40 Martyrs of England and Wales and Cardinal Newman

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: Continue reading →