On this day in Tudor history, 12th March 1564, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Roman Catholic priest and martyr Christopher Bales was baptised in Coniscliffe, in County Durham, in the north of England.
Bales ended up being executed by hanging on 4th March 1590.
Let me tell you a bit more about Bales and how he came to this sad end…
On this day in Tudor history, 25th January 1540, St Edmund Campion, Jesuit and martyr, was born in London.
Campion was hanged, drawn and quartered on 1st December 1581 for treasonable conspiracy. He was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII and canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.
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On 11th January 1584, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Blessed William Carter was executed for treason.
Printer William Carter, who was about thirty-six years of age at his death, had been found guilty of treason for printing a book which allegedly contained a passage inciting the queen’s assassination. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.
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On this day in Tudor history, 1st December 1581, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Alexander Briant was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, along with Ralph Sherwin and Edmund Campion.
The twenty-five-year-old Roman Catholic priest had been imprisoned, and had suffered being starved, racked and tortured in other awful ways, but claimed that he felt no pain due to God’s help. He also refused to give his interrogators the information they wanted. Briant was tried for treason and suffered a full traitor’s death.
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On this day in Tudor history, 15th October 1584, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Richard Gwyn (Richard White) was hanged, drawn and quartered at Wrexham in Wales.
The schoolteacher and poet was executed for high treason for his Catholic faith.
Find out about Richard Gwyn’s life, how an attack by crows and kites made him steadfast in his faith, his arrest and downfall, his works, and the legends associated with his death…
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On this day in Tudor history, 24th July 1594, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Catholic priest John Boste was executed in Durham.
Find out more about Boste and what led to his brutal end in this edition of #TudorHistoryShorts…
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Polydore Plasden was born in 1563 and was the son of a London horner. He was educated at Rheims and then at the English College in Rome. He was ordained as a priest on 7th December 1586. He remained in Rome for a year after his ordination and then moved back to Rheims, where he stayed from 8th April to 2nd September 1588.
When Polydore returned to England in 1588, he ministered in Sussex and London until 1591, at which point he was captured on 2nd November. He was captured in London at Swithun Wells’ house, where Edmund Gennings was celebrating Mass alongside other fellow Catholics who were captured beside Polydore.
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Richard Leigh was born in 1557, the son of Richard Leigh and Clemence Holcroft, daughter of Sir John Holcroft.
Leigh was the subject of an arranged marriage in 1562 with Anne Belfield, daughter of Ralph Belfield of Clegg Hall. Anne’s sister, Elizabeth, was also married that day to Alexander Barlow. However, both marriages were annulled at a later date on the grounds that they were all too young to be legally married.
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Margaret Ward was born in Congleton, Cheshire, in around 1550; however, this is an estimated guess as we know very little information regarding her early life.
What we do know is that Margaret was living in London, working in the service of a lady, when she found out about the suffering of Richard Watson, a Catholic priest who was imprisoned at Bridewell Prison. She eventually obtained permission to visit him, and over the course of her visits, the guards became less cautious. This lack of caution enabled Margaret to formulate an escape plan for Watson. Margaret’s plan involved commissioning a boatman to take him to safety after he had escaped using some rope that she would provide.
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On 25th January 1540, Jesuit priest and martyr, St Edmund Campion, was born in London. Although he was close to the Earl of Leicester and William Cecil at one point, he ended up being thrown into the Tower of London’s Little Ease and being executed as a traitor. Let me tell you his story in today’s video.
On 26th January 1528, diplomat and courtier Sir Francis Poyntz died of the plague.
On 27th January 1556, in the reign of Queen Mary I, Bartholomew Green, also known as Bartlet Green, was burnt at the stake for heresy with six other Protestants. He could have got away with receiving communion according to Protestant rites, but he did something that brought him to the attention of the queen and her government. Find out what he did, and about his sad end…
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On this day in Tudor history, 19th June 1573, Jesuit priest and former rector of a Lincolnshire parish, Thomas Woodhouse, was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.
Blessed Thomas Woodhouse was the first priest to be executed in Elizabeth I’s reign, and he was beatified in December 1886 by Pope Leo XIII.
