The Martyrdom of Blessed George Haydock
Barry Coldrey and Leo Griffin
'Sadness turned to Joy'
The Martyrdom of Blessed George Haydock
* Barry M Coldrey, 1939
* Leo Griffin, 1921
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Introduction and Acknowledgements
During penal times in Elizabethan England the principal stronghold of the Catholic survivors of persecution and repression was Lancashire where a cluster of reasons guaranteed the survival of the Old Faith. Lancashire was a large, sparsely-populated county remote from the wealth and commerce of the south east and distant from the seat of government in London. However, important though this isolation was, the critical reason for the survival of Catholicism in the north west as a small, but influential minority was the strong lead given by many of the local gentry. There were 129 'gentlemen' in Lancashire and around one-third of them were Catholics and another third possessed Catholic sympathies.
The Haydocks were Lancashire gentry, their estates centered on Cottam, near Preston. Their forbears had been prominent in the political and social life of the county for generations. In the religious turmoil of the sixteenth century, the family remained firmly Catholic through trial and persecution. This account is focused on the story of Blessed George Haydock, the martyr, but there were three priests from the family ministering during Elizabeth's reign, George himself, his father, Vivian, and his older brother, Richard. In a sense, the book is a glimpse at Catholic life in Lancashire in penal times, focused on the Haydock family.
This is the third book in a series of modern lives of the English martyrs, commenced by Brother Leo Griffin, cfc, ten years ago. The first was a Life of St Margaret Clitheroe, published 1992, and the second, The Life of St Philip Howard, Martyr, released in 1998. In this case, Brother Griffin is joined by another author in completing the work, as advancing years have taken some toll.
In the 'lives' a little piece of sixteenth century England comes alive, on the one hand its excitement and splendor it is the age of Shakespeare and exploration of the New World of the Americas and, on the other, the reality of its awfulness and tragedy. The old manuscripts and family records provide some background to George Haydock's biography, but much is presumed since the political and religious issues were well known to the contemporary diarists and their public.
Present day readers, far removed from Lancashire, the Haydocks and their times may beneficially recall the second half of the sixteenth century which shaped their lives on the English mission.
George Haydock was born in 1556, during the reign of Queen Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Mary a staunch Catholic had restored English to the old faith on her accession to the throne in 1553. Mary's reign, however, was brief and she died on November 1558 to be succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth tended to religious indifference, but her background was in a Church of England, separated from Rome. She and her advisors many more staunch Protestants than she were influenced by the reformation which changed the Anglican Church strongly during the reign of Edward VI.
In Elizabeth's first Parliament, 1559, the Pope's spiritual jurisdiction over England was revoked, and the Church of England declared the established church. Another Act of the same Parliament conferred on Elizabeth the title of 'supreme Governor of the Church of England', and a third, The Act of Uniformity, obliged everyone to conform to the religious beliefs and practices set out in the revised Book of Common Prayer.
The Act of Uniformity Elizabeth's attempt the end 'the religious question' by compromise was unique in that it compelled people to attend Church on Sundays and Holy Days under pain of fines and imprisonment. The Act of Supremacy, on the other hand, made traitors of those who refused under oath to accept Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church. Treason carried the death penalty.
All of the Bishops, but one, resigned their Sees, and soon all were in exile or in prison. On the other hand, most of the parish clergy conformed. However, there was strong dissent in the major universities, Oxford and Cambridge, England's great centres for theological learning and priestly formation.. A minority including some heads of colleges, together with some staff and under-graduates deserted their posts and went to Louvain in the Netherlands where they formed a scholarly English community in exile.
Prominent among them was Dr William Allen, from Lancashire, who in 1561 had been appointed Principal of St Mary's Hall, Oxford. He refused to take the Oath of Supremacy which admission to the post required. He went to Louvain and in 1564 was ordained to the priesthood.
While on the continent, Allen travelled widely and kept in touch with English Catholics in exile. In 1567, he visited Rome and soon afterwards established a seminary at Douai for the training of candidates for the English mission. Within ten years, 77 young Englishmen had been ordained at Douai for their hidden and dangerous mission in England. Spies abounded on both sides of the Channel and money could be had for the arrest of priests and those who harbored them.
The Elizabethan administration was alarmed at this influx of a highly motivated clergy who had been trained abroad. There was a constant fear among members of the Privy Council that English Catholics might link with Catholic Spain as a sort of 'fifth column' for the overthrow of the Elizabethan settlement.
Meanwhile, Dr Allen encouraged the printing of Catholic books and pamphlets for distribution in England, including the so-called Douai version of the New Testament translated by Gregory Martin. By the 1580s, the Spanish Netherlands were engulfed in war and the college was moved to Rheims in France. Since there were many vocations to the embattled English priesthood, an English College was established at Rome in 1576, and others at Valladolid, Lisbon and St Omer to prepare priests for the English (and Irish) missions.
In 1580, the recently-established Society of Jesus, was persuaded to send a mission to England, led by Fathers Robert Persons and Edmund Campion. Campion was educated within the Church of England and had been a brilliant student at Oxford where he was ordained for the established church. However, he began to question the validity of the reformed faith, and in time he was reconciled to the Catholic Church. In went into exile at Douai and eventually joined the Jesuit Fathers. While in Prague he was selected for the English mission.
He returned to England, disguised as a goldsmith, but his ministry lasted only for a year. He was too well-known and was determined to confront the government which led to more than average effort for his apprehension. He was arrested, held in the Tower, tortured and executed in 1581.
The fate of Edmund Campion and his fellow martyrs did nothing to halt the steady stream of seminary priests and Jesuit missionaries into England. There were further repressive Acts of Parliament such as that of 1585 requiring all priests wheresoever ordained to depart the country within forty days but few obeyed and continued their ministries.
The English Recusants
This was the world of the English recusants in which the Haydock family were reared, educated and moved. The term 'recusant' in the period of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries refers to English people who would not attend service and communion within the Church of England, at least once a month (service) or once a year (communion). In practice, the term refers to Catholics who would not conform to the reformation in England.
The first statute in which the term 'Popish Recusants' is used in 35 Elizabeth, c 2. An Act for restraining Popish Recusants to some certain place of abode which was passed in 1593. The statute defines a recusant as one 'convicted for not repairing to some Church, Chapel or usual place of Common Prayer to hear Divine Service there, but forbearing the same contrary to the tenor of the laws and statues heretofore made and provided in that behalf.' After 1593, there were a number of Recusancy Acts and several statutes declare that other offenses shall be deemed acts of recusancy, and that those convicted of them shall be deemed 'popish recusants convict.'
This book, recalling the scores and scores of priests and lay people who were martyred for their faith in Elizabethan England, is timely at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The reputation of the English-speaking priesthood over recent years has been tarnished by the depredations of the few during the great sexual abuse crisis. The recent revelations around the whole of the English-speaking church suggest that a substantial minority of the celibate priesthood have treated their vows and responsibilities lightly; among some, celibacy has been honoured in the breach, treated as the optional extra. The intense media attention to the failings of some priests has led to a decline in the public reputation of the priesthood as a whole. It is a good time to recall the splendid heroism of many priests in a similar culture if different century.
During the Elizabethan era there was no vocation crisis for the priesthood despite the imminent risks of exile, capture, imprisonment, torture and execution.. Over 800 young Englishmen went to European seminaries to be trained as priests both for the secular priesthood and the Jesuit fathers. The majority returned to England, and over half were captured and imprisoned; a quarter martyred. This is the story of one of the martyrs.
My thanks go to the Province Leader of the Christian Brothers in Victoria, Brother M C Godfrey and his Leadership Team for encouraging this project and to many others who assisted in its production. Mr J A Hilton, President of the North West England Catholic History Association, has provided a photocopy of the Catholic chapel in Cottam and via his own writings, much of the background on Lancashire Catholicism. Mother John Baptist Brennan, the Crypt Curator at the Tyburn Convent in London, has kindly sent a number of visuals and material on the English martyrs, including George Haydock. Mrs J Bond, the Librarian at the Central Catholic Library in London, has made available rare material on the Haydock family and a pamphlet on the martyr himself. Mrs Susan Stoker, a descendant of the Haydock family, living near Cottam, at Higher Bartle via Preston encouraged Brother Griffin to write the history when the idea was first mooted. To these and any others inadvertently omitted, our thanks are due.
Barry M Coldrey
T Leopold Griffin
Easter 2001
Table of Contents
1 Introduction and Acknowledgements
2 The English Recusants
3 The Catholic Church in Lancashire in Penal Times
4 The Haydock family
5 Vivian Haydock
6 Blessed George Haydock, the martyr
7 Richard Haydock
8 The Beatification of the English Martyrs
Appendix 1 The Penal Laws
Appendix 2: Martyrdom
Appendix 3 The English martyrs to 1603
9 Illustrations
10 Bibliography
Time-Line
Henry VIII - break with Rome, 1533
Richard Haydock, born 1551
George Haydock born, Cottam Hall, Preston, Co Lancashire, 1556
Queen Elizabeth ascends the throne, 1558
Vivian (Ewan) Haydock, ordained, 1575
George, arrived Douai, 1 June 1577
sent to the English College, Rome, 1578
present at the formal opening of the English College, 23 April 1579
ordained deacon, Rome, 3 September 1581
arrived Rheims, prepare ordination, 2 November 1581
missioned for work in England, 16 January 1582
captured, 2 February 1582
in the Tower, 5 February 1582
arraigned, 18 January 1584
convicted, 5 February 1584
executed at Tyburn, 12 February 1584
Shakespeare's first plays performed, 1589
Queen Elizabeth died, 1603
Richard Haydock, died 1605
Catholic Lancashire in Penal Times
Lancashire was a poor and backward county, remote from London, government, and commerce in the more flourishing south east of the country. It was a sparsely populated land of moors to the east and mosses to the west. There was a local proverb: 'God's grace and Pilling Moss are endless'. The population of around 100,000 people was overwhelmingly rural and was divided among sixty large parishes in religious terms..
Religious change was imposed on Lancashire from above during the English reformation. The government of Henry VIII enacted the Act of Supremacy in 1535 replacing the pope with the king as head of the church in England, but otherwise made no change in either Catholic practice or teaching. However, between 1535 and 1539, the monasteries were dissolved despite active opposition, but the ordinary Catholic in his parish church would have noticed little or no change.1
The county of Lancashire was in the diocese of Chester from 1541. During the Edwardian reformation of the 1540s, Acts of Uniformity in 1547 and 1552 replaced the Catholic liturgy with successively more Protestant English Books of Common Prayer. After Queen Mary's attempt to restore Catholicism (1555?59), her half-sister's, Elizabeth's government tried to imposed a new Book of Common Prayer which was, in effect, a compromise between the first and second Edwardian Prayer Books.
Protestantism was a dynamic and complex religious movement dedicated to the reformation of late medieval Catholicism. It originated in Germany with Martin Luther (1519) and spread widely in northern Europe during the first half of the sixteenth century. Luther's teachings were developed further by other Protestant spiritual leaders, among them John Calvin, Heinrich Zwingli and Philip Melancthon. Protestants exalted the authority of Scripture but limited the authority of the visible church and denied the authority of the Pope. Protestants emphasized divine grace and denied that good works effected salvation. Of the seven sacraments named by the Catholic church, most protestants retained baptism and holy communion, but denied the others, together with the sacrifice of the Mass and the doctrine of transubstantiation. Protestants denounced devotion to the saints.
The Protestant reformation was confronted by the Catholic or Counter-Reformation, the internal reform movement within the Catholic church. During the middle years of the sixteenth century, the papacy, episcopates, priesthood and religious orders underwent widespread moral reform. New active religious orders, especially the Jesuit Fathers, were organised to minister to the faithful. Meanwhile, the Council of Trent (1545?1563) codified these reforms and defined essential Catholic teaching in opposition to the main thrusts and emphases of the Protestants. A revived Catholic church confronted a dynamic and youthful Protestant movement all over Europe.
In England, time passed. After a seven year delay, in 1566, Pope Pius V proscribed attendance at Anglican services and this admonition was disseminated by Lord Vaux throughout Lancashire, creating 'a separated Catholic church united with Rome, into which priests and laity were received by reconciliation.' After this intervention, for a person to declare himself a recusant in England meant not only religious schism from the majority church, but also implicit disloyalty to the monarch and state. Non-attendance at services of the established church could conceivably appear as treason. Recusant Catholicism was a blatant challenge to the queen's authority.2
Religious issues were burning issues. This was not an ecumenical age: those who had different religious opinions had wrong opinions. Political and religious issues were enmeshed. Queen Elizabeth I personally indifferent in religious matters attempted to impose a moderate settlement, part-Catholic, part-Protestant but many of her ministers were rigorous Protestants.
However, the Elizabethan settlement survived a series of coups, including the Northern Rising of 1569. A year later, the papal bull, Regnans in excelsis, inflamed the situation. The Pope declared Elizabeth deposed and her subjects absolved of obedience, intensifying the religious and political crisis still further. There was increasingly harsh anti-Catholic legislation and Catholic plots, resulting in the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 and culminating in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
By the end of the reign a whole battery of anti-Catholic penal legislation was in place. The Church of England was repeatedly affirmed at the established church. Attendance at its Sunday services was compulsory on pain of heavy fines backed by imprisonment, while attendance at Catholic rites was banned under similar penalties. The presence of a Catholic priest on English soil was declared treason, incurring the death penalty and harboring a priest incurred outlawry and forfeiture of goods and property.
Over most of the country and for the vast majority, the royal Reformation produced conformity. The bulk of the clergy accepted the changes. The parish church or chapel was the centre of community life, and to withdraw from the established church was to be a pariah in the local community. Nevertheless, Catholicism survived. The harsh penalties were rarely applied consistently; local accommodations were common.
The surviving Catholic minority was at its strongest in Lancashire, even if a very small percentage of the population, even in this county. Its influence was stronger than its numbers suggested, since many Catholics were gentry or retainers of prominent landed families. In 1601, there were 754 registered recusants in Lancashire, but to an extent they were the tip of a Catholic iceberg since many conformed to protect their assets while maintaining Catholic sympathies.
When this is allowed, there remains something of a mystery why Catholicism survived as strongly as it did in Lancashire while succumbing in most other places. Lancashire was distant from London, but the Lake counties, Westmoreland and Cumberland, were more distant and there were few, if any Catholics there.There must have been special reasons in Lancashire.
These reasons included: The Lords Lieutenant, the earls of Derby, were rarely zealous persecutors; while many of the local Justices of the Peace were Catholics, Catholic sympathizers, lax or indifferent. Perhaps as important was the fact that a large minority of local clergy never accepted the Elizabethan settlement. In 1570, there were over fifty priests working in Lancashire and they provided ministry to most of the Catholic.3 A contemporary has explained how it was easier for Catholicism to survive in remote places, all other things being equal.4
In the country (p. 84) there were fewer eyes to spy on Catholic houses. There one's neighbours were not so steeped in malice, that they could not bear even the name of Catholic. In fact, for the most part, Catholics were well-regarded by their country neighbours. In the towns their reputation was put in doubt by daily slander, alleged crimes and the infliction of undeserved punishments.
The leadership was provided by Lawrence Vaux and William Allen. Vaux was born at Blackrod, educated at Manchester Grammar School and Oxford, and in 1559 when Elizabeth succeeded to the throne he was the leading ecclesiastic in Lancashire. He refused to conform and in 1566 circulated blunt letters to the gentry after the Pope had ruled that conformity to the Church of England was schism from the Catholic church:
I am charged to make a definitive sentence, that all such as offer children to the baptism now used or be present at the communion or service now used in churches in England, as well the laity as the clergy, do not walk in the way of salvation; neither may we not communicate nor sociate ourselves in company with schismatic or heretic in divine things; there s no exception nor dispensation can be had for any of the laity if they will stand in the way of salvation. Ye must not think this be any severity or rigorousness of the Pope, Pius V, that now is God's Vicar in earth to whom at this present God hath appointed the government of His Church in earth ... If ye associate yourselves at sacraments or service that is contrary to the unity of Christ His Church ye fall into schism, that is to say, ye be separated from Christ His Church, and living in that state (as saith St Augustine) altogether you lead never so good a life in the sight of the world, the wrath of God hangeth over you, and dying in that state shall lose the everlasting life in Heaven ... I pray you that comfortable promise of our Saviour Christ in His Gospel, Whosoever will confess Christ and the faith of His spouse of the Catholic Church before men, He will confess Him before His Father in Heaven.
