Victor R. Claveau, MJ
The Catholic Church has painstakingly recorded the lives of many of those who persevered to the end in witnessing to their faith and in the one true Church of Jesus Christ. The following are a few biographies of the thousands of Catholics who were martyred under the reign of the House of Tudor. They form the archives of truth written in blood. We owe them everything and we cannot forget the debt. Devotion to these heroes will enable us to keep our own faith fervent.
Why did these martyrs suffer torture and death? Simply for clinging to the Faith of their Fathers, They had not changed their religion, they were not the innovators; they died because they held dearer than life the old Catholic faith of England.
Saint John Fischer
The good bishop’s third and final imprisonment in the Tower of London began in April 1534, and lasted for fifteen months for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, because it included a repudiation of the authority of the Holy See. Bishop Fisher, the able Chancellor of Cambridge, who neither lost faith nor courage, was eventually beheaded because he put divine law before the so-called divine right of kings. The Pope selected him to become a cardinal, but King Henry said, “I’ll send his head to Rome for the cap.”
James Brodrick, S.J., in his A Procession of Saints, tells us that
“On the eve of his journey to London, when he was gravely ill, he [Saint John Fischer] had written a noble letter to Cromwell, who, like the Procounsul at Smyrna with Polycarp, used all his cunning to persuade him to take the oath. In it occurred a sentence that became a kind of slogan on the lips of Saint Thomas More: ‘Not that I condemn any other men’s conscience; their conscience may save them, and mine must save me,’ He had fainted on the way to London, and in the Tower, we find him so weak and wasted that, as the king’s chaplain who came to tempt him reported, ‘his body could not bear the clothes on his back”. Near the Christmas of 1534, when he had been eight months in close confinement, grievously ill from liver-disease and suffering tortures in his old bones from the terrible cold of his cell, he wrote again to Cromwell begging for a few clothes to keep him warm and a little food better suited to his ailing condition than the grim prison fare, as well as for the following two favors: ‘That I may take some preest [priest] with me in the Tower…to hear my confession against this holy time, and that I may borrow some books to stir my devotion more effectually these holy days for the comfort of my soul…And thus our Lord send you a merrie Christenmass and a comfortable, to your heart’s desire.”[1]
Too weak to walk to the scaffold on Tower Hill, he was carried there, but when the soldiers would have helped him up the steps, he said to them,
“Nay, masters, seeing I am come so far alone, and ye shall see me shifte for myself so farre, let me alone, and ye shall see me shifte for myself well enough.”[2] As he was mounting the steps he said, “so lively it was marvaile to them that knew before of his debility and weakness,…the south east sun shined verie bright in his face, whereupon he said to himself these words, lyfting up his hands: Accedite ad eum et illuminamini, et facies vestrae non confundentur.” [Come ye to him and be enlightened: and your faces shall not be confounded.][3] And so, “with a bold courage and a loving chere” he laid his neck on the block and died “for the faith of Christes Catholyke Church.”[4]
Saint John Fisher’s services were devoted entirely toward producing learned and holy priests. In one of his erudite works, he said that he wished he had spent those years in prayer, which he considered a more effective use of his time. The famous sad words, spoken with reference to the Apostolic Age, indicate perfectly where lay all his concern: “In that tyme were no chalyses of golde, but then was many golden prestes, now by many chalyses of golde, and almost no golden prestes.”[5]
Saint Thomas More
Saint Thomas More (1478-1535) was also among the many martyred for the Faith. Sir Thomas More, Henry’s loyal Chancellor of England, climbed the scaffold and asked the people present to pray for him, and to bear witness with him that he went to his death in and for the Faith of the Holy Catholic Church, a faithful servant of both God and the king.
Saint Thomas More was put to death on July 6, 1536. The Roman calendar commemorates him on the 22nd of June, together with Saint John Fisher, who was beheaded on that date two weeks before Thomas More, also for refusing to take the king’s Oath of Supremacy. Both, convicted of treason, were beheaded. Bishop John Fisher, William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England were a few of the earliest martyrs for the faith in the reign of Henry VIII. They were but a sampling of the prominent men and women victims in a movement that made itself felt deep in the heart of the entire country.
On July 6, 1535, Sir Knight Thomas Pope[6] notified Thomas More that his execution would take place on that day. “Master Pope,” More said, “for your tidings I most heartily thank you. I have always been bounden much to the King’s Highness for the benefits and honors which he hath from time to time most bountifully heaped upon me. Yet more bounded am I to his Grace for putting me into this place, where I have convenient time and space to have remembrance of my end; and most of all that it hath pleased him so shortly to rid me of the miseries of this wretched world. And therefore, will I not fail most earnestly to pray for his Grace, both here and in another world.”[7]
He was, therefore, brought about nine of the clock by Mr. Lieutenant out of the Tower, his beard being long, which fashion he had never before used, his face pale and lean, carrying in his hands a red cross, casting his eyes toward heaven.”
“And now as with his feeble steps, resembling those of an old man, he passed with his armed guard by the house of a good woman, she, like another Veronica seeing him led to Calvary, offered him out a cup of wine. But he refused to drink saying: “Christ at His Passion drank no wine, but gall and vinegar.”
“’Being brought to the scaffold,’ the martyr’s great-grandson continues, ‘where he was to be beheaded, it seemed to him so weak that it was ready to fall, wherefore he said merrily to Mr. Lieutenant, ’I pray you, Sir, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.’”
“When he began to speak a little to the people, which were in great troops there to hear and see him, he was interrupted by the sheriff. Wherefore briefly he desired all people to pray for him, and to bear witness to him that he there died in and for the Faith of the Holy Catholic Church, a faithful servant both of God and the King. Having spoken this, he kneeled down, and pronounced with great devotion the Miserere Psalm (his favorite psalm that he was used to say every evening with his children in his oratory at home); which, being ended, he cheerfully rose up, and gave the executioner his forgiveness, he kissed him saying: ‘Thou wilt do me this day a greater benefit than ever any mortal man can be able to give me; pluck up thy spirit. Man, and be not afraid to do thy office; my neck is very short, take heed, therefore that thou strike me not awry for saving thy honesty.’”
“When the executioner would have covered his eyes, he said, ‘I will cover them myself’; and presently he did so, with a cloth that he had brought with him for the purpose; then laying his head upon the block, he bade the executioner stay until he had removed aside his beard, saying that he had never committed any treason. So with great alacrity and spiritual joy, he received the fatal blow of the axe, which no sooner had severed the head from the body, but his soul was carried by the Angels into everlasting glory, where the crown of martyrdom was put upon him, which can never fade nor decay.”[8]
The head of Saint Thomas More, lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, humanist, councilor to Henry VIII, Lord High Chancellor of England chancellor and martyr for the Roman Catholic Faith, was impaled on a pike on London Bridge as though it had been that of a traitor, side by side with the head of Saint John Fisher. A few weeks later, the heads of the saints were cast into the river to make room for further victims. More’s head was recovered by his daughter, who buried it in a vault in Saint Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury, the city of his patron saint.
The Second Succession Act was formally titled An Act concerning the Succession of the Crown,[9] yet, it also defined it treason to criticize the death sentence passed against Thomas More under the Treasons Act 1534.
William Warham
• William Warham, (1450 -1532) was the last of the pre-Reformation archbishops of Canterbury. He ended his career with a resolute stand against the anticlerical policies of King Henry VIII of England. Had he not died a natural death, there is a certainty that he would have become another Catholic martyred by an edict of Henry VIII.
After presiding submissively over the convocation (1531) that declared Henry to be the head of the Church in England, Warham bravely published (February 1532) a dignified but emphatic protest against the enactments of the Reformation Parliament from 1529. He died shortly thereafter.
