Tag: English martyrs

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Saint of the Day – 30 July – Blesseds Edward Powell, Thomas Abel and Richard Fetherston

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Blessed Edward Powell

Edward Powell (c.1478 – 30 July 1540) was a Welsh priest, theologian, and opponent to King Henry VIII. He was beatified in 1886. Powell was born in Wales, was M.A. of the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Oriel College. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity on 26 June 1506 and was styled perdoctus vir by the university.

A court preacher in high favour with Henry VIII, he helped the King write Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, a reply to Martin Luther, and then published his own work on the subject in December 1523. The University of Oxford commended this work, and styled Powell “the glory of the university” in a letter to the king. Powell was one of the four theologians selected to defend the legality of the king’s marriage of Catherine of Aragon, in connection with which he wrote the “Tractatus de non dissolvendo Henrici Regis cum Catherina matrimonio”.

In March, 1533, Powell was selected to answer Hugh Latimer at Bristol, and was alleged to have disparaged his moral character. Latimer complained to Thomas Cromwell, and Powell fell into further disfavour by denouncing Henry’s marriage with Anne Boleyn. He was discharged from the proctorship of Salisbury in January, 1534, and in November he was attainted, together with John Fisher, for high treason in refusing to take the oath of succession, deprived of his benefices, and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

The sentence was not carried out until 30 July 1540. Three Catholics (Powell, Abel, and Richard Featherstone) and three Protestants suffered together. (The protestants were were condemned for teaching Zwinglianism.) The victims were dragged on hurdles from the Tower to Smithfield, a Catholic and a Protestant on each hurdle. Powell’s companion was Robert Barnes, the Protestant divine. The Catholics were hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors; the others were burned as heretics.

The site of executions at Smithfield

Blessed Thomas Abel

Blessed Thomas Abel (also Able, or Abell), priest and martyr, born about 1497; died 30 July, 1540. He was chaplain to Queen Catherine, and defender of the validity of her marriage to Henry VIII, for which reason he was put to death. He was a graduate of Oxford, and taught the queen modern languages and music. After a journey to Spain on her behalf, he received the parochial benefice of Bradwell in Sussex. He soon published in defence of the queen’s marriage a work entitled: “Invicta Veritas, an answer to the determination of the most famous Universities, that by no manner of law it may be lawful for King Henry to be divorced from the Queen’s grace, his lawful and very wife”. The work contained an answer to the numerous tracts supporting Henry’s ecclesiastical claims. The king, enraged and terrified, bought up copies of the book in order to destroy them.

A carving Blessed Thomas created in Beauchamp Tower

For his defence of holy matrimony, he was thrown into Beauchamp Tower, and after a year’s liberation again imprisoned, in December, 1533, on the charges of disseminating the prophecies of the Maid of Kent, encouraging the queen “obstinately to persist in her wilful opinion against the same divorce and separation”, and maintaining her right to the title of queen. He was kept in close confinement until his execution at Tyburn, two days after the execution of Cromwell himself. There is extant a very pious Latin letter written by him to a fellow-martyr, and another to Cromwell, begging for some slight mitigation of his “close prison” — i.e. “license to go to church and say Mass here within the Tower and for to lie in some house upon the Green”. It is signed “by your daily bedeman, Thomas Abell, priest”.

His act of attainder states that he and three others “have most traitorously adhered themselves unto the bishop of Rome, being a common enemy unto your Majesty and this your Realm, refusing your Highness to be our and their Supreme Head of this your Realm of England“.

The Tyburn ‘Tree’

Blessed Richard Fetherston

Blessed Richard Fetherston (Fetherstone, Featherstone) was an English priest. He was Archdeacon of Brecon, Chaplain to Catherine of Aragon, and Latin tutor to her daughter, Mary Tudor. He was executed on 30 July 1540 and beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 29 December 1886.

Richard Featherstone studied at Cambridge where he became a doctor of divinity. In 1523 he was appointed archdeacon of Brecon in South Wales. By 1525 he had become the Princess Mary’s Latin tutor. When the Convocation of Canterbury met in November 1529 and considered whether Henry VIII and Queen Catherine were truly married, he spoke in defence of the marriage. The Act of Parliament which condemned St John Fisher in 1534 for his refusal to take the Oath of Succession, also referred to Fetherstone, who was sent to the Tower of London on 13 December of the same year. There he was confined until his execution in 1540. As in these cases, the limbs of all three were fixed over the gates of the city, and their heads were placed upon poles on London Bridge.

London Bridge, with heads on spikes

Posted in SAINT of the DAY

Saint of the Day – 16 July – Bl Robert Grissold

Posted on by AnaStpaul

One of the English Martyrs. Blessed Robert Grissold (or Greswold) was a native of Rowington, the son of John and Isabel Grissold of Poundley End, Rowington. John was a weaver and he and his wife had seven sons and one daughter. Of yeoman stock, and he was the servant of a Mr Sheldon of Broadway in Worcestershire. Both Robert and his brother John had a reverence for Catholic priests. John was the servant of Fr Henry Garnet, SJ, and was so badly racked after the Gunpowder Plot that it was rumoured he was dead. It was probably in Mr Sheldon’s service that Robert encountered John Sugar, who had been a clergyman of the Anglican Church but had become a Catholic, studied at the English College, Douai, and was ordained a priest on 21st April 1601. Having returned to England, he travelled on foot throughout Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire, where he ministered to the ‘poorer and meaner sort of Catholics.’ Robert accompanied the priest to his old home, where news of the priest’s arrival was noised abroad.

On Sunday, 8th July 1603 a warrant was issued to search the house of a Catholic dwelling in Rowington for the arrest of a Catholic priest who was rumoured to be there. This was probably the house of William Skynner, Lord of the Manor or Rowington, a Catholic who in 1592 had been in trouble for harbouring a priest. On this occasion no priest was found and the searchers went to the house of Robert, Henry and Ambrose Grissold, Robert’s three unmarried uncles, who kept house together and were known to be Catholics. One of the searchers was Clement Grissold, nephew of the three brothers and first cousin of Robert; he it was who directed the search to the Grissold household. Again, no priest was found.

However, on the highway near Baddesley the search party encountered Robert and John Sugar. They were betrayed by a relative of Grissold who offered to let him leave. “Cousin, if you will go your way you may,” said Clement; but Robert replied, “I will not, except I may have my friend with me.”

Both were imprisoned in Warwick Gaol, where they languished for a year. On 13th July 1604 John Sugar was arraigned for being a Catholic priest and was condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Authorities offered both men a final chance at pardon if they would conform to the Church of England by attending Anglican services, but Grissold, approximately 29 years old, steadfastly refused, affirming his loyalty to the Catholic faith.

On 16th July they were taken to the place of execution, known as Gallows Hill. John Sugar was drawn on a hurdle. Robert was given the opportunity of not following through the mud, but he replied, ‘I have not thus far followed him to leave him now for a little mire.’

Fr Sugar was executed first. He said on the scaffold: “Be ye all merry, for we have not occasion of sorrow but of joy: for although I shall have a sharp dinner, yet I trust in Jesus Christ that I shall have a most sweet supper.”

Seeing the halter with which he was to be hanged lying on the ground, Robert went and dipped it in John Sugar’s blood, and going up the ladder he said to the people, ‘Bear witness, good people, that I die here not for theft, nor for felony, but for my conscience.’ Then he forgave his persecutors and the hangman, made an act of contrition, and called on the name of Jesus. Lastly, he commended himself into the hands of Almighty God and was turned off the ladder; he hanged until he was quite dead. He was buried beneath the gallows, while the head and quarters of John Sugar were set up on the gates of Warwick.