Lawrence Vaux published a Catechism at Louvain in 1567 which became one of the principal means of formation for English Catholics. It was 'an Instruction, what all people ought to believe and do, if they will be saved', and expounded the Apostles Creed, the ten commandments and the sacraments. Vaux insisted that 'the Church is a visible company of people, first gathered together of Christ and His disciples, continued unto this day in a perpetual succession in one Apostolic faith, living under Christ the Head and in earth, under his Vicar, Pastor and chief Bishop', and therefore, that 'a man ought to forsake all new doctrines, and constantly to cleave to the ancient religion and doctrine, universally and openly professed in England, by all the ancient kings and peoples of this island, ever since the first receiving of Christian religion here.'
Such open defiance of the Queen's new religious regime meant that the Elizabethan administration was anxious to remove him from circulation. However, for twenty years, Vaux moved around his home county ministering to Catholics, sheltered by the gentry, many of whom were his relatives. In the end, in 1580, he was arrested and imprisoned. He died in prison five years later.
The emphasis on Catholicism surviving among the gentry and their retainers may sound strange for a later age, but in the context of Elizabethan England, for a priest to lead a simple life among the common village people where everybody knew everybody else's business was to invite almost immediate arrest. A Jesuit historian has explained:5
It was only the vast houses of the gentry that could provide sheltered accommodation and, with the constant flow of guests, provide a safe cover for occasional small gatherings of Catholics and to callers who required the help of a priest. In these circumstances, the extent of a priest's activity depended on the willingness of their hosts to share the same risks and to share the work. Their zeal was the measure of his effectiveness. It was only as a gentleman of fashion in the company of other gentlemen that a priest could move about without the constant risk of being questioned and he consequently depended on his host to ride out with him, to organise hunting parties and other social events to bring likely converts together and to introduce the priest to the society of the neighbourhood.
In Lancashire, William Allen, another priest with deep roots in the county, preached the same message. In 1568, he founded the English seminary at Douai in the Netherlands, to provide a continuous supply of priests to undertake the same ministry
Altogether during Elizabeth's, in spite of the fact that it was illegal, 815 men left England to be trained for the priesthood, sixty of them from Lancashire, including Vivian, Richard and George Haydock.6 Of the hundreds of priests who returned for the English mission, over a half were caught and imprisoned; and a quarter were executed. In 1587, Allen was created a cardinal and accepted as the leader of the English Catholic church, though he normally lived in exile. He died in 1594.7
The early schooling of these and other young Catholics was provided in Catholic gentry homes, where the resident priest often doubled as school master, in clandestine Catholic schools, of which there were 32 by the end of the century and at Blackburn Grammar School where there was residual Catholic influence.
In a sense, the Catholic church in Lancashire was the extended family of Lawrence Vaux and William Allen providing 'the social bonds, the intricate threads of interest and affection, that kept the Catholic minority together.' It was not all sweetness and light in that community, however. There were crises. One was provided by the defection of Thomas Bell in 1592. He had been born in Yorkshire in 1551, and as a young man was ordained in the Church of England. However, he journeyed to Rome and was reordained there in 1579 as a Catholic priest.. He returned to England and ministered in Lancashire, mainly in the Wigan district until he was arrested in 1592.
While in prison, he conformed to the Church of England to save his skin and revealed the network of households in the county which harbored priests, and he was sent back by the government to Lancashire to assist Lord Derby, the Lord Lieutenant, to arrest those whom he had betrayed. Some of the Catholic gentry were imprisoned, but many of the intended victims, both priests and gentry were forewarned and fled the scene. As a result the Lancashire Catholic community survived
The Catholic presence in Lancashire remained strong and the critical factor was the strength of the Catholic gentry. The recusant gentry set an example for the farmers and their own tenants and household servants. In major towns like Blackburn and Burnley they ensured a Catholic influence in the grammar schools. The most prominent of the Catholic gentry was John Towneley of Burnley, one of the richest gentlemen in the north of England. He maintained a large household and exercised great patronage and influence.
In fact, Towneley was prepared to conform (attend Divine Service once a month) but not to communicate in the Church of England and spent much of his time in prison from 1568 until his death forty years later. However, his prison years do not appear to have reduced his wealth or influence to a great extent. Meanwhile, the gentry comprised twenty per cent of all recusants in Lancashire in the census of 1596, and at the same time, 30% of the gentry families were recusant and 74 of 129 gentry families were described as having 'Catholic sympathies'.
Since there were no English bishops at liberty in the country, formal leadership of the Catholic community was shared between the Jesuit superiors, led by Father Robert Persons until his death in 1610, and among the secular clergy, the Archpriests, who had some bishop's faculties and were appointed from Rome. George Blackwell was the superior of the secular clergy. for some years.
In all this discussion of the survival of Catholicism in Lancashire (or indeed in England as a whole), it is worth stressing that small ultra-Protestant sects, and alternative religions, such as witchcraft, also survived state suppression.
By end end of the reign of Elizabeth I, Catholicism in Lancashire, had not only survived but was increasing in numbers. There were 498 detected recusants in 1598, 754 in 1601, and nearly 2000 in 1603, a fourfold increase in the last five years of the reign, although the numbers may reflect either more stringency in applying the law or secret Catholics 'coming out' in more tolerant times. It was an intense, heroic, self-contained community with contacts abroad in Ireland, in educational establishments on the continent and in Rome.
At the time, James I secured the throne Lancashire possessed the largest Catholic community in England. The King remarked, some years later, 'At our first entering to this Crown and Kingdom we were informed, and that too truly, that our county of Lancaster abounded more in popish recusants than any other county in England.' and among the persistent recusants none were more staunch than the Haydock family.
The Haydock Family
The Haydocks were Lancashire gentry for centuries, the name deriving from the phrase 'hearts of oak'. George Haydock the priest and martyr was born in 1556. He was the youngest son of Vivian Haydock of Cottam Hall near Preston, and Ellen, daughter of William Westby, of Mowbreck Hall, Lancaster. The family motto: Tristitia vestra vertetur in gaudium ('Your sadness will be turned to joy')
The Haydock family, descended from Hugo de Eydoc de Haidoc, appears to have held the manor of Cottam and some parts of Ashton and French Lea, from a very remote period. In a survey of the wapentake of Amounderness, in 1320?46, Edmund de Haydoke is stated to have held part of one carucate of land in Ashton. The eldest branch of the Haydocks became extinct in the male line on the death of Sir Gilbert de Haydock. Gilbert Haydock, lord of the manor of Cottam, 10 Henry V (1422), married Isabel, daughter of William de Hoghton of Hoghton and English Lea, two separate estates near Cottam.
Some curious traditions attached to the family, and none more so than the prophecy said to have been made by his mother shortly after the birth of the martyr. While the saintly life of Vivian Haydock lay on her sickbed, to add to the gloom which pervaded the moated and semi-fortified manor-house of Cottam, the news arrived that Queen Mary was dead and Elizabeth proclaimed Queen. There by his wife's side stood the lord of Cottam, gazing into the future which would transform him into a widower, a priest, a fugitive for conscience sake, hunted with his children through his own country.
A few years after Mrs Ellen Haydock's death, William Allen, afterwards cardinal, whose brother, George was married to Ellen's sister, Elizabeth, came over to England and stayed three years, 1562?65, visiting his friends and relatives in Lancashire and ministering to the Catholic minority. He discussed the gradual disappearance of Catholicism from the land.
It was at this stage that Vivian Haydock was inspired with the determination to resign his worldly position as soon as his eldest son was old enough to take his place, and devote the remainder of his life to the preservation of the Church in England. It was to him that Thomas Hoghton alludes in his pathetic ballad of The Blessed Conscience:
And as I went, myselfe alone,
Their came into my presence
A frende, who seem'd to make grate moan,
And sayde, 'Goe, gett yo hence.'
For in this land yo have noe frende
To kepe your conscience
Hoghton withdrew to the continent, establishing himself at Antwerp in the Netherlands in 1569.
Vivian becomes a priest
In 1573, and fifteen years a widower, Vivian Haydock, accompanied by his son, Richard, left England for Douai, and joined Dr William Allen in his recently-established college. The eldest son, William, married Hoghton's half-sister, Bryde and remained to manage some of the family estates. Haydock's departure, without permission or passport, was noted by the Elizabethan authorities. In a Grand Jury held at Garstang in Lancashire, 15 February 1574, it was recorded that:
Ewan (Vivian) Hadock (sic) late of Cottam, gent, about the 25 day of April last (year) did depart forth of this realm of England and others the queen majesty's dominions unto strange parts beyond the seas, as the said jurors do suppose without licence, and as yet is not returned.
