ONE BY ONE TIDIEST THOUGHTS HEROES DIED

By M. M. Merrick
TO the readers of THE CATHOLIC
HERALD it is probably unnecessary to give the background history accounting for the deaths of about seventy notable men and women put to death for their Catholic Faith between 1535 and 1681. It is necessary though, to review the four great changes in English attitude during these years, to account for the martyrdoms.
"The word MARTYR means a witness, and it is possible to be a witness without sealing your testimony by death," We must examine why these martyrs' lives were required of them. and how the giving up of life provided testimony to the faith they professed.
First, there was the question of Henry VIII' usurpation of the title Head of the Church.
Because Thomas More. Lord Chancellor ot England, refused to agree that this title could he correct. he lost his life. He was the first lay martyr of the long line, but only three of them besides himself were to suffer in this reign; Clement Philpot, 1540, David Gouson, 1541. and Thomas Ashby, 1544.
These may be regarded as the first martyrs in the cause
of Papal Supremacy, and to
them we may later add Lady Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. mother of the exiled Cardinal Pole, who also firmly adhered to the claims of the Papacy.
All these martyrs were important people, conspicuous either by family rank or position. who dared to differ from the King on the question of his authority.
Why so few ? Because the bulk of English people, then as now, were not potential martyrs. Also, the issue seemed at that time clear only to some few saints. In those early days of " reformation " one could hardly expect layfolk in he sensitive to distinctions which were lost upon all Bishops, save one, St. John Fisher, and obscure, if no more, to most heads of religious houses. Still, there were these feu martyrs, one ofthem a giant in intellect as well as faith. since canonised as typifying the best of " holy living and dying "-St. Thomas More.
THE RISING UNDER Elizabeth, a new phase of persecution began without bloodshed and ended in a welter of it.
The first ten or twelve years of her reign, 1558-1570, saw English Catholics forsaken by all possible aid. There was no need of persecuting such a hopeless, helpless minority. Their religion seemed likely to die of inanition.
Then flamed out a ray of hope in the Rising of the North. 1569, and Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland, paid for that with his life. There was now, as could not be in the days of More, a new religion to which men could conform and so save their lives. Thomas Percy would not so conform. " As for this new Church of England," said he. " I do not acknowledge it." He was therefore executed at York in 1572.
Dr. John Storey was put to death in 1570, merely for being a staunch supporter of Catholicism. and so an enemy to that new religion as by law established. He was put to death with special cruelty as an example to all, the via media now being worked out by Elizabeth.
When St. Pitts V, that intrepid and zealous Dominican. formally excom municated her in 1570. John Felton as a London citizen still a Catholic, pinned the copy of the Bull of Excommunication to the Bishop of London's door, For this, Felton was hanged. drawn and quartered. though he died professing loyalty to the Queen he yet considered ecclesiastically put outside the pale of his Church. These martyrdoms ended the passive persecution.
NEW ' CRIME '
THE first lay martyr to suffer for the Bull's threat to the Queen's religion was Thomas Sherwood, a seminary student
whose parents Were known reeusants a term which Carrie into use under the spy systems of Walsingham and Burleigh.
This martyr, aged 27, would not acknowledge Elizabeth as substitute for the Pope, and suffered the full penalty at Tyburn, 1577.
With him begins the long list of seminary martsrs, but most of them were priests, for lay people conformed in steady flow under persecution. All the more honour to the heroic lives and deaths of those who would not so conform.
The situation had now changed completely. From being a personal insult to Henry VIII, profession of Catholicism had become a crime against English law. Treason and practice of one's religion were now identical. Indeed, the statute 27 Elizabeth (1585) even perticularised the details of that identity.
The lay martyrs who now poured out their blood profusely at 'Tyburn, and elsewhere in England, proved over and over agein that their only crime was their religion.
William Carter, the printer. died in 1584, for the " sedition" of printing Catholic books, but he was known to be a trusted champion of the Faith.
In 1588. seven laymen and a woman, Margaret Ward, were executed immediately after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. but all in connection with assisting priests and contriving the saying of Mass. Yet no historian .has ever denied the loyalty shown by Catholics to their sovereign in that hour of danger.
Exactly a hundred years later, in 1688. some English were welcoming a Dutch invading army to England.
A MOTHER THE roll now continues to the end of Elizabeth's reign: Swithin Wells, a Hampshire gentleman, with his servant and Sydney Hodson, all were put to death in 1591, when Topcliffe invaded Wells' London residence and took prisoner Fr. Edmund Gennings while he was saying Mass. For their sturdy defence of the priest, all three men paid with their lives.
In 1586, Margaret Clitherow died at York for having harboured priests and kept a room in her house furnished for the saying of Mass. A dreadful death was hers, her body pressed between oaken doors weighted with stones. ,Small wonder that it took but 15 minutes. young and strong wife and mother though she was, When the Sheriff tried to make her say she died for treason, " No, no, Mr. Sheriff," she replied, " I die for the love of my Lord Jesus Christ."
So did they all. Wherever politics or revolution have been mingled with religion, by men driven desperate in savage persecution, the Chtirdi has hesitated to gall those men her martyrs, however great and undeserved their sufferings may have been.
We do not lack either names or types among the "cloud of witnesses" towards the end of the reign. Nicholas Horner, a tailor born in Yorkshire, as hanged outside his ossn door in London " for that he had made a jerkin for a priest." in 1590.
William Pike, a joiner, heeds the list of the Dorchester martyrs, for he suffered there in 1591. In the same year, York saw the martyrdom of
homes Watkinson, an East Riding solitary, " who has been wont to serve the priests."
In the same year, too, Winchester lists included the hanging of Ralph Millar. a labourer saint. ignorant of letters but a genius in bringing souls to God. James Dowdall, an Irish merchant. was martyred in Exeter, 1599. merely for announcing his religion.
John Carey and Patrick Salmon were servants of the Arundel family at Chideock in Dorset. They were Irishmen who died together with their Cornish squire, Thomas Bosgrave. for courtesy to the martyr. Fr. John Cornelius. at Dorchester, in his sufferings and his martyrdom.
THIS heavy toll did not end the martyrs of the laity. There Were classes and categories not mentioned in the all too brief SUM mary.
The martyr-rolls include at least three Welshmen of the laity: Richard White, hanged at Wrexham in 1584, Riche' d Flower of Anglesey, put to death in 1588 for harbouring priests, and Robert Price. He was taken by Crom
well's soldiers after the sack of Lincoln in 1644. Asked if he was Price the Papist, "he answered that he was Price and a Roman Catholic, whereupon he was at once shot dead."
At the very end come Mistress Anne Lyne, 1601, who died for her services to priests, and James Duckett, the Catholic bookseller and helper of priests. cruelly slaughtered at Tyburn in 1602.
The date of other martyrdoms show that the work of 27 Elizabeth went on long after her death. Twelve years after it, Richard Herat. a Lancashire yeoman, was martyred for supposed complicity in the death of a pursuivant.
Fifty years after that Edward Coleman " gent." and Richard Lang horne, the barrister, were being trapped to their death, the last martyrs of the laity, because of a fresh and hysterical outburst of " No Popery."
ECHOES PERHAPS all the echoes have not yet died down. Perhaps the cross-bearers to Walsingharn heard those echoes, here and
there in England. Perhaps we have heard them more recently in some (only some) of the letters to The Tithes on the question of. Catholic schools and teaching.
However this may be, the echoes of the martyrs' prayers can still resound in Heaven, and the echoes of our prayers to them can still plead for God's blessing on this, their much-loved England.
*Mgr. Knox, Paper on "The Theology of Martyrdom," Cambridge Summer School, 1928.