MARGARET CLITHEROW ONE OF THE FORTY MARTYRS CANONISED ON 25th OCTOBER 1970
MARGARET CLITHEROW
ONE OF THE FORTY MARTYRS
CANONISED ON 25th OCTOBER 1970
By the terms of the Act of Uniformity (1559), all the distinctive Catholic doctrines, the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Real Presence, the seven sacraments- were abolished and the new Protestant service of Cranmer was instituted in it’s stead.
Any clergyman refusing to perform divine service according to the Protestant Prayer Book under the legislation was liable, for a first offence, to lose a year’s income and to be imprisoned for six months. A third offence was to be punished with imprisonment for life. Any lay person who criticized the new service was to be fined a hundred marks. Everyone in the country was now bound, under pain of a fine of twelve pence, (12d), to attend the Protestant service every Sunday in his own parish church.
Gerard Culkin observed, The English Reformation, Pater Noster Publications, 1952, at p. 72:
“Thus, as far as legislation could do so, these two Acts made England a Protestant country; or perhaps it would be better to say that they made Protestantism the only form of religious belief henceforward permitted to freeborn Englishmen. All that remained was to see how far, and in the face of what resistance, these two Acts could be enforced.”
Commissioners were employed by the Crown, under William Cecil, to visit the country, interrogating parishioners and administering the oath to the clergy.
“But religious conviction is not brought about by compulsion. To make England a Protestant country it would be necessary to change the religious outlook of the majority of the population so that Protestant doctrine and worship would come to be not merely a thing accepted at the law’s dictation, but something gladly and willingly received as the truth revealed by Christ and the one way of salvation. That, clearly, no Parliament could do: that must be the work of time, if indeed, it was possible at all.”
Culkin, ibid., at p. 75.
In 1571, following the excommunication of Elizabeth by Pope Pius V, legislation was introduced by which it was made treason to reconcile, either oneself or another to the Catholic Church. The fact of being a Catholic was illegal, and, as treason, the penalty was execution.
Culkin observed:
“From this date begins a new era of persecution for the Catholics. In the north of England, above all in Lancashire and Yorkshire the local magistrates on whom the government depended for the execution of the laws demanding attendance at Protestant church showed little enthusiasm for persecuting their Catholic neighbours. A warning to the York magistrate in 1570 ordering them to show more zeal seems to have had no effect at all. But two years later the government sent there as president of the Council of the North the earl of Huntington, a rabid Puritan, and under his rule there began a harrying of Catholics which was to last till the end of the reign.
ibid., at pp. 84-85.
Huntington called at once for a return of the names and dwelling places of all known and suspected papists in the city – a request which seems to elicited a poor response. The demand was repeated at intervals, to little satisfaction, it appears, the names reported being of a few poor and elderly, harmless locals. It was not until 1576, and then only after repeated warnings from Huntington, that the York magistrates showed any signs of co-operation. Then a first inquiry produced some 40-odd names and a second some 65 suspected papists from the twenty of the city parishes.
Ibid.
Culkin set out the responses of those brought before the commissioners:
“The interrogations of these people– fifty-two of them were women, some of whose husbands still conformed to avoid paying the recusancy fines-show clearly enough that here in York, as elsewhere, Catholic resistance was by this year 1576, both organized and informed. These people were no ‘church papists’.
Kathleen Wildon said she would not go to church ‘because there is neither altar nor sacrifice’.
William Bowman said he would not go to church ‘because he thinketh it is not the Catholic Church, for there is neither priest, nor altar nor sacraments’.
Margaret Tyler would not go ‘because there is not a priest as there ought to be, and also there is not the sacrament of the altar’.
Gregory Wilkinson said his conscience would not serve him to go to church ‘for he will remain in that faith he was baptized in’.
Isabel Porter refused to go ‘because things are not in the church as it hath been aforetime, in her forefather’s time’.
Culkin observed that “[m]ost of the replies echo William Bowman. These people will no longer go to church because it is no longer the Catholic Church and there is no longer the Mass. It was surely no coincidence that these men and women answered the charges against them in virtually the same terms-and in terms which show clearly enough that they recognized and rejected the new Protestant service......
Moreover, some of these people – Margaret Clitherow was among them- were former Protestants or lapsed Catholics who had only recently been reconciled to the Church. There seems to be little doubt that the resistance of these Catholics of York was a first and direct result of the labours of that new generation of missionary priests from Douai who for some two years now had been active in the country.”
York Civic Records vol. vii; Culkin, ibid., at p. 85.
Margaret Clitherow was the daughter of the Sheriff of York who was also the church warden of St Martin’s church in Coney Street, York. As she was born in 1556, conformity to the state religion was required for any social standing or advancement of any kind. She was raised Protestant and married John Clitherow, a prosperous butcher. John Clitherow was not only Protestant, he was responsible for reporting Catholic worshippers to the local authorities.
Margaret converted to Catholicism, which must have created an interesting situation in their marriage, as Margaret then began to subvert the authorities. She refused to attend the Protestant service which compelled husband John to pay the 12d fee for recusancy, levied for each time she failed to attend.
She was first imprisoned for recusancy in 1577. Following that, she was imprisoned two more times at York Castle, her final imprisonment lasting two years. While in prison she learnt Latin in order to more clearly follow the Mass. She found the deaths of her fellow Catholics heartrending and, upon her release from prison, engaged on a pilgrimage to Tyburn and Knavesmire where, between 1582 and 1583, five priests were hanged.
In 1586, she was arrested for harbouring a priest, a criminal offence punishable by death. Her home was raided and a frightened young boy revealed the location of the priest’s vestments, bread and wine for the Mass.
Margaret’s trial took place in the Guildhall but her refusal to plead, and thereby be tried by a jury, led to an immediate sentence of death- the penalty of peine forte et dure. Knowing this, and knowing that the means of execution was horrifically barbarous, she nevertheless remained firm in refusing to plead by saying: “I know of no offence whereof I should confess myself guilty. Having made no offence, I need no trial.”
The most insightful observations on her motivations must be those of her contemporary, Father John Gerard SJ, in his autobiography “Diary of a Hunted Priest”:
“They decided to invoke the law against her and she was brought up for trial. The usual false witnesses were produced and she was charged with being privy to the maintenance of priests contrary to the laws of the land. The judges empanelled a jury to declare her guilty or innocent. But in order to save the jury staining their consciences with her blood by returning a verdict of guilty, this good woman decided to hold her tongue and to make no reply when the judge ordered her to plead guilty or not guilty. She did this knowing full well the provision of the law-I mean that far more severe and cruel sentence reserved for men and women who refuse to plead in a matter of life and death. They are laid on their backs on a sharp stone and a heavy weight placed on their chests until life is crushed out of them.
Up to the time I am writing about we had only two women martyrs (not including Mary Queen of Scots). One of them, Clitherow, chose the same death and martyr’s crown at York for the same reasons. She knew that the jury were certain to declare her guilty in order to please the judge, and she wanted to spare their consciences. She knew they would be fully aware of the injustice.”
She was taken to the toll-booth on 25th March 1586 where she was pressed to death under 7-8 hundredweight until she died. She left behind her husband and three children, whom she had educated in the Catholic faith. Her son, Henry Clitherow, trained as a priest abroad before returning to England as a missionary.
*Ignatius, 1952, at pp. 64-65.
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