Thus, the Reformation made its bloody way into Henry’s domains.[10] The Franciscans and Dominicans were ordered to leave England. All the monasteries were looted and the booty went into the royal purse. For those who resisted Henry, there was torture on the rack, burning at the stake and/or the hangman’s noose. Henry’s blind hatred did not end there; he shocked Europe when the relics of Saint Thomas Becket (1118-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury, were destroyed in September, 1538, when he ordered the destruction of nearly all of the Catholic shrines in England. With the fury of a madman, Henry VIII wreaked havoc throughout all of England.
Queen Elizabeth’s persecution lasted forty-four years. The fines for recusancy (opposition towards Protestantism), the banishments, the imprisonments, and torture which characterized Elizabeth’s reign are more impressive in the horrors of persecution than even the burning and hangings at Tyburn.[11]
“The rack seldom stood idle in the tower for all the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign,” says Henry Hallam (1777-1859). “Such excessive severities,” he continues, “under the pretext of treason, but sustained by very little evidence of any other offence than the exercise of the Catholic ministry, excited indignation throughout a great part of Europe. The queen was held forth in pamphlets, dispersed everywhere from Rome and Douay, not only as a usurper and heretic, but a tyrant more ferocious than any heathen persecutor, for inadequate parallels to whom they ransacked all former history.”[12]
Saint Edmund Campion
• Saint Edmund Campion, of the Society of Jesus, (1540-1581) was the proto-martyr of the English Jesuits, executed for assisting Catholics who were suffering from the terrible Elizabethan persecutions. The Saint was born in London about 1540. In 1573, he joined the Society of Jesus in Rome, and was ordained in Prague, 1578. He was sent to the English mission with the special aim to win the nobility and gentry to the Church, and for a time he was very successful. He published, from a secret location his Decem Rationes – ten reasons demonstrating the truth of the Catholic religion.
Convert to Catholicism, Father Robert Hugh Benson,[13] provides the following description:
“To the minds of Protestants there was something almost diabolical about the man; he was here, he was there, he was everywhere, and yet, when the search was up, he was nowhere. Tales were told of his eloquence that increased the impression he made a thousand-fold; it was said that he could wile birds off their branches and the beasts from their lairs; and this eloquence, it was known, could be heard only by initiates, in far-off country houses, or in quiet, unsuspected places in the cities. He preached in some shrouded and locked room in London one day; and the next, thirty miles off, in a cow-shed to rustics. And his learning and his subtlety were equal to his eloquence; her Grace [Elizabeth I] had heard him at Oxford years ago, before his conversion; and it was said, would refuse him nothing, even now, if he would but be reasonable in his religion; even Canterbury, it was reported, might be his. And if he would not be reasonable—then, as was fully in accordance with what was known of her Grace, nothing was too bad for him.
“Such feeling, then, on the part of Protestants, found its fellow in that of the Catholics. He was their champion, as no other man could be. Had he not issued his famous ‘challenge’ to any and all the Protestant divines, to meet with them in any argument on religion that they cared to select, in any place and at any time, if only his own safe-conduct was secure? And was it not notorious that none would meet him? He was, indeed, a fire, a smoke in the nostrils of his adversaries, a flame in the hearts of his friends. Everywhere he ranged, he and his comrade Father Persons, sometimes in company, sometimes apart; and wherever they went the Faith blazed up anew from its dying embers in the lives of rustic, knave, and squire.”[14]
Campion was arrested in July, 1581, after less than thirteen months of missionary activity, imprisoned in the Tower of London and severely tortured. William Cardinal Allen (1532-1594)[15] describes Father Campion’s commending himself to God before undergoing torture:
“He used to fall down at the rackhouse door upon both knees to commend himself to God’s mercy, and to crave his grace of patients in his pains. As also being upon the rack he cried continually with much mildness upon God and the holy name of Jesus. And when his body was so cruelly distent and stretched upon the torment that he did hang by his arms and feet only, he most charitably forgave his tormentors and the causes thereof, and thanked one of the rackmen meekly for putting a stone under his backbone. He said to his keeper after his last racking that it was a preface to death…
“And being…benumbed both of hand and foot, he likened himself to an elephant, which being down could not rise; when he could hold the bread, he had to eat betwixt both his hands, he would compare himself to an ape; so merry the man of God was in his mind in all his bodily miseries.”[16]
He was dragged through the streets of London amid a howling mob and brought to trial on the charge of plotting against Queen Elizabeth I. He put up a brilliant defense, before the rigged jury— “Our religion only is our crime,” was a plea that only infuriated his judges. He was offered every kind of inducement to bring him to conform, but he remained constant to the end.
