Introduction to the 1924 Edition

(i) The New Edition of the 'Memoirs of Missionary Priests (2) Martyr Literature before Challoner {p. vi); (3) Catalogues of the Seventeenth Century {p. vii); (4) Lives collected on a small scale {p.vii); (5) Complete Collections of Lives (p. viii); (6) Authorities accessible and inaccessible {p. viii).

(i) The Essentials of Martyrdom {p. ix); (2) The Evidence for Orthodoxy; King Jameses forbidden Oath of Allegiance {pp. ix-x); (3) Hatred of the Faith in the Persecutor. The Case of the Martyr Price, and that of the Martyr Wells {pp. xi-xii).

(i) Richard Challoner, Bishop of Debra {p. xii); (2) Bishop Challoner as a Writer {pp. xii-xiii); (3) The Three Dossiers {pp. xiii-xiv); (4) First Steps towards the Beatification of the English Martyrs {p. xiv).

IV

(i) Our Martyr Studies: Official Sources {pp. xiv-xv); (2) Catholic Sources {pp. xv-xvi); (3) Principles in this Edition, ChallonePs Text {pp. xvi-xvii).

I. The New Edition of the 'Memoirs of Missionary Priests.'

The remainder of the old Derby edition of Challoner ’s Memoirs passed away in the dark years of the war. The dearth of paper was prompting the Government to call out louder and louder for extensive pulping operations, and these cries led to the boiling down of the residue of those stout little i6mo. volumes, which William Richardson, of Derby, began to issue as early as 1843.

The loss at first seemed grave, for there was now no accessible copy on sale of this valuable Catholic work. But a Catholic firm has now come- forward with commendable zeal, and has repaired the loss with interest, by the publication of the present handsome library edition.

The best edition of Challoner — -that is the first — has been chosen for the text, and it has been followed with precision. But a Chinese fidelity was not to be commended. Nearly 200 years have passed since the work was printed, and much fresh historical material is now available. Some reference must needs be given to the new confirmations and corrections. It would not be necessary to rewrite, or to omit, a word of the biographies, but there were parts where some modification did not seem out of keeping. In the first place, a new and up-to-date index must be added, which would indicate not merely the places and the persons, but also the sufferings, virtues, trials, prayers — in fact, all details about the martyrdoms; some reference must also be given to the latest historical authorities. To find room for this something could be omitted — e.g., the quasi appendices, which are not about the martyrs. Knaresborough’s account of the Sequestrations under the Commonwealth has been left; but Lord Castlemaine’s enumeration of Catholic cavaliers slain in civil war could no longer be called indispensable. The introductions by previous editors, it seemed, might be left to future or to enlarged editions. They were indeed excellent in themselves, and the loss of Dr. Challoner’s preface was especially regrettable, and Mr. Law’s historical introduction (1878), one may hope, will always be kept in memory. But neither was biographical in any strict sense, and that consideration was necessarily here decisive.

2. Martyr Literature before Challoner.

It may be that, as we turned the title-page, we noticed that even there Dr. Challoner spoke of having gathered information ‘ partly from printed accounts published by contemporaries, and partly from manuscript relations.’ Like other historians, Challoner began by the study of books, and on finishing with them he pushed on still further back to the oldest manuscripts he could find. This we take as an indication that we should begin by surveying the oldest printed literature, and afterwards point to the surviving manuscript sources.

The first printed volumes on the martyrs were Biographies, the earliest being Dr. Allen’s incomparable A Briefe Historie of the glorious Martyrdom of xij Reverend Priests, written under the spell of the wonderful achievement of Edmund Campion in 1582 (reprinted in 1908). This was the cornerstone on and round which was slowly built up the whole fabric of subsequent martyr literature. First came translations into Italian published at Turin, Venice, Milan and Macerata, and the number of martyrs grew with the succeeding editions till it reached eighteen. A Latin translation now followed vi at Treves by Father John Bridgewater, S J., in 1583, and a new edition in 1588 inflated by many more lives, some controversy and historical tables. In this form it is generally described by its secondary title, Concertatio Ecclesice Anglicance, 1588. But by this time the book had become so bulky that in those days of poverty our printers could no longer deal with it, and in the year 1594 two translations appeared simultaneously: one in Italian at Rome, by Girolamo Pollini, O.P., the other at Madrid in Spanish, by Diego Yepez, Bishop of Tarazona.