Before he left, he disposed of much of his property. By a deed of 10 January 1573, he granted Bridget Houghton, daughter to Sir Richard Houghton, deceased, for her life, one half of his manor known as Cottam Hall. By a further deed of 26 January 1573, he granted the other half to Gilbert Moreton of Whalley, gent. for 21 years, and Moreton agreed to pay annually to his two youngest sons, Ewan and George, £13/6/8. He sold other items on 6 February 1573 to George Walton of Preston for £50.
Obviously, Vivian had thought long and hard about being a priest. Both father and son were almost immediately matriculated at Douai (as an Oxford College in exile) suggesting both were well educated.Within two years, Vivian was ordained, and on 21 November 1575, he set out for England to labour on the mission in his own county.In the records of Douai, he is called 'gravissimus et sanctissimus vir' ('a most dignified and holy man') and great hopes were expressed that he would reconcile many of the upper class to the Catholic Church.
The strict watch kept by the English Government probably prevented his crossing the channel for some time, and in the following February he was again at Douai for a few days. On the 24 May 1578, he was authorized together with George Blackwell and Robert Gwin 'to perform episcopal functions in England.' This meant that they could administer the sacrament of confirmation, and were granted faculties to bless sacerdotal vestments, corporals and all altar equipment and to consecrate portable altars in England and adjacent countries.
The high opinion held by Dr Allen and all the professors at Douai of Vivian Haydock's prudence, integrity and experience, induced them to appoint him procurator official recruiter and fund-raiser of the college in England, which he undertook in 1581, to the general satisfaction of the clergy. The Privy Council was aware of this, and made intermittant effort to apprehend him. Hunted from place to place the old man's strength at last gave way, and while staying at Mowbreck Hall, his brother-in-law's, John Westby's, country estate, he received a shock which killed him. The family memoirs captured the scene as from a contemporary tragedy:8
On the Halloween preceding the arrest of his son George, Vivian Haydock stood robed in his vestments at the foot the altar in the domestic chapel at Mowbreck, awaiting the clock to strike twelve. As the bell tolled the hour of midnight, the fugitive' beheld the decapitated head of his favourite son slowly rising above the altar, whose blood-stained lips seemed to repeat those memorable words, Tristitia vestra vertetur in gaudium !' He took a heart attack at the horrible apparition and collapsed. Servants carried the old man to his secret bedroom where he passed away.
After the obsequies, his body was carried to its last resting-place, and laid beneath the chapel at Cottam Hall by his son, Dr Richard Haydock.
George Haydock, Priest, Martyr
George Haydock, meanwhile, had entered the college at Douai in the same year as his father in 1573, but then returned to England at some stage, probably for health reasons. In June 1577, he was readmitted and in the following year, he was sent as one of a group of students to take possession of the English College at Rome, and was present at its formal opening, 23 April 1579.9
He was at the College when the Jesuit fathers took over the management and when the famous Jesuit theologian, (St) Robert Bellamine, solemnly administered the oath to the 48 students then in residence (Richard and George Haydock being among the number) that they would return to England after ordination when their superiors should send them there.
At Rome, George was ordained deacon, but in the summer of 1581, having 'made' his logic and philosophy and having already commenced theology, he made the pilgrimage to the seven churches, and caught a chill, which developed into a fever probably malaria. At one point he seemed close to death but rallied. Convalescence was slow. He was never very strong physically and is described in a letter from the Tower as 'weak in body and slight in stature'. The Roman physicians suggested a cooler climate, and it was arranged that he should go to Rheims in France to complete his studies for ordination..
Before leaving Rome the party of students travelling were given an audience with the Pope Gregory XIII, who received them graciously, wished them God speed on his mission, and supplied him with funds for the journey As a result, early in September 1581, George left Rome in the company of three priests, William Bishop, William Smith and Humphrey Maxfield and a student, Isaac Higgins.
They hiked across the Appenines to Ancona, where they boarded a ship for Venice. On the voyage, George was violently ill, but gradually the sea trip seems to have given him a new lease of life 'cutting to the roots of his disease' as mentioned in a contemporary record After visiting the sights in and around Venice, they trekked over the mountains to Switzerland. The bracing mountain air as they crossed the Alps completed his recovery. The overall journey, largely on foot, took five to six weeks.
All Souls Day the small group arrived at Rheims and here George learned that his father was dead. On 21 December he was ordained priest, and on 4 January 1582, he celebrated his first Mass. Twelve days later, he left the college for the English mission, travelling by sea from the French coast to Dover and reached London without incident.
When he reached London it was already dark and having sought in vein for a lodging in Holborn, he found an inn in the neighborhood of St Paul's Churchyard. The next day he arranged to visit Lancashire friends who were detained in the Gatehouse and Fleet prisons, one was John Towneley, then in prison at the Gatehouse and the other Mr William Hesketh, then detained at the Fleet prison. Shortly afterwards Haydock made a third visit which was the immediate cause of his arrest.
He was betrayed by an old acquaintance whom he thought was a friend, into the hands of the authorities. His betrayer was John Hankinson, the son of one of Vivian Haydock's tenants at Lea near Cottam. The young man had settled in London and was of assistance to his son on the occasion of his return to Douai after his first trip home. In the meantime, however, Hankinson had conformed to the Church of England, and not suspecting this, George Haydock went to his house and announced his arrival and plans. In fact, at the same time, John Hankinson's sister, Elizabeth, a recusant, was a prisoner in Salford gaol. In this way, the penal laws tore families apart.
Unsuspecting the drift of events, it was natural, then, that George Haydock should visit him as an old friend, partly to thank him for his services in the past and partly to tell him all that had happened since they had met. However, after their meeting Hankinson at once made secret arrangements with Norton and Sledd, two priest hunters the latter a former servant at the English College in Rome that they should lay in wait near his house in St Paul's Churchyard, and seize Haydock as he emerged. This they did readily, on 6 February 1582. After the arrest they carried their prisoner into the cathedral where one of the Protestant ministers conferred with him, and offered him liberty without further trouble if he would renounce the Pope.
Haydock angrily rejected this proposal and so they led him to the inn where he had been taking his meals since his return to London and there they found another priest, Arthur Pitts, eating with a friend, William Jennison, a law student at Lincoln's Inn.
Pitts was recognised by Sledd, for they had been contemporaries at the English College in Rome. All three were led off to appear before Sir John Popham, the Attorney-General, but in the meantime, while waiting for him, they were were surrounded by crowd of law students from the Temple, and a keen debate was carried on for nearly an hour on the subject of religion. George Haydock zealously defended his faith but deferred to Pitts as his senior, and one more advanced in theology.
At length on Popham's arrival, the priests and Jenneson were questioned, and George Haydock has left an account as regards his own interrogation in a letter to a fellow-prisoner. All three was then conveyed to the Gatehouse prison for the night and on the next morning George was led to the Star Chamber to appear before Sir Robert Cecil, the High Treasurer, who committed both priests to the Tower. Jenneson remained at the Gatehouse prison, but was discharged in September after seven months imprisonment for consorting with the Queen's enemies.
At the Tower of London both priests were received by Sir William George, the commander of the Tower garrison, with every kind of abuse. Haydock was then passed to the Tower lieutenant, Sir Owen Hopton, who robbed him of some money he was carrying.
On his arrest, it appears that Norris offered to release Father Haydock if he would hand over some gold pieces, about £7. Haydock took out his purse and paid the pursuivant what he demanded, but the scoundrel, seeing that Haydock had more money, hoped to steal the remainder. He did not release the priest. Later, he listened attentively to learn to which prison Haydock and Pitts would be consigned, and went to the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Owen Hopton, to advise him that Father Haydock had some money on him. When he was committed to the Gatehouse he gave Norris a noble (i.e. 6/8, 68 pence/cents) as his fee. He thus retained £5/13/4 when he was sent from the Star Chamber to the Tower. A contemporary account captures the scene:
Thither he was brought with a great parade of escort and much noise, as is the custom, that people from all sides should come to look at him, as his country's common foe; but the saint departed from the presence of the council rejoicing, and in face and bearing showed such gladness and joyousness that the faithless who gazed on him wending his way made much ado, being filled with malice at the spectacle of the unshaken constancy of the good priest's soul.
