ; in
Tower 472, 494 ; attainted, con-
demned to forfeit life and goods
494 ; terms of attainder 495 ;
assisted by Sampson and Wilson j
475 — 477 ; released on bail by j
his keeper 474, 475, 476 ; second I
attainder and condemnation |
477 — 479, 496 ; hanged at i
Smithfiehl 479, 480, 496 ;
rhyming pamphlet on 500, 501.
Prague II. 293, 298, 353, 356.
Prestall, John, spy upon Catholics
II. 97 n. ; indicted with Storey
77 5 95 «•
Preston Tower, Northumberland
II. 115 n. 2.
Price, Ellis, Iconoclast I. 304,
310 n. i.
Prudhoe Castle, Northumberland
II. ill, 113, 116.
Psalms, recited by the Martyrs I.
13, 14, 114, 130, 150, 208, 234.
320 M.2; II. 9, u, 231, 406,
420, 560.
Pyrton Church, Oxon. I. 418 —
423, 440.
Quent, Dr. I. 311.
Ramsden, Roger, kidnaps Storey,
II. 56, 59, 69 ; whining letter
to Cecil 70 — 75.
Rastell, William, nephew of B.
Thomas More, his book in
defence of the Pope I. 189 ;
543 ; II. 22, 108 n.
Reading, Pilgrimage of Grace pro-
claimed in 1.369 — 371 ; 372 bis;
Gaol 372 bis ; Abbey, founda-
tion and burial-place of Henry I.
359; pillaged by Dr. London 373
—376 ; relics in 375 — 377 and n. ;
visited by Commissioners, seized
and given to Sir William Penizon
382 ; BB. Faringdon, Eynon,
and Rugg hanged before the
gateway 386 ; Grey Friars' Con-
vent suppressed by Dr. London
374 ; St. Giles's Church, B.
John Eynon, priest of 371,
384.
Rede, Anne, B. Adrian Fortescue's
second wife I. 433 ; joins her
husband in Marshalsea 445, 446 ;
pleads for him with the King
447 ; in favour with Queen
Mary 459 ; second marriage 460.
Redyng, Dom John, O.S.B. I.
368.
INDEX
683
Redyng, B. Thomas, Carthusian
lay-brother, refuses Oath of
Supremacy 1. 259 ; never brought
to trial 260 ; sufferings and death
in Newgate 260, 263, 264 ;/. i.
Relics, destroyed, Holy Blood of
Hailes I. xlv. 307 ; bones of
St. Thomas of Canterbury xlv.
Hand of St. James the Great
359, 375—3775 hand of St.
Anastasius 376, 377 n. 385.
Relics of English Martyrs (existing),
of BB. Fisher I. in «. 2, 122 ;
More 241 and n. i, 242, 244;
Forest 326 ; Fortescue 434, 448,
455—459; Whiting 411, 412;
Beche 399, 400, 412 ; Percy II.
183 ; Mayne 222 ; Hanse 261 ;
Campion 352, 353, 356, 357,
419 ; Sherwin 396 ; Briant 415,
418, 419, 422, 423 ; Ford 458 ;
Ford, Shert, and R. Johnson
422, 459, 473, 490 ; Filby 498 ;
Kirby 522 ; Cottam 563 ;
Thirkeld 652.
Reynolds, B. Richard, monk of
Syon, Life I. 27 — 36 ; at Cam-
bridge 29 ; arrested, examined,
and tried 30 — 32 ; martyred
12, 34 ; asks the people's prayers
for the King's amendment 34,
35-
Rheims, Benedictine Abbey, Kirk-
man's first Mass in II. 579 ;
Cathedral, Hanse and Filby
ordained in 252, 263, 492 ;
Seminary, Douay students trans-
ferred to 250, 464, 539.
Riche, Hugh, O.S.F. I. 277;
arraigned and hanged with the
Holy Maid of Kent 281 «. 2 ;
465-
Rich, Mr. (afterwards Baron) I.
220, 222 and n. 2 ; II. 440,
441 n.