3. The Catalogues of the Seventeenth Century.

In the place of Biographies there was in the first half of the seventeenth century great industry in the making of Catalogues of the Martyrs. The earliest of these was slightly earlier still, by a priest named Edward Rishton, who had brought out the first edition of Sander’s De Schismate Anglicana at Cologne in 1585. As the De Schismate was a popular work, its catalogue of the martyrs passed through fifteen Latin editions, with six editions in French, Italian and Spanish. These catalogues, like Sander’s work, included early martyrs under Henry, as well as some of those under Elizabeth. There were several new editions of the Catalogue of the Elizabethan Martyrs between 1610 and 1614 by Worthington and Wilson. But the best of all these little catalogues was that arranged by Dr. Richard Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon, which was unfortunately never printed, though Canon Raisse of Douay (1628) brought out one at the same time which was much appreciated, and frequently copied.

4. Lives Collected on a Small Scale.

The seventeenth century saw the publication of Collected Lives, but collected on a small scale only. Dr. Worthington began with his Relation of Sixteen Martyrs. During the Civil War period there were publications of this class both by the Franciscans and by the Jesuits (Certamen Seraphicum, O.S.F., and Certamen Triplex, S.J.), by Chiflet, Palma Cleri Anglicani (for the secular clergy), by Dom Joannes Rubeus, O.S.B., in 1657 Benedictines. Sieur de

Marsys published a larger volume of collected papers and pamphlets for sixteen martyrs of this period belonging to several orders, etc.

The Jesuit Father John Keynes published a miscellaneous volume entitled Floras Anglo-Bavaricus, with one of the earliest accounts of Oates’s victims. Lord Castlemain’s so-called Comvii pendiiim of the trials, and of last speeches of the period is a still larger source. The Stajford Memoirs and the various single trials^ and last speeches, are all accessible. But the history of the period is intensely gloomy and obscure. Horror at its senseless credulity, repugnance at its shameful cruelty and low-class fanaticism make the study of its secret history unusually toilsome and repulsive.

5. Complete Collections of Lives.

Some time had still to run before the collection of Lives was made for the whole persecution period. Though Father Christopher Grene, S.J., displayed great diligence at the English College, Rome (from 1666 to 1696), in transcribing and arranging the acts of the martyrs, especially those of that College, and though Dom Bennet Weldon did the same for the Anglo-Benedictines, the earliest martyr ologist on the complete scale was John Knaresborough, priest, whose composition seems to have been put together in Yorkshire about 1700 to 1710. Though never printed, his work was known to Bishop Challoner, and is frequently cited in his second part. He was followed twenty years later by the historian Dodd.

6. Other Authorities, Accessible and Inaccessible.

Thus far we have touched upon Bishop Challoner’s printed sources for the history of the martyrs; but he did not confine himself to printed books. He made much use of the then unprinted Douay Diaries, and of such memoirs as he could find at Douay itself, or borrow from Jesuits, Benedictines and other owners of manuscript sources. The inaccessibility of archives and libraries in those days was almost complete, and though he is most correct in acknowledging every small loan of copies and all assistance, we must always remember the very great obstacles that were in his way. Not only had he no information from Rome, Italy, Spain, Flanders, but also no Public Record Office in London, no British Museum, no Bodleian Library. To this we shall return later.

Vlll

1. The Essentials of Martyrdom.

Martyrdom and Orthodoxy.

The very essence of Martyrdom is affected by Orthodoxy. Martyrium^ says St Augustine, non facit poena sed causa. It is not mere suffering which makes a martyr. Many an invalid has been put to as much or more pain for his health’s sake as martyrs have had to bear for the sake of their faith. It is giving life for the faith that makes martyrdom so precious in the sight of the Church, whereas neither merit nor reward would be won by spending life for error.

2. The evidence for Orthodoxy.

It follows, therefore, that keen attention must be paid to the martyr’s defence of the faith, when he is challenged by its adversaries. His extant writings, especially those on the Catholic faith, must also be examined. This inquiry is called technically the processiculus diligentiarum (‘the little process of industries,’ because, though little material may be found, it gives much scope to the industrious work of the postulators). In our case it has already been held (1900 to 1904): there were but few literary works found, but very numerous short pieces. They were reported upon by a small band of English Dominican Fathers, and were finally pronounced blameless by Rome.

The result of the inquiry showed that nothing even remotely compromising could be found, and that the overwhelming probability was that no compromising material had ever existed. The inquiry further indicated that, if there was a danger spot, it would be found in the controversies about the Oath of Allegiance devised and imposed by King James.

This conclusion is also suggested by the second half of the volume before us: the pronouncements of the martyrs here upon the oath are most instructive. No less than thirteen martyrs made noteworthy or sometimes full and detailed pleadings on this subject. The thirteen fullest seem to be Almond (p. 331), Arrowsmith (p. 362), Atkinson (p. 341), Cadwallader (p. 304), Drury (p. 293), Thomas Garnet (p. 291), Gavan (p. 533), Gervaise (p. 295), Heath (p. 445), Herst (p. 374), Maxfield (p. 345), Napier (p. 311), and Thulis (p. 343). It is probable that, if our reports for other martyrs were fuller, we should find many more who resisted the imposition of the oath with a courage and a coolness no less remarkable than that displayed by the above.

ix

These stories lead one to comment on the perseverance with which the officials commend the oath to the prisoners. They constantly offered mercy, and even freedom, to those who would take the oath. And hence it seems likely that any who wished to go free could have won that grace, if he had been willing to take the oath; or, what comes to the same thing, it seems that all who suffered death, all the martyrs, were given the opportunity to refuse the oath, and that all refused it.

But though the martyrs heroically refused the insidious formula, there were certainly others who were less chivalrous, though this is not the place where an inquiry into their failing will be expected. It will be sufficient to indicate here the frequency with which the Pope urged the gravity of his command. It was originally forbidden by Pope Paul V. in 1606, and next year, 1607, he found it necessary to renew the prohibition. The command was published by the Archpriests and Assistants, though Dr. Blackwell, the first Archpriest, afterwards showed the white feather, and when in prison not only yielded to take the oath, but gave the more offence by defending his fall. Several Catholics, moreover, gave scandal by defending the oath in printed books, which were condemned by the Holy Office in the years 1611, 1613, 1614, and the sentence against them is still maintained in the latest official reissue of the Index librorum prohibitorum. But while Rome has not allowed the defenders of the oath to pass unobserved, she has nothing untoward to recall of our martyrs, despite of the efforts made by the servants of the Stuarts to induce the martyrs to yield in the matter of the oath.¹

But the favourer of the oath, whatever his name, cannot have been the future martyr; for Panzani in his final Relazione, 1636 (printed in Maziere Brady, Annals of the English Catholic Hierarchy in England and Scotland^ 1883, p. 87), describes this Huardo as a father, whereas the martyr was not married till 1637.

The ‘ Huardo ’ whom Panzani had in mind was probably both a baronet and a baron. Sir William as well as Lord William Howard of Naworth, whose eldest son was born in 1629.

3. Hatred of the Faith in the Persecutor.

It might at first seem no compliment to the sufferer to say that he has been hated by anyone or for any reason. But reflection will show that such an aphorism betrays at least some laxity of thought. Every martyr is, after all, a man who has been slain, and therefore hated in the clearest way. Everything depends on the reasons for which he has been hated.