When you hear what he said to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, you can understand just why he was seen as a traitor by Burghley and Elizabeth I’s government. Not wise words in those times, but he stuck to his faith and principles.
Find out more in today’s video.
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On this day in Tudor history, 20th March 1544, Cuthbert Mayne (Main/Maine) or St Cuthbert Mayne, Roman Catholic priest and martyr, was baptised in Youlston in North Devon.
Cuthbert Mayne has gone down in history as the first seminary priest to be martyred. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Launceston on 30th November 1577, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
Let me tell you a bit more about this Elizabethan martyr.
[Read More...]It’s not unusual for my interest to be piqued when I’m going through my list of “on this day” events, and today it was William Carter’s execution, on 11th January 1584, which made me want to dig a bit deeper into his story.
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In today’s Claire Chats video talk, I talk about the Rome and Rheims Plot, a fictional plot in which 20 men, mostly Catholic priests, were implicated. Many of them were tortured, tried and executed.
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On 28th May 1582, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Roman Catholic priests Thomas Forde, John Shert and Robert Johnson were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.
In his Memoirs of Missionary Priests, Bishop Richard Challoner gives a biography of each of these Catholic martyrs. You can read it online at archive.org/details/memoirsofmission01, but here are a few details about these men and what led to their horrific ends.
Thomas Forde was a Devonshire man who was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, where he graduated MA in 1567 before becoming a fellow there. He resigned his fellowship due to the college’s Protestant stance and in 1571 he travelled to the English College, a Catholic seminary, at Douai in France, to study divinity. In 1573, Forde entered the priesthood and in 1576 he attained his degree in divinity. He then returned to England to evangelise, i.e. spread the Catholic faith. He was arrested on 17th July 1581 with Edmund Campion in Berkshire and taken to London. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London and condemned to death on 21st November 1581 for being involved in what Challoner describes as “the pretended conspiracy of the Rhemes [Rheims] and Rome”, although, as Challoner points out “he had never been in his life either at Rhemes or Rome; nor had the witnesses that appeared against him […] ever so much as seen Mr Forde before his imprisonment.
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On 24th September 1589, William Spenser, a Roman Catholic priest, and layman Robert Hardesty were executed at York. Spenser was executed for being a priest, and Hardesty for sheltering Spenser.
In his book Acts of English martyrs, John Hungerford Pollen, writes that William Spenser was born in Gisburn in Yorkshire and that he was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, supported by his uncle William Horn. There he was a scholar and fellow, and graduated MA in 1580. Pollen states that he met Spenser at Oxford:
“There I knew him for about eight years, always leading a most upright life, but suffering much at the hands of the heretics even before he left the university, because he was looked on as leaning somewhat towards the Catholic faith. They brought many charges against him, and he would argue against them, but never recklessly. From the time he was a boy his zeal for souls was marvellous, and he never neglected the first rudiments of faith taught him by his uncles, but acted up to them with zeal and constancy to the time of his death.”
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On this day in history, 4th July 1597, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, three men were martyred at Knavesmire, York. They were William Anlaby (or Andleby), Catholic priest; layman Thomas Warcop, who had been charged with harbouring Anlaby, and layman Edward Fulthrop.
William Anlaby was born c.1552 in Etton, Yorkshire, and was the second son of John Anlaby of Etton and his wife, Dorothy. Anlaby graduated BA from St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1571. He converted from Protestantism to Catholicism in 1577 after meeting Cardinal William Allen at Douai while travelling. Anlaby joined Allen’s college, or seminary, there and was ordained as a Catholic priest at Cateau-Cambrésis. In 1578, Anlaby was sent as a missionary to England, where he worked in Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire, Durham and Yorkshire, including ministering to Catholic prisoners at Hull gaol.
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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:
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On this day in history, 17th April 1595, Henry Walpole, the Jesuit martyr, was hanged, drawn and quartered in the city of York. Walpole had been accused of treason on three counts: that he “had abjured the realm without licence; that he had received holy orders overseas; and that he had returned to England as a Jesuit priest to exercise his priestly functions”. Walpole was beatified in 1929 and canonised in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.
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