Richardson, B. Lawrence (vere
Johnson), priest, Life II. 523 —
535 ; family 523 ; at Oxford and
Douay 445, 524 and n. ; ordained
524 ; work in Lancashire 525
and n. i — 527 ; slandered 528 ;
betrayed, arrested, imprisoned
529 ; in Newgate 530 ; arraigned
447 and n. 2, 531 ; tried and
sentenced 447 n. 2, 531 ; possi-
bly condemned on mistaken
identity 532 ; martyrdom 532 —
535) 55^ and n" 5 protests his
innocence 533 > asks prayers
of Catholics 535 ; his head cut
off 559 ; body buried under the
scaffold 499, 560.
Richmond, Yorks. II. 154, 50x5.
Ridley, Dr. Robert I. 487.
Ridolfi II. 7 and n.
Ripon, Cathedral, Mass said in,
November, 1569 II. 154 ; 133.
Risby, Richard, O.S.F., of Green-
wich, arraigned and hanged I.
281 n. 2.
Rishton, Edward, priest, at Brase-
nose II. 445, 524 ; at Douay
445 ; ordained 524 ; at Rome,
sent to England with Campion
365 ; searched at Dover, released
542 ; seized in London 398 ;
tried with Campion 345 ; 375.
Robsart, Amy, her body removed
from Cumnor to Oxford for
burial, funeral oration by
Campion II. 271, 272.
Robson, John II. 144.
Rochester, B. John, Carthusian
I. 249 — 256 ; examined 254 ;
burns Marshall's heretical book,
carried by force to St. Paul's
Cathedral, sent to Hull Charter-
house, tried and condemned at
York 255 ; hung in chains 256.
Rochester I. 53, 84, 85, 176.
Rodesley, Derbyshire II. 359.
Roehampton, relics of English
Martyrs at I. 244, II. 222,
356, 357-
Rome, churches, Gesu II. 357,
422, 563 ; S. Stefano Rotondo
I. xvi. Ix. ; English College
xvi. Ix., II. 12, 98, 159, 305,
361, 362, 419, 462 — 464; frescoes
of the Martyrs I. xvi. Ix. 408
n. 3, II. 12, 98, 159; German
College II. 474 and n., 539.
684
INDEX
Roods, destroyed (in 1538), Boxley
I. xlv. 304, 307 ; St. Margaret
Patens 306 bis ; St. Saviour's,
Southwark 307.
Roper, Margaret, More's eldest
daughter I. 15, 120, 132, 144,
147, 148, 154, 199, 207 — 210,
219 «. I, 226, 239 — 242; letter
to her father 211, 212 ; buried in
Chelsea Church 243.
Roper, William, Margaret More's
husband I. 140, 144, 145 ; turned
from Lutheranism 153, 154 ; con-
versations with B. Thomas More
140, 179 — 181, 192, 193 ; house
and grave at Canterbury 243,
II. 108 ;/. ; his son's kindness to
Sherwood in the Tower 243 and
»., 244.
Roscarrock, Nicholas, Catholic
layman, receiver of priests,
Sherwin taken at his house II.
380, 381 ; in Tower, racked
385.
Rossall Grange, Lanes. II. S27-
Rouen II. 277, 391, 419 n. i.
Rowsham, Ven. Stephen, his
vision in the Tower II. 458.
Royal Supremacy, acknowledged
under condition by clergy I. 75 ;
treated as a dogma of faith by
Cranmer xlii. ; rejected by the
martyrs and others xlii. II, 15,
19, 21, 26, 41, 75 «., 92, 94, 98
and «. 2, 103, 221, 224, 255,
259. 273, 274, 296, 351, 352
"• i, 379, 385, 394, 395, 405,
407, 408, 447, 449, 478, 500, 5 14,
515, 528,542,545,546,11. 8,9,
82, 113, 119, 122, 184, 196,218,
226, 235, 254, 388, 457, 471,
488, 494, 497 ». i, 559, 575,
592, 640.
Royal Supremacy, Act of, passed
(November 18, 1534) I. xxxvii.
19, 440, 447 ; comes into opera-
tion (February I, 1535) 93,
216 ; Second Act passed (1559),
II. 41, 119, 126.
Royal Supremacy, Oath of, pro-
posed to Religious in specially
offensive form I. 334, 335 and ;/. ;
perpetuated in Anglican Article
xxxvii. 336 ;/. ; Oath taken for a
time by the Abbot, Prior and
fifty monks of Glastonbury 336,
338 and ;/. ; by the Abbot and
Prior of Colchester 402 ; docu-
ments bearing their signatures
described 401 — 404; Oath taken
by Storey II. 16 ; imposed afresh
under Elizabeth, penalties for
refusal of 48, 126.
