1590: Christopher Bales, Nicholas Horner, and Alexander Blake

(Thanks to Charles George Herbermann for the guest post. Herbermann emigrated from Prussia to the United States in childhood and became a prominent scholar of Catholicism at the institution now known as New York University. Herbermann was the chief editor of the gigantic originally published in a volume of Catholic Encyclopedia in the early 20th century, where this text originally appeared; many other contributors were involved, and it’s impossible to tell . -ed.)

Christopher Bales. Priest and martyr, b. at Coniscliffe near Darlington, County Durham, England, about 1564; executed 4 March, 1590. He entered the English College at Rome, 1 October, 1583, but owing to ill-health was sent to the College at Reims, where he was ordained 28 March, 1587. Sent to England 2 November, 1588, he was soon arrested, racked, and tortured by Topcliffe, and hung up by the hands for twenty-four hours at a time; he bore all most patiently. At length he was tried and condemned for high treason, on the charge of having been ordained beyond seas and coming to England to exercise his office. He asked Judge Anderson whether St. Augustine, Apostle of the English, was also a traitor. The judge said no, but that the act had since been made treason by law. He suffered 4 March, 1590, “about Easter”, in Fleet Street opposite Fetter Lane. On the gibbet was set a placard: “For treason and favouring foreign invasion”. He spoke to the people from the ladder, showing them that his only “treason” was his priesthood. On the same day Venerable Nicholas Horner suffered in Smithfield for having made Bales a jerkin, and Venerable Alexander Blake in Gray’s Inn Lane for lodging him in his house.

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1595: Robert Southwell

February 20, 1594-5, [Father Robert] Southwell, a Jesuit, that long time had lain prisoner in the Tower of London, was arraigned at the King’s-bench bar. He was condemned, and on the next morning drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged, bowelled and quartered.

-Chronicle of John Stow

Youngest child in a gentry household of Catholic-leaning Norfolk, Robert Southwell was for holy orders and martyr’s laurels from the jump; in 1576 at the tender age of 15, he made for Douai and its English seminary, noted for training missionary priests who would return secretly to Elizabethan England to court torture and death for the Word. Within a decade he was a prefect at the English College in Rome and a fully armed and operational member of the Society of Jesus.

In 1586, Southwell sailed for his homeland with fellow Jesuit Henry Garnet, who would one day go to the gallows for Guy Fawkes’s Gunpowder Plot.

For Southwell, the pen was mightier than such detonations.

“St. Peter’s Complaint” (Excerpt)
by Robert Southwell

Ah! life, sweet drop, drown’d in a sea of sours,
A flying good, posting to doubtful end;
Still losing months and years to gain new hours,
Fain times to have and spare, yet forced to spend;
Thy growth, decrease; a moment all thou hast.
That gone ere known; the rest, to come, or past.

Ah! life, the maze of countless straying ways,
Open to erring steps and strew’d with baits.
To bind weak senses into endless strays,
Aloof from Virtue’s rough, unbeaten straits
A flower, a play, a blast, a shade, a dream,
A living death, a never-turning stream.

Quietly nestled in as the house confessor to Catholic noblewoman Anne Howard, Southwell scratched out page after page to fortify the hearts of the beleaguered Old Faith — standard stuff like martyrology testimony concerning his brother priests, overt manifestos like An humble supplication to Her Maiestie, and literary bestsellers admired by Protestant countrymen like Mary Magdalene’s Funeral Tears and his verse collection St. Peter’s Complaint, and Other Poems.*

This last appeared posthumously. After three years’ imprisonment — “I am decayed in memory with long and close imprisonment, and I have been tortured ten times,” the imminent martyr said of his handling by notorious Catholic-hunter Richard Topcliffe; “I had rather have endured ten executions” — Southwell was brought to the bar on February 20, 1595, to answer as a traitor and put to the traitor’s death the very next day.

Though less widely familiar now, his literary output was well-known and highly regarded long after he died, and perhaps influenced many other writers including Shakespeare. The Catholic Church elevated Southwell to sainthood in 1970.

* A couple of Southwell’s epistles are preserved in the 1741 volume Memoirs of Missionary Priests.

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1591: Edmund Geninges

Catholic priest Edmund Geninges (also Gennings, or Jennings) was executed on this date in 1592, along with the layman Swithburne Welles, whose home played host to Geninges’s final Mass. At least, that’s according to The life and death of Mr. Edmund Geninges priest, crowned with martyrdome at London, the 10. day of November, in the yeare M.D.XCI., by .

Despite the title, the text within that volume correctly places events on “fryday the 10 day of December” — per the Julian calendar still in use in England at that time. The book was even by the priest’s brother, John Gennings: m must have just been a typeset-o on the frontispiece.

As merchants of the grim we excerpt the portion of that tract focusing on Geninges’ death. A fuller summary of the hagiography can be enjoyed on Early Modern Whale.

When the happy houre of his passion was come being 8 of the clocke on fryday the 10 day of December, M. Plasden, M. White, and the rest were carryed to Tyborne, & there executed. Mistresse Welles to her great grief was reprived, and died in prison. M. Edmund Geninges, and M. Swythune Welles, as is aforesayd, were condemned to be executed in Grayes Inne fieldes on the North side of Holborne, over agaynst his owne dore: When they were brought thither, after a few speaches of a Minister or two that were there present, M. Geninges was taken of the sledd, whereon he lay. In the meane time he cryed out with holy S. Andrew: O bona Crux diu desiderata, & iam concupiscenti animo preparata, securus & gaudens venio ad te; ita & tu exultans suspicias me discipulum eius qui pependit in te! O good gibbet long desired, and now prepared for my hart much desiring thee, being secure and ioyfull I come unto thee, so thou also with ioy, I beseech thee receyue me the disciple of him that suffered on the Crosse.