Sir William George who was in command of the gate-warders and Tower garrison, pointed Haydock out to the others who poured out of the barracks to look at him, and exclaimed: 'Look at the trickster, how proudly and arrogantly he struts.'
Since he was in solitary confinement the earlier robbery was not revealed. Over fifteen months Haydock was in strict confinement in a narrow cell in a remote part of the Tower buildings, suffering from the recurrences of a severe malarial fever first contracted in the early summer of 1581 when visiting the seven churches of Rome.
During the first period of his captivity he was accustomed to decorate his cell with the name and arms of the Pope. His devotion to the papacy amounted to a passion. In this wretched condition, seeing no one but his gaoler, except for the rare occasions when a priest contrived to gain admittance to his cell and fortify him with Holy Communion, Haydock passed more than a year.
On one occasion, as the Annals of the English College at Rome record, 'a Protestant minister came to dispute with him and finding, after a lengthy discussion, that he made no way asked him angrily whether or not the Queen was the head of the English church.' 'By what authority', replied Haydock, 'do you ask me this question?' It must be remembered that as this question involved serious legal repercussions, none could ask it appropriately unless they had a warrant from the administration.
The Anglican minister answered, 'Were you a true servant of Christ, you would surely not inquire as to my authority, but would make open profession of your belief before everybody.' 'Do you, heretic as you are', replied the priest, 'reproach me with cowardice in the cause of God? I believe that the Queen neither is, nor can be, the head of the English church.' The minister asked, 'Who then?' 'The Roman Pontiff, replied Haydock. 'Traitor!' exclaimed the minister; 'you dare say as much because there are no fit witnesses to convict you for what you have said.' 'Not so,' replied the priest, 'but to make confession of my faith.' 'If so', said the minister, 'put down in writing what you have said just now.' 'But', said Haydock, 'I have neither pen nor ink nor paper, yet will I gratify you to the best of my power,' and taking a piece of charcoal he wrote as follows on the door of his cell: 'Gregory XIII is the head of the English and of the Universal Church, to whom the whole world must be subject if it would be saved.' It seems that the discussion or the record of it ended at this point.
In May 1583, though he remained in the Tower of London, Haydock's imprisonment was relaxed to 'free custody'. He was removed to another cell and was able to administer the Sacraments to his fellow prisoners. However, his family still had to meet the charge for his upkeep while imprisoned. This was put at £4/13/4 per week for his diet, 5/- a week for his gaoler and 4/- per week for fuel and candle.
Those who saw him were edified by his humility and patience, for besides the hardships imposed by his imprisonment, George still had recurrent bouts of malaria which he had first contacted in Rome. There was the fever and violent cramps in his stomach, legs and arms, for which there was no contemporary palliative.10
Meanwhile in January 1584, the authorities prepared to subject the priests imprisoned in the Tower to a preliminary examination, with a view to selecting some among them for execution in the immediate future and so on 18 January 1584, Father Haydock was brought before the Recorder of London, Sir William Fleetwood, who abused him before the court as a dangerous rebel engaged in treasonous activities agains the Queen. Since it was plain that he would not recant, Fleetwood questioned Haydock as to the respective authority of the Pope and Queen Elizabeth in religious matters.
He replied courageously and bluntly that the Roman Pontiff possessed supreme authority over the universal Church upon earth and that Queen Elizabeth could not exercise such authority over the people of God in religious matters. He added, when pressed, that the Queen was a heretic and, without repentance, was in danger of being eternally dammed. It was the feast of St Peter's Chair. George was committed for trial on a charge of high treason.
On leaving the Guildhall, George returned to the room where the other priests were waiting their turn to be questioned, and close to the door found 'his spiritual father, a learned, grave and venerable man' Richard Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh who said to me, 'Come, father, be of good cheer, it is all over.' Later in the day, when all the priests had been examined, and were on their return journey to the Tower, George Haydock expressed his joy that the had been questioned as to the prerogatives of the papacy on the very day that the feast of the Chair of St Peter was being celebrated in Rome.
The savage religious passions of the age were compounded by the deep divisions within families caused by the waves of change which had swept over the religious life of the country from the time of King Henry VIII in the 1530s, through the more drastic reform of Edward VI's reign in the following decade, to the Catholic reaction of the 1550s under Queen Mary and the attempted compromise under Elizabeth I.Elizabeth Hankinson, for example, the sister of the man who betrayed George Haydock was confined in Salford gaol at the this very time, with a number of relatives of the interlocked Westby - Hoghton - Allen - Haydock families.
On 5 February, two years since his arrest George Haydock was brought from the Tower to Westminster Hall and there indicted for high treason with James Fenn and seven other priests for having conspired against the Queen at Rheims, and for agreeing to come to England and for actually arriving in the country on 1 November 1582. It was a brief trial, although all the priests pleaded 'not guilty'!
On Friday, 7 February 1584, all seven were found guilty and sentenced to death. It was the Feast of St Dorothy, to whom the martyr had a special devotion, which he carefully noted in the calendar of his breviary before presenting it to his fellow prisoner, the venerable Archbishop of Armagh. They were convicted under the act of 1 Elizabeth c i, for being ordained priests beyond the seas by the Pope's authority, and for conspiring at Rome and at Rheims the death of the Queen. There were no grounds for the second part of the accusation. George Haydock had appeared in court dressed as a Jesuit, though he was not a member of the Order as far as is known. An eye-witness at the trial commented:
So grave a man as ever I sett my eyes upon, he wore a coate of black very low and upon the same a cloke of black downe almost to the grounde. He had in his hand a black staff and upon his head a velvet coyfe and there upon a broade seemly black felt hat.
After their return to the Tower, the other priests were committed in shackles to 'the pit' in the Tower a pestilential dungeon, twenty feet underground but Haydock, probably lest he should elude the executioner by a natural death, was sent back to his old quarters.
In the course of the week there was a rumour in the Tower that the Queen had changed her mind and reprieved the prisoners. George Haydock heard of it from some friends, who came to congratulate him. He, however, was bitterely disappointed until his confessor knowing his deep thirst for martyrdom, reminded him that the reports circulating were almost certainly untrue.He pointed out that a precisely similar rumour had spread just before Blessed John Shert and his companions had been put to death. It was, he said, a very common ruse of the Government to throw dust into the eyes of the people and induce them to believe that the Queen was inherently gentle and averse from bloodshed, but that the cruel and barbarous executions which so frequently took place were contrary to her personal wishes. So it proved.
On the 10 February, a warrant was addressed to the Lieutenant of the Tower to hand over the bodies of five priests, including George Haydock, for execution on the 12th. On that morning, having said Mass in his cell at an early hour, he was bound flat upon a hurdle, in like manner with four other priests, and so drawn across London to Tyburn through the muddy, crowded streets. It was raining.
When they arrived after a lengthy, slow journey across there was an enormous crowd waiting at Tyburn (near modern Marble Arch) to watch the executions. Public executions drew football-type crowds. The overall mood of the people was grim and unfriendly. There was a persistent fear of invasion from Catholic Spain and captured priests were often viewed by the populace as dangerous foreign agents.
Haydock as the youngest of the prisoners and in poor health was the first to be ordered into the cart. After the rope had been adjusted around his neck, he was called upon by Sir John Spencer, the sheriff, and certain Protestant ministers, to acknowledge his treason against the Queen and beg her forgiveness. Haydock denied the treason. Furious arguments followed between prisoner, the officials and the milling crowd, delaying the executions.
An eyewitness has given an account of the actual martyrdom, which Father Pollen, S J, has printed in the fifth volume of the Catholic Record Society: The witness described Haydock as 'a man of complexion fayre, of countenance milde, and in professing of his faith passing stoute.' He had been reciting prayers all the way, and as he mounted the cart said aloud the last verse of 'Te lucis ante terminum'. He acknowledged Elizabeth I as his rightful queen, but confessed that he had called her a heretic. He then quietly recited a Latin hymn and refused to pray in English with the mob around the execution scene. He desired that all Catholics would pray for him and his country.