Rugg, B. John, O.S.B., preben-
dary of Chichester, retires to
Reading Abbey, probably monk
I. 384; indictment 377 n., 385 ;
martyrdom 384, 386 ; scholar of
Winchester, and New College,
Oxford, his benefices (see
Addenda}.
Russell, Sir John (created first
Baron Russell) I. 355, 356 and
Sadler, Sir Ralph II. 122, 123 and
n. i, 131, 132.
St. Alban's II. 58.
St. Bede, relics scattered II. 141.
St. Charles Borromeo II. 313, 608.
St. Cuthbert, relics burnt, his
corporal-cloth burnt II. 141.
St. Derfel, image of I. xlv. 304 — 307
and ;/. 318, 320.
St. Francis Borgia, S.J. II. 356.
St. John the Almoner, anecdote of
I. 198 n.
St. Omers College II. 316.
St. Osyth's Abbey, Essex I. 391.
St. Thomas of Canterbury, his
shrine I. xliv. ; its destruction,
and bones burnt xlv. 298 ; mar-
tyrdom compared with Fisher's,
&c. 298 — 300, 400 ; More's de-
votion to 229 and n. I, 350,
441 n. ; Whiting's 349 ; his
feast 440 and n. 2.
Salden (Souldern), Oxon. I. 414,
460, 461.
Salford Gaol II. 523.
Salisbury I. 484, 490, 491.
INDEX
685
Salisbury, Frances, daughter of
B. John Felton, her Relation
quoted II. 4 and «. i, II, 12.
Salt, B. Robert, Carthusian lay- !
brother, imprisoned for a year i
I. 260 ; refuses Oath of Supre-
macy 259 ; never brought to
trial 260 ; sufferings and death
in Newgate 260, 263, 264 n. I.
Saltanstall, Cecil's spy II. 54, 56,
72.
Sampson, Richard, Bishop of
Chichester I. 475, 477.
Sander, NicholasII.xxv. 22«. 2,51.
165, 168, 169, 451, 498, 506.
Sandys, Dr. II. 573, 620.
Scarborough Castle II. 116.
' ' Scarborough's Warning," pro-
verb quoted by Storey on his
trial II. 79 and n.
"Scavenger's Daughter," the, de-
scribed, used for torture of Kirby
and Cottam II. 507 and nn.,
55°.
Scott, Dr. Cuthbert, last Catholic
Bishop of Chester, sent to the
Fleet by Elizabeth II. 47.
Scrivelsby Court II. 579.
Scryven, B. Thomas, Carthusian
lay - brother, refuses Oath of
Supremacy, never brought to
trial I. 259, 260 ; sufferings and
death in Newgate 260, 263,
264 n. i.
Sedgefield, Durham II. 148.
Seton, Lord, kindness to the
Countess of Northumberland
II. 167.
Seyncler, Sir John, treachery to
Abbot Beche I. 389, 391, 392;
on special commission to try
him 398.
Shakespeare, John, the poet's
father, converted by Persons
II- 323.
Sharpham (Park), Somerset I. 349.
Shaw, Henry II. 207, 209, 445.
Shaxton, Nicholas, interferes at
Reading Abbey I. 364 ; rebuked
by Cromwell 365.
Shene Charterhouse, B. Augustine
Webster, monk of I. 9 ; Chauncy
elected prior 266.
Shene Palace, B. Margaret Plan-
tagenet and her brother here in
childhood I. 503, 505 ; 506.
Sheprey, William II. 445, 463.
Sherborne II. 288.
Sheriff Hutton Castle, Yorks. I.
505-
Shert, B. John, Life II. 460—473 ;
birth, at Oxford, schoolmaster
in London, exile 460 and «. ;
at Douay 460, 461 ; at English
College, Rome 462, 463 ; in
England 464, 465 ; taken 465 ;
in Tower 466 ; indicted and
sentenced 447 n. 2, 466, 467 ;
respited and questioned 450 —
452, 467 ; refuses to answer
485 ; imprisoned, racked 467 ;
martyred with Ford and Johnson
454, 468 — 472 ; prays to Ford
468 ; denies treason 469 ; and
Royal Supremacy 47 1 ; profession
of faith 470; words to the people,
last prayers 472 and n. ; relics
422, 459, 473.
