Fear of upsetting ecumenical relations has led to a steady decline in the cult of the English martyrs. But, says

Anthony Symondson SJ, it is now time to revive interest in the ordinary lives of these extraordinary people
They did not die in vain
The stories of the Catholic martyrs of the Elizabethan age are sometimes moving for the sheer ordinariness of what they tell.
Few were high profile like St Edmund Campion and his Jesuit companions. Long before St Edmund’s conversion to Catholicism he was recognised for his exceptional brilliance and popularity as a Junior Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford.
He was one of the most notable figures of his time in Oxford, patronised by the Earl of Leicester and chosen by the University as orator, to welcome Queen Elizabeth on a state visit in 1569.
After his ordination as a deacon in the Church of England, St Edmund was seen as a young man of promise who might one day occupy a powerful position in the national Church. Instead he was received into the Catholic Church in 1571, was ordained sub-deacon at Douai, and joined the Society of Jesus in Rome in 1573. In 1580, he and Robert Persons were chosen to start a Jesuit mission in England.
His eloquence, learning, attractive personality, courage and daring gave new heart to the dispirited English Catholics. Within a year he was arrested, imprisoned in the Tower, tried in Westminster Hall on a fabricated charge of having plotted rebellion abroad, and was hanged, drawn, and quartered with Alexander Briant and Ralph Sherwin at Tyburn on 1 December 1581.
Twenty-two years later, on Sunday, 8 July 1603, a priest, John Sugar, and a layman, Robert Grissold, were arrested in a lane at Rowington, in Warwick shire; John was accused of celebrating Mass at Baddesley Clinton Hall, Robert of serving it. Both were in a far more modest league than St Edmund. They had been betrayed by Robert’s cousin, who offered to let him go, but he would not leave his friend and both he and John were imprisoned in Warwick gaol.
A year later, on July 16, 1604, a haggard drama was enacted. John was hanged, drawn and quartered on Gallows Hill, in Warwick, and Robert was hanged beside him. Robert’s body was buried next to the gallows, but John’s head and quarters were set up as a grim warning on the gates of Warwick. Why? John had been arraigned and condemned for his priesthood and Robert for felony, because he had assisted a priest. Both were offered their freedom if they would conform to the Church of England, but they refused.
They were among a group of nearly three hundred Catholics in England, Wales and Scotland who gave their lives in the religious persecution of the 16th and 17th centuries and who have always been venerated as martyrs.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth (15581603) a series of penal laws was passed by parliament to destroy the Catholic religion. The celebration of Mass was forbidden, and all Catholic books and articles of devotion, such as rosary beads, were prohibited.
Fines of increasing severity were imposed on all persons who did not attend the services of the Church of England. They were called “recusants”, from the Latin word recusare, to refuse. Recusants could not only be fined, but also imprisoned for hearing Mass, and were forbidden to travel more than five miles from home without written licence.
Those who wished to remain Catholics were forced to celebrate Mass secretly, and priests had to train in seminaries abroad, returning to England to minister the sacraments. They were in great danger because the government made any priest ordained abroad guilty of high treason, the punishment for which was death. Anyone who helped a priest was guilty of misprision or treason, also punishable by death. There were many spies and informers who, for money or to gain favour with the authorities, were willing to betray priests and those who helped them.
In a climate of fear Catholics had to decide whether to abandon their faith or to face the risk of practising it. Many chose to keep their heads down and conformed to the new religious order, while others were determined to remain loyal to the faith of their fathers. Among those who continued as Catholics were the Ferrers family of Baddesley Clinton Hall. The moated house, deep in the Forest of Arden, became an important centre of Catholic resistance. Mass was celebrated there, and for a time it was the headquarters of the Jesuits. Hiding holes, built to conceal priests if there was a raid on the house, were constructed by St Nicholas Owen. In 1591 five Jesuit priests and two seculars hid in one of them, a converted sewer, while the house was ransacked looking for them. They were not found, but in 1595 a priest, William Freeman, was captured in the county and executed at Warwick These were dangerous times. Baddesley Clinton Hall provided a refuge for priests and encouraged local Catholics to persevere.
Robert Grissold (or Greswold) was born c1575 in Rowington, two miles from Baddesley Clinton. His family was devoutly Catholic, and he is said to have had a great reverence for priests, many of whom he would have met as he grew up near the Hall. He became the servant of Mr Sheldon of Broadway, Worcestershire, in whose service he probably met the priest, John Sugar. He was born in Wombourne, Staffordshire, in 1562. After studying at Oxford, he was for a time a minister of the Church of England. He became a Catholic and went to the English College at Douai, in what is now France. Ordained in 1601, he returned to England and ministered in Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire. John and Robert were beatified, with 83 others, by Pope John Paul II on 22 November 1987.
This summer, the 400th anniversary of the martyrdom of Blessed John Sugar and Blessed Robert Grissold was celebrated at Baddesley Clinton in a way that drew together many strands of history and contemporary church life.
Despite the beatifications of 1987, in the last 40 years the cult of the English Martyrs has seen a slow decline. It is often pointed out that there were as many Protestant martyrs during the Marian persecutions. Sensitivity is demanded on both sides if ecumenical relations are to be nurtured.
But these celebrations were an ecumenical success, and show how similar commemorations might develop in other parts of the country.
Organised on a deanery basis, this led to wide cooperation and enthusiasm. The ecumenical dimension was achieved by holding choral evensong at Rowington parish church, with the choir of St Mary’s Lapworth at which the Catholic parish priest of St Francis of Assisi, Baddesley Clinton, preached.
The events began with a talk by Eamon Duffy, Professor of Christian History at Cambridge, before a large audience at St Peter’s, Leamington Spa. There was a walk of witness from the church of St Mary Immaculate, Warwick, to the site of the martyrdom on Gallows Hill for a short service of prayer. This was well attended and repeated earlier walks in the steps of the martyrs that had taken place annually but had fallen into abeyance.
The night before the main celebration, there was a stylish social evening at Baddesley Clinton Hall. The National Trust opened the house and gardens, there was a buffet dinner and drinks, picnics, madrigal singers, morris dancers, Tarot the Jester, and a magnificent fireworks display. A high point of the evening was a play about the martyrs performed by the children of St George’s and St Teresa’s School, Dorridge.
The feast of Blessed John and Blessed Robert was observed with a Solemn Pontifical Mass at St Francis’, concelebrated by Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville, Bishop Philip Pargeter, and the priests of the deanery. Byrd’s fourpart Mass was sung, Archbishop Nichols preached, and there was lunch afterwards in a marquee in the grounds of the Poor Clares Convent. In the evening the parish priest gave an ecumenical dinner party in the presbytery. Next day Archbishop Couve de Murville celebrated the Parish Mass and in the afternoon the children’s play was repeated before Pontifical Benediction, given by Bishop Pargeter, at the church of Blessed Robert Grissold, Balsall Common.
What this celebration achieved was a renewed devotion to the Warwick Martyrs, a deepening of a historical sense that put the Reformation into a context that enabled the present generation of Catholics and Anglicans to understand their past, and a boost to the local Catholic identity that re-established its links with their forebears. There was profound gratitude to the martyrs for their witness, and thanksgiving for the Faith.
In St Francis’, Baddesley Clinton, Blessed John Sugar and Blessed Robert Grissold are now commemorated by a welllettered slate monument, cut and gilded by Giles Macdonald, in association with Memorials by Artists.
Few will forget the celebrations; they gave a welcome injection of confidence, and some are already asking when they can have more.