 Chapter 4 of A Book of English Martyrs A Book of English Martyrs by E. M. Wilmot Buxton Chapter 4 Papists and Heretics Eighteen years had passed away since the fall of Cromwell in 1540, had to some extent stayed the persecuting hand of Henry VIII. Seven years later the king himself had gone to meet his terrible account, leaving in charge of his young son Edward, a land torn asunder by the extraordinary upheaval of the past twenty years. It is indeed almost impossible to realize the effect of the shock to England of the changes brought about by the so-called Reformation. The monasteries alone had formed such an important part of ordinary social life as the schools, the libraries, the hospitals, the all-moners, and indeed the whole charity organization of the time that the suppression of more than six hundred of these religious houses was bound to disorganize the country. Thousands of monks, lay brothers, and nuns had been turned out, often without any friends or means of support, and left to starve by the wayside. Many of these monks were men of learning, with all the taste of a student and no knowledge of practical affairs, and these found themselves at the mercy of a brutal mob or a jeering crowd as they passed in their worn habits through the public streets. When this became the ordinary fate of men whose holy office had hitherto caused for them respect and reverence, the effect upon the more ignorant part of the population can be easily understood. When the ordinary restraints of religion are destroyed, license and disorder became a natural result, and accounts for much of the extraordinary violence shown in the reign of Henry VI, when the persecution of abbots and monks was exchanged for a furious attack upon the churches and the shantries of the land. So we find the beautiful old buildings, raised by the generosity of benefactors and the loving hands of monastic workmen, despoiled. The statue of our Lady smashed with ribald glee, the holy rude from which the image of the Savior stretched, imploring hands, defaced by His rebellious children, the stained windows splintered by stones, the painted walls long, bright, with pictures of the saints covered with coats of whitewash. When England had fallen so far from grace, she might well wish to hide or destroy all those tender reminders of her former position as the Isle of Saints. Then in the July of the year 1553 the boy king, who had been simply the tool of one ambitious nobleman after another, died, and his sister Mary, after years of disgrace and peril, was hailed as Queen of England by a joyful crowd of Londoners. Was it but the fickleness of the changeable mob, or were men beginning already to weary of the stone that had been given them in place of bread? It certainly seemed as though the greater part of England would have been unfainedly glad to return to the old paths of the Catholic faith, had it not been for that ill-fated marriage with the prince of the hated Spanish race. As it was, Mary's people could but look on and distaste and wonder at her union with the man who neglected and forsook her, and later at the persecutions for heresy at the hands of one who, at her accession, had urged her subjects to live together in quiet sort and Christian charity without use of the new found devilish terms of papest and heretic. It must, however, in fairness be remembered that the so-called martyrs who suffered under Mary died not for their fidelity to the faith, or of the English church, but for their holding of opinions which had brought down a similar penalty in the latter days of the reforming Henry VIII, and that these very reformers themselves had never hesitated to send such heretics as anti-Baptists to the stake, but that we will not attempt to justify either one side or the other in need scarcely be said. One class of Englishmen, however, much they disapproved of the fires at Smithfield, must have felt unmixed relief at the prospect of a return to the old ways of Catholicism. The landed gentry of the countryside had never ceased to regret the changes that had occurred in the past twenty years. They had not wavered in their faith, but all that had been to them of aid and consolation in their often lonely lives had been swept away. In place of the genial parish priest, they found some undergroom, or unlearned curate, jeered at by the country lads as lack-latins, who slubbered up their services, or were still read a service that sounded strange and irreverent to the ears attuned to the fine cadences of the Roman Missal. No longer could they send their boys and girls to the neighbouring Abbey school or convent for the beautiful old cloisters where the children had stood to sing their pricksong, now stood ruthless and desolate. In the dark chimney corner during the long dull winter evenings, while the Christmas logs were sending up their lazy smoke, as his children gathered round him and stared at the fire many an old squire, still but a little past his prime, would tell of this or that prior or monk who used to drop in in the old days and bring some relief to the monotony of their isolated lives, he would not sell to mutter his curse upon the ribald recklessness of the parvenous who had ousted their betters and made the grand old places desolate. Sometimes too he would sigh for a priest of the old school into whose practised ear he might pour out his soul to seek remission of sins that press sorely upon his hardened conscience. How bitterly he would mourn for the good old times and denounce the wild havoc that had been wrought. Generous lads heard the laments and brooded over them. They got to believe that their parents' lives had been saddened and their own estate seriously damaged by that which they had been taught from childhood to regard as sacrilege. And the rising generation were in the mood to hope for little in the future and to regret very much in the past. To such as these the reconciliation of England to the holy sea came as an unmixed joy. It was too late to restore the abbey lands that by this time had changed hands more than once. But hopes were high that the return of monks and priors and priests of the old order would again revive. Just when this seemed most possible, Queen Mary died. And out of the tumult of disappointed hopes and irritated feelings that lay on the surface and the deep devotion to the Catholic Church of their fathers that surged beneath arose that spirit of enthusiasm and faith that was to produce a noble army of martyrs during the reign of Elizabeth. The hearts of those who cared so deeply about these things might well have grown heavy when they heard that at the opening of Elizabeth's first parliament, which contained but ten who were loyal to the Catholic faith, no mass of the Holy Ghost was sung at Westminster. And that when the abbot received the Queen at the entrance to the abbey with the usual procession of monks bearing lighted candles, she had cried, Away with these lights we see very well. She had listened more over on that occasion to the sermon of a heretic priest who had said many things against the Christian religion. It was no wonder that the more ignorant folk taking their cue from such happenings began a campaign of sacrilege and blasphemy which drove the only abbot who still survived in the House of Lords to make a hot protest. My good lords, when in Queen Mary's days you know how the people of this realm did live in an order, there was no spoiling of churches, pulling down of altars, and most blasphemous treading down of the sacrament under their feet. The subjects of this realm knew the way unto churches and chapels, there to begin their daily work with calling for help and grace by humble prayer. But now, since the coming of our most sovereign and dear Lady Queen Elizabeth, all things are now changed and turned upside down. Abedience has gone, humility and meekness clean abolished, and virtuous chaste and straight living abandoned. Yet when the act of supremacy, which made the Queen to be supreme in all causes, both ecclesiastical and civil, was passed, only one member of the Commons spoke out boldly against it, and that was Dr. John Story, late Chancellor to the Bishop of London, one of those who had taken part in the trial of Archbishop Cranmer in Mary's reign, and had helped, though without undue severity, to suppress the heretics who had tried to set up a new religion during those years. For his outspoken condemnation of the changes proposed by this act, and that of uniformity, which imposed a penalty on those who refused to attend the reformed services, Story was summoned before the Council, when he defied his accusers to prove that he had said anything at which offense could reasonably be taken, adding, Should Her Majesty will otherwise, I do not refuse to die for the Church. The words were prophetic of his end, but in those days he was more eager to live for his faith than