SAINTS OF THE DAY
WEDNESDAY, 25 OCTOBER, 2023
FORTY MARTYRS OF ENGLAND AND WALES
(1535 - 1679)
These forty men and women of England and Wales, martyred between 1535 and 1679, were canonised in Rome by Pope Paul VI on 25th October 1970. Each has their feast day but they are remembered as a group on 25th October.
When King Henry VIII, after his break with Rome, proclaimed himself supreme head of the Church in England and Wales, Catholics felt that he had usurped a supremacy in spiritual matters that belonged only to the Pope. While they wished to remain loyal subjects of the Crown as the legitimately constituted authority, they refused for reasons of conscience to recognise the “spiritual supremacy” of the King. When the Act of Supremacy was passed in 1534, it quickly led many having to face a serious dilemma and even death rather than act against their conscience and deny their Catholic faith.
FOUR DISTINCT WAVES OF PERSECUTION AGAINST CATHOLICS
The First Wave - followed the passing of the First Act of Supremacy (November 1534) when Henry VIII broke with Rome and suppressed the monasteries. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Henry's former chancellor, Sir Thomas More, were executed in 1535 along with a number of religious.
The Second Wave - came after 1570 when Pope Pius V, believing that Queen Elizabeth I as the daughter of Anne Boleyn was illegitimate and had no right to the throne of England, issued a papal bull Regnans in excelsis excommunicating her and absolving all her subjects from allegiance to her and her laws. The numbers of Jesuits coming in from the continent were seen as a real threat to the Queen and the realm. In 1581 an Act was passed that made it treason to withdraw English subjects from allegiance to the Queen or her Church and in 1585 the entrance of Jesuits into the country was prohibited by law. A number of Jesuits, secular priests and lay men and women were executed at this time.
The Third Wave - of persecution followed the failed Gunpowder Plot in 1605. This was a somewhat unwise attempt by some to kill James I in a single attack by blowing up the House of Parliament during the ceremony of the State opening.
The Fourth Wave - came in 1678 following the so-called “Popish Plot” created by the infamous Titus Oates. Oates had been twice expelled from Jesuit colleges on the continent and was refused admission as a novice. He spread the rumour that the Jesuits in collusion with the Pope were plotting to overthrow King Charles II and make England a Catholic country again. The very rumour of a plot was enough to stir a new persecution of Catholics.
THE FORTY MARTYRS INCLUDE:
St. John Houghton, St. Robert Lawrence and St. Augustine Webster, the first martyrs (1535), all priors of different Charter houses (houses of the Carthusian Order, including the one in London) who, by virtue of the Carthusian vow of silence, refused to speak in their own defense.
St. Cuthbert Mayne, a Devonian, who was the first martyr not to be a member of a religious order. He was ordained priest at the then newly established English College at Douai in Northern France and was put to death at Launceston in 1577.
St. Edmund Campion, the famous Jesuit missionary and theologian who published secretly from Stonor Park, the ancient Catholic country house near Henley-on-Thames, who died in 1581 on the same day as St. Ralph Sherwin, the first martyr to have been trained at the English College in Rome.
St. Richard Gwyn, the first of the Welsh martyrs, a schoolteacher from Llanidloes in Mid-Wales who died at Wrexham in 1584.
St. Margaret Clitherow, the wife of a butcher with a shop in the famous Shambles in York, who allowed her house to be used as a Mass centre, who was sentenced to be crushed to death under a large stone at the Ouse Bridge Tollbooth in the city.
St. Swithun Wells, a teacher from Brambridge in the county of Hampshire who owned a London house at Grays Inn Fields which was also a secret Mass centre (1591).
St. Philip Howard, eldest son of the fourth Duke of Norfolk (himself executed for treason in 1572) who led a dissolute existence and left behind an unhappy wife in Arundel Castle until he was converted by the preaching of St. Edmund Campion, and died in the Tower in 1595.
St. Nicholas Owen, Jesuit lay brother and master carpenter, who constructed many priests' hiding-holes in houses throughout the country, some of them so cunningly concealed they were not discovered until centuries later (1606).
Under James I and Charles I the purge died down, but did not entirely cease. St. John Southworth, missionary in London, was put to death under Cromwell and is venerated in Westminster Cathedral, and the final martyrs died in the aftermath of the Titus Oates plot in 1679. [St. John Fisher & St. Thomas More are not included in this list for they had been canonised in 1935].
Taken from Sacred Heart Parish, Waterloo.
PRAYER: To you, Holy Martyrs of England and Wales, we commend our prayers and our needs in these difficult times. As you laid down your lives for Christ and His Church, we ask that we may emulate your sacrifice in our daily lives, living as true and humble disciples of Christ.
May His Gospel so penetrate our minds and hearts that we may become what He urges us to be: salt of the earth and light of the world, making Him present through holy lives to the men and women of our time. Sustain us with your loving presence, be our companions on our earthly journey.
Defend us in moments of trial, console us in sorrows and remind us of that joy which Christ implants into the souls of His devoted servants. Intercede that we may truly be servants of mercy and reconciliation. Watch over us and guide us in our Christian lives so one day we may merit to be with you in the Kingdom of our Heavenly Father. Amen.
All you Holy Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us.
That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ!