Mary's Dowry Productions: English Martyrs - Why are the English Martyrs so important for Catholics?

ENGLISH MARTYRS
Why are the English Martyrs so important for Catholics?

St John Fisher
© Mary's Dowry Productions
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English Martyrs. The English Martyrs give us an opportunity to remember some of our ancestors who willingly laid down their lives for their faith, Recalling their lives and accounts is an opportunity, too, to renew and strengthen our own faith in today's Church which is at once unchanging and also very different.

St Swithun Wells
© 2010 Mary's Dowry Productions
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The Martyrs lived in times of religious persecution. Illustrations of the martyrs are not easy to come by. Some contemporary paintings exist in the English college at Valladolid, Spain, and there a few examples of stained glass windows dedicated to particular martyrs.

Blessed Margaret Pole
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The Martyrs were from every social class. Among them were highly educated men, prosperous landowners, sons and daughters from wealthy families, but there were also craftsmen, ordinary unskilled workers and serving men.

St Nicholas Owen
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Many of the priests came from well-to-do landed families. Francis Ingleby's home was Ripley Castle in Yorkshire, in the family's possession since the 14th century and still occupied by them today. Anthony Page was 'born of a gentleman's family' in Middlesex. But they came from the Yeoman class (landed people ranking below the gentry) too: Roger Cadwallador's father is described as 'a yeoman and man of substance.' There were professional and merchant classes a well, for instance, Thomas Bullaker's father was a medical doctor, Arthur Bell's father a lawyer, and Thomas More was the Chancellor of England.

St Thomas More
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St Thomas More
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The laymen and women suffered mainly because they were closely involved with the hunted Catholic priests, helping them in one way or another with their ministry, such as Anne Line and Margaret Ward, Margaret Clitherow and Swithun Wells.

St Margaret Clitherow
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Jesuits and St Nicholas Owen
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St Margaret Ward
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St Swithun Wells
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Without the co-operation and assistance of such laymen and women, the priests simply could not function. Many 'received' the priests, to use the official legal term. They sheltered them in their homes and provided a base from which they could operate and where they could gather the faithful together with relative security for Mass and the Sacraments. These places were the 'safe houses' by means of which the underground Catholic Church of the time was able to survive.

The English Martyrs
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Thus Marmaduke Bowes in Yorkshire, even while still externally conforming to the Establish Church, gave hospitality to priests, to whom he 'opened his doors bountifully' and whom he 'received and entertained as gladly as any men could be'. His wife was brought before the Council of the North at York with him in 1585 on the charge of sheltering priests, but the case against her was not pursued.

The English Martyrs
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After arrest the martyrs were carried off under guard and lodged in prison. Some of them spent just one short period in prison, a month or two awaiting trial; others were arrested and held captive more than once in the course of their ministry; others again were confined for years at a stretch.

The English Martyrs
St Robert Southwell
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English prisons in the 16th and 17th centuries were even less pleasant places that they are today and the martyrs confined in them had much to endure. Their gaolers treated them roughly and were often hostile to Catholics, though we do occasionally hear of sympathetic gaolers.

The English Martyrs
St Henry Morse
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Their fellow prisoners were murderers, thieves and criminals of all kinds, and no doubt their manners were often uncouth and their language coarse. The prison buildings were dark, forbidding places: the Tower of London, Newgate prison besides the Sessions House, old castles around the country like York Castle and Lancaster Castle.

St John Southworth
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In English winter the cold and damp must have been severe and the whole atmosphere gloomy and depressing. The food must have been bad and insufficient.
Dominican Robert Nutter spent 16 years of the 18 years he was on the English Mission in prison confinement. He was shackled with chains, tortured with a notorious instrument known as 'the Scavenger's daughter' and twice confined to an underground dungeon known as 'the pit'. He was deported but returned and spent several more years in London prisons. 16 years and 5 different prisons, with confinement in a dungeon and torture thrown in, all ending in death on the scaffold where he joyful offered his life and sufferings for the Catholic Faith.

English Martyr
St Polydore Plasden of Fleet Street, London
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English Martyrs
St Swithun Wells of Gray's Inn Lane, London
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It was dangerous to keep the memory of the martyrs alive on paper but accounts written found their way to English Catholic exiles on the continent and were preserved for us today.

Mary's Dowry Productions was established in 2007 with the desire to bring the memory of the lives of the English Martyrs to life through film. We have recreated film imagery of many of these Martyrs to assist in imagining the heroic missions, deeds and sacrifices that these great men and women of England offered for the Catholic Church.

We were privileged to be present at the Beatification of the 85 Martyrs in Rome, 1987.

The then Cardinal Basil Hume has left us some inspiring words about our English Martyrs;

"Several of these martyrs were lay people. They all lived in our land, walked the same fields and lanes, lived under the same skies and, to their contemporaries, appeared to be perfectly ordinary neighbours.

They show that sanctity is within the grasp of any of us.

What was special about them was the way in which they were dedicated to Christ, steadfast in prayer and generous in the love and service they offered to their families, neighbours and friends.

The strength of their commitment to faith was stronger than all opposition, even death itself.

They are an inspiration to Christians of every Church in the daily following of Jesus Christ."
- Cardinal Basil Hume, 23rd February 1987.

The films of Mary's Dowry Productions have been broadcast on EWTN and Sky and featured on BBC. For a full listing visit:

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Mary's Dowry Productions

Monday 25 June 2018

English Martyrs - Why are the English Martyrs so important for Catholics?

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