Being put upon the ladder naked to his shirte, many questions were asked him by some standers by, wherto he answered still directly. At length M. Topliffe being present cryed out with a loud voyce, Geninges, Geninges, confesse thy fault, thy Popish treason, and the Queene by submission (no doubt) will grant thee pardon. To which he mildly answered, I knowe not M. Topliffe in what I have offended my deare annoynted Princesse, for if I had offended her, or any other in any thing, I would willingly aske her, and all the world forgivenesse. If she bee offended with me without a cause, for professing my fayth and religion, because I am a Priest, or because I will not turne Minister agaynst my conscience, I shalbe I trust excused and innocent before God: Obedire (sayth S. Peter) oportet Deo magis quam hominibus, I must obey God rather than men, and must not in this case acknowledge a fault where none is. If to returne into England Priest, or to say Masse be Popish treason, I heere confesse I am a traytour; but I thinke not so. And therefore I acknowledge my selfe guilty of these thinges, not with repentance or sorrow of hart, but with an open protestation of inward ioy, that I have done so good deedes, which if they were to do agayne, I would by the permission and assistance of Almighty God accomplish the same, although with the hazard of a thousand lives.

Which wordes M. Topliffe hearing, being much troubled therwith, scarce giving him leave to say a Pater noster, bad the Hangman turne the ladder, which in an instant being done, presently he caused him to be cut downe, the Blessed martyr in the sight of all the beholders, being yet able to stand on his feete, & casting his eyes towardes heaven, his senses were very little astonished, in so much that the Hangman was forced to trippe up his heeles from under him to make him fall on the blocke. And being dismembred, through very payne, in the hearing of many, with a lowde voyce he uttered these wordes, Oh it smartes, which M. Welles hearing, replyed thus: Alas sweete soule thy payne is great indeed, but almost past, pray for me now most holy Saynt, that mine may come. He being ripped up, & his bowelles cast into the fire, if credit may be given to hundreds of People standing by, and to the Hangman himselfe, the blessed Martyr uttered (his hart being in the executioners hand) these words, Sancte Gregori ora pro me, which the Hangman hearing, with open mouth swore this damnable oath, Gods woundes, See his hart is in my hand, and yet Gregory in his mouth, o egregious Papist! Thus the afflicted Martyr even to the last of his torments cryed for the ayde & succour of Saynts, and especially of S. Gregory his devoted patron, and our countries Apostle that by his intercession he might passe the sharpnes of that torment.

And thus with barbarons [sic] cruelty our thirce [sic] happy Martyr finished the course of his mortall life, and purchased no doubt a crowne of immortality in the glorious Court of heaven. Wherfore now he triumpheth with all unspeakeable ioy, and [b]eatitude amongst the number of those blessed martyrs who have in this world suffered all torments of persecution, and have withstood Princes and Potentates, lawes and lawmakers, for the honour and glory of theyr Lord and Saviour, and therfore have found true the confortable saying of holy David, Qui seminant in lachrymis, in exultatione metent: They who sow in teares, shall reape in ioy. Now so much the more is our Saynt glorifyed, by how much the more he was tormented, according to that saying of S. Cyprian: Quo longior vestra pugna hic, corona sublimior, presens tamen confessio quanto in passione fortior, tanto clarior & maior in honore. By how much your combat is the longer, by so much your crowne shall be the higher, so that by how much stronger the present confession is in suffering, so much more glorious and greater it shall be in honour.

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1592: Thomas Pormort, prey of Richard Topcliffe

Thomas Pormort (or Pormant) was hanged on this date in 1592 on a gibbet erected adjacent to a Paul’s Churchyard haberdashery whose proprietor had once entrusted the condemned Catholic priest with his confession.

Pormort was a priest trained on the continent who returned to native soil about the beginning of 1591 to brave the Elizabethan persecution, but managed only a few months in the field before his arrest.

He had the misfortune to face the personal interrogation of the vindictive inquisitor Richard Topcliffe, notorious even in his own day for his gleeful sadism. Topcliffe seems not to have even feigned a politic distaste for the breaking of bones and and of men and made a point to attend the executions his offices effected, including Pormort’s.

Now, back in the day such grim ministers of state could be empowered to toy with their prey in their very own lairs. Even the sainted Thomas More had kept a personal torture chamber at his own home.

So it was with Topcliffe, who inflicted his hospitality on Pormort in the intimacy of his own place, where he apparently had the facilities necessary to put a prisoner to the rack. According to Portmort, the torturer had another intimacy besides during their pain-wracked discourse, taunting or boasting to his victim of carnal indulgences he enjoyed from the queen herself. Pormort would allege at the bar that

Topcliffe told [Pormort] that he was so familiar with her Majesty that he many times putteth [his hands] between her breasts and paps and in her neck.

That he hath not only seen her legs and knees [but feeleth them] with his hands above her knees.

That he hath felt her belly, and said unto her Majesty that she had the softest belly of any woman kind.

That she said unto him, ‘be not these the arms, legs and body of King Henry?’ To which he answered: ‘Yea.’

That she gave him for a favour a white linen hose wrought with white silk, etc.

That he is so familiar with her that, when he pleaseth to speak with her, he may take her away from any company; and that she is as pleasant with everyone that she doth love.

This Penthouse letter for the queen has no factual plausibility, and nobody thought so in 1592. Whether the priest’s report of its utterance is an actual glimpse into a seditious perversion of the torturer, or a desperate attempt by a doomed man to smear his persecutor, Topcliffe took the matter seriously enough that he made Pormort stand on the ladder under his noose in freezing cold for two hours on execution day while Topcliffe browbeat him to withdraw the allegation. (Pormort didn’t budge.)

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