The trial was held on November 20, 1581. After hearing the testimony for three hours, the jury deliberated only one hour before delivering its pre-determined verdict: Campion and his fellow defendants were found guilty of treason.
He answered the verdict: “In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors, all our ancient bishops and kings, all that was once the glory of England—the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter.”
Lord Chief Justice Wray read the sentence:
“You must go to the place from whence you came, there to remain until ye shall be drawn through the open city of London upon hurdles to the place of execution, and there be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts (genitals) cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight; then your heads to be cut off and your bodies divided into four parts, to be disposed of at Her Majesty’s pleasure. And God have mercy on your souls.”[17]
On hearing the death sentence, Campion and the other condemned men broke into the words of the Te Deum.[18] After spending his last days in prayer he was dragged with two fellow priests, Fathers Ralph Sherwin (1550 –1581) and Alexander Briant (1556 – 1581), to Tyburn[19] where the three were hanged, drawn and quartered on December 1, 1581. Campion was 41 years of age, Sherwin 31, and Briant 26.
The following description of Edmund Champion’s execution is typical of the many executions under Queen Elizabeth I:
“Campion had long esteemed himself dead to the world, and it would seem difficult to die to it more perfectly than he had hitherto done; but from the Saturday when he was first appointed to die, he seems to have found means to increase his mortifications; for then must have begun ‘his five days’ fast from temporal and bodily sustenance; and then, again, on the Wednesday he must have begun his abstinence from sleep and bodily rest, which was by credible report of some continued two nights, bestowed in meditation and prayer.
“In the splash and mud of a rainy December morning, Campion was brought forth from his cell, clad in the same gown of Irish frieze which he had worn at his trial, and he was taken to the Coleharbour tower. Outside the Tower a vast crowd was already collected. Campion, nothing daunted, looked cheerfully around and saluted them: ‘God save you all, gentlemen! God bless you, and make you all good Catholics!’ Then he knelt and prayed, with his face towards the east; concluding with the words, ‘In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum. (Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit).’
“There were two hurdles[20] in waiting, each tied to the tails of two horses. On one, Sherwin and Briant (Campion’s consorts), were laid and bound, Campion on the other. As they were dragged through the gutters and filth, each hurdle was followed by a rabble of ministers and fanatics, calling upon them by the way for their subversion…. One gentleman, like Veronica in another via dolorosa, either for pity or affection, most courteously wiped his face, all spattered with mire and dirt, as he was drawn most miserably through thick and thin; ‘for which charity,’ says the priest who saw it done, ‘or haply some sudden-moved affection, God reward him and bless him!’ The procession took the usual route by Cheapside and Holborn. A crowd of men followed it, and the women stood at their doors to see it pass by.
“A little farther, and the hurdles were dragged under the arch of Newgate,[21] which crossed the street where the prison now stands. In a niche over the gate stood an image of the Blessed Virgin that was yet untouched with the axes and hammers of the iconoclasts. Campion, as he passed beneath, with a great effort raised himself upon his hurdle and saluted the Queen of Heaven, whom he so soon hoped to see.… A priest, who saw the martyrs on their way, constantly declared that they had a smile on their faces, and as they drew near Tyburn, actually laughed. There was a cry raised among the people, ‘But they laugh; they don’t care for death.’
