ANNE LINE ONE OF THE FORTY MARTYRS; INDIVIDUAL FEAST DAY 28th FEBRUARY
ANNE LINE
ONE OF THE FORTY MARTYRS
INDIVIDUAL FEAST DAY 28th FEBRUARY
As a response to the training of priests at Douai and other seminaries that had developed in Europe and their effective mission in England, in 1585 legislation was passed by Parliament, under the rule of Elizabeth I, by which harbouring, maintaining or sheltering priests was deemed high treason and, as such, punishable by death and forefeiture of all property to the Crown.* Anne Line was executed by hanging on 27th February 1601 for harbouring Catholic priests. She was canonised as one of the Forty Martyrs on 25th October 1970.
Martin Dodwell, in “The Neat-Herd’s Daughter, Anne Line, Shakespeare’s Tragic Muse” * introduces us to Anne Line:
“The story of Anne Line, at least as it was passed on by the Jesuit John Gerard who knew her well, starts with her marriage to Roger Line of Ringwood. Both husband and wife were from Protestant families of minor landed-gentry, and Roger Line, the eldest son, was heir both to his father and to his uncle. This meant that while they were not vastly wealthy, they were certainly set fair for a secure future on the Line family estates in Hampshire and Sussex. Within three years of their wedding day Roger Line was arrested at a banned Catholic Mass together with Anne’s brother William and a Catholic priest evidently employed by the said William as a chaplain. The priest was hanged, drawn and quartered a few weeks later and Roger Line and William Higham were imprisoned, the latter in the Bridewell, notorious among Catholics for particularly hellish conditions and domain of the sadistic bigot Richard Topcliffe.
While in prison, Roger Line learned that he was being cut out of his inheritance by his father and his uncle because of his refusal to conform to the state church. This had been threatened before but the threat was now carried out. At around the same time, Anne Line’s father took similar drastic action and seems to have deprived her of land due to her as her dowry. He also took the extraordinary step of cutting his only son William out of his inheritance. After several months in prison Roger Line was released but banished into exile where he managed to obtain financial support from the Spanish crown in the form of a regular pension, part of which he sent back to support his wife in England who was now estranged from her own family. It appears that Anne Line became pregnant before her husband left the country for Antwerp and subsequently gave birth to a son who was called John. At some point, perhaps when Anne Line was very sick, the baby was taken from her and adopted by her estranged in-laws in Hampshire. A few years later, after fruitless attempts to obtain permission to return to England, Roger Line died in Belgium. “
Father John Gerard SJ, who, in 1609, authored his personal recollections of his own privations and the persecution of the Catholic faithful during the time of Elizabeth I in his book, “The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest” * described Anne Line as married to a “very good gentleman and a staunch Catholic,” (at p. 102).
It appears that it is at the point in her life, at the death of her husband and the loss of her baby, that Father Gerard entered it. Father Gerard observed that “[w]hen her husband died in Belgium, Mistress Line was without friends in this world and was entirely dependent on God’s providence. Therefore, before my imprisonment, I introduced her to the house where I was staying, and the family gave her board and lodging while I provided her with whatever else she needed.”
Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, at pp. 102-103.
At some stage later, Father Gerard decided to set up a safe house for persecuted priests under the regime and sought out Anne Line’s cooperation;
“When I decided to establish the house I mentioned above I could think of no better person than her to put in charge of it. She was able to manage the finances, do all the housekeeping, look after the guests and deal with the inquiries of strangers. She was full of kindness, very discreet, and possessed her soul in great peace….
“After my escape from prison she gave up managing the house. By then she was known to so many people that it was unsafe for me to frequent any house she occupied. Instead, she hired apartments in another building and continued to shelter priests there. One day however, (it was the Purification of Our Blessed Lady), she allowed in an unusually large number of Catholics to hear Mass- a thing which she would never have done in my house, because she was more anxious for my safety than her own. Some neighbours noticed the crowd and the constables were at the house at once. They rushed upstairs and found a room full of people. The celebrant was Father Francis Page, the martyr and Jesuit. He had pulled off his vestments before the pursuivants broke in, so it was difficult for them to pick out the priest. But the Father’s tranquil and modest look gave him away, and they seized him on suspicion and began to search him and a number of others present. No one, however, admitted there was a priest in the room; though, as the altar was prepared for Mass, they did say that they had been waiting for the priest to come. The pursuivants would not accept the story and while an altercation was going on Father Page, seeing someone open the door, took his chance, slipped the grasp of the men who were holding him, and dashed out, shutting the door behind him. He rushed upstairs to a room where he knew Mistress Line had prepared a hiding-place and got safely into it. The whole house was searched, but they did not find him.
Mistress Line and the well-to-do people in the party were taken off to prison, while the others were released on bail. God prolonged the Martyr’s life beyond what she dared hope, and after some months she was brought up for trial on the charge of harbouring priests.
Asked by the judges whether this was true or not, she neither denied not admitted it, but said in a loud voice so that the whole court could hear:
“My Lords, nothing grieves me more but that I could not receive a thousand more.”
Father Gerard said that she had kept house for him for three years and “attended to many holy priests there”.
Ibid., at pp. 106-107.
Martin Dodwell takes up the story*:
“[S]he was sentenced to death by the Lord Chief Justice at the Sessions House. On Friday 27 February, as snow flurries swept through the London streets, Anne Line was taken on a cart to the execution site at Tyburn and hanged before the crowd that had gathered there. A Benedictine monk, Mark Barkworth and Roger Filcock, a Jesuit priest, were hanged, drawn and quartered shortly afterwards. On the journey to Tyburn, Mark Barkworth had sung to William Byrd's setting, the Paschal anthem;
“Haec dies, quam fecit Dominus, exultemus et laetemur in ea”
[This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Anne Line’s body was retrieved from the grave in the road (where it had been dumped without ceremony) by the servants of the Countess of Arundel, so that it could be buried with ‘full decorum’ after a proper requiem Mass held in great secrecy. It is this requiem that is thought to be the setting for Shakespeare’s cryptic poem, ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’.”
According to Dodwell, Shakespeare alluded to her story both in Sonnet 74 and especially in the play, Cymbeline.
*“An Act Against Jesuits and Seminarists” (1585), 27 Elizabeth, Cap. 2.
*Ignatius Press, 1952, at pp. 102-4.
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