Sherwin, B. Ralph, priest, Life
II- 359 — 39°; birth, at Oxford
359 and nn. ; at Douay 360, 445 ;
at English College, Rome 360 —
363, 605 ; its first martyr 360 ;
sent to England 311, 364, 365,
502 ; preaches before St. Charles
Borromeo 365 ; his letters de-
scribing the journey 366 — 379 ;
work in England 379 and n. 2. ;
taken 380 ; in Marshalsea 381 ;
joy in sufferings 381, 382 ; trans-
ferred to Tower 384, 482 ; twice
racked, laid in snow, offered Pro-
testant Bishopric 385, 386 ;
dragged to sermons, indicted for
recusancy, a year in prison,
austerities 387 ; confers with
heretics 341 ; indicted 345, 388,
417 ; examination 388, 389 ;
sentence- 390 ; letters 390 — 393 ;
martyrdom 393 — 395 ; kisses
Campion's blood on executioner's
hand 393 ; profession of faith,
686
INDEX
last prayers, 394, 395 ; his
parents' conversion 395 ; relics
396.
Sherwood, B. Thomas, Life II.
234 — 248 ; his parents 234, 235
and n. ; his devout life, visits
Douay, arrested in London 236 ;
in Gatehouse and Tower, ex-
amined under torture 238 — 240 ;
amongst the rats 240, 241 ;
nakedness, cold and hunger,
repeatedly racked, his money
stolen 241 — 244 ; his holy life
in prison, his fortitude 244, 245 ;
trial, indictment, pleads not
guilty, sentenced 245 — 247 ;
writs for execution extant,
martyrdom, cut down alive
247 and n. ; his age 245 and
n. I ; 450.
Shirburn, Oxon. I. 420, 434, 437,
442, 444-
Shirwell Church, Devon II. 207
«. 4.
Shooter's Hill I. 85.
bilva, Guzman de II. 125 and
n. I.
Six Articles, Act of the, passed in
1539 I. xlvi. 308, 379, 451 ;
its intention and scope xlvi.
Six Articles, devised by Elizabeth's
Council to fix charge of treason
on Catholics II. 450 — 452 ; pro-
posed to the seven martyrs of
May, 1582, 450, 452, 453, 485,
486, 493, 494, 497, 498, 510,
5", Si?, 534, 555-
Skelton, Yorks. II. 223.
Sledd, apostate, Government spy
at Rheims and Rome, reproved
by Robert Johnson II. 478 ;
betrays him from revenge 479 ;
false witness against Kirby 508,
509; 449, 479 w. I, 513, 541.
Smithfield, relics and images burnt
I. xlv. ; Forest burnt xlv. 314;
three Beati hanged at 479, 480,
496.
Soissons II. 542, 590.
Southampton, Earl of, illtreats B.
Margaret Pole I. 521, 524, 526 ;
his letters to Cromwell 522 — 526,
527-
Southwell, Sir Richard, I. 207,
220.
Southwell, Sir Robert I. 539 «. ;
II. 3 n. I.
Southwell, Ven. Robert, his suffer-
ings in Limbo (Newgate) II. 229.
Spes, Don Guerau de, Spanish
Ambassador in England II. 6 ;
letters about Storey 64, 65, 75,
84 and n. 2, 85 ; 7, 95 «., 97.
Spetchley Park, Worcester, relic
at II. 423.
Staindrop, Durham II. 149, 153.
Standeven, High Sheriff of York,
Hart and Thirkeld brought to
his house II. 611, 638 ; robs the
latter and William Hutton 638,
639-
Standish, servant to B. Margaret
Pole I. 522 — 525.
Standish, Bishop, O.S.F. I. 275,
487.
Standish, Ralph II. 606, 608.
Stanihurst, James II. 280.
Starkey, Thomas I. 33, 34, 249,
5I5-
Sterne, Edmund, Yicar of London
Charterhouse, signs Oath of
Supremacy I. 259.
Stockton, Durham II. 148.
Stokesley, John I. 92, 314, 386.
Stone, Staffs, relics at I. 241 ;/. i.
Stone, B. John I. 269 — 273 ;
Austin friar of Canterbury 270,
271 ; persecuted by Ingworth
273 ; long imprisonment 270,
273 ; austerities, encouraged by
supernatural voice 270, 271 ;
expenses of execution 271, 272 ;
hanged on the Dane John, Can-
terbury 272 ; date of martyrdom
uncertain 272, 273 and n. I.