“There was throng on Tower-hill, there was throng through all the streets; but the throng at the place of execution at Tyburn exceeded all that anyone could remember. They had been gathering all the morning in spite of the rain and wind; and now, when the hurdles were driven up, the clouds divided, and the sun shone out brightly. There were present many good Catholic gentlemen desirous to be eyewitnesses of that which might happen in the speech, demeanor, and passage of those three rare patterns of piety, virtue, and innocence, and amongst them a Catholic priest, who pressed in to observe and mark that bloody spectacle, with mind upon occasion to refer sincerely and truly (to his power) this tragedy, with such accidents as should happen in the manner, course, and end thereof.…
“Campion was first put into the cart under the gallows, and was ordered to put his head into the halter, which he did with all obedience; and then, after some small pause, while he waited for the mighty murmur of so many people to be somewhat stilled, with grave countenance and sweet voice stoutly spake out, ‘Spectaculum facti sumus Deo, angelis et hominibus.’ These are the words of Saint Paul, Englished thus: ‘We are made a spectacle or a sight unto God, unto His angels, and unto men; verified this day in me, who am here a spectacle unto my Lord God, a spectacle unto His angels, and unto you men.’ Here he was interrupted by Sir Francis Knowles and the sheriffs, earnestly urging him to confess his treason against the Queen, and to acknowledge himself as guilty. He answered: ‘As to the treasons which have been laid to my charge, and for which I am come here to suffer, I desire you all to bear witness with me that I am thereof altogether innocent.’
“On this, one of the Council replied that he might not seem to deny the things objected to him, having been proved by sufficient evidence: ‘Well, my lord,’ said he, ‘I am a Catholic man and a priest; in that faith have I lived, and in that faith do I intend to die. If you esteem my religion treason, then I am guilty; as for other treason, I never committed any, God is my judge. But you have now what you desire. I beseech you to have patience, and suffer me to speak a word or two for discharge of my conscience.’
“They next asked whether he renounced the Pope. He answered, he was a Catholic; whereupon one inferred, saying, ‘In your Catholicism all treason is contained.’ At length, when he was preparing himself to drink the last draught of Christ’s cup, he was interrupted in his prayer by a minister, willing him to say, ‘Christ, have mercy upon me,’ or such like prayer, with him; unto whom, looking back with mild countenance, 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 to him to pray in English—for it had grown to be quite a superstition in those days that prayer in a foreign language was a mockery of God; but he pleasantly answered that he would pray God in a language that they both well understood.” Once more he was interrupted, and bidden to ask the Queen forgiveness, and to pray for her. He meekly answered, ‘Wherein have I offended her? In this I am innocent. This is my last speech; in this give me credit—I have and do pray for her.’ Then the Lord Charles Howard asked of him for which queen he prayed, whether for Elizabeth the queen.
“To whom he answered, ‘Yea, for Elizabeth, your queen and my queen, unto whom I wish a long quiet reign with all prosperity.’ While he was speaking these last words, the cart was drawn away, and he, amid the tears and groans of the vast multitude, meekly and sweetly yielded his soul unto his Savior, [22]protesting that he died a perfect Catholic.
“Then his body was cut down and stripped, and the butchery proceeded with. There was standing beside the block where Campion was being cut into quarters a young man named Henry Walpole: he was still a Protestant, and had gone merely to see. As the hangman was throwing the quarters into the caldron of boiling water a drop of the bloody mixture splashed out upon Walpole’s clothes, who afterwards declared to Father Ignatius Basselier, S.J., that he at once felt he must become a Catholic. On his conversion he joined the Society, was ordained a priest, and sent into England, where he was apprehended, and like Campion, condemned and executed as a traitor.