to lay down his life. He had done nothing so far for which he could be condemned, but on openly taking the side of a Catholic Bishop who was about to be deprived of his lands, Story found himself in peril at the hands of his many enemies on the Council, and so fled to the West Country in disguise. As soon, however, as it was realized that a sure way of winning favor with the Queen was to attack those who clung to the Catholic faith, her servants were on the lookout for all suspects, and one of them, a fellow called Aylworth, recognized Doctor Story, dressed in a freeze coat, like a serving man and writing before the mail. Accused of having to obstinately refused attendance or public worship, and everywhere declaiming and railing against that religion which we now profess, he was thrown into the Fleet Prison, a miserable place, where the prisoners had to pay an exorbitant sum for the necessaries of life, from here being a man of much spirit and resource, he seems to have made his escape. We find him retaken some two years later, again in the West Country, this time disguised as a courier. He was now thrown into the Marshall Sea Prison, while his enemies hurried through Parliament a new act which required the oath of supremacy to be taken, on pain of death, by anyone who had held office during the last three reigns. Life is sweet to all of us, and John Story had a wife and children whom he tenderly loved. Faced with the grim alternative of acting against his conscience or being hanged, he determined to avoid both by escaping from the country. A Flemish gentleman confined in the same prison for debt gave him information of how to get across the Channel to Belgium, and helped him to escape from his cell into a garden. This led down to the river, and having scaled a wall, Story took a boat and went to the house of the Spanish ambassador, from whose chaplain he hoped to get assistance. The chaplain was out, however, and Story had to wait for an anxious hour or two until his return, when he begged him to help him to escape. Afraid of compromising his master with the Queen, the chaplain refused, and poor Story went out into the cold midnight to do what he could alone. For a time he lay hid in the houses of his friends, but at length he managed to get a passage across to Belgium, and settle down at Le Vein, where his family soon joined him. From that time Story became a changed man. His old spirit and enterprise forsook him, and he seemed crushed under the mysterious burden of woe. His wife thought it was on account of the utter poverty to which he saw her and his children reduced, but at length he confided to her that he suffered bitterly from the remembrance that he had thrown away the crown of martyrdom when it was placed within his grasp. She, seeing his evident eagerness to return, and give himself up, persuaded him to take advice upon the matter, and he was assured that since he had been delivered by the will of God he must not count upon divine grace if he placed himself in danger when God had set him free. Still, however, he could not quiet his conscience. He tried to get his wife to enter the religious life that he might be free to become a monk of the charter house at Le Vein, and so expiate his failing by a life of penance, and when she would not agree he compromised by spending more time at prayer with the Carthusians than at home with his family. But even this solace was denied him. For his household now increased by the family of a nephew and niece and a married daughter with her children, whom the penal laws had driven out of England had to be maintained. These seven years of poverty, anxiety, and exile were but steps on the ladder of martyrdom. He was known in England to be in close communication with the Duke of Alva, and that through the letter he had received some help and money from the King of Spain. This was magnified into treason, and a plot was laid to entrap him. It had been lately arranged by the King of Spain and the Duke of Alva that all English ships coming and going from the port of Antwerp should be searched for heretical books or other forbidden merchandise. Hearing this, the English Council bribed one William Parker, brother of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, under the pretense of being a convert to Catholicism and a fugitive from his own country to obtain the post of searcher from Alva. This was readily granted, for the Duke was naturally much interested in the case of a convert so nearly related to the Chief Spiritual Heretic in England, and Parker at once offered the post of assistant to Dr. Story, who was still living in great poverty in Louvain and quite unable to find work. Story seems to have utterly disliked the office, which was quite unworthy of a man of his position, but he would not refuse because of his family. He was by this time a naturalized Spanish subject, and as such there was no reason whatever for refusing to take office under the Spanish King any more than there is reason to believe that at any time he took part in a plot to rid England of a Protestant queen by the aid of the King of Spain. Thus he walked innocently enough into the net so carefully spread for him. Certain agents of Cecil, Elizabeth's Prime Minister, otherwise spies, arranged that a ship should enter the port of Antwerp, and that Parker and Dr. Story should search it as usual. Three merchants were bribed to carry this out, and the ship having touched at Bergen up Zoom, the two went on board and below hatches to search the cargo. At once the hatches were shut down, and the ship set full sail for Yarmouth, where Dr. Story was landed on an August evening of the year 1570. He was now an old man of 66, much tried by poverty and disease, and he writes a pathetic letter to Cecil on his arrival begging that if he be thrown into his old prison he may be made to wear heavy irons on that of my legs, which is only able to bear the same. He also pleads that Cecil will hear his side of the matter and not only that of his agents. There was great rejoicing in London at the old man's apprehension. The Lollard's Tower, in which he shut up the heretics whom the ancient laws then punished, was to be nulock and bolted to shut him up for fear less in a common prison he should find too many friends. And while with great ingenuity his jailer, the Archdeacon of London, was appointing two of my neighbors being honest men and favorable of the truth to be his keepers jointly, and have divided the keys of the prison between them so that the one cannot come to him without the other. He also reports that his prisoner seemeth to take little thought for any matters. He might well not grieve at the straightness of his prison for the day of his real deliverance was now assured, though it was to be won through a bitter draining of the cup of suffering. In the December of that year, 1570, the King of Spain received this ominous letter. Dr. Storey has been lodged in the Tower and confronted with the man who brought him. He is accused of having plotted with the Duke of Alva. They are putting him to the torture today, and I expect it will go hardly with him. God help him. All the Catholics pray for him. The difficulty, of course, was to find any good cause of condemnation in finding themselves hard put to it. A new charge was concocted by the Council of having had intercourse with a traitor at Antwerp in the person of one of the Nortons, the family who had led the ill-fated northern rising in the end of the year 1569, and who had fled to Belgium for their lives. In the indictment against Storey, we find it stated that he came one day to Parker's house at Antwerp, where, sitting at dinner, the elder Norton and some other of his company came in from the church, and one said, This is Norton, and there upon Storey rose, and gave him place, and bid him welcome. And so the elder Norton sat down in Storey's place. On this frivolous charge, therefore, was John Storey brought to Westminster Hall in the May of 1571. He was weak with long imprisonment, and his body torn with the frequent torture that had been used to ring some incriminating admission from him. But when he found himself before magistrates appointed by an excommunicated queen, he refused to plead, saying that he was not an English subject, that men were not born slaves but free men, and that he was a naturalized Spaniard, the subject of the most Catholic and mighty prince, the King of Spain. In his courage and despair he called upon any friends who might be present to give notice to that prince, how cruelly they dealt with him, though he must have known that Philip was but a broken reed upon which to lean. The Spanish ambassador, indeed, after his condemnation did demand that Storey should be sent back to Flanders, upon which Elizabeth insolently replied that the King of Spain might have his head, but that she meant to keep his body. So