Feast Day: December 10th
The date was November 2nd, 1591. William Shakespeare was at that time putting the finishing touches on his play, Henry VI, Part 1. Uncannily anticipating the Marvel Cinematic Universe by centuries, this play would eventually stand alongside seven further plays of the next several years, prequals and sequels enthralling thousands with their interconnected depiction of the heroes, heroines, and villains involved in the rise of the English Kings and War of the Roses.
Mr. Swithun Wells – a poet, schoolmaster, European traveler, country gentleman, and revert to Catholicism – was the owner of a comfortable country home near Gray’s Inn, on the (then) outskirts of London, just across the Thames from where Shakespeare’s play would debut 6 months later. Swithun was, on that chilly morning, regretting that he wasn’t home because his wife, Margaret (or Alice) and three gentlemen, John Mason, Sidney Hodgson, and Brian Lacey, were participating in a Mass celebrated at the Wells home by Fr. Edmund Gennings. Two other priests, Fr. Eustace White (31) and Fr. Polydore Plasden (27) were also present, but must have offered the younger priest the privilege of celebrating Mass on the feast of All Souls.
Perhaps Fr. Edmund asked if he could. He had been ordained one year before and was only 24 years old. His nickname from seminary, turned his codename in the underground Catholic Church under Elizabethan England, was “Ironmonger.” (Hilariously, this is the name of a Marvel comic-book character who tries to takeover Tony Stark’s company and gain control of his Ironman technology). Fr. Edmund had lost all of his immediate family except for a brother while in seminary in France (a loss made all the more tragic by their previous rejection of him for his choice to remain Catholic, and become a Catholic priest). No doubt he offered some of those sorrows to God, and entrusted the souls of his estranged and fallen-away parents to the Lord, while celebrating Mass on that solemn feast.
As the Consecration was concluding, heavy fists beat upon the door. Richard Topcliffe, the remorseless and vicious priest-hunter of Queen Elizabeth I had arrived. He was renowned for his tenacity in hunting down Catholics, especially priests, and torturing them to death in all sorts of horrible ways. Certainly, his reputation was known to those in the room as they held the door against Her Majesty’s forces while Fr. Edmund finished offering Mass. Swithun, hurrying back, having been arrested before, knew what to expect too, when he joined his wife, the three priests, and the other men as they were captured.
Topcliffe would torture each man over the coming weeks (Alice was pardoned for the moment) killing them all on December 10th 1591. He hung Fr. White for eight hours in iron manacles. The priest’s only reply: “Lord, more pain if Thou pleases and more patience.” Also martyred at Tyburn, Fr. Polydore’s proclamation before being hung as a traitor was to acknowledge and pray for Elizabeth, but that he could not deny His Savior for her: “I am a Catholic priest, therefore I would never fight, nor counsel others to fight against my religion, for that were to deny my faith.” Looking up to heaven and kissing the rope on which he would hang, he continued, “O Christ, I will never deny Thee for a thousand lives.” The three laymen were likewise killed at Tyburn.
On the same day Swithun watched the gibbit rise near his home for his own execution. Fr. Gennings was hung (and drawn and quartered) first and, amid his tortures, only said “Saint Gregory, pray for me.” In a turn of phrase that could have just as easily been spoken by a comic-book villain, his executioner was said to have exclaimed “Zounds! See, his heart is in my hand, and yet Gregory is in his mouth. O egregious Papist.” The priest’s words, though, gave courage to Mr. Wells, who jested with Topcliffe’s insults as he mounted the scaffold, but then asked his torturer’s pardon for he needed to turn his mind to more important matters. Genning’s words would, unbeknownst to him, also bring about the conversion of his scornful brother, John, who would go on to be ordained a Franciscan priest:
[John, writing this himself in the third-person] made long discourses concerning his religion and his brother’s, comparing the Catholic manner of living with his, and finding the one to embrace pain and mortification, and the other to seek pleasure. the one to live strictly, and the other licentiously; the one to fear sin, the other to run into all kinds of sin. Upon this, being struck with exceeding terror and remorse, he wept bitterly, desiring God, after his fashion, to illuminate his understanding that he might see and perceive the truth. Oh! what great joy and consolation did he feel at that instant; what reverence on the sudden did he begin to bear to the Blessed Virgin and to the Saints of God, which before he had never scarce heard tell of; what strange motions, as it were inspirations, with exceeding readiness of will to change his religion, took possession of his soul; and what a heavenly conceit had he now of his dear brother’s felicity! He imagined he saw him; he thought he heard him. In this ecstasy of mind, he made a vow upon the spot, as he lay prostrate on the ground, To forsake kindred and country to find out the true knowledge of his brother’s faith; which vow he soon after performed, and departed England without advertising any one of his friends, and went beyond the seas to execute his promise.
– Fr. Dominic invites you this week to join him in imagining yourself at that last Mass of Fr. Gennings. What would their thoughts be while receiving Holy Communion as Topcliffe battered the door? What are yours, and mine, as we receive Jesus ourselves?