As to this St Peter lays down the principle, “ Let none of you suffer as a murderer or as a thief... but if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed^' (i Pet. iv. 15, 16). If as a Christian, let him not be ashamed — that is, if the sufferer be charged with nothing more than the profession or practice of Christianity, ‘ let him not be ashamed,’ for he is in reality a martyr. ‘ The hour cometh,’ said our Saviour about the persecutors, ‘ that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God ’ (John xvi. 2). Let no one wonder, therefore, if judge, jury and executioner believed that in obeying the old laws they were acting the parts of good citizens, and carrying out their duty before God, though in reality they were under the influence of odium fidei. Let us take the example of the Ven. Robert Price, a Cavalier Colonel who was in the force defending Lichfield when the close was carried by assault on May 6, 1644. Next day after the surrender a party of Puritan soldiers met him. ‘ Are you Price the papist?’ ‘I am Price the Roman Catholic.’ He was immediately shot dead (p. 457 below).

The question put distinctly proves the motive of the Puritan. It was not the loyalist against whom he was animated; he had passed by scores of them. Again, if Price had failed to confess his faith he too would have gone free. The Puritans were not murdering indiscriminately. But the confession of faith followed by instant execution stands out clearly as death for the faith ex odio fidei — that is, as martyrdom. And whatever the mind of the Puritan, whether he was cold-blooded or exalte, any fair-minded jury should pronounce Price’s death to be martyrdom.

Dr. Challoner does not make special efforts to accumulate proofs of animus in the persecutors. Sufficient for him to record the deeds that speak more plainly than words. But if anyone desires further evidence as to the animus against Catholics during Oates’s plot, let us say, let him consult the popular songs, now published by the Ballad Society, for the period, and he will find there, both as to quantity and as to quality, more strong language than he can possibly want. The feeling of the martyrs themselves towards xi their enemies is finely shown in the prayer of the Ven. Swithin Wells for Topcliffe, worst of persecutors: ‘ I pray God make you of a Saul a Paul, of a persecutor a Catholic professor ’ (p. i8i).

1. Richard Challoner^ Bishop of Debra.

Richard Challoner, Bishop of Debra, was Vicar Apostolic of the London district from 1740 to 1781. He had been born at Lewes on September 29, 1691, of Protestant parentage, but was instructed and received into the Church by John Gother, when thirteen. Three years later he was sent to Douay College, where he passed through the course, then became professor, and eventually a Doctor of Divinity. In every post he was distinguished for his piety, regularity and hard work. In 1730 he returned to London, and in 1740 was appointed Bishop of Debra in partibus infidelium and coadjutor to Bishop Petre. So unremitting was his diligence that he always had on hand some useful work, chiefly controversy, piety, or history. His life has latterly been written with much judgement and learning by my friend Canon E. Burton. Almost the first of his published volumes was the Memoirs of Missionary Priests, of which the first volume appeared in 1741, the second in 1742. We know nothing of the circumstances which induced him to take pen in hand, and, judging from his other publications, it would perhaps be a mistake to institute a minute investigation of the point, for he seems to have commenced new books boldly, with but few preliminaries. Brought up at Douay, he would always have had some martyr literature within his reach, and he always knew that much more work was much wanted. The existing lives of the martyrs were antiquated, few, inaccessible, in foreign languages; not one treated of all the martyrs. It would be interesting to know how he obtained access to the rarer volumes which he used. There seems, for instance, to be nowadays but one copy in England of Cardinal Allen’s Brief e Historie, which is the cornerstone on which we rest the foundation of all our martyr knowledge. However, it is probable that, before the French Revolution, our old religious houses were not so ill-provided as they have been since.

2. Bishop Challoner as a Martyr ologist.

We have no information as to Challoner ’s early teachers or guides in research. While at Douay, the vital books and papers may have been pointed out by some librarian or teacher of history.

xii

And before the publication of his second volume he had access to John KnareshorougK s MS. Collections, which were written before 1720. The first helper to whom we can definitely point was Alban Butler, who was professor at Douay from 1735 to 1743. He sent Challoner transcripts, which the Bishop was glad to use.

3. The Three Dossiers.

By great good fortune the very clutch of Douay papers copied by Alban Butler has survived, and they are now in the Westminster Archives. They are rebound, however, in chronological order. I shall call them The Douay Dossier.