William Storey alone and friendless, though still undaunted in spirit, was condemned to be hung, drawn and quartered, and was taken to the tower through a yelling crowd, who shrieked blasphemous outrages all the way. To all of which he answered never a word, but his brave speech and bearing had not been unmarked by one who stood by and watched the progress of his trial. A young man of brilliant intellect and great promise, who had been led by hopes of high ferment to linger a while in the paths of heresy, had lately become more and more uneasy as to his position. He had by this time openly professed the Catholic faith, but from any further step he held back until he was present at the unjust trial of Blessed William Storey. That decided him. He was animated to offer himself by this blessed man's example to any danger or peril for the same faith for which the doctor died. So the man who was to be known as Blessed Edmund Campion set forth at once for Douay, there to become a Jesuit priest and one of the noblest of armarters. Just before his death Storey wrote his wife a letter in which he thanks God that he was thought worthy to die in so good a cause and thinks that his wife and all his friends would be right glad if they knew with what eagerness he prepared himself for that death by which in so short a time he would expiate the faults of a life of nearly seventy years. He was helped in this preparation by his old friend Fekenheim, abbot of Westminster, himself a prisoner in the tower, who was allowed to spend that last night with him. On the morning of the first of June the martyr was was drawn on the hurdle from the tower to Tyburn. Even on that terrible journey men ceased not to revile him and to call on him to repent, but he lay as though he had been asleep and would not speak to any person. When however he was set up on the cart under the gallows he made a beautiful speech full of resignation and spiritual joy. He confessed that for a time he had been sorely afraid of death but that had now passed from him. He briefly recounted the story of his arrest and trial and declared that he was innocent of any plot against the Queen. He referred to the charge of cruelty in the previous reign which the mob had so persistently brought against him and reminded them that while he was bound by his office to carry out the sentence of the Bishop for Heresy both he and Bonner had done their best to be merciful. On one occasion indeed saving twenty-eight heretics from burning on the plea that they knew not what they did. Wherefore I pray you, name me not cruel. I would be loath to have any such slander to run on me, but sith I die in charity. I pray you all of charity to pray for me that God may strengthen me with patience to suffer my death to the which I yield most willingly. In the midst of a declaration that he died in the ship of Christ of which the Apostle Peter is the guide they began to question him anew and receiving nothing of satisfaction from him cried away with the cart and so he was hanged. He was cut down immediately and cruelly butchered while still in the possession of his senses and so through much tribulation obtained the martyr's crown. On the walls of his prison in the Bochamp Tower that almost sacred spot hallowed with the memories of so many of our martyrs you may still see the inscription cut by his own hand. CHAPTER V. THE NORTHERN RISING AND ITS EFFECTS. 1568-1572 Throughout his life he was beyond measure dear to the whole people from Sanders' martyrdom of Blessed Thomas Percy. The first ten years of the reign of Elizabeth 1558 through 1568 were not a time of persecution. Penal laws had been made but were not strictly enforced and the earlier imprisonment of Blessed John's story was due rather to his outspoken criticism of the acts of supremacy and uniformity than to the fact that he was a Catholic. All the bishops, it is true, said one had refused to take the oath of supremacy and had been thrown into prison but when the more advanced reformers urged the Queen's advisors to kill the caged wolves the latter wisely held their hands. In the year 1570 however the fire of persecution shot up anew and four martyrs including Blessed John's story perished. The reasons for this change of spirit are interesting. The ambition of Queen Elizabeth had at first been to win popularity in all quarters from Catholic and Protestant alike. Herself devoid of any kind of religious conviction she fondly imagined that her choice of a via media as the policy of the English church combining Protestant doctrines with a certain amount of Catholic order and ceremonial would satisfy all parties and as wise Catholics were content to suppress their opinions and to offer no open opposition to her supremacy they were allowed to stay away from the Protestant service held in their parish churches with only an occasional fine as a reminder of their position and even to hear mass whenever they could smuggle a priest quietly into their houses for the purpose was not a dangerous matter. With this state of sufferance therefore Catholics were obliged to be content until the year 1568 when the flight of Mary, Queen of Scots into England kindled almost forgotten hopes and the flame of religious zeal burned up anew. For Mary though a prisoner in her cousin's hands was a Catholic and next heir to the throne and it was impossible but that even those most loyal to Elizabeth should look forward to the day when she should rule in England. The affairs of the country however were in the hands of William Cecil one of the most astute politicians who ever lived and he knowing well that the one strong bond between Catholics and Protestants was their common hatred of themselves determined to separate their forces by a far severe administration of the penal laws where Catholics were concerned. These fell with special weight upon the North Country which partly because of its isolation had never fallen away in any market degree from the faith. The people it is true had been forced to look on while their beautiful cathedrals of York, Ripon, Durham and Carlisle had been stripped of their crucifixes and their altars while the care of their souls had been committed to strange bishops and ministers who read in the place of the ancient liturgy an unfamiliar service which they were fined if they did not attend. But the faith lived on. The new Bishop of Carlisle complained bitterly at the great prevalence of Popory in his diocese. The Earl of Sussex, the Queen's General in the North, wrote frankly to Cecil, there are not ten gentlemen in all this country that favor the Queen's proceedings in religion. Hence it was that in the year 1569 the eyes of Catholics in the North began to turn hopefully towards Thomas Percy, Earl of North Thumberland, who were the Earl of Westmoreland, was the leading Catholic nobleman of the district. As a child of nine years old Thomas Percy had listened awestruck to the news of his father's death on Tyburn Tree for that he did as a false traitor conspired to deprive the king of his royal dignity, visa being on earth supreme head of the Church of England, under St. Cuthbert's banner that brave father had led one army of the pilgrimage of grace. And when he died for his faith he left a legacy of religious seal to his young son that was to develop into the martyr's crown. After a forlorn childhood Percy came into his own again during the reign of Mary when he was created Earl of North Thumberland and warden of the marches. This office had been busy with order warfare and afforded an excuse to the Council for his not being summoned to attend the Parliament of Elizabeth which passed the acts of supremacy and uniformity. Suspicion and distrust began to surround the Earl almost from the first for the agents of Cecil had been already tampering with his younger brother Henry and they were well aware of the horror with which Thomas Percy regarded the latter's apostasy from the faith. Finding his position as warden untenable under such conditions the Earl resigned it and went to live for a time at Petworth his estate in Sussex. It is possible that during these years he escaped persecution by conforming as did countless other Catholics of that time to the rule of attending his parish church and that this was what he refers to when he declared at the time of his trial that he had been reconciled to the church some two years before the rebellion that he did not apostatize is clear from the fact that he spoke boldly in the Parliament of 1563 against the act imposing the oath of supremacy on all Catholics on penalty of death saying that the heretics should be satisfied to enjoy the bishoprics and benefits of the others without wishing to cut off their heads as well. And again in 1566 against the hasty act brought in to declare the defective consecration of the protestant bishops good lawful and perfect. Three years later Percy was