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The Tudor Society
  • January 25 – St Edmund Campion, Catholic Martyr

    Engraving of St Edmund Campion with a knife in his chest

    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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  • Blessed Thomas Woodhouse – the first priest to be executed in Elizabeth I’s reign

    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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