In so many ways we moderns are pygmies who stand on the shoulders of giants. One group of giants for all English-speaking Catholics is the 40 martyrs of England and Wales who were canonized by Pope Paul VI on October 25, 1970. They deserve to be remembered for their heroic deaths for Christ, and here are their names:
3 Carthusians:
- Augustine Webster d.1535
- John Houghton 1486-1535
- Robert Lawrence d.1535
1 Augustinian friar:
- John Stone d. 1538
1 Brigittine:
- Richard Reynolds d. 1535
2 Franciscans:
- John Jones d. 1598 (Friar Observant – also known as John Buckley, John Griffith, or Godfrey Maurice)
- John Wall d. 1679 (Franciscan – known at Douai and Rome as John Marsh, and by other aliases while on the mission in England)
3 Benedictines:
- John Roberts d. 1610
- Ambrose Barlow d. 1641
- Alban Roe d. 1642
10 Jesuits:
- Alexander Briant 1556-81
- Edmund Campion 1540-81
- Robert Southwell 1561-95
- Henry Walpole 1558-95
- Nicholas Owen 1540-1606
- Thomas Garnet 1575-1608
- Edmund Arrowsmith 1585–1628
- Henry Morse 1595-1644
- Philip Evans 1645-79
- David Lewis 1616-79
13 Priests of the Secular Clergy:
- Cuthbert Mayne 1543–77
- Ralph Sherwin 1558-81
- Luke Kirby 1549-82
- John Paine d. 1582
- John Almond d. 1585
- Polydore Plasden d. 1591
- Eustace White 1560-91
- Edmund G(J)ennings 1567-91
- John Boste 1544-94
- John Southworth 1592-1654
- John Kemble 1599-1679
- John Lloyd d. 1679
- John Plessington d. 1679
7 members of the laity
4 lay men:
- Richard Gwyn 1537-84
- Swithun Wells 1536-91
- Philip Howard 1557-95
- John Rigby 1570-1600 and
3 lay women, all of them mothers:
- Margaret Clitherow 1586
- Margaret Ward 1588
- Anne Line 1601
They were torches that God sent to us to light our way in a frequently dark world. They were representatives of hundreds of martyrs who died for the Faith in England and Wales in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. With the Anglican Ordinariate established by Pope Benedict perhaps what Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman said in the Nineteenth Century will come true in the Twenty-First:
To set up the Church again in England is too great an act to be done in a corner. We have had reason to expect that such a boon would not be given to us without a cross. It is not God’s way that great blessings should descend without the sacrifice first of great sufferings. If the truth is to be spread to any wide extent among this people, how can we dream, how can we hope, that trial and trouble shall not accompany its going forth? And we have already, if it may be said without presumption, to commence our work withal, a large store of merits. We have no slight outfit for our opening warfare. Can we religiously suppose that the blood of our martyrs, three centuries ago and since, shall never receive its recompense? Those priests, secular and regular, did they suffer for no end? or rather, for an end which is not yet accomplished? The long imprisonment, the fetid dungeon, the weary suspense, the tyrannous trial, the barbarous sentence, the savage execution, the rack, the gibbet, the knife, the caldron, the numberless tortures of those holy victims, O my God, are they to have no reward? Are Thy martyrs to cry from under Thine altar for their loving vengeance on this guilty people, and to cry in vain? Shall they lose life, and not gain a better life for the children of those who persecuted them? Is this Thy way, O my God, righteous and true? Is it according to Thy promise, O King of Saints, if I may dare talk to Thee of justice? Did not Thou Thyself pray for Thine enemies upon the cross, and convert them? Did not Thy first Martyr win Thy great Apostle, then a persecutor, by his loving prayer? And in that day of trial and desolation for England, when 20 hearts were pierced through and through with Mary’s woe, at the crucifixion of Thy body mystical, was not every tear that flowed, and every drop of blood that was shed, the seeds of a future harvest, when they who sowed in sorrow were to reap in joy?
Donald,
I do not know much about history, but both sides – Protestant and Catholic – had shed more than its fair share of blood. Didn’t Mary I of England (a Catholic) burn at the stake 280 religious dissenters in what are called “The Marian Persecutions?”
Every time I read little about this time in history, I shudder to think of the atrocities that both sides – Catholic and Protestant – committed against each other.
🙁
284. An excellent recent study of the Marian Persecution was written by Eamon Duffy:
http://www.amazon.com/Fires-Faith-Catholic-England-under/dp/0300152167
The Tudors were all persecutors. Under Bad Queen Bess some 312 Irish and Catholic martyrs died, although, strangely enough, she has a reputation in history for tolerance, which would have been regarded as a bad joke by almost all of her Catholic subjects, probably the majority of her subjects until well into her reign.
Saint Peter Canisius, who helped reverse the Reformation in Austria and southern Germany in the Sixteenth Century, regarded the persecutions of his day as against the example of Christ:
“It is plainly wrong to meet non-Catholics with bitterness or to treat them with discourtesy. For this is nothing else than the reverse of Christ’s example because it breaks the bruised reed and quenches the smoking flax. We ought to instruct with meekness those whom heresy has made bitter and suspicious, and has estranged from orthodox Catholics, especially from our fellow Jesuits. Thus, by whole-hearted charity and good will we may win them over to us in the Lord.
Again, it is a mistaken policy to behave in a contentious fashion and to start disputes about matters of belief with argumentative people who are disposed by their very natures to wrangling. Indeed, the fact of their being so constituted is a reason the more why such people should be attracted and won to the simplicity of the faith as much by example as by argument.”
It was an intolerant age, although what strikes me is how quickly it ended, when viewed through the prism of 2000 years of Christian history. By 1700 the bloodiest of religious persecutions were largely ended, only to be reawakend by the birth of totalitarianism with the French Revolution and the persecution of both Catholics and Protestants by worshipers of the power of the State. Fascism and Communism, when viewed by future historians, may be regarded as variants of the Emperor worship that confronted the earliest Christians.
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As an American of partial English descent (and last name Bryant, although no relation to the martyr Briant that I am aware of) I would like to know why this feast day doesn’t seem to be a priority on the U.S. calendar. We take a lot of our culture and obviously language from Britain, plus we are still living here the effects of the Reformation there. Obviously had Henry VIII not acted as he had the U.S. would be a predominantly Cathlic nation. Are we afraid of offending Protestants (or Latinos) ?
I doubt if it is concern for offending anyone since we sing Faith of Our Fathers regularly at Mass and that song, although doubtless most singers are unaware of it, directly refers to the persecution of Catholics by the English government. Additionally Irish Catholics, which make up a large proportion of the Church in America, are always ready to point out English persecutions. In England the feast day has been moved to May 4 and now includes an additional 85 martyrs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty-five_martyrs_of_England_and_Wales