Stonor, Anne, B. Adrian For-
tescue's first wife I. 414 ; her
death 418 ; her three burials
419—425.
Stonor Park, B. Adrian Fortescue s
property through first wife,
chapel never used by Protestants
INDEX
687
I. 414 ; Campion's Decent
Rationes printed at 414, 415,
II. 334 ; printing-press seized
419 ;z. I ; I. 422, II. 336.
Stonor, Sir Walter, disputes Stonor
property I. 414, 432, 433, 441 ;
examines B. Hugh Cook at
Reading 372.
Stonyhurst College, relics at I.
122, 244, 411, II. 181, 182,
356> 396, 415, 422, 423, 498,
522, 563, 633.
Storey, Ellen II. 38, 52, 91, 104,
1 06 n.
Storey, B. John, Life II. 14 — no ;
birth 14; Franciscan Tertiary
14, 15 and n. I ; at Oxford 15 ;
marriage 16; takes Oath of
Supremacy, life-long repentance
16, 92, 103 ; in Parliament 17 ;
opposition to first Act of
Uniformity, punishment for 18
— 20 ; goes to Louvain 22 and
n. 2 ; friend of Bonvisi 22, 106
— 108 and nn. ; returns to Eng-
land,appointments 23; slandered
byFoxe24 — 26 and n. ; attitude
towards heretics 26, 27, 31, 32,
34, 42, 89—91 ; Proctor for
Cranmer's trial 34 ; defends
Papal Supremacy 35, 36 ; on
commission for suppression of
heresy 36, 89 ; opposes new
Supremacy Bill 42 and n. 2 ;
visited by Feckenham 83 ;
not supported by Philip II. 83,
84; martyrdom 85, 94; pro-
testation 86 — 92 ; new gallows
85 ; treated with special bar-
barity 85, 93, 94 ; his will 22,
23, io2andw., 109; letters from
31) S2, 37, 57, 58, 82 ; portrait
98 ; slandered after death 93 —
97 ; his parents 14, 104, 105 ;
his son 100 ; his nephew 106,
107 n. ; his cause and record of
his trial xxi. xxii. and n.
Stubton, Lines. II. 153.
Succession, Act of (March 30,
1534) I. xxxvii. 83, 196, 439,
440 ; its object xxxvii. 19, 83 ;
preamble refused by More and
Fisher 86 n. 2, 205.
Succession, Oath of, proposed to
all subjects of lawful age I.
xxxvii. 83, 197, 439 ; terms of
the Oath, penalty for refusal 83 ;
refused by More and Fisher 86
and n. 2, 199, 205, 206, 440 ;
exacted from Religious 9 1 ; taken
with reservation by London
Carthusians 6 ; refused by Car-
thusian Priors 9 — II.
Suffolk, Charles Brandon (Fourth
Duke) I. 182, 217, 221, 314,
431-
Surrey, Thomas Howard (Four-
teenth Earl) I. 429, 430.
sent to the Fleet for recusancy j Sussex, Robert Ratcliffe (Eighth
46; escapes, retaken, in Marshal- j Earl) I. 314.
sea 47 ; escapes to Belgium 49,
50; life at Louvain 51 — 53;
naturalized as Spanish subject
54, 77, 78, 87, 88 ; kidnapped
by Cecil's contrivance, brought
to England 53 — 57 ; imprison-
ments 59 n. 2, 63, 65 ; examined
under torture before trial 75,
76 ; grounds of indictment 55,
76, 77 ; arraigned 77 ; refuses
to plead 77, 78, 82, 83 ; con-
demned 79 ; sent back to Tower,
insults on the way 79 — 81 ; in
Beauchamp Tower 81, 82 ;
refuses Oath of Supremacy 82 ;
Sussex, Robert Ratcliffe (Tenth
Earl), President of the Council
of the North II. 134; sent
against the Northern insurgents
154 — 156; his cruelty 157, 158;
letters to Cecil 134, 135, 150;
letter to, from Sir George Bowes
139, 140.
Sutton Place, reliquary II. 222.
Swift, Protestant Vicar - General
of Durham II. 141, 142; tries
Northern insurgents 146 «.