staying at Topcliffe his Yorkshire estate when he heard of the arrival of a certain Dr. Nicholas Porton. This man once pre-Bendery of York Minster was now acting by the Pope's orders as apostolic penitentiary in order to grant faculties to those priests yet in the country who were anxious to administer the sacraments to Catholics. Dr. Morton had been staying at the house of his relative Mr. Richard Norton an old Catholic gentleman who with his son Francis was seething with wrath against the treatment of his fellow Catholics at the hands of Cecil. When Percy knew of this he sent for Mr. Morton and spoke to him very strongly of the great grief he had for that they all lived out of the laws of the Catholic Church for the restitution of which he would willingly spend his life. Then Francis Norton joined the conference the possibility of securing the freedom of Mary of Scotland as the next heir to the throne was discussed. Preparations for a general rising among the Catholics of the North was set on foot and all through that autumn the Catholic Gentry met first in one place then in another to frame their plans. Curiously enough the Earl of Northumberland was the last to give his consent to a general revolt. It was indeed torn between his loyalty to his sovereign and his devotion to the Church. In nothing but his belief that only by setting free the person of Mary could they hope to secure religious liberty prevailed on him to join it. That he had not the faintest intention of personal harm or even of disloyalty to Elizabeth is clear from a letter written to her the day before the rebellion broke out and that his one object was the safeguarding of the faith is equally clear from his reply to one who urged that they should give some other cause for the revolt than the Catholic religion. I neither know of nor acknowledge any others at the Earl for we are seeking I imagine the glory not of men but of God. The actual rising was precipitated by a sudden summons to the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland to appear before the Queen. At once they gathered their men and marched on Durham where amid the joyful shouts of the people they went to the Cathedral, cast out the Communion Table and Protestant service books and publicly restored the altar and the Mass. They stayed but one hour but that was long enough to bring back the ancient faith lost for eleven years to the city of St. Cuthbert. The Protestant cannons and ministers fled and once more the Cathedral and the churches of the city were to be seen filled with penitents who, melting thousands at the feet of four zealous priests to receive absolution for the falling away of those dark years of schism. The investigations during the trials that followed reveal a moving picture of the relief of the people at this return to the ancient faith of the scruples of the singing men who had not yet had time to be reconciled as to whether they might sing the Mass and of the reassurance of the priest of their joy at being allowed to occupy their bodies that is to tell their beads again and to receive once more holy water into their houses as well as in the church. We hear also the thronged high Mass at the Cathedral on St. Andrew's Day when the crowd was so great that some could not see the Mass and so sat down in the low end and said their prayers. Meanwhile the two earls were moving southward to Mary's Prison at Tutbury under a standard representing our Lord with blood streaming from his five wounds which was held by gray-haired old Mr. Richard Norton. With them marched their chaplain, Thomas Plum Tree, and a great force all of whom were red crosses, as well the priests as others, through Stain Drop and Darlington and Ripon they passed, staying only to see the Holy Mass once more celebrated in each of these places and having captured a body of horse at Tadcaster and camped on Clifford Moore. A vigorous assault on York would probably have left the North Country in their hands but supplies and money were falling short and the leaders could not agree upon their plans. Turning north again they began to besiege Bernard Castle but, disquieting rumors, reached them from Durham. Earl Percy returned Bither with Father Plum Tree to guard the city. So he was present on that wonderful occasion when on the second Sunday in Advent before High Mass the whole of the vast congregation was absolved from the sins of heresy committed during the previous eleven years. This was their last scene of triumph. Westmoreland would have fought to the last, regardless of the hopelessness of their cause. The gentler Northumberland, always unwilling to resist his queen, hesitated to place so many brave fellows in peril of their lives. And so in the middle of December they dismissed their followers and fled to Scotland from once Westmoreland, the Nortons, and others escaped to the Continent. A dreadful vengeance was exacted from the North by Cecil. In the country of Durham alone says the historian Lindgard more than three hundred individuals suffered death, nor was there between Newcastle and Weatherby, a district of sixty miles in length and forty in breadth, a town or village in which some of the inhabitants did not expire on the gibbet. The hand of the avenger fell heaviest on Durham, as might have been expected, but one of the first to suffer was the priest Thomas Plumtree. On the fourth of January, fifteen-seventy, he was taken from Durham Castle to the Marketplace, where, on his arriving at the place of execution, his life was offered to him if he would but renounce the Catholic faith and embrace the heresy, to which he made answer that he had no desire so to continue living in the world as, meantime, to die to God. Wherefore, having fearlessly confessed his faith by God's grace, he suffered death in this world that he might merit to receive from Christ eternal life. Meantime, the Earl of Northumberland and his brave wife, who had been at his side ever since the rising began, had taken refuge in the cottage of a border outlaw of Littisdale named John Odeside, driven thence by suspicion of disloyalty among the Littlesdale men, who went in fear of Murray, the Scottish region. The Earl fled to the protection of the Armstrong clan, one of whom he had befriended when a fugitive in England. They appeared to receive him kindly, but a plot had already been made with the region, and Hector Armstrong had volunteered to be the one to portray his former benefactor. He persuaded the Earl to meet an envoy from Murray for a friendly conference, while they talked arranged that a troop of horsemen should surround them and carry off the former to Haywick as the region's prisoner. When she heard this, Elizabeth insisted on his being handed over to her, though warned that most of the nobility of Scotland thought it a great reproach to the country to deliver any banished man to the slaughter. While the matter was under discussion, and the queen was hesitating to pay the large ransom, asked, the noble prisoner was left to a heartbreaking imprisonment and the lonely castle of Lock Levin. There he remained for two and a half years in great anxiety as to the safety of his wife and his four little girls, and harassed by his keeper, the Laird of Lock Levin, who was continually urging him to give up his faith on condition of release. Then in 1572 came a gleam of hope. His gallant wife had been moving heaven and earth to raise a large sum of money for his ransom from the Scots. With great difficulty, thanks to a timely promise of four thousand crowns from Pope Pius V, this had now been done. In both she and the friends of Percy were able to write congratulating him on his immediate release and arranging for his safe passage to the continent. Directly this was made known to Elizabeth through her spies. She hastened to make a disgraceful bargain with the regent for a sum of two thousand pounds. As this outbid the money offered by the Countess, the earl was handed over to Lord Hunston by the cold blooded Laird, who actually tried to persuade him that he was going to be set free and allowed to depart from the country in peace. You have got your money, but you have sold your faith and honor, declared Hunston as he paid the ransom to the Scottish Laird, and seems in his pity for a prisoner who had the pluck to discuss hawks and hounds with him, though very sorrowful and fearing for his life, to have raised hopes of Her Majesty's mercy in the earl's breast. These, however, were soon crushed by the order to take him to York for execution, which Hunston bluntly refused to do. He conducted him, however, to his own feudal castle at Aldenburg, not without anxiety, for the way led through the land of a people who knew no other prince but a Percy, and from thence Sir John Forster, to whom the castle had been given, conveyed him to York. Here once again he was offered his life if he would but give up his faith, and once more firmly refused. His modest firmness is commented on even by his gay hauler, Forster, who announced to him that he would be executed on the following day, and yet the heart of this man, still in the prime of life at forty-four, must have been full of desire to live. Probably he had been allowed to see his four little daughters as he passed through Topcliffe on his journey to York. Probably they had clung round his neck and begged him to come back to them and to bring their mother home once more. The familiar scenes, the friendly faces of the Northumbrian Yeoman and Shepherds, the sweet August sunshine, all must have stirred in him an intense wish to return to the old, normal, happy life that seemed now like a dream. The alternative was the scaffold, the block, the disgrace of a traitor's death. Yet he never wavered, but after a night of prayer went forth to the place of execution with a cheerful and glad countenance. On the scaffold he spoke some plain words. No, he said to the listening crowd, that from my earliest years down to this present day I've held the faith of that church, which throughout the whole Christian world, is knit and bound together, and that in the same faith I am about to end this unhappy life. But as for this new Church of England I do not acknowledge it. At these words the Protestant minister Palmer, who had been set to harass him the previous night, called out, I see that you are dying an obstinate papist, a member not of the Catholic, but of the Roman Church, to which the earl made dignified answer. That, which you call the Roman Church, is the Catholic Church, which has been founded on the teaching of the apostles, Jesus Christ himself being its cornerstone, strengthened by the blood of martyrs, honored by the recognition of the Holy Fathers. And it continues always the same, being the Church against which, as Christ our Savior said, the gates of hell shall not prevail. Then says Sander, after kissing a cross which he traced upon the ladder of the scaffold, with his arms so folded on his breast, as to form a cross. He stretched himself upon the block, and as soon as he had once said, Lord, receive my soul, the executioner struck off his head. At that same instant the great groan, which sounded like a roll of thunder, burst from the weeping spectators, as with one voice they called on God to receive his soul, unto eternal rest. So died blessed Thomas Percy, one who throughout his life was beyond measure, dear to the whole people. At three o'clock on Friday, August 22, 1572. The Queen never was, nor is, nor shall be, head of the Church in England. Words of blessed Cuthbert Mayne, the day before his martyrdom. On Thursday, May 25, the Feast of Corpus Christi, in the year 1570, London was in a strange ferment of excitement. It was not an account of the feast itself, for the days of joyous processions, when the blessed sacrament was carried through the kneeling ranks of worshipers, were over now, and well nigh forgotten by all but the elder folk. Yet the throng was thickest in St. Paul's Churchyard, from whence the procession used to start, and a crowd of people were staring up at the gates of the Bishop of London's Palace, close by the Cathedral. What is it? What is it? cried a young man, who had come too late to get a place anywhere near the front of the mob, to whom one who was pushing his way out of the throng replied in awestruck tones, to his abull of excommunication, sent by the Pope against the Queen's Majesty. But whoever dared to put it up there, exclaimed the youth. That no one knows, but it has been there since dawn, and already they say the houses of all the Catholics, in or around London, are being searched. Twas a bold man, who fixed up that parchment, said the young man thoughtfully, I, and will go hard for him if he is discovered, said the other. Not that these Catholics seem to fear the consequences of their obstinacy, for I have already heard several of the crowd express their joy that this bull releases them from their allegiance, and that a redress for their evils is now bound shortly to follow, since the Christian princes of Europe will not fail to take up their cause against an excommunicate Queen. That is strange talk, said the lad. I myself, come of a Catholic family, and hold the old faith, and though I know many Catholics, I never heard of one who was less loyal to the Queen than the Protestants, that they longed for freedom and their religion goes without saying, but they would not do ought to harm a hair of the Queen's head. Then, tis a desperate remedy they have hit upon Yonder, for me thinks Twill recoil hardest upon themselves, replied the Protestant with a somewhat mocking smile, and forthwith went his way. Later on, the lad heard that a lawyer, in whose chambers a copy of the bull had been found, had been cruelly wracked, till he confessed that it had been given him by his friend Mr. John Felton, then living in Bermancy Abbey near Southwark. Hastening thither, the next morning he caught a glimpse of that gallant gentleman, whom he knew as belonging to a wealthy and zealous Catholic family of Norfolk, looking down from a window at the armed men preparing to break down the Abbey gate, while he tried at the same time to cheer and support his swooning wife. He heard the clear voice bidding the men, have patience, since he knew they came for him, and he would come down to them, and saw him open to them and bid them welcome. He heard a little later of his frank admission that he had posted up the bull, and also that as he held the pope to be the vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, since it came from him, he thought it ought to be duly venerated. He heard also that in spite of this declaration of his so-called guilt, he had been cruelly wracked three times. Nothing, however, daunted that brave and ardent spirit. Up to the hour of his martyrdom, he was harassed and bullied by Protestant ministers, to whom he is said to have answered, arrogantly, that he believed the ancient and Catholic faith for which he was about to die. For a moment, as was but natural, his bright face paled as he saw on the scaffold erected in front of the gates of the bishop's palace the rope, the cauldron, the knife, and the fire. But his fear was but the dismay of a moment. What is this? Aren't thou afraid of death? He cried to himself, and then pointing with a smile to the palace gates he said cheerfully. The sovereign Pontiff's letters were duly exhibited there, and now I am content to die for the Catholic faith. Ask forgiveness of her majesty, made the crowd. Nay, I have done her no injury, he replied. But if I have injured any one, I ask forgiveness of them, and for the matter of that of the whole world. And forthwith he took a valuable diamond ring from his finger, and in the generosity of his heart, sent it to the queen, to show that he had borne no ill will towards her. And so calling upon the name of Jesus, he suffered the awful death of a traitor. It was in the same spirit of dauntless courage that the martyred priest blessed Thomas Woodhouse, who had been taken in the act of saying mass after enduring twelve years of captivity, actually bearded the treasurer Cecil first. In a letter of rebuke for his conduct as a heretic, urging both him and the queen to repent and be reconciled to the holy sea, and then in a conversation so outspoken that even the grim Lord treasurer was moved to a kind of sour helmer, and asked the daring little priest if he would be his chaplain. Yay, certainly, replied Woodhouse, and will thou say mass in my house? Yay, that I will. And shall I come to it? No, that you shall not, was the quick reply, unless ye will be reconciled to the Catholic Church. This was turning the tables with the vengeance. A week later we find him calmly surveying the council, who had sent for him in the hope that he might be classed as a madman, rather than denounced as a traitor. They told him to kneel, but he refused, and stood upright. Oh, poor fool, said one, the Pope hath nothing to do in this realm. To which he replied, Christ said unto Peter, Pasque oves meos, Pasque anios meos. And I say that if Christ have in England either sheep or lambs, the Pope, who is Peter's successor, hath to do in this realm. This is thy dream, said one of the council, rather helplessly, to which he replied, No, tis not my dream, but the opinion of St. Augustine, and other doctors of the Church. This was no madness, and he was condemned to die. Few of our martyrs met their death with such extraordinary courage and joy. He gave money to the smith, who riveted heavy irons on his limbs, and promised a crown of gold to one who should bring him word that he was to be wracked. When in his weakness he fell and sorely bruised himself on the stone stairs of Newgate, he told one who would pity him that these were troubles sweet in the bearing. To one