Whereupon one bystander called : 'Here be noe Catholiks' and another, 'We be all Catholiks'. Haydock explained: 'I meane Catholiks of the Roman Catholik Church and I pray God that my bloud may encrease the Catholik faith in England'. Finally Spencer once more asked Haydock if he had not called Elizabeth I a heretic and this Haydock acknowledged. At this the some in the crowd was yelling and shouting abuse, that he was rebel, a traitor and unworthy of the light of day. The mood was becoming ugly, like a mob ready to lynch the condemned..
Haydock's last recorded sentence was 'God grant that my blood here may accrue some increase to the Catholic faith,' to which Sir John Spencer replied 'Catholic faith, the devil's faith! Drive on with the cart; hang the traitorous villain1'
Then the cart was driven away. Someone recorded that Haydock was alive when he was disemboweled; another that he was already dead. 'He was not permitted to hang long after the cart had driven from beneath the gallows. The rope was severed and the martyr fell to the ground where the executioners proceeded to dismember his body before the the martyr was finally dead.' So the record was as confused as the execution scene.
According to the long account sent by Richard Barrett on 6 April 1584 to the rector of the English College in Rome, Haydock who suffered first was treated with more than usual barbarity in order to frighten the others who were spectators. It is likely that the executioners and the crowd were in a ferment over the arguments and abuse which had taken place between chaplains, the condemned and guards before Haydock was hanged.
There is a short reference to Haydock in a letter of 1582: 'He was very young, only 26, and having no beard, looked even younger than he was.'
The detailed accounts of the martyr's last moments derive from eyewitness reports. There was nothing to stop Catholics, relatives or friends of the prisoners to join the milling crowds at Tyburn. In George Haydock's case, one of his relatives, William Hesketh, obtained possession of the martyr's head which was preserved by the family in the chapel at Cottam until the estate, many years later, passed into other hands.
In addition, modern historians are indebted mainly to the contemporary Spanish embassy in London for the preservation of many of the relics of the Tyburn martyrs and accounts of their separate passions. The Spanish Ambassador would attend the martyrdoms in his carriage and try to bribe the executioner to obtain the body of the martyr. Sometimes members of the embassy staff would go out at night and, with the aid of lanterns, would search in the pit beside the gallows for the remains of someone martyred during the day. The remains were received by embassy ladies reverently and where possible were embalmed and sent over to the continent.
Richard Haydock
George was dead predeceased by his father but the family's priestly ministry was not exhausted. Richard, the older brother, born in 1551, was thirty-three years old when his brother was executed. He had arrived at Douai with his father but his course of preparation for the priesthood was longer and he was ordained at Cateau Cambresis, 23 May 1577. Four years later he was described by a spy in these words: 'about 36 years of age, short of stature and lean of body and face; the hair of his beard thin, the hair of his upper lip somewhat long and of a flaxen colour.'
By 3 February 1578, he was in Rome to assist in the foundation of the English College. After eighteen months post-ordination studies in Rome, he was sent to England, arriving at Rheims, 4 November 1579 and departing on 22 January of the following year. In 1582, the Elizabethan authorities noted that:
Richard Haydock, priest, who keepeth with his brother at Cottam Hall two miles from Preston in Lancs., or with his uncle three miles from his brother's house. His uncle's name is John Westby and the house where he dwelleth is called Moorbridge Hall in Lancs. Dr Allen is the uncle unto the said Haydock and to George Haydock prisoner in the Tower.
Richard managed to move around Lancashire and between England and the continent leaving relatively few traces. Twelve years passed. There are rumours that he spent some of the time in prison but there are no details. He next surfaces in 1594 when he was secure in Rome as maestro di camera to his uncle, Cardinal Allen.
After James I succeeded to the throne, Richard Haydock was sent on a mission to Ireland and took the opportunity to visit Rheims and Douai en route and his family and friends in Lancashire on the return journey. However, he had a house rented from the English College in Rome and that was his base. His last years in Rome were spent in writing and he translated a work of Robert Bellamine under the title, An Ample declaration of the Christine doctrine, which was printed secretly in England in 1603.
Richard Haydock died in Rome of natural causes, 13 July 1605.
Appendix I: The Penal Laws
The persecution of Catholics in England, especicially Catholicpriests was developed over several laws. However, all Catholic priests in England did not stand upon the same legal footing. All priests who had been ordained before Elizabeth I ascended the throne remained throughout their lives subject only to the same statutes as the laity, though there were some special provisions in their regard. The same would have held of priests ordained in England after 1558, had there been any ordinations. The imprisonment and exile of all the Catholic bishops prevented ordinations in England, so the 'Old priests' were those ordained during the reign of Queen Mary (1555?1558) and now referred to as 'Marian priests'.
Such priests were only liable to a charge of high treason for five classes of offences:-
(After 1563) Maintaining the authority of the Pope after having been previously convicted of the same;
Refusing the Oath of Supremacy for the second time;
(After 1571) Procuring, using or receiving any bull or form of reconciliation
(After 1581) Absolving or reconciling anyone to the Catholic church
Being absolved or reconciled to the Catholic Church.
These 'Marian' priests were not affected by the Act of 1585 against Jesuits and Seminary priests, so that even after that date it was quite open to them to live in England without any risk of a prosecution for high treason, except under the above five heads.
However, the Jesuits and all 'Seminary priests' a term which was interpreted to include all English priests ordained beyond the seas the legal situation was different. To support a charge of high treason against the first class it was necessary to prove a specific action of treason at common law; or one of the five offences which the statutes of 1563, 1571 and 1581 declared to be high treason.
On the other hand, any Jesuit or 'Seminary' priest could be condemned for high treason on the simple fact of his priesthood, apart from any act. Under the Act of 1585, 'priest hunting' was a feature of the oppression under which Catholics laboured. Lay Catholics were also affected by this statute, for by it persons receiving or supporting a priest knowing him to be such were guilty of a felony, besides incurring various penalties for other offences. The distinction between high treason and felony explains why most of the lay martyrs were hanged only, and escaped the horrible addition of being cut down often still alive and being disemboweled and quartered. Some of the key provisions of the Act, 27 Elizabeth 1585 'An Act against Jesuits, Seminary Priests and other such disobedient persons' were as follows:
all Jesuits and Seminary priests still in England to depart within forty days;
no Jesuit or Seminary priest , ordained by the pretended authority of the See or Rome, 'to come into, be or remain in any part of this realm or any other of her Highness' dominions, after the end of the same forty days, other than in such special cases and upon such special occasions only, and for such time only as in expressed in this Act; and if he do, that then every such offense shall be taken and adjudged to be high treason; and every person so offending shall for his offence be judged a traitor and shall suffer, lose and forfeit, as in case of High Treason.
any person receiving or relieving such priest shall be guilty of felony
all persons now being in any College or Seminary not priests, deacons or ecclesiastical persons abroad shall return within six months, and within two days of their return take the Oath of Supremacy. Failing to do this they are guilty of high treason.
all persons sending relief to priests etc., in Seminaries shall incur the penalties of a Premunire.
all who send their children across the seas, except by Her Majesty's licence, to forfeit for each offence, £100.
this Act shall not apply to any priest who shall return to England and take the Oath of Supremacy and submit himself to the Queen.
Sick priests to be allowed to remain on certain conditions till they recover. But this period is not to exceed six months.
Any person who knows of the presence of a priest within the realm, and who does not report the same to the magistrate within twelve days, shall be imprisoned at the Queen's pleasure and fined.
Any person submitting are not to come within ten miles of the Queen for ten years after their submission
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The likelihood of the priests being caught and imprisoned was very high. Of the 471 seminary priests who came to England after 1574, more than half (285) were captured and imprisoned. Many died in prison. Others were executed. The first was St Cuthbert Mayne, put to death in 1577. Between that date and 1603, between 120 and 130 other priests were executed, along with around 60 Catholic lay people' Coffey, J, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, Pearson Education, England, 2000, pp 88?89
Appendix 2: Martyrdom
Martyrdom is not an easy road to Heaven, but a grace granted by Almighty God and then only to those who have rendered themselves worthy to receive the gift by fidelity to his Service; and a warning that constant rejection of the graces offered by God can lead to such hardness of heart as almost nothing can soften.
The word 'martyr' means witness, a person who has given up his or her life for the Christian faith and derives from the earliest times of Christianity in the Roman empire. Many martyrs died in the persecutions before Constantine's Edict of Toleration, 313 A.D. The shedding of one's blood in the face of persecution was seen as a kind of second baptism in which one's sins were forgiven and salvation assured. The custom of the celebration of the martyr's 'birthday' - usually on the date of death p began in the second century. Later theologians established three criteria for proclaiming a person a martyr.