Syon Monastery, Isleworth I. 27
— 29, 190, 257, 258 «. ; ejected
nuns of, at Lyford II. 336, 445.
688
INDEX
Tadcaster II. 154, 585.
Tarbes, Bishop of I. xxx. 176 n. i,
177-
Tarnaker, Lanes. II. 536.
Teddington I. 1 8.
Teignmouth, St. Scholastica's
Abbey, relics at II. 261.
Tempest, Sir Thomas II. 114.
Temple Church, London, Mass
privately said here in 1569 II.
358.
Thame, Bucks. I. 442 fa's, 443.
Therkell, Henry II. 636 n. i.
Thirkeld, B. Richard, priest, Life
II. 635 — 652 ; birthplace, at
Oxford, ordained at Douay, or
Rheims, sent to England 635
and n. ; in York 636 ; compiles
Acts of York Martyrs 576, 634,
636 ; confessor to Margaret
Clitherow, taken in the Kidcote
637 ; robbed by the High Sheriff
638, 639 ; in Kidcote dungeon
639 ; examined by Dean Iliitton
639, 650, 651 ; wears cassock at
his trial 640 ; indictment and
condemnation, amongst the
felons in York Castle 641, 642 ;
brought up for sentence, his
joy, touching incidents 642 —
644 ; martyrdom ; butchered
alive 645 ; head set on Ouse-
bridge prison 646 ; letters 640,
647—652 ; Latin poem, relic
652.
Thompson, B. James, priest, Life
II. 589 — 599; birth, at Rheims,
illness 589 ; ordained 590 ;
confessor to Margaret Clitherow
637 ; arrested at York 590 ;
examined 591 — 593 ; denies
Royal Supremacy 592 ; doubly
ironed, imprisoned, tried and
condemned, joy at the sentence
593 ; converts felons 594 ;
martyrdom 594 — 597 ; speaks to
the people, professes his faith
and innocence of treason 595,
596; not quartered, buried
under gallows, place visited
by Margaret Clitherow 597 ;
Sarnelli's epigram on him ^98,
599-
Thome, B. John, O.S.B., monk
and treasurer of Glastonbury
Abbey I. 357 ; arrested and
imprisoned 352 ; martyred 357.
Throckmorton, Edward II. 378
and «. 379.
Tindale, William, his heresy I.
134, i6oand n. 2, 161 ; abuse of
the Catholic Church 165.
Topcliffe, Yorks. II. 128, 133,
175-
Topcliffe, Richard (torturer), at
martyrdom of Filby, Kirby, and
Richardson II. 496, 519, 534.
Trafford, William I. 259 and
n. i .
Tregian, Elizabeth, sister of Francis
Tregian, mother of B. Thomas
Sherwood II. 235 and ;/.
Tregian, Francis, of Golden,
receives Mayne II. 211 ; arrested
with him, released on bail 213;
recusancy 221 n. i ; property
confiscated, thirty years in prison
220, 221.
Tregonwell, Sir John II. 237 and
n. 2.
Tregony, Cornwall, one of Mayne's
quarters set up here II. 220 n.
Tresham, Sir Thomas, of Rushton,
Northants, converted by Campion
11.323.
Troutbeck, Kendal II. 183.
Truro II. 211, 212, 213.
Tunstall, Cuthbert (last Catholic
Bishop of Durham) I. 76, 92,
137. 159, !74, 176, 179, 189,
515, II. 114, 115, 117, 121 ;
protests against Elizabeth's new
religion, refuses Oath of Supre-
macy, confined and dies in house
of Matthew Parker 122.
Tutbury Castle II. 129, 152.
Tyburn (see London).
Tyfeld, Oxon. I. 424, 425.
Tynbigh, William, Prior of London
Charterhouse I. 127, 250; holy
life, supernatural visitations 250,
251.
INDEX
689
Tyrrel , Warder of the Fleet
II. 188.
Tyrrell, Margaret, attainted I. 477
— 479 ; not executed 478 n.
Uniformity, Act of, First Act,
passed January 21, 1549,
establishes the Anglican Liturgy
II. 19; Second Act, 1559;
abolishes the Mass and orders
use of Common Prayer-book,
penalties for breach of 1 19;
makes over the English cathe-
drals and churches to the
Establishment 119, 129.
Upsatlington II. 121.