in the crowd who gave him a blow on the face, he said with his sunny smile, Would God, I might suffer ten times as much that thou might go free for the blow thou hast given me. I forgive thee, and pray to God to forgive thee, even as I would be forgiven. Even on the scaffold he never quailed for a moment, but when the sheriff bat him, Ask for pardon of God, the Queen, and his country, Blessed Thomas replied, Nay, I, on the part of God, demand of you, and of the Queen, that ye ask pardon of God, and of Holy Mother Church, because contrary to the truth he have resisted Christ the Lord, and the Pope his vicar upon earth. Hang him, hang him! This man is worse than story! cried the mob, and so, after the usual butchery, that intrepid spirit gained his reward. Not all Catholics, however, were so courageous and steadfast as these men, and the lull in persecution that followed the death of Blessed Thomas Woodhouse in 1573 speaks for itself. The severity of the penal laws was certainly not relaxed. The old ones indeed were put more strongly into force, and a new one, added after the death of Felton, made it high treason to obtain or publish any writing whatever from the Pope, or to absolve from heresy, or reconcile any person to the Catholic Church. A second clause made it penal to possess or give to any one an agnus dei, beads or crosses, that had been blessed by the Pope. A third ordered all those who had left the realm to return within six months under penalty of forfeiting their property. This last clause was aimed at the crowds of Catholics, many of them people of wealth and position, who were daily leaving England for an exile where they could practice their religion and freedom. They had no wish to languish in prison, or to be reduced to beggary because they refused to attend the Protestant Church. There were in the land no Catholic schools where their children could be taught, and the presence of a priest in the house as chaplain or tutor was an offence. Therefore many during these years indignantly or sullenly conformed, so far as to attend their parish church so many times a year, or paid their fines and suffered imprisonment in silence. Many others escaped abroad, while a large minority, sad to say, fell away from the faith altogether under the stress of constant persecution. This was not altogether to be wondered at, when we remember that the Catholic priests were rapidly dying out. There were no bishops to ordain new ones, and though the old priests of Mary's time were braving every danger to carry on their work, they were fast diminishing in number, and were not nearly enough to fan the flickering embers of the faith. With no sacraments to console and inspire, no backing, no encouragement, it was nothing less than a marvel that more of the old Catholic families did not fall away. If the church were still to exist in England, new priests and a revival of enthusiastic devotion were absolutely necessary, and already preparations for both these requirements were in the making. In 1568 Dr. Allen, formerly Proctor of Oxford University and Canon of York, who had left the country seven years before, but had returned for three years of strenuous labor, founded the seminary at DOWA in Flanders for the training of priests who should perpetuate the faith in England, little by little students were gathered in. The first ordination took place in the year blessed Thomas Woodhouse was executed. The next year, 1574, the first three missionary priests left the college gates for England. In the course of another six years, it sent a hundred such laborers into the English vineyard. Well, might this institution become a source of constant annoyance and harass to Elizabeth and her advisers, seeing that within ten years from its foundation, it was training the flower of England's youth in zeal and devotion to the cause of the Catholic faith, and turning them into devout priests eager for martyrdom. If by that path alone their master could best be served, the effect on England was most striking. One of those sent over, writes to Dr. Allen after a year's work, the number of Catholics increases so abundantly on all sides that he who almost alone holds the rudder of the state has privately admitted to one of his friends that for one staunch Catholic, at the beginning of the reign, there were now, he knew for certain, ten. Later on it was reported that one of the younger priests, lately sent on the mission, had reconciled no fewer than eighty persons in one day. Such a revival was certain not to escape the vigilant eye of Cecil. And in 1577, the first of the long line of seminary priests whose names are written as martyrs in the book of life was called upon to die for the faith. Lessid Cuthbert Main was a west countryman, brought up near Barnstable by his uncle, a Catholic priest who to his shame had been bribed by the offer of a fat living to become a Protestant minister. When still only a lad of nineteen, and as he says knowing neither what religion nor ministry meant, he was himself ordained as a minister in order to keep the living in the family. He then went to Oxford, took his degree, and being evidently a young man of unusual intelligence and most attractive appearance, was given the good post of chaplain at St. John's College, then recently built. Many were his friends among the Protestants and Catholics, but of the former there was one Edmund Campion, an ordained deacon of the English Church, and of the latter one Gregory Martin, who themselves constantly together were forever drawing the young chaplain into religious discussions that left him troubled in mind. Both these young men were notable scholars, the pride of their college, until Martin left to become tutor to the boys of the Duke of Norfolk. His absence did not seem to settle the doubts of either of his Protestant friends, and in the year when Martin fled abroad, choosing exile rather than obey the command to attend the Protestant service, Campion drawn by the chains of his friends devoted love left Oxford, and after being present at Story's trial in 1571, went straight to Dowie. Both he and Martin had sacrificed all at the call of God, for Cuthbert Main the struggle was a bitter one. He longed to enter the Church, but the dread of poverty, loss of office, and loss of friends held him back a while from taking the decisive step. The frequent letters from Dowie, by which Campion and Martin strove to convince their old comrade and to brace his will to act, left him no peace. However, and while he still hesitated, the hand of God suddenly made his way quite clear. One of his friends' letters came into the hands of the Bishop of London, who in dismay at the obvious unsoundness of the chaplain, and some of his acquaintances sent to have them all arrested. Warned of his danger by another Oxford friend, Thomas Ford himself a future martyr, Cuthbert fled into hiding, and after a fairly long interval during which we know nothing of his movements, crossed the sea, and entered the seminary of Dowie in 1573. That he was naturally timid and slow to act seems clear from this part of the story and makes his end the more glorious, since he was one of those characters which find it no easy task to face pain and death unmoved. His great desire after he was ordained priest was to return and labor for that country in which he had once held office as a heretic, and so having won a high reputation for sanctity and humility, he set out in company with John Payne another seminary priest, and landing in England made his way alone to the West Country where he hoped to convert many of his old acquaintances. That he met with marked successes clear from the fact that a letter soon reached Dowie for another source, declaring that a spirit of great exasperation had been excited among the heretics by numerous conversions, and that all kinds of torture were threatened in particular against Henry Shaw, one of the first missionaries from Dowie, Cuthbert Mayne and John Payne, whenever they should be caught. We should like to know more details, but none a forthcoming, till we find Cuthbert living in the house of a staunch Catholic, Mr. Francis Tredgian of Golden, near Truro, and passing as his steward. He would of course act as chaplain to the household and use his opportunities of seeing those who sought him to instruct and receive them into the church, and probably it was some rumor to this effect that brought upon Golden the attention of the sheriff, Richard Grenville Stowe. Accompanied by the Bishop of Exeter, the sheriff determined to search the house, pretending that he was in pursuit of an escaped criminal. There was no time for Tredgian to warn the priest, though he did his best to prevent the unwelcome visitors from entering. Forcing their way into the house they came to the door of Blessed Cuthbert's room, which happened to be locked. The priest entering at that moment from the garden heard the blows upon the panels and opened it himself to the high sheriff. Who are you? cried the latter rudely. I am a man, replied Cuthbert, in his gentle voice. But Grenville, as he spoke, had seized him by the doublet and thrusting his hand into his breast, pulled out an agnus dey, which he wore hung from his neck, in a silver case. He was at once arrested, dragged off to a horrible underground prison at Launston, and presently brought to trial. The charge brought against him was that he had absolved and reconciled certain persons, that he had taught at Launston the ecclesiastical power of a foreign bishop to wit the bishop of Rome, that he had publicly said mass, and had brought into the kingdom a vain and superstitious thing commonly called an agnus dey. As a matter of fact, none of these things could be proved except the last, and that, since it had not been brought from Rome, was actually not illegal. The jury at Launston, before which he was tried, was indeed most unwilling to convict him, but was forced to do so by the sheriff, now knighted as Sir Richard Grenville, as a reward for his zeal and arresting Cuthbert Main. When sentence was pronounced the priest with eyes and hands uplifted to heaven, cried Dale Grazius, and joyfully prepared to die. But for five months longer he had to endure a living martyrdom in that filthy prison, while the two judges who had tried him quarreled over and discussed the justice of the verdict. However unjustly he had been condemned. He was not to escape the toils of Cecil, and the privy council. There had been too many conversions of late, to make that even probable, and in November of 1577 the order came for his death. The day before his martyrdom he was brought out to a conference with a number of gentlemen, justices, and ministers, who seemed to have made it their pastime, to worry and argue with Catholics, as they were about to die. From early in the morning, till it grew dark, blessed Cuthbert, either held his own or stood modestly silent during the heat of this controversy. Last of all they offered him life and liberty, if he would swear that the queen was head of the church in England. He at once asked for a Bible, and as they gathered round with eager glances, fixed upon their apparently yielding prey, he quickly made the sign of the cross. Kiss the book, and holding it up, cried in a clear, firm voice. The queen never was, nor is, nor shall be, head of the church of England. On the eve of St. Andrew 1577 they drew him on a hurdle to the marketplace of Launston, and when the rope was actually around his neck began to question him as to whether Mr. Tregeon and Sir John Arundel, his brother-in-law, knew of the things he was about to die for. I know nothing about them, except that they are good and pious men, said he steadfastly, and as to the things laid to my charge, no one but myself has any knowledge. Thus bravely did the man who once had been afraid even to declare himself a Catholic, or to face the loss of worldly goods. He had indeed outdistance for a time his old friend and tutor, Edmund Campion, who writes a year later to express his joy that Cuthbert had obtained the palm of martyrdom, wretched that I am. How has that novice outdone me? May he be favourable to his old friend and tutor. I shall now boast of these titles more than ever. A Book of English Martyrs by E. M. Wilmot Buxton Chapter 7 Increase in Persecution 1578-1585 Lord Jesus, I am not worthy to suffer these things for thee, much less to receive those awards which thou hast promised to such as confess thee. Prayer of Blessed Thomas Sherwood The first of our seminary priests had been martyred in the year 1577. A victim, to the panic still reigning in the breasts of Protestants, as a consequence of the combined terrors of the Bolabex communication, the various plots to free the imprisoned Mary of Scotland, and the establishment of seminaries abroad for the training of missionaries. In the years that immediately followed we can note very clearly an increase in persecution, accompanied by a no less increase in missionary zeal and self-sacrificing devotion. We have seen that an early act of Elizabeth's reign had declared that any person not resorting to his parish church on Sundays and holy days was to forfeit twelfths, a much larger sum then than now. For the first twelve years of the reign this had been paid by many of the Catholic gentry, though with scowls, in order to escape the charge of recusancy, while they consoled themselves by getting mass set in their private houses as often as the priests passed by their way. The first fruit of the excommunication, however, was an act declaring at Penal under pain of death for any priest to exercise his functions in England in absolving or reconciling, or for any lay person to receive the same at his hands. This, as we saw, was the crime for which blessed Cuthbert Payne suffered. In the next year, 1572, the terrible massacre of Saint Bartholomew in France roused a fresh outburst of fury against the innocent Catholics of England. No actual victims presented themselves, however, till some few years later, when the ministers of Elizabeth and the Queen herself determined to turn for a while from questions of foreign policy and royal engagements to settle once and for all the matter of those obstinate recusants. The method of procedure was a curious one. The Queen, as we all know, was fond of making royal progress as exceedingly inconvenient and expensive matters for those who had to entertain her on the route, but by means of making the impression upon her subjects which was not to be neglected. In July 1578, she set out on a progress through the east of England, and was entertained at Euston Hall, near Tethford, by a gentleman named Rookwood, who was lately married, and was but just come of age. Next day, when she was about to depart, her host advanced to kiss her hand upon which the Lord Chamberlain suddenly began to rail upon him as a recusant, unfit to see or touch the sacred person of his sovereign. Speechless, with astonishment, the young man had nothing to answer, and within a short time found himself a prisoner in Norwich Castle. A week later the Queen stayed at Brockinash, near Norwich, the estate of Thomas Townsend, whose wife, the Lady Elizabeth Style, had refused to conform, even though her husband had submitted. A fairly large party of neighbouring gentry had come to pay their respects to the Queen, and these were sacrificed to her spite against her hostess. Nine of these unsuspecting gentlemen were arrested and thrown into jail at Norwich. As she approached the city itself, Elizabeth was met by Mr. Downes, Lord of the Manor of Erlum, who presented her with a pair of gold spurs and some verses. But it was whispered in her ear that he too had refused to attend church, and so this gallant, with the rest, was taken back to Norwich as a prisoner. No wonder that her royal progress became a matter of dread, and that the temper of the Queen was reflected in the conduct of a host of spies and informers, who now began to infest the country for the purpose of recusant hunting and priest-baiting. Opportunities for this latter form of sports became more common after 1579 when a new band of zealous missionaries drawn from the English College at Rome joined the constant stream of seminary priests from Dowie, and when also the prejudices of Protestants had been further roused by an attempt made by certain adventurers with the approbation of the Pope to rouse a rebellion against Elizabeth in Ireland. This vain enterprise gave Walsingham, now coming more and more to the front as the Queen's chief minister, a fine excuse for stirring up a new spirit of hatred against the Catholics, who themselves scarcely knew of the existence of the plot. There was big talk of a papal league crashing English Protestantism, though no one knew better than Walsingham that such a thing was utterly impracticable. This was quite sufficient to gain popular approval for an act that now imposed on recusants a ruinous fine of twenty pounds a month that made reconciliation with the Church high treason, and the keeping of a Catholic tutor and illegal act. So far there was no law under which men could be executed merely because they were missionary priests. And so the process of conversion itself had to be twisted into an act of treason against the Queen's supremacy before such persons could be condemned. After 1585, as we shall see, the acceptance of orders from the Pope, that is, the very fact of being a priest, became in itself an excuse for a traitor's death. Meantime in the February of 1578, Tyburn Tree had claimed two more victims within a single week. Blessed John Nelson, a Yorkshire man, had seen during his lifetime of forty-four years the whole progress of the Great Sism, and was want to declare emphatically that England would never return to the Catholic faith till her earth had been drenched with the blood of martyrs. He seemed indeed to have foreseen long beforehand that he himself would die for his religion. He went to DOWE in 1573, was ordained three years later, and possibly about that time was admitted into the Jesuit order. In that same year he returned to labour for the souls of his fellow countrymen in this land. We know little of his work save that he was probably the priest who, regardless of his own safety, went to the deathbed of an anchoress who had been living for years in a tiny enclosed space in London, and had become a kind of spectacle to the people of that district. Although living the life of a religious, she seems to have practically given up the faith and never to have made any attempt to obtain the sacraments. But when she was dying we read in the DOWE records that one of ours, rather than allow a soul so religious in life to pass away without the sacraments, disguised himself so that he should not be at once recognized as a priest, and then boldly entering the place, made the bystanders withdraw a little, and as if he were engaged in some other business with her, reconciled her to the church, and that done she expired. A year after his arrival he was asked to exercise a person possessed of an evil spirit, and it is said that as he departed the evil spirit threatened him that he should be arrested very shortly and put to death. Probably some bystander gave information concerning him, and on the following Sunday he was seized and thrown into Newgate. The commissioners could find no definite charge against him, and so were bent on getting him to say something that could be construed into treason. When he refused to take the oath of supremacy they asked him what he thought of the religion then practiced in England. He replied that it was sismatical and heretical. Is the Queen then a sismatic and a heretic? They asked, knowing that if he said yes he could be condemned as a traitor. Nelson knew this as well as they did, and for a moment he hesitated considering if the answer could be evaded. Then he replied calmly, if she be the setter forth and defender of this religion now practiced in England, then is she a sismatic and a heretic? Condemned to a wait execution in a filthy underground dungeon, Lyssa John Nelson passed the intervening time in a state of extraordinary peace and joy. Indeed, when his two brothers, now also priests in the English mission, came to take leave of him, it was found that they were in more need of consolation than himself. On the scaffold he said to the onlookers, I beg you to bear me witness that I die in the unity of the Catholic Church, and for that unity do now most willingly suffer my blood to be shed. And I earnestly beseech of God through his infinite mercy to make you all true Catholic men and both to live and die in the unity of the Roman Catholic faith. Away with thee, and thy Catholic Romish faith! cried the crowd. But when the fatal cart was withdrawn, and the brave martyr was swinging from the beam, many voices were heard to say, Lord, receive his soul. Four days later a young layman of twenty-seven years, Thomas Sherwood by name, earned his martyr's crown. He was the nephew of Mr. Francis Ingram, in whose house, blessed Cuthbert Main, was seized, and who had suffered many things for the faith. In his boyhood he had seen his parents driven from one place to another in order to avoid the penalties for not attending church, and finally they had settled in London, where they hoped to escape notice by living in the strictest retirement. About this time, Thomas had obtained his parents' leave to visit D'Away, and consult the fathers there as to his vocation for the priesthood. As he knew very little Latin, a long course of study would be necessary for him, and he returned therefore to London to make arrangements with his father for the necessary expenses. He had almost completed the business and was eagerly looking forward to his return to D'Away, when he happened to meet one morning in Chancery Lane, a youth who looked hard at him with a peculiar expression, and then hastened away. His face seemed familiar, and Sherwood presently recognized him as the son of a widow, Lady Treganwell, at whose London house he had frequently visited, since the sacraments were administered there, as often as it was safe to do so by a certain father's stamp whose mass he had probably served. The son of this lady, George Martin by name, was utterly opposed to the faith, and is thought to have conceived an implacable hatred against Thomas Sherwood because, by means of him, mass had been said in his mother's house. He was mean-spirited enough therefore to betray her friend, and as blessed Thomas was walking unconscious of danger through the London streets, he was seized on the mere suspicion of being a papist, and brought before the dreaded Mr. Justice Fleetwood. This man had a perfect genius for provoking replies that could be turned and twisted into treason, and in the gentle and simple-hearted young Sherwood he found an easy victim. Asked what he thought of the bull of excommunication, and whether, if she were excommunicated, Elizabeth could be the lawful queen, he replied ingeniously that he knew nothing of the bull. But if the pope had actually excommunicated her, he did not see how she could be lawful queen. This was enough to secure his own condemnation for high treason, but it did not satisfy his persecutors. They hoped to get the names of other Catholics through him, and hence he was sent to the Tower, and was the first of our martyrs, whom we know for certain to have been wracked. Moreover, the letters of his committal expressly state that, if the said Sherwood will not willingly confess such things as should be demanded of him, he is then to be committed to the dungeon among the rats. This gruesome spot is described as a cell below high watermark and totally dark. As the tide flowed innumerable rats, which infest the muddy banks of the Timbs, were driven through the orifices of the walls into the dungeon. The alarm excited by the eruption of these loathsome creatures in the dark was the least part of the torture which the unfortunate captives had to undergo. Instances are related where the flesh has been torn from the arms and legs of prisoners during sleep. Even this awful treatment did not break the spirit of this brave youth. And they then had recourse to the torture of the rack, in order that overcome by pain, he might confess where he had heard mass, to the intent that any he might name might be punished. He was brave beyond his years. No racking, no cross-examination could make him betray anyone. Then having lost the use of his limbs through racking, he was thrown again, naked and helpless, into that awful cell. A sinister story goes that knowing what kind of fear the tower provided for penniless prisoners, William Roper, son-in-law of Blessed Thomas Moore, sent money to Sherwood's jailer in order to buy food for his prisoner. This was returned on the plea that the lieutenant would not allow the youth to have the benefit of any arms. All he could effect was that he would expend sixpence on a bale of straw, upon which his starving prisoner might lie in that filthy dungeon. Once again we can but marvel at the pluck and spirit shown under such awful conditions. Truly, said Thomas, a campus of such souls as Blessed Thomas Sherwood, he rides at ease, who is carried by the grace of God. His brother says, after his first racking in the tower, being visited by a Catholic gentlewoman, he showed himself of that joyful and comfortable spirit as she was astonished there at. As also his keeper with compassion, giving him warning that he was to be racked again, he was so little moved there at as merrily and with a cheerful countenance to say these words, I am very little and you are very tall. You may hide me in your great hose, and so they shall not find me, which the keeper did afterwards report to divers, much marveling at his great fortitude and courage. The story makes us wonder whether such heroism left the hearts of those grim waters utterly untouched. Yet he they certainly felt, and perhaps all unknown to history, the Sacred Heart of Jesus rewarded them for that spark of compassion and gave them, in some cases at least, the grace of conversion before their death. On the feast of the purification, this little one of God was condemned finally to a traitor's death. There could not have been much left of the brave young martyr when he was dragged from the tower to Tibern, and the end in all its horrid details must have come as a blessed relief to one who throughout his torture had cried continually, Lord Jesus, I am not worthy to suffer these things for thee, much less to receive those rewards which thou has promised to such as confess thee. End of chapter 7, recording by John Brandon