SAINT OF

THE WEEK
BB. 3OHN DUCKEIT AND RALPH CORBY. Martyred 1644 -The name "Duckett" has become happily familiar to Catholic book-buyers; but he whose spirit doubtless haunts the Strand in London was James Duckett, the book-seller. martyred on April 19, 1602. Today's John Duckett was most probably his grandson; he was ordgined priest at Douay in 1639. Before starting for the English mission, he made two month's retreat under a Carthusian Fr. Duckett who was a kinsmanpossibly his uncle.
He was soon enough arrested and sent to London with Fr. Corby, S.J. They were placed in the Newgate gaol. An offer was made to exchange Fr. Corby for a Scots officer imprisoned in Germany. Corby gave the reprieve to John Duckett as being younger and so likely to be of more use on the mission. John refused it, hut Corby pressed it on him, till at last they realised that it would be of service to neither of them: their death was determined on.
Bewildering as it may seem, Catholics flocked even from overseas to assist at their last Masses and receive Communion from their hands. On September 7. at 10 they were taken to Tyburn and executed.
On the eve of his death, John Duckett wrote to Dr. Smith, Vicar Apostolic of England, then in Paris: "I fear not death, nor I contemn not life. If life were my lot, I would endure it patiently; but if death. I shall receive it joyfully, for that Christ is my life, and death is my gain. Never since my receiving Holy Orders did I so much fear death as I did life; and now, when it approacheth, can I faint?"
This letter is in the Westminster archives, which brings us very close to these martyrs. May they help us when it is our turn to die, or to "witness" to our Faith in days that may be more difficult than dying.