Urban VIII., Pope, his Bull pre-
scribing process of canonization
I. xii. — xvii. Ixiii.
Ushaw College, relics at II. 222.
Uxbridge I. 443.
Uxenden Hall, Campion at II.
334-
Vachell, Thomas I. 370, 372, 382
and n. 2.
Van Eycke, Cornelius II. 56, 65
and n. I, 67.
Vaux, Laurence, deprived Warden
of Manchester II. 364 ; probably
reconciles Kirby, with him in
Gatehouse 503 and ;/. 2 ; dies in
prison 365.
Vaux of Harrowden (Lord), con-
verted by Campion II. 323.
Venerable Servants of God, only
privately invoked I. xii.
Venice I. 249, 516.
Veysey (Vasty) John, Bishop of
Exeter I. 174 and ;/.
Verona I. 516.
Viterbo I. 536.
Wadebridge II. 220.
Waferer , I. 295, 296, 300.
Waire , O.S.F., Observant,
hanged for denying Royal
Supremacy I. 453.
Wallingford I. 372.
Walpole, Ven. Henry II. 353.
Walsingham, Sir Edmund, Lieut.
SS
of the Tower I. 41, 107 — 109,
207, 214, 219, 232.
Walsingham, Sir Francis, his spies
in the seminaries II. 254 ;
daughter converted 353 ; employs
Eliot as spy 430 ; letter from
430 «.,43i ; letter to 409; 514,
515, 516 ; his policy xxiii.
\Valsingham, Our Lady of, Prince
Henry Tudor's pilgrimage to
I. xxiv. ; her image burnt xlv.
307-
Walworth, B. James, Carthusian,
fellow-martyr of B. John
Rochester, q.-v. I. 249 — 256.
Warblington I. 521 and n. z.
\Varford, Father, his account of
Ford II. 444—446.
Warham, Archbishop I. xxx. 67,
74 n. 2, 79, 81, 176, 361, 362,
486 ; his loyalty to Rome 386.
Warwick Castle 1. 504.
Watlington, Oxon. 1.420, 421, 442.
Watson, Thomas (last Catholic
Bishop of Lincoln) in Tower II.
46 ; summoned to take new Oath
48, 49 ; sent to Wisbeach Castle
322.
Watts, Dr. II. 62—64, 88.
Watts, Joan, wife of Storey II. 16 ;
petitions Parliament on his
behalf 19, 20; joins him at
Louvain 51, 91 ; commended by
him on the scaffold to Catholic
charity 91 ; remains abroad 100 ;
by his desire 23, 105—107 ».,
108, 109 ; pensioned by King
Philip 97.
Webb, Dr. Laurence II. 4 and n. 2.
Webster, B. Augustine I. 9 — 16 ;
Carthusian, prior of Axholme,
visits London Charterhouse, in
Tower 9 ; martyred at Tyburn
14.
Wells, Whiting priested at I. 332 ;
his mock trial in the Bishop's
Hall 355 and n. ; one of his
quarters sent to 357 and n. I ;
B. William Hart born at II. 600.
Wentworth, Sir Thomas I. 445,
446.
II.
6go
IXDEX
West, Nicholas, Bishop of Ely, one
of Queen Catherine's counsel I.
67.
Westmoreland, Charles Nevill
(sixth Earl) see Percy, Thomas
II. 132 — 156; escapes to
Flanders 156; in exile 55;
falsely accused by Eliot 432.
Weston, Robert, assistant to
Storey at Oxford II. 16 ; marries
his daughter 16, 52 ; sent to the
Fleet 52.
Weston, Sir William, I. 437.
Weston, William, S.J. II. 445-
Whalley, John, I. 250 n., 260.
Wharton, Lord, II. 117.
White, Sir Thomas, Lord Mayor
of London II. 266 ; staunch
Catholic, founds St. John's,
Oxford 269 ; his funeral oration
pronounced by Campion 271.
White, Dr. II. 462.
Whiting, B. Richard, O.S.B., Life
I. 327 — 358 ; family, education i
331 ; degrees 331, 332; ordained, j
Camerarius and last Abbot of :
Glastonbury 332; takes Oath of
Supremacy 336 ; arrested 349 ; •
grounds of accusation 350 and «. ; j
sent to the Tower, his constancy
350; examined, no formal trial,
secretly condemned 350, 351 ;
charged with sacrilege and
treason 353 and n. i ; arraigned
in the Counter, mock trial at
Wells 355 and «.; martyred at
Glastonbury with two of his ,
monks 356, 357,405 «., 406, 407;
head set on Abbey gate, quarters
distributed 357 and n. i ; secon-
dary relics 411, 412; still
reverenced at Glastonbury, local
ballad on his fate 358 and «.