Alban Butler’s transcripts have also survived. Having passed into the hands of Dr. Kirk, he bequeathed them to Oscott College, where they are still preserved, and I shall call them The Butler Dossier.

We may also distinguish another group of m.artyr papers, now in the Westminster Archives, put together at an earlier date by Dr. Richard Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon, and which I shall call The Chalcedon Dossier. This is the earliest of the three dossiers, and contains papers collected for the formation of Chalcedon’s Catalogue or Register of Martyrs in 1628. This was perhaps never at Douay, and was never seen, I fancy, by Challoner; it contains fifty- two pieces relating to fourteen martyrs, from 1610 to 1628, and they are still unpublished. This bishop. Dr. Richard Smith, was a most energetic man, and though perforce he had to live in Paris, he was the first who worked for the beatification of the English martyrs in a practical way, gathering up information by his archdeacons and others, and pressing Rome to act. I have printed one of the answers to his inquiries, that from Benjamin Norton, in Volume V of the Catholic Record Society, with an introduction which refers to many other papers in Dr. Richard Smith’s collections.

To return to the other two dossiers. Both are founded on Chalcedon’s collections, but they also contain some documents of a later date, especially some relating to the persecution of Oates. Moreover, a few of Chalcedon’s papers are here reduced to summaries. I have already explained that The Butler Dossier is for the most part copied from The Douay Dossier, yet they are not identical. Butler’s dossier has a certain number of originals bound up in it, evidently old duplicates,^ which saved the trouble' of making yet other transcripts. Article No. 32 again is in the hand of Dr. Challoner, to wit, notes on the history of Douay College — evidently a later insertion.

M‘ii

The Douay Dossier contains ninety-one pieces, the Butler Dossier seventy-six; and at least twenty-seven of these are in Butler’s own hand, the last piece being a stray one in the hand of Dodd. I have careful catalogues of all three dossiers made before the pieces were rearranged in chronological order. They were made by the late Father John Morris, S.J., then postulator in the cause of the martyrs.

4. First Steps towards Beatification.

Our survey of the martyr manuscripts has incidentally brought to our notice the first attempt to procure the formal beatification of our martyrs. The first preliminary was the drawing up of the martyr catalogue by the Bishop of Chalcedon in 1628. But Rome was still slow to move. It was twelve years later before Pope Urban VIII gave faculties to the Archbishop of Cambray to appoint commissioners, who should examine likely witnesses, whose depositions might establish juridically the truth about the martyrs.

But the Puritan persecution, breaking out exactly at this moment, led to the seizure of the Archbishop’s letters, which were published by Parliament on the very day appointed for the execution of Father Arthur Bell (p. 455), who had been named in them. Thus it was clear that change of circumstances, at any rate, had made the time unpropitious and the process futile, and so it was abandoned. There were still nearly fifty martyrs to be added to the catalogue of 1628.

IV.

I. Our Martyr Studies.

Our present circumstances have changed again. The freedom we now enjoy for studying in the archives and great libraries of the land has caused an immense advance in our acquaintance with the sources for martyr history, and makes us wonder whether we are abreast of the time in making known to ordinary readers that knowledge about the martyrs which is so near to our hands.

Our first duty surely is to make clear what the official evidence is in regard to martyr history. The Government of our country insists on records being kept of all important official acts. This has always been so. There were once at least records of all trials, xiv executions, imprisonments, fines, etc., and the ideal thing would be, no doubt, to print now those for each martyr. But though all the surviving indictments for London have already been printed by the Middlesex Record Society, we find the number of surviving martyr indictments to number about sixteen only, whereas there should have been 140 for so many martyrdoms. The number sixteen is quite satisfactory for establishing the text of the writ, but it does not prognosticate that the official papers in existence are unmanageably numerous.

But there are other official records besides those of the indictments. Thus Dr. Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon, amongst his other services to the martyrs’ cause, caused inquiries to be made among the assize records, which were, of course, far more complete in his time than they are in ours. He found in the result no less than eighty-one martyr entries, nearly all of which appear to have got lost in the three centuries which have passed since his time. There are other indictments elsewhere, but very few I fear; I have found traces of about a dozen only.

