Lancashire priest Edmund Arrowsmith was martyred on this date in 1628.

Actually named Bryan by his parents, Arrowsmith took the name of an uncle while matriculating at the English seminary in Douai.

He deployed for the old religion his “fervour, zeal and ready wit” in Lancaster from 1612 to 1622, withstood an arrest, then entered the Jesuit order and resumed his underground ministry — until, as the story has it, a man whom Fr. Arrowsmith had chastised for his adulteries petulantly shopped him.

Arrowsmith suffered the horrible public butchery of drawing and quartering, as well as posthumous burning. From the remans, someone retrieved as a relic a charred hand and sent it to Arrowsmith’s relations, who (per a 19th century relative) “keep it in a silver case, and honour it very much, and every Sunday all the crippled or diseased Catholic poor come to kiss it, and the priest touches them with it. It has performed many authentic cures, — some in our time, — so strong is faith.” It has since been transmitted to the Church of St. Oswald and St. Edmund Arrowsmith in Ashton. Look for the stained glass of Edmund and his Holy Hand in this beautiful Flickr album of the church.

On this day..

• 1955: Emmett Till lynched
• 1588: Eight Catholics after the defeat of the Spanish Armada
• 476: Orestes, father of the last Roman Emperor
• 388: Magnus Maximus, minimized
• 1648: Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, royalists
• 1948: Ragnar Skancke, the last executed in Norway
• 1765: Three Burglarious Johns
• 1987: Dale Selby Pierre, Hi-Fi Murderer
• 1941: Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Indochina Communist cadre
• 1793: Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine
• 1944: Bronislav Kaminski, Waffen SS collaborator
• Themed Set: Russian Revolutions That Weren't
• 1807: James McLean, twice