Whittingham, , rifles shrines at
Durham II. 141.
Whitton, Thomas I. 425, 434, 444.
Whyte, George II. 147, 148.
,, John, Bishop of Winchester
II. 45, 46, and ;;. I.
Wilbraham, Thomas II. 87.
Wilkinson, Alice II. 145.
Willen, Miles I. 494, 495.
Willesden, Our Lady of, her image
burnt at Smithfield I. xlv.
Williams, Joseph I. 266.
Wilson, Dr. Nicholas, Henry
VIII. 's confessor, sent to Tower
for refusing Oath of Succession
I. 200, 494 ; three years in
prison, conforms, is released 476 ;
again in Tower 475 ; letter to
Cromwell 476, 477 ; pardoned on
Cromwell's death 476.
Wiltshire, Thomas Boleyn (sixth
Earl of) suspected of attempting
Fisher's life I. 77 and ;/. ; on
commission to try More 221 ; 12
«• 2, 217, 491.
Windsor, St. George's Chapel I.
371.
\\isbeach Castle, Catholic pri-
soners in II. 322, 323.
Wiseman, Nicholas (Cardinal) I.
Ixi.
Witton Gilbert Church, Durham
II. 149.
Woburn, Cistercian Abbot of I.
xliv. 337. 34.8 «.
Wolsey (Cardinal) Chancellor of
Cambridge I. 52 ; foreign em-
bassies 141, 176; encourages
the King's divorce 177, i"S;
intrigues xxviii. xxx. xxxii. 66,
176 and ;/. ; holds Legatine
Court xxxiii. 67 ; disgrace and
death xxxiv. 70, 181 ; 275, 276,
332, 4J8.
Wood, John a I. 208.
Woodford, Essex, B. John Larke,
Rector of I. 541.
Wood house, B. Thomas, priest,
Life II. 188—203 ! taken while
saying Mass 189 ; in the P'leet
twelve years 188 — 190 ; probably
Jesuit 199—202, 233 ; Mas.s
and Office, fearlessness 189, 190 ;
desire of martyrdom 190, 191 ;
zeal for conversions 192, 195 ;
letter to Cecil 191 — 193 and
11., 201 ; brought before Cecil
193 — 195 ; before the Council
195, 196 ; examined, arraigned
INDEX
691
and condemned 196 ; sent to
Newgate 197 ; ill-treatment on
the way 197, 198 ; confutes
ministers 198 ; martyrdom 198,
199 ; ] rays with Catholics only,
brave speech 198, 199; butchered
whilst fully conscious 199 ; first
j riest mat tyred under Elizabeth
200 ; his cause xx.
Woodstock I. 442, 443, 445 ; II.
274, 275-
Woodwaid. John II. 377, 391 —
393-
Worcester, Our Lady of, her image
burnt at Smithfield I. xlv.
Worthington, Dr. Thomas II. 445.
Wortley, Justice, arrests Kirkman
II. 583 ; examines and abuses
him 586.
Wrington, Somerset I. 331.
Wroth, Sir Thomas II. 5, 6 and
n. 2, 87.
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, plots Cardinal
Pole's assassination I. 516 «. 2.
Yarmouth, Norfolk II. 57 ; Toll
House 59 n. 2.
York, Bootham Bar II. 591 ;
Church of St. Crux 181, and
n. 3; Micklegate Bar 181, 628;
Palace of the Abbots of St.
Mary's 591 ; The Pavement 178,
181 ; Prisons, The Castle 175 and
n. I ; 569, 570, 572, 585. 588 «.,
59i» 593, 610, 611, 639, 641,
645 ; Ousebridge Kidcote 571 «.,
588 «., 591 and «., 593, 637, 639,
646 ; St. Peter's prison 593 ;
' ' The Tyburn " at Knavesmire,
martyrs executed at I. 256 ; II.
576, 588, 594, 631, 645; City
I. 255; II. 112, 154, 175, 564,
585. 589. 590, 610, 636.
Youlston, Devon II. 207.
./v
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