On this day in history, 19th July 1573, Blessed Thomas Woodhouse, former rector of a parish in Lincolnshire and private tutor, was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.

Woodhouse was apprehended on 14th May 1561 and taken to the Fleet Prison. He was received into the Society of Jesus, the Roman Catholic order of religious men founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola and known as Jesuits, while he was in prison.

On 19th November 1572, his twelfth year of imprisonment, Woodhouse wrote a letter to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, a letter which is said to have led to his martyrdom. Here is the text of the letter: