England's Martyrs

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 8, 4 March 1925, Page 13

England's Martyrs

THE CAUSE OF THEIR CANONISATION

Hanged, drawn, and quartered ! This was the horrible death suffered by the greater number of the two hundred and fifty-two Catholics who gave their lives for the Faith during the English persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and the agony of their last moments had been preceded, in many cases, by long imprisonment in a foetid dungeon and hours of unimaginable torture upon the rack. Probably, in all the long annals of the Church, there is no record of martyrs who suffered more intensely — certainly, none bore their passion with greater fortitude. Priests and laymen and delicate women, the old and the young, were not merely unyielding under torture, and in the shadow of the gallows; they were brightfaced and merry—the merriest martyrs this old world has ever seen. One after another was dragged to Tyburn, with a smile on his lips and a jest on his tongue. Is it their light-heartedness that makes them so lovable?

The first band, who suffered for refusing to take Henry VIII’s Oath of Supremacy, set the brave example. They disobeyed quietly, and respectfully and joyously, well knowing that heaven would be the penalty of their refusal. As the years passed Franciscans, Jesuits and secular priests, and the men and women who harbored or in any way aided them, lived in constant peril: hunted, spied upon, a price on their heads, with enemies numbering thousands and tens of thousands. But they thought less of the hardships of their lot, and of the danger of capture and death, than of God’s goodness and the sweetness of His service. The gallows was not to be greatly dreaded: was there another so short and sure a way to heaven?

Typical of these gallant English martyrs was a Benedictine monk, Dom Mark Barkworth, who went to Tyburn singing for joy. The chronicler says: “Coming up with the cart in his black habit, his hood being taken off, his head being all shaven but for a circle on the nether part of his head, he most joyfully and smilingly looked up directly to the heavens and blessed him with the Sign of the Cross. Then he turned himself towards the gallows tree, whereon he was to suffer, mad© the Sign of the Cross thereon, and kissed it, and the rope also, the which being put about his neck, he turned himself and with a cheerful, smiling countenance and pleasant voice sang in manner and form, { This is the day which the Lord hath made ; let us rejoice and be glad in it.’ A Jesuit Father, who was with him, joined in the

triumphant strain.” The sublime duet continued until the hangman ended it.

The proverbially joyous Franciscans were not less joyous than usual in the grim shadow of England’s displeasure. Friar Elstow, having publicly protested against Henry’s divorce from Queen Catherine, was summoned before the Council to give an account of his words. “You deserve to be put in a sack, and thrown into the Thames!” thundered Cromwell; and the friar answered merrily, “As for the Thames, the road to heaven is as near by water as by land.” Their story is well told in Father Steck’s Franciscans and. the Protestant Pevolution.

Long afterwards one of his brethren, Father Bullaker, with his health shattered by months of imprisonment and severe attacks of gaol fever, had but one fear: that he would die before he reached Tyburn. At his trial, when he was called a seducer of the people, he exclaimed delightedly; “You fill me with gladness, for you give me the same title which the Jews gave to Christ.” Even as his body hung from the gallows his face smiled, “as -if it had been the face of an angel.”

Dr. Allen, the founder of Douay, begged the assistance of the Jesuits in the English mission, and foremost in the first band of them, was Blessed Edmund Campion, with the possible exception of Blessed Thomas More, the most beloved of all the English martyrs. When the rector told him that he had been chosen for the work, he, “being scarce able to hold tears of joy and tenderness of heart, went to his chamber and there on his knees to God offered himself wholly to His divine disposition without any exception or restraint, whether it were to rack, cross, quartering, or any other torment or death whatsoever.”

The approach of danger did not sadden or even sober him. Disguised as a jewel merchant, he landed at Dover. To his superior he wrote; “Such a peacock, such a swaggerer! A man must needs have very sharp eyes to catch a glimpse of holiness beneath such a garb; such a look. In any case I will take a part in the fight, though I die for it.”

Some time later, living in hiding, surrounded by spies, but merry still, he wrote his famous Brag and Challenge, which ends thus: “Touching our Society, be it known unto you that we have made a league—all the Jesuits in the world —cheerfully to carry the cross that you shall lay upon us and never to despair your recovery while we have

a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or to be consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God—it cannot be withstood. So the Faith "Vi ivas planted, so it must be restored.” . ■ j % When the end was at hand, after repeated Packings and the long agony of a mock trial, Father Campion was dragged on a hurdle through the muddy London streets, followed by a second hurdle bearing Fathers Briant and Sherwin. A priest who saw them on the

way told how they had a smile on their faces, and actually laughed as they drew near to Tyburn. “But they laugh; they don’t care for death!” the bystanders cried.

Father Campion’s companions in martyrdom were as heroic and almost as magnetic as he. Father Briant, a Jesuit novice, had been tortured repeatedly. The rack-master boasted that he had made him a foot longer than God intended him to be. Needles had been thrust under his nails, he had been deprived of food and drink, and even after torture had been given no softer bed than the floor of a prison cell. Nevertheless, one who was present at his final examination spoke emphatically of his cheerfulness. With Father Campion he laughed for joy when' the gallows came in sight.

The companion of these two Jesuits, Father Ralph Sherwin, had been one of a notable band which set out for England in 1580. He had not labored there long before he was apprehended. One of his fellow priests wrote at the time: “When Sher was taken into the inner court of the prison, they fastened on him very heavy fetters, which he could scarcely move. The gaolers then went away to see in what cell or dungeon he was to be confined. On looking round and finding himSlone, he gazed up to heaven with a face

full of joy and gave God thanks. Then looking down again at his feet loaded with chains,

he tried whether he could move them; but when lie heard the clank of the chains as he stirred, he could not help breaking out into laughter, and then into tears of happiness, and with hands and eyes lifted up to heaven, betrayed the greatness of his joy. This scene was witnessed by two heretics, who were confined in a neighboring part of the prison, and who were filled with astonishment.”

Father Sherwin himself, writing from his prison, said: “I wear now upon my feet and legs some little bells to keep me in mind who I am and whose I am. I never heard such sweet harmony before! Pray for me that I may finish my course with courage and fidelity.”

He had been in custody for a year before he and Father Campion and several others were tried. When sentence was pronounced he cried: “This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad therein”; and as the prisoners were led back to their cells, he pointed to the setting sun, saying to Father Campion: “I shall soon be above yon fellow I”

Nor were the women of those dreadful days legs merrily courageous than the men. We for instance, of Mistress Anne Line, / a widow, who offered herself to Father Ger-

ard, head of the English mission, to do any work for God’s Church which he should as-

sign her. It was desirable that there should be a house where priests might find refuge on landing in England, and the management of the place was confided to her. Arrested at last, as she had hoped some day to be, Mistress Line feared she would not live to reach Tyburn. She had always been very frail, and harboring priests in those days was not invalids’ work. So weak was she at the time of her trial that she had to be earned into court, but her spirit was as strong as it had ever been. Accused of having sheltered priests, and asked if she were guilty, her reply was: “My lords, nothing grieves me but that I could not receive a thousand more.” On reaching the gallows she kissed them “with great joy,” and kneeling prayed until the hangman’s work was done.

Better known, perhaps, is Venerable Margaret Clitherow, whom her countrymen love to call the “Pearl of York” —a convert with more than the typical convert’s zeal and enthusiasm. Her greatest delight, especially after the bloody statute against priests and their harborers had been passed, was to have two or three Fathers in her house at the same time. Her biographer tells us “how she would laugh with inward glee to have Mass said within her home divers times in one day, and how she deceived the heretics.”

When, at length, she was denounced, imprisoned, and tried, the sentence imposed was that she must die by the peine forte et dure —the horrible torture of being slowly pressed to death. “God be thanked! lam not worthy of so good a death as this,” she cried, with a joyful countenance. So evident was her happiness that the heretics were puzzled to account for it, and decided that she was possessed by a merry devil!

She passed smiling through the streets to her martyrdom, giving alms to the poor who pressed close to see and touch her. “This way to heaven is as short as any other,” she told them cheerfully. They may have noted that her .feet were bare. She had sent her shoes and stockings to her little daughter as a token that she should follow in her footsteps.

The merry wit of Blessed Thomas More is too well known to need more than passing mention. Father Benson emphasised it in The King's Achievement, and Francis Thompson referred to it in the “Motto and Invoca-

tion,” which Mr. Meynell used to preface the volume of his collected essays:

“Thomas More,

Teach (thereof my need is sore) What thou showedest well on earth — Good writ, good wit, make goodly mirth!”

Honor and dishonor, good and ill fortune, life and death found him equally merry. His ready wit had amused the king and court, and it made his executioner laugh. No doubt it now delights the angels.

So the story is repeated again and again and again. For the English martyrs, the thought of the reward not only sweetened, it almost counteracted, the sufferings of this life. Father Francis Ingleby said to his friends, when fetters were put on his legs; “I fear I shall be over-proud of my new boots.” Blessed Thomas Woodhouse gave

money to the smith who riveted heavy irons on his limbs, and promised gold to the one who should bring him word that he was to be racked. When he fell and bruised himself severely on the stone stairs of his prison, he told some one who spoke pityingly to him that such troubles were sweet in the bearing. He smiled upon a brute who struck him in the face. When his gaoler warned Blessed Thomas Sherwood that he was to be racked again, he said cheerily, laughingly: “I am very little and you are very tall; you might hide me in your pocket and they would not find me.”

The glorious list may well end with John Finch, a young farmer, who, to atone for years of tepidity, made it his special task to guide priests from one Catholic house to another. Betrayed by a spy, who had pretended to be a Catholic, he suffered a year’s cruel torture. His courage gave way at last, and he attended Protestant service; but repentance followed swiftly, and he did heroic penance. He began to long for martyrdom, and when he was condemned, on a charge of high treason, he smiled and gave thanks to God. Friends who visited him the night before his execution “found him so merry in God, and so joyful of the next day’s banquet which he expected, that they were marvellously comforted and edified.” It was in April, 1584, that he died. We are told that when the executioners came at the appointed hour, “this blessed man most joyfully bid them welcome, and thanked God for His infinite and innumerable benefits, especially for this death he was now to receive.”

The cause of these martyrs is going forward rapidly. Their canonisation will be a joy, not alone to English Catholics, but to all who love the old Faith and delight to see it defended ably and valiantly and gladly. England has no holier spot than Tyburn, no greater glory than her martyrs.—Franciscan Herald.

SACRED HEART CONVENT, ST. JOHN'S HILL, WANGANUI. The Sisters of St. Joseph are notified of the following successes secured at. the public examinations held in September, November, and December respectively:—Class 0. (partial pass): R. Nolan and M. Ahem. Class D (1 group): L. Eugle, N. Cooper, and L. Howard. Matriculation (partial pass): L. Engel and N. Cooper. Public Entrance : L. Engel, N. Cooper, P. McGreevy, G. Culling, and L. Howard. Intermediate: Z. Donnelly (credit), R. Mullins, M. Keegan, W. Howard, 0. Graham ,E. McGrail, and L. Cross.