Strictly Protestant sources like the annalists and chroniclers, therefore, should also be cited; and for the Commonwealth times and those of Titus Oates, the chronicles of Baker, as well as the newsletters, especially those of an official character.

About the later martyrs there were also reports by foreign news-agents, Italian, French, and especially Dutch, as well as German, Spanish, Latin. They have still to be ferreted out and transcribed.

2. Catholic Sources.

But new matter, abundant in quantity as well most valuable in quality, is still to be found in Catholic sources, to many of which Challoner never obtained access. It was impossible for him to travel, or to spend in researches the considerable time which would have been necessary to obtain the information then existing in Rome or in Spain, or in the English Catholic colleges and convents on the Continent. This archive material of the best class is now mostly scattered, though we know from previous explorers where most of the material can be found. The martyr correspondence at West-minster, with the original ‘ relations ’ in Father Christopher Grene’s Collectanea volumes at Stonyhurst, lettered M, N, B, with E at Oscott are, we know, the gems of this literature.

It should surely be our first duty to catalogue and define what these Catholic materials are, and as they are still largely in Catholic

XV h hands, they could and should be transcribed; the transcripts should be set in due order, and then printed in full, whenever we are dealing with materials which regard either purely or predominantly the history of our martyrs. Then, as the occasion served, we should proceed methodically with the history of the persecutions.

3. Principles in Editing ChallonePs Text.

Challoner’s Missionary Priests has been regarded since its first appearance as a classical work on the sufferings of the Catholic body. But there is also unanimity that, though the Lives need rewriting, this book should not be altered or tampered with. We have, therefore, gone back to Challoner’s first edition, re- expanding the occasional slight condensations which previous editors had allowed themselves, and we have restored, so far as was possible, even the original spelling.

The accuracy of Challoner’s work has been highly and most deservedly praised.² But of course, where the materials themselves were still uncriticized, there some confusion, some error, was morally sure to follow. For this reason let me say that the only mistake worth mentioning, which we have found and corrected, occurs in the crowded year 1588. Father Morris himself had recognised that something was wrong with our list for that year, and he had suggested as the remedy, that the martyr Flower should be identified with the martyr Way. This turned out to be wrong, and when the biographies were worked out at full length in The Lives of the Venerable Martyrs, the late Rev. H. E. Dunne, the writer of the lives in question, found that without doubt the true solution lay in identifying Hewett with Weldon, and this correction has been made and explained in this volume. Another detail in the tangle was the substitution of the name of an old priest Williams for that of a non-priest Symons alias Harrison. This has been corrected, and the necessary reference to The Lives of the Venerable Martyrs has been made in a note.

xvi

Other changes are both small and uneventful. Dr. Challoner, writing professedly about Martyr Priests, also gives them, according to the manner of his age, the highest honours of typography and precedence. We, however, have a new standard to take account of,

Footnotes

1. At this point I ought to draw attention to a fault of my own, which I desire to retract and unsay. In the Catholic Encyclopedia {Article Oaths), I stated that “Preston wrote in defence of the Oath of Allegiance, and so also did Sir William Howard (1634), who was probably the future martyr.” The last clause is an error, and was due to Panzani’s insouciance about English names. There were in reality no less than four knights named William Howard in England (Shaw, The Book of Knights^ 1906), during Panzani’s agency, 1634-1636. So his words* II Huardo ’ would equally well specify any of the four. ↩

2. My suspicions, I must confess, were often aroused by his spelling of local names. Biddolf, Higgons, Thim6elby, Win<iford, Sone — seemed to me not only probably wrong, but also probably to be the result of slip-shod pronunciation. But in all the above cases, I found that Challoner had the same spellings in the text before him. Such spellings as Grenada for Granada, and Tarrasona for Tarazona were the correct English spellings at that day. In Challoner’s days there were no Gazetteers, no reference books like the Dictionary of National Biography. Local names are still sometimes spelt diversely, and variations were then quite frequent. ↩