Saint of the Day – 21 June – Saint John Rigby (1570-1600) Martyr

Saint of the Day – 21 June – Saint John Rigby (1570-1600) Martyr, Confessor, Layman. Born in 1570 at Harrack Hall, Wigan, Lancashire, England and died on 21 June 1600 at Southwark, London, England. His body was chopped up and scattered around Southwark. Patronages – of bachelors, of torture victims. Also venerated on 25 October as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Also known as Thomas Rigby but this is merely an error in printing.

The Roman Martyrology reads: “In London, England, St John Rigby, Martyr, who, arrested and sentenced to death under Queen Elizabeth I for reconciling with the Catholic Church, was hanged in Southwark and disemboweled while still alive.”

John Rigbywas born in 1570. His father one of a long succession
of Nicholas Rigby, who could trace their ancestry to the early Catholic Plantagenet Kings. His mother Mary, the daughter of Oliver Breres of Preston, was also from a Catholic family. The family home, Harrock Hall, was in the Parish of Eccleston, Lancashire and was fairly typical of that owned by the Lancashire gentry. The present Hall was probably rebuilt shortly after John Rigby’s time.

In 1600 John was working as a Steward for Sir Edmund Huddleston. Sir Edmund sent him to the sessions house of the Old Bailey Court House, to plead illness for the absence of his daughter, the widow Mrs. Fortescue, who had been summoned on a charge of recusancy. A commissioner then questioned John about his own religious beliefs, whereupon John acknowledged that he was a Catholic.

He was immediately arrested and sent to Newgate Prison. The next day, the feast day of St Valentine, he signed a confession saying that since he had been reconciled to the Roman Catholic Faith by Saint John Jones, a Franciscan Priest, some two or three years earlier, he had not attended Anglican services. Twice he was given the chance to recant, his confession but twice refused. He told the Judge that his sentence to die for treason “is the thing which I desire.”

His sentence was carried out. He gave the Executioner, who helped him up to the cart, a piece of gold, saying, “Take this in token that I freely forgive thee and others, who have been accessory to my death.”

John was hanged, drawn and quartered at St Thomas Waterings, in London on 21 June 1600. However, he was cut down too soon, being still alive, he landed on his feet but was thrown down and held, while he was disembowelled. According to Bishop Richard Challoner, “The people, going away, complained bitterly of the barbarity of the execution.”

St John Rigby had died 2 years later but in the same manner and at the same place as his revered Confessor, St John Jones, who had reconciled him to the Church.

John was Beatified by Pius XI on 15 December 1929 and included in the Canonisation by Paul VI of the 40 Martyrs in 1970.