(1) physical death occurred;
(2) the death was the result of malice towards the Christian life and truth;
(3) it was undergone voluntarily in defense of Christian life and truth.
In the Book of Revelation, (ca 95) the word 'martyr' is used of those who shed their blood for Jesus...The veneration of the martyrs often included the celebration of the Eucharist at the martyr's tomb on his or her 'birthday'.
Martyrs were inspired by the story in 2 Macc (6: 18 - 7:41) of Eleazar and the woman with seven sons, whose heroic refusal to comply with anti-Jewish laws resulted in torture and death. The martyrs regarded their passion as a share in the Passion of Christ, who suffered with the martyr and enabled him or her as an 'athlete of Christ' to endure and triumph in combat with the devil. Those confessing the faith in defiance of the authorities were regarded as Spirit-filled and thus as able to forgive sins in the name of Christ, both in their life on earth and subsequently in heaven. Unbaptised persons who died for the faith were regarded as baptised by the shedding of their blood. The refusal of the martyrs to change in the face of physical death continued to be regarded as the witness to the faith par excellence.
Martyrdom is a living fresco of suffering, of faith in Christ throughout history. The ecumenism of the saints and martyrs is stronger than division...the cross witnesses: the victory over death, the strength in resurrection and the love of the Father
The Jubilee will represent a unique opportunity for the Churches and the Christian confessions to converge together, making a memory of their sons who died and lived for the Gospel in the most difficult situations in the history of this century...to give thanks for what the Spirit was able to accomplish within his church.
Appendix 3: The English Martyrs
1537 Anthony Brookby, OFM
1538 Thomas Belchiam, OFM; Thomas Cort, OFM
1539 Griffith Clark priest, Nicholas Waire, OFM; Adrian Fortescue and Thomas Dingley, Knights of St John of Jerusalem; John Travers, priest; John Beche, Abbot of Colchester; Hugh Faringdom, Abbot of Reading; Richard Whiting, Abbot of Glastonbury; Roger James and John Thorn, monks of Glastonbury; William Onion, OSB and John Rugg, OSB
1540 Edmund Brindholm, priest; Clement Philpot, layman
1541 David Gunston, Knight of St John of Jerusalem
1544 John Ireland, priest; Thomas Ashby, layman
1583 John Slade and John Bodey, laymen
1584 George Haydock, James Fenn, Thomas Hemerford, John Nutter and John Munden, priests; William Carter, layman; James Bell, priest; John Finch and Richard White, laymen
1585 Thomas Alfield, priest; Thomas Webley, layman; Hugh Taylor, priest; Marmaduke Bowes, layman
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'We went to the torture-room in a kind of solemn procession, one of the attendants walking ahead with lighted candles. The chamber was underground and very dark, particularly near the entrance. It was a vast place and every device and instrument of human torture was there. They pointed out some of them to me and said I would try them all.' Hung up by his arms, Father John Gerard was left dangling for hours. 'All the blood in my body seemed to rush into my arms and hands', he wrote, 'and I thought that blood was oozing out of the ends of my fingers and pores of my skin. However it was only a sensation caused by my flesh swelling about the irons holding them. The pain was so intense that I thought I could not possible endure.' But despite fainting, Gerard did endure. Coffey, J, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, Pearson Education, England, 2000, p 89
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1586 Edward Strancham and Nicholas Woodfen, priests; Margaret Clitheroe; Richard Sergeant, William Thomson, Robert Anderton, William Marsden, Francis Ingolby, John Finglow, John Sandys, John Lowe, John Adams and Richard Dirdale, priests; Robert Bickerdike and Richard Langley, laymen.
1587 Thomas Pilchard, Edmund Sykes, Robert Sutton, Stephen Rowscham, John Hambley, George Douglas and Alexander Crow, priests
1588 Nicholas Garlick, Robert Ludlam, Richard Sympson and William Dean, priests; Henry Webley, layman; William Gunter and Robert Morton, priests; Hugh More, layman; Thomas Holford and James Claxton, priests; Thoma Felton, priest; Richard Leigh, priest; Edward Shelley, Richard Martin, Richard Flower; John Roch and Margaret Ward, lay people; William Way, Robert Wilcox, Edward Campion and Christopher Buxton, priests; Robert Wildmerpool, layman, RodolphCrochet, Edward James, John Robinson and William Hartley priests; Robert Sutton, layman; Richard Williams, John Hewett and Edward Burden, priests; William Lampley, layman.
1589 John Amias, Robert Dalby, George Nichols and Richard Yaxley, priests; Thomas Belson and Humphrey Pritchard, laymen; William Spenser, priest; Robert Hardesty, layman
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In the corporation accounts for Newcastle-on-Tyne, a Finance Office civil servant has described the costs in staging the execution of Father Joseph Lambton in 1592 in gory but matter-of fact-detail: 'Paid to a Frenchman who did take forth the seminary priest's bowels after he was hanged, 20 shillings ... and for a wright's axe, which (be)headed the seminary priest, 4/6 to 5/-, for a hand axe and cutting knife, which did rip and quarter the seminary priest, 14 pence, and for a horse which trailed him from the sledge to the gallows, 12 pence to 2 shillings, 2 pence ... for carrying the four quarters of the seminary priest from gate to gate and other charges, 2 shillings. Coffey, J, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, Pearson Education, England, 2000, pp. 89
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1590 Christopher Bayles, priest; Nicholas Horner and Alexander Blake, laymen; Miles Gerard, Francis Dickenson, Edward Jones, Anthony Middleton, Edmund Duke, Richard Hill, John Hog and Richard Holliday, priests
1591 Robert Thorpe, priest; Thomas Watkinson, layman, Momford Scott, George Beesley and Roger Dickenson, priests; Rodolph Milner, William Pike and Lawrence Humphrey, laymen; Edmund Genings, priest; Swithin Wells, layman; Eustace White and Polydore Plasden, priests; Brian Lacy, John Mason and Sydney Hodgson, laymen
1592 William Patenson and Thomas Pormont, priests; Anthony Page, Joseph Lampton and William Davies, priests
1593 Edward Waterson, priest; James Bird, layman; Anthony Page, Joseph Lampton and William Davies, priests
1594 John Speed, layman; William Harrington, priest; John Cornelius, priest; Thomas Bosgrave, John Carey and Patrick Salmon, laymen; John Boste and John Ingram, priests; George Swallowell, layman; Edward Osbaldeston, priest
1595 Robert Southwell, S.J, priest; Alexander Rawlins, priest; Henry Walpole, S J, priest; William Freeman, priest; Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel
1596 George Essington, William Knight, William Gibson and Henry Abbot, laymen
1597 William Andleby, priest; Thomas Warcop and Edward Fulthorp, laymen
1598 John Britton, layman; Peter Snow, priest; Rodolph Grimston, layman; John Buckley, OFM, priest; Christopher Robinson and Richard Horner, priests
1599 John Lion and James Dowdall, laymen
1600 Christopher Wharton, priest; John Rigby, layman; Thomas Sprott, Thomas Hunt, Robert Nutter, Edward Thwing and Thomas Palasor, priests; John Norton and John Talbot, laymen
1601 John Pibush, priest; Mark Barkworth, OSB; Roger Filcock, S.J; Anne Line; Thurstan Hunt and Robert Middleton, priests; Nicholas Tichborne and Thomas Hackshot, laymen
1602 James Harrison, priest; Anthony Bates and James Ducket, laymen; Thomas Tichborne and Robert Watkinson, priests; Francis Page, S.J
1603 William Richardson, priest
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Fathers William Marsden and Robert Anderton were en route to England from France when they were shipwrecked and cast on the Isle of Wight. Here they were arrested and brought before a kindly country Justice of the Peace who, sympathising with them in their misfortune, tried to give them a loophole through which to escape. 'I suppose, gentlemen', he said, 'you came out of France not with the design of coming into England but of going on to Scotland, and that you were driven into England by a storm, against your will. Tell me, is not this the Truth ?' To which they answered: 'God forbid, my Lord, that we should tell a lie in the matter ... The truth is we are both priests.' To which the magistrate could only reply: 'Then may the Lord have mercy on you, for by the law you are dead men !' Burton, E H, and Pollen, J H, Lives of the English Martyrs, Vol II, Second Series, Longmans Green, London, 1914, Introduction, p xxii
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Bibliography
Anderson, G M, 'A Letter from an Elizabethan martyr', America, Vol 175, No 17, 30 November 1996, p 20
Aveling, J C H, 'Catholic Households in Yorkshire, 1580?1603,' Northern History, XVI, 1980
Aveling, J C H, 'Northern Catholics: The Catholics Recusants of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1558?1790,' London, 1966
Aveling, J C H, The Handle and the Axe: The Catholic Recusants in England from Reformation to Emancipation, London, 1976
Bossy, J, The English Catholic Community, 1570?1850, Oxford, 1976
Bossy, J, 'The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism,' Past and Present, No 21, April 1962
Bossy, J, 'The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe', Past and Present, No 47, 1970
Bossy, J, Christianity in the West, Oxford, 1985
Burton, E H, and Pollen, J H, Lives of the English Martyrs, Vol 1, Second Series, Longmans Green, London, 1914,
Caraman, P, (trans.) John Gerard, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, Longman Green, London, 1951
Collinson, P, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, New York, 1988
Dickens, A G, The English Reformation, 2nd edition, London, 1989
Duffy, E, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400?1580, New Haven, 1992
Dures, A, English Catholicism, 1558?1642, London, 1983
Elton, G R, Reform and Reformation: England 1509?1558, London, 1977
Gillow, J, The Haydock Papers, a Glimpse into English Catholic Life, Burns & Oates, London, 1888
Guy, J, Tudor England, Oxford, 1988
Haigh, C, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire, Cambridge, 1975
Haigh, C, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors, Oxford, 1993
Haigh, C, 'From Monopoly to Minority: Catholicism in Early Modern England, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 31, 1981
Haigh, C, 'The Continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation', Past and Present, No 93, November 1981
Haigh, C, 'The Fall of a Church or the Rise of a Sect? Post-Reformation Catholicism in England', Historical Journal, 21, 1978.
Hibbard, C, 'Early Smart Catholicism: Revisions and Re-Revisions', Journal of Modern History, 52, March 1980
Hilton, J A, 'Catholicism in Jacobean Durham', Recusant History, 14, May 1977, pp 1?8
Hilton, J A, 'Catholicism in Elizabethan Northumberland,' Northern History, 13, 1977, 58
MacCulloch, D, The Later Reformation in England, 1547?1603, New York, 1990
McGrath, P and Rowe, J, 'The Elizabethan Priests: Their Harborers and Helpers', Recusant History, 19, May 1989, pp 209?33
McGrath, P and Rowe, J, 'The Marian Priests under Elizabeth I,' Recusant History, 17, October 1984
Matthew, D, Catholicism in England: The Portrait of a Minority: its Culture and Tradition', 2nd edition, London, 1948
More, H, (trans. Edwards, F) The Elizabethan Jesuits, Phillimore, London, 1981
Muldoon, A R, 'Recusants, Church-papists and "Comfortable" Missionaries: Assessing the post-Reformation English Catholic Community', Catholic Historical Review, Vol 86 Issue 2, April 2000, pp 242?258
Pritchard, A, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1979
Scarisbrick, J J, The Reformation and the English People, London, 1984
Walsham, A, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England, London, 1993
Wright, D, 'Catholic History, North and South,' Northern Light, 14, 1978
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Edmund Campion described his purpose in returning to England in these words: 'My charge is of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners, to confute errors - in brief to cry alarm spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance, wherewith mny my dear countrymen are abused.' The language is dated, but you understand what he means.
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(Edmund Campion, Brag) My charge is of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners, to confute errors - in brief to cry alarm spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance, wherewith mny my dear countrymen are abused.
More, H, The Elizabethan Jesuits, Phillimore, London, 1981 (trans. Francis Edwards)
In the country (p. 84) there were fewer eyes to spy on Catholic houses. There one's neighbours were not so steeped in malice, that they could not bear even the name of Catholic. In fact, for the most part, Catholics were well-regarded by their country neighbours. In the towns their reputation was put in doubt by daily slander, alleged crimes and the infliction of undeserved punishments.
(1580) Our own priests, outstanding for learning and holiness of life, inspire such a high opinion of our Order that the awe in which Catholics hold us is something I hesitate to describe ... We cannot hope to escape the hands of the Protestants in the long run; so many eyes, so many mouths, so many traps at the service of the enemy. My dress is very simple and I change it often; likewise our names.
(1580) Our own priests, outstanding for learning and holiness of life, inspire such a high opinion of our Order that the awe in which Catholics hold us is something I hesitate to describe ... We cannot hope to escape the hands of the Protestants in the long run; so many eyes, so many mouths, so many traps at the service of the enemy. My dress is very simple and I change it often; likewise our names.
Robert Persons (17 November 1580) 'The entire kingdom rages most cruelly against the Catholics.'
We know how far we are from the perfection which they admire in us.
Small print runs: Murray Tucker, P. O. Box 288, Traralgon Vic 3844 (03) 5174 - 3021
Many tales are made up about them as formerly by the poets about their monsters ... the wild ravings of weak heads ... a fine type of young man who easily outshone his fellows ... the worst creatures of the night ... inspired many other young men of equal loftiness of soul.
Duncan, B, Crusade or Conspiracy: Catholics and the Anti-Communist Struggle in Australia, UNSW Press, 2001.
The human reality and amusing frailty of the priests and Brothers with whom I came in contact...
We are indebted mainly to the contemporary Spanish embassy in London for the preservation of many of the relics of the Tyburn martyrs and accounts of their passion. The Spanish Ambassador would attend the martyrdoms in his carriage and try to bribe the executioner to obtain the body of the martyr. Sometimes members of the embassy staff would go out at night and, with the aid of lanterns, would search in the pit beside the gallows for the remains of someone martyred during the day. The remains were received by embassy ladies with great reverence and where possible were embalmed and sent over to the continent.
1footnote* There were eight abbeys or priories in Lancashire before the dissolution: Furness, Whalley, Cockersand, Cartmel, Lancaster, Burscough, Upholland, Penwortham and Lytham. There were three Franciscan friaries at Preston, Lancaster and Warrington and no convents.
2 Muldoon, A R, 'Recusants, Church papists and 'Comfortable' missionaries: Assessing the post-Reformation English Catholic Community', Catholic Historical Review, Vol 86 No 2, April 2000, pp 242?258
3 The Catholic priests did not administer parishes; that was impossible. They were each attached to a gentry family or moved around a hidden circuit of Catholic sympathizers.
4 More, H, The Elizabethan Jesuits, Rome, 1660, translated, Edwards, F, Phillimore, London, 1981, p 84
5footnote* Caraman, P, (trans.) John Gerard, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan , Longman Green, London, 1951, Preface, p xviii. A few families organised their whole lives around the priests ministry such as the Vaux sisters at Baddesley Clinton in a remote part of Warwickshire, whose vast semi-fortified residence was used for clerical retreats and meetings. In London, Mistress Margaret Line managed a hostel for priests as they moved in and out of the city. This lasted many years although in due course Margaret Line was caught, imprisoned and executed for harbouring a priest. Many Catholics were inn keepers or some inn keepers were Catholics and their hotels provided accommodation and meeting places for priests on the move and for liturgies.
6 The 815 men who trained for the priesthood during Elizabeth's reign, 1558?1603, were trained in four colleges, Douai (1568), Rome (1579), Valladolid (1589) and Seville (1592).
7 Some readers may ask, if a half of all captured priests were executed, why were not all martyred ? The answer is that government policy waxed and waned over the almost forty years of Elizabeth's reign; some priests who were imprisoned, died there; others were exiled; some escaped; a few had powerful friends (like a European monarch), and the survival of others is simply a mystery. The Jesuit. William Weston, escaped from prison three times; Father John Gerard managed to convert his gaoler and escape from the Tower of London, which was presumed escape-proof.
8footnote* Gillow, J, The Haydock Papers: A Glimpse into English Catholic life, Burns & Oates, London, 1888, p 32
9 Gillow, J, Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics, Vol III, Burns & Oates, London, 1887
10footnote* Rome was a rather unhealthy city at the time, because of the extremely hot summer weather and the Pontine Marshes provided an ideal breeding ground for mosquitos. It was ironically, during the Fascist years of the 1930s that the Pontine marshes were finally drained.