“While Campion was being chopped to pieces, the Catholic gentlemen who stood around were contriving in some guise to steal a few relics of him, but the greatest precautions were taken to prevent it. A young man who dropped his handkerchief into the blood on the ground was taken and committed. In the tumult that ensued, another was quick enough to cut off a finger and carry it away. The loss was presently discovered, but the thief could not be found. Another, finding that nothing could be stolen, offered twenty pounds for a single joint of a finger; but the hangman reluctantly refused: he was afraid. Large sums were offered for the clothes; but when Parsons wrote nothing had been gotten, and it was supposed that everything was to be burnt to prevent the Catholics obtaining any relics.”[23]
When Campion was executed, it was noticed that all his nails had been pulled out in his torture.[24] It was said that the river Thames ceased to ebb and flow on the day Campion was executed. [25]
Saint Nicholas Owen
• Saint Nicholas Owen (Little John) was born at Oxford, England. He became a Jesuit lay brother in 1580. He was well known as the chief designer and builder of “priest holes” (hiding places) in Catholic homes throughout England during a twenty-year period. Each project was a fresh test of his skill, for each had to be unique: the discovery of any of the hiding places must not give any clue where others might be found.
When first arrested in 1594, Owen could have done much damage to the English mission as he could hand over more priests and injure and betray more Catholics than any other single person. Despite prolonged merciless torture, Owen did not reveal the names of any of his Catholic colleagues; he was released on the payment of a ransom by a wealthy Catholic. Nicholas was again arrested in 1606, and subjected to such vicious torture, over six days, that he died of it on March 2nd. Suffering from a hernia, his torturers fastened an iron girdle about him and hung him up for six hours at a time by iron bracelets fastened to his wrists. To increase his suffering, weights were added to his ankles. He died in agony when his entrails burst out while he was on the rack, but with his secrets still locked within him. The only words he uttered during his torture were “Jesus” and “Mary.” He died in the Tower of London at age 56, he is honored as a martyr by the Roman Catholic Church, and he was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970, as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. His feast day is on March 22nd.
Women were not exempt from persecution or death under the brutal reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
Saint Margaret Clitherow
• Saint Margaret Clitherow, also known as St Margaret of York or the Pearl of York, was the wife of a butcher who had conformed to the new religion. She, too, was raised as a Protestant, but three years after her marriage she came into the true Church as a zealous member of the Catholic cause.
In August 1577, Margaret received her first jail sentence after previously paying fines for not attending Anglican church services. After her release in June, 1578, she set up a place where Mass could be celebrated in a house next to her own, with access from her own home.
Twice more, she was arrested and twice again, released. On the occasion of her final arrest, in 1586, the priest in his hiding place heard the commotion and made good his escape. At that time Margaret was also hosting a school wherein a Catholic scholar was instructing the children. One of the pupils, when threatened, gave up the names of all who had attended Mass in the secret chapel. Everyone, including the children were taken to jail where Margaret’s children were severely whipped. When Margaret was told that she would be prosecuted for harboring a priest, she was overjoyed. She was called before the York court for the crime of harboring Roman Catholic priests. She surprised everyone when she refused to plead to the charge so as to prevent a trial that would save the conscience of the jury and which would entail her children being made to testify, therefore she was forced to undergo the standard inducement to force a plea—torture under Peine Forte et Dure.[26]
As a result, Margaret Clitherow was led to the prison and there stripped naked, except for a linen cloth placed over the lower part of her abdomen. She was placed on the ground, lying on her back, and a sharp rock the size of a man’s fist was placed under her spine. A hollow spot was created under her head, and her head rested in it. The door from her own house was put on top of her, and upon this was placed as much weight as she could endure, and more. As long as she was to live, she was to have the worst bread and water that could be found in the prison. If she ate, she could not drink; if she drank, she could not eat. Should she survive three days, she was to be crushed to death. The three-day sentence was not fully carried out as she only took fifteen minutes to die, on Good Friday, March 25, 1586.[27] This form of death was not abolished in England until 1827. Her death occurred within minutes, but her body was left for six hours before the weights were removed. After her death, her hand was removed, and this relic is now housed in the chapel of the Bar Convent, in York.
Her two sons, Henry and William, both became priests. Her daughter, Anne, to whom she sent her shoes and stockings on the morning of her death so that she could follow in her footsteps, became a nun at St. Ursula’s, Louvain. Her fame spread through a biography, The Life and Death of Mistress Margaret Clitherow,” (written in 1586, and first printed 1849), by her confessor, Father John Mush, one of the priests whom she sheltered.
