Saint of the Day – 19 August – Blessed Hugh Green (c1584-1642) Priest, Martyr. Born in c1584 in London and died by a botched hanging and finally beheaded on 19 August 1642, at Dorchester, Dorset, England during the reign and persecutions of Charles I. Also known as – Ferdinand Brook/s or Ferdinand Brown. Additional Memorila on 29 October as one of the Martyrs of Douai. Hugh was Beatified on 15 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI.
Hugh Green was born in c1584 of Protestant parents. He took a Degree at Cambridge in 1605 but, in 1610, after converting to Catholicism Hugh travelled to Douai to study for the Priesthood.
He tried his vocation as a Capuchin Friar but left that Friars Minor in 1612, whereafter he was and was Ordained to the Priesthood and left to return to England as a Missionary to the persecuted Church.
Hugh returned to England and as a Chaplain at Chideock Castle, Dorset. Here Hugh served the Catholics of Dorset under the protection of Lady Blanche Arundell of Lanherne.
Just before the beginning of the Civil War, on 8 March 1641, Charles I, to placate the Puritan Parliament of England, issued a proclamation making the presence of Catholic Priests in England a crime punishable by death. Although Hugh intended to lpossibly eave England under this ban, he was too tardy in his exercise of this intention, probably because he could not desert his fellow Catholics, so much in need of their Priests.
He was captured near Lyme Regis, imprisoned and then executed on 19 August 1642. In prison his constancy so affected his fellow-captives that two or three women sentenced to die with him, sent him word that they would ask his absolution before death. They did so after confessing their sins on the scaffold to all the people watching the gruesome spectacle and were absolved by the Martyr, Fr Hugh.
The story of his execution is more appallingly cruel and barbaric than usual – there was no experienced executioner available, so a barber-cum-part-time-executioner spent almost half an hour trying to locate his heart while he was hanging by his neck on the scaffold. Finally, a soldier mercifully ended this torture by beheading him. When his head was severed, the Puritan mob used it as a football! As Archbishop Challoner noted, this was thankfully, not an event repeated in the annals of the English Martyrs.
Blessed Hugh Green is honoured at the Church of Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs and St Ignatius, Chideock, Dorset.
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