Saint of the Day – 26 July – Bl. John Ingram

John Ingram, born in 1565 at Stoke Edith, Herefordshire, England. Son of Anthony Ingram of Wolford, Warwickshire, and Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Hungerford. He was an English Jesuit and martyr who was executed in Gateshead on 26 July 1594, during the reign of Elizabeth I, aged 29.

He was educated at Worcestershire and the New College, Oxford, England and was an adult convert to Catholicism. After graduating from there at 17 years old, he left England for Douai, then he attended the English College at Rheims, France; the Jesuit College at Pont-a-Mousson, France; and the English College Seminary, in Rome. On the way to Rheims he and three other young men were waylaid and held for ransom by a troop of Calvinist mercenaries in the pay of Francis, Duke of Anjou. 

The first mention of Ingram is in a letter from William Allen, Principal at Rheims, to the rector of the English College in Rome: Even at the very moment of my writing to you bad tidings come of four young students. On their way to this college from Douai, they were robbed, and are still held captive, by the soldiery of my lord, the brother of his Majesty, and a large sum of money is demanded of us for their ransom. Meanwhile the soldiers are dragging their unhappy victims from town to town, and from province to province, in the direction of their camp in Belgium. God knows how much we shall have to pay to redeem them, for letters from the Mayor and Corporation of Rheims in their favour have been entirely without effect.”

But the four young men, John Ingram, Richard Haward, Thomas Heath and Christopher Haywood, managed to escape and made their way to Rheims, arriving, in a state of the utmost destitution during October and November 1582. On 10 June 1585, he took the oath of commitment to return to England as a Missionary Priest and took minor orders. John was ordained at Rome in 1589.

Sent on a mission to Scotland in 1592, he was supported by Lords Huntly, Angus, and Erroll, the Abbot of Dumbries, and Sir Walter Lindsay of Balgavies. To get there John traveled to Abbeville in France, then doubled back to Brussels where he said Mass in a secret chapel run by the Jesuits, and thence to Antwerp where he visited the Carthusian church and said Mass. There he abandoned his clerical garb and dressed as a layman. This circuitous route was possibly to obscure his intentions and identity, from the network of spies maintained by the English Government, who were always on the lookout for priests. John lived for 18 months as resident chaplain to the household of Sir Walter Lindsay, in the guise of a steward, ministering to the local faithful. He converted many people to the faith.

He lived under a number of aliases, but when Sir Walter Lindsay fled to Spain after angering the king by his own allegiance to the Faith, John fled south and to evade pursuit, slipped across the English border on 25 November 1593. He rested for some hours at Wark-on-Tweed and then traveled downriver seeking a means to cross back into Scotland but he was apprehended by the English border guards near Norham Castle.

Strenuous efforts were made by Scottish supporters to secure his release, one laird claiming Ingram as his own son, and others offering the substantial ransom of a thousand crowns for his release. This only confirmed the English belief that they had captured someone of significant importance, as up till then they were not certain whether he was a priest or some other enemy of the state.

He was imprisoned for his faith at Berwick, Durgam, York, and the Tower of London. Tortured in the Tower for the names of other “traitorous” Catholics, he gave away nothing, ministered to and encouraged his fellow prisoners, and still wrote 20 Latin epigrams that have survived.

Ingram arrived at the Tower of London on Holy Saturday, 17 April 1593, and later wrote:

Rocks are quarried, the entrails of the earth,
That Dives may have living rock for his tomb.
No tomb seek I; and yet shall there be a living tomb

For my lifeless body — the carrion-crow.

He was severely tortured by priest hunter Richard Topcliffe. Hung by the joints of his fingers and arms, he was in extreme pain for so long that the feeling of his senses was taken completely from him. He was often put to the rack, but would give no information about persons and places. When he and another priest were moved to York, Ingram was in solitary confinement in a stinking vault of a locked jakehouse for four days, without either a bed to lie on or a stool to sit on. From York, he was transported to Newcastle and imprisoned in the Newgate prison there for four night. A woman visitor to the prison was struck by the serenity and joy of the priest, who said that he had good cause to be merry because his wedding day being at hand, the bridegroom must be glad, for within ten days he hoped to enjoy his Spouse. She remarked that it was true his hope was good, but his banquet was deadly; but he answered that the reward was sweet. The serenity and courage of John Ingram is reflected in two letters he wrote from prison to his friends or fellow prisoners in the same prison: “I look for my trial on Thursday and consequently for my death in God’s honour ( …) in my pained body; my spirit is not pained, nor in any disaster, distress or durance.”

Tower of London cell

Someone in Scotland offered the English Government a thousand crowns to spare Ingram’s life, but he was convicted with Saint John Boste and Saint George Swallowell (the other two Durham Martyrs), for the high crime of priesthood.

When he was asked what he had to say that he should not receive judgement, he made this answer, “I say that I am a priest, and that my exercise and practice of priesthood cannot be made treason by any Christian law; and I beseech God to forgive both you and them that make it otherways. And I do with all my heart forgive you, and all my accusers and persecutors, and so I beseech God to have mercy upon me, and to strengthen me with patience and constancy in mine agony.”

Immediately prior to his execution, he was held for a short while in the Toll-Booth in Gateshead, a small local gaol very close to the place of execution. Holtby gives an account of Ingram’s preparations, the prayers he said, his words to the bystanders, and of the execution itself:

“I take God and his holy angels to the record, that I die only for the holy Catholic faith and religion, and do rejoice and thank God with all my heart that hath made me worthy to testify my faith therein, by the spending of my blood in this manner.”

He was asked to pray for the Queen and he prayed to God that she might long reign to his glory, and that it might please him to procure her to live and die a good Catholic Christian prince. With rope around his neck he said more prayers, ending with the psalm Miserere mei Deus, after which, making the sign of the Cross and saying, “In manus tuas“, the ladder was turned; and being dead, he was cut down, bowelled, and quartered. His severed head was placed on a spike and displayed on the bridge across the Tyne.

The Toll-Booth

In Rome, at the English College, when the news of his martyrdom reached them, the staff and students sang the Te Deum in the college chapel and wrote against his name “Martyro insigni coronatus“.

He was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.