Saint John Gerard, S.J.
• John Gerard, S.J. (1564–1637) was an English priest, operating undercover in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. He is notable for successfully hiding from the English authorities for eight years before his capture, but he endured extensive torture, escaping from the Tower of London and, after recovering, continuing with his covert mission. After his escape to the continent, he was later instructed by his Jesuit superiors to write a book about his life, which He completed in 1609. An English translation was published in 1952. This is a rare, first-hand account of the deadly cloak-and-dagger world of a Catholic priest in Elizabethan England. An excerpt follows:
“When the Lieutenant saw that I could speak he said: ‘Don’t you see how much better for you it would be if you submitted to the Queen instead of dying like this?’ God helped me and I was able to put more spirit into my answer than I had felt up to now. ‘No, no, I don’t!’ I said. ‘I would prefer to die a thousand times rather than do as you suggest.’
‘So you won’t confess, then?’
‘No, I won’t,’ I said. ‘And I won’t as long as there is breath left in my body.’
‘Very well, then, we must hang you up again now, and a second time after dinner.’
‘He spoke as though he were sorry to have to carry out his orders.’ ‘Eamus in nomine Domini’ [Let us in the name of God], I said. ‘I have only one life, but if I had several, I would sacrifice them all for the same cause.’
‘I struggled to my feet and tried to walk over to the pillar but I had to be helped. I was very weak now, and if I had any spirit left in me, it was given by God and given to me, although most unworthy, because I shared the fellowship of the Society.
‘Then they put my wrists into iron gauntlets and ordered me to climb two or three wicker steps. My arms were then lifted up and an iron bar was passed through the rings of one gauntlet, then through the staple and rings of the second gauntlet. This done, they fastened the bar with a pin to prevent it from slipping, and then, removing the wicker steps, they left me hanging by my hands and arms fastened above my head.”[28]
[1] Brodrick, James, S.J., A Procession of Saints, (London: Burns & Oates), 1949, p. The Catholic Book Club),
[2] Cf. Saint Polycarp: “They were about to nail him to the stake, when he said, ‘Let me be as I am. He that granted me to endure the fire will grant me also to remain at the pyre unmoved.’”
[3] Psalm 34:5.
[4] François van Ortroy, Vie du Bienheureux Martyr Jean Fisher, Cardinal, Évêque de Rochester, 1893, pp. 337-339, 342, 411-13.
[5] The English Works of John Fisher, ed. Mayor, E.E.T.S., 1876, p. 181.
[6] Sir Thomas Pope (c. 1507 – 1559), was founder of Trinity College. As second officer and treasurer of the court for the settlement of the confiscated property of the smaller religious foundations, he obtained wealth and influence, under the reign of Henry VIII.
[7]The Story of Blessed Thomas More, by A Nun of Tyburn Convent, (London: R. & T. Washbourne, LTD.). 1914, p.p. 163-164.
[8] Ibid. pp. 165-168.
[9] This Act was passed after the Act of Supremacy 1534, which made the king the “Only Head of the Church of England on Earth so far as the Law of God allows.” The 1534 Act made it treason, punishable by death, to disavow the Act of Supremacy.
[10] For an overview of this period see: William Cobbett, A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, (New York: Benziger Brothers), 1930. Though the author was a Protestant, he defends the Catholics.
[11] Executions took place at Tyburn for almost 600 years, with the first recorded as William Longbeard in 1196 and the last as John Austen in 1783. In between, tens of thousands of highwaymen, robbers, forgers, murderers, traitors and other convicted men and women met their end at Tyburn. From the Reformation period onwards, this included many 105 Catholics who would not abandon their faith.
[12] Hallam, Henry, The Constitutional History of England: from the accession of Henry VII to the death of George II, Vol. 1, (London, J. Murray, 1827, p. 148.
[13] Robert Hugh Benson AFSC KC SG KGCHS, was an English Anglican priest who in 1903 was received into the Roman Catholic Church in which he was ordained priest in 1904.
