THE DRYBURNE MARTYRS – RICHARD HOLIDAY, EDMUND DUKE, RICHARD HILL & JOHN HOGG, PRIESTS,

THE DRYBURNE MARTYRS – RICHARD HOLIDAY, EDMUND DUKE, RICHARD HILL & JOHN HOGG, PRIESTS,

EXECUTED AT DRYBURNE 27th MAY 1590

These priests were part of the English mission, having studied at Rheims and the various colleges by reason of the interdiction against Catholic education in England under Elizabeth I. As it was a capital offence to be a priest under Elizabeth, they suffered death by hanging, drawing and quartering.

Their story is set out in “Memoirs of Missionary Priests, and other Catholics of both Sexes, That have suffered Death in England on Religious Accounts, from the Year 1577 to 1684” by Bishop Challoner, Volume 1: (1)

“EDMUND DUKE was born in Kent and was first a student in the English College, then residing at Rheims, where I find him promoted to minor orders, September 23, 1583; from thence he was sent to Rome, where he finished his studies and was made priest.

RICHARD HILL, JOHN HOGG AND RICHARD HOLIDAY were all born in Yorkshire, all students of the college then residing at Rheims, and were made sub-deacons at Soisson, the 18th of March 1589, deacons at Laon, the 27th of May, and priests at Laon, the 23rd of September, in the same year. They were all sent together upon the English mission (with Mr Duke, who was lately returned form Rome) on the 23rd of March, 1589-90. They landed in the north of England, and travelling through the country, which they were not well acquainted with, they were, upon a slight suspicion, stopped in a village, where they staid to rest themselves, and were carried before a neighbouring justice of the peace who, upon examination, finding them to be priests, committed them to Durham jail. Here they had some conflicts about religion as well with some prebendaries of Durham, as with some other ministers, in which, says my author, Dr Champney, the confessors of Christ came off victorious. But there was another and more effectual way of stopping their mouths, which was to arraign and condemn them for transgressing the statute of Elizabeth 27 which forbids, upon pain of death, priests made by Roman authority, to come over into England or remain here. Of this transgression they were all found guilty and upon this account alone they were sentenced to die, as in case of high treason. They suffered at Durham, May 27, some say May 6, 1590. The meekness and constancy which appeared in them, in this last scene of life, edified many and was admired by all. It was also taken notice of, as a thing very extraordinary, that the well out of which they took water to boil the quarters of these four holy priests, did dry up and so continued for many years after. [It is for this reason that the place is known as “Dryburn.”]

The Wikipedia entry provides:

“With the priests were executed four common criminals felons, who declared that they, too, died Catholics. In the crowd were a good number of Catholics and reportedly when the priests' heads were as customary cut off and held up, only the officers and a Protestant minister or two would say "God save the Queen". It is also said that two Protestant spectators, Robert Maire and his wife Grace Maire, were converted to the Catholic faith.”

In the same entry, Bishop Challoner provides additional information on Sir Francis Walsingham, which from a Catholic standpoint (malice perhaps?) is interesting:

“This year put an end to all the plots and stratagems of that unwearied persecutor of the English Catholics, and capital enemy of the missionaries, Sir Francis Walsingham, principal secretary of State to queen Elizabeth. He died miserably on the 6th April 1590, of an ulcer and impostume in his bowels, which reduced him to that wretched condition, that, whilst he was yet alive, he yielded so insupportable a stench that scarce any one could bear to come near him. Ribandeira and Onamney relate, that amongst other attempts he made to ruin the seminaries abroad, he once, by his emissaries, procured to have the well poisoned, which supplied the college of Rheims with water, in order to destroy, by poison, all the priests and their students; and that another time he caused poison to be given to Dr Allen, the institutor and first president of that community: but the providence of God defeated these and many others of his plots. He maintained so many spies abroad and was at such expenses to bring about his wicked enterprises, that he not only spent what was allowed him by the queen for that purpose, which was very considerable, and the salary of his place, but also his whole estate, leaving nothing to his only daughter but his debts, who, says Dr Champney in his manuscript, having renounced heresy, now embraces the Catholic faith.”

John T Green, Philadelphia, 1839, at pp. 155-156.

IMAGE: Supremacy and Survival; The English Reformation.