[14] Benson, Robert Hugh, Come Rack! Come Rope, (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne LTD), 1944, p. 110.
[15] William Allen was forced into exile at Louvain, Belgium, when he opposed the accession of Elizabeth I in 1561. In 1562 he returned to England in order to organize a missionary center near Oxford and evaded capture for three years, leaving the country in 1565 for Mechelen, Belgium, where he was ordained. In 1568 he founded the English College at Douai, from which issued not only missioners for his homeland but a stream of publications in English in defense of Catholicism. There, too, he completed the English translation of the New Testament (published in 1582 at Rheims, to which the college was transferred after anti-English riots in 1578) and the Old Testament (published in Douai in 1609, two years before the King James Version). His writings dealt with the priesthood, the sacraments, and martyrdom (160 priests from Douai died in England); he also published an account of the death of Saint Edmund Campion and an explanation of the papal deposition of Queen Elizabeth.
[16] Philip Caraman, The Other Face: Catholic Life Under Elizabeth I. (New York: Sheed & ward, 1960), p. 241.,
[17] Simpson, Richard. Edmund Campion: a Biography, (London, Hodges, 1896), pp. 308–309.
[18] The Te Deum (also known as Ambrosian Hymn or A Song of the Church) is an early Christian hymn of praise. The title is taken from its opening Latin words, Te Deum laudamus, rendered as “Thee, O God, we praise.”
[19] Executions took place at Tyburn for almost 600 years, with the first recorded as William FitzOsbert, known as Longbeard in 1196 and the last as John Austen in Dec. 1783. In between, tens of thousands of highwaymen, robbers, forgers, murderers, traitors and other convicted men and women met their end at Tyburn. From the Reformation period onwards, this included numerous Catholics who would not abandon their faith.
[20] A frame or sled on which criminals, especially traitors, were formerly drawn to the place of execution.
[21] Newgate Prison remained in use for over 700 years, from 1188 to 1902.The common felons, debtors, and beggars were mixed with the victims of tyranny, religious intolerance, and commercial misfortune. Those who supported a losing cause were consigned there by those wielding temporary authority; those who persisted in doctrines of faith opposed to the belief of the ruling power were sent there between the periods of their tortures, awaiting execution, or transportation to North American penal colonies. The outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) halted transportation to America. It is estimated that some 50,000 British convicts were sent to colonial America. Transported convicts represented perhaps one-quarter of all British emigrants during the 18th century. (Ekirch, A. Roger (1987), Bound For America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775, Oxford University Press) .
The final Newgate prison (built in 1770) was built to house 300 male, 60 female, and 100 debtors. Invariably overcrowded, Newgate was unbelievably filthy. Thousands died from outbreaks of (gaol-fever) typhus, transmitted to humans by parasites such as lice, fleas, and ticks.
[23] Simpson, Richard, Edmund Campion: A Biography, (The Hague, Holland: Motley Press, 1866), pp. 447-455.
[24] Caraman, The Other Face: p. 241.
[25] Ibid. p. 2.
[26] Peine forte et dure (French for “hard and forceful punishment”) was a method of torture formerly used in the common law legal system, in which a defendant who refused to plead (“stood mute”) would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered, or the defendant died. Pressing to death continued until the end of Queen Anne’s reign (1714). The law at the time demanded the property of anyone convicted of murder or felony—a felony being theft of any kind—forfeited his possessions to the Crown in addition to the penalty of death or transportation to a penal colony. Many prisoners, therefore, so as to save their goods and money for their families, refused to plead, or stood mute. This punishment was common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By an Act of the twelfth year of the reign of George III (1772) mutes were found guilty just as if they had been convicted or confessed. It was not until 1827 that the Court was directed by Statute to enter a plea of not guilty when the accused refused to plead. W. Eden Hooper, History of Newgate and the Old Bailey, (London: Underwood Press LTD.) 1935, pp. 98-99.
[27] It is believed that Saint Margaret Clitherow was pregnant at the time of her execution.
[28] Gerard, John, The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, (New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1952).