THE FORTY MARTYRS OF THE REFORMATION CANONISED ON 25th OCTOBER 1970 JOHN HAUGHTON, PRIOR OF THE LONDON CARTHUSIAN CHARTERHOUSE AND THREE CARTHUSIAN MONKS
THE FORTY MARTYRS OF THE REFORMATION
CANONISED ON 25th OCTOBER 1970
JOHN HAUGHTON, PRIOR OF THE LONDON CARTHUSIAN CHARTERHOUSE AND THREE CARTHUSIAN MONKS
In his desire to procure a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, in 1533 and marry Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII withdrew the Church in England from the authority of the Pope and placed himself as the head of the Church in England, ridding himself of the Archbishop, Cardinal Wolsey and, installing Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, thereby rendering the Church in England subject to his personal authority.
Thomas Cromwell implemented the King’s plan to subdue the English Catholic Church and consolidate the temporal power of the Crown by installing a nobility and power base that was dependent upon the lands seized under Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries.
By an Act of 1539 the property of the monasteries was vested in Henry and his heirs. These properties were “disposed of for cash; sold, for the most part, to the nobles, the gentry, the merchants and citizens who made up the wealthier classes of England.”
Gerard Culkin, The English Reformation, (Pater Noster Publications, 1954), at pp. 32-33.
“Within 14 years the Crown had raised over a million pounds in what was the largest transfer of land since the Norman conquest…the effect of this huge transfer of land was to give to those classes in the nation which alone had any share in the political life of the country a vested interest in maintaining at least this part of Henry’s “reform” of the Church.’
Lawrence James, The Aristocrats, (Little Brown, 2009), at pp. 93-94.
By the year 1540 when Waltham Abbey was surrendered, there was not a single religious house left in England.
“More than a century later Gilbert Burnet, the Protestant historian of the reformation, admitted frankly that the possession of these properties was still one of the most powerful bonds attaching the English landed classes to the Established Church. When, under Henry’s daughter, Mary Tudor, England was once again reconciled to the Catholic Church, the reconciliation was opposed chiefly by holders of monastic property, who feared that they would be called upon to make some restoration of their ill-gotten gains.“
Culkin, ibid., at p. 33.
Gerard Culkin observed, ibid., at pp. 24-25:
“By the Act of Succession the king’s first marriage to Catherine was declared to be ‘against the laws of Almighty God’ and so ‘utterly void and annulled’; while the marriage with Anne was to be held ‘undoubted, true, sincere, and perfect hereafter’. How perfect it was Henry showed two years later when he cut off her head!
Meanwhile Henry, who knew that many people in the country still looked on the whole of this business with horror, was looking for a means by which he might destroy what was left of the opposition. It was for this purpose that an oath was now devised, to be taken by such of his subjects as might be suspected of dissatisfaction with his proceedings. Those taking the oath ostensibly swore to accept the succession of Elizabeth; but it was so worded as to include in its terms a declaration that the dissolution of the king’s marriage was in accordance with the law of God, and that the repudiation of the Pope’s authority was just and lawful. To refuse this oath was made treason.”
Thomas More, described by Culkin as “a scholar and the friend of scholars, one of the leaders in the revival of letters which is called the Renaissance” had become a lawyer, “Under-Sheriff of London, Under-Treasurer to the king and a judge famous for the justice of his decisions and the efficiency with which he got through his business, a favourite ambassador and a favourite of the king.”
Culkin, ibid., at pp. 22-23.
More refused to take the oath when he appeared at Lambeth Palace in April 1543. Gerard Culkin stated, at pp. 24-25:
“A few days later he was sent to the Tower. There, for fourteen months he was to stay until he was led out to execution. At the same time the oath was administered to John Fisher, the bishop of Rochester. He had been one of the most outspoken opponents [of Henry’s] divorce, he had been forbidden by the king to attend Parliament, and at least one attempt had been made to poison him. Fisher too refused the oath and joined More in the Tower; here, for more than a year they both lay while the king prepared to draw his first blood from lesser men.
“There were in England at this time six convents of the Observant Friars, living according to the reformed rule of St Francis, and distinguished for the sanctity of their lives. Here was a religious world untouched by laxity or scandal, and here too Henry found opposition to his proceedings. In the course of this same summer the houses of the Observant Friars were accordingly suppressed and the friars confined to other houses or imprisoned.
There were also at this time nine houses of Carthusians, famous for the rigour of their lives. The monks of the London Charterhouse were called on to take the oath at the same time as More. Two of them, John Haughton the prior and Humphrey Middlemore, the procurator, refused and were sent to the Tower. They were later released when the rest of the community took some kind of oath which for the time being satisfied the commissioners. Early the next year, Augustine Webster, the prior at Axholme in Lincolnshire and Robert Lawrence, prior of Beauvale in Nottinghamshire, came up to London to consult Haughton as their superior on the attitude they should take to the oath; and the three decided to discuss the matter with Cromwell. Cromwell refused to hear them at the first meeting but some days later they were summoned to appear before him and other members of the council and asked whether they would agree to take the king as Supreme Head after Christ of the Church in England. All refused and were sent to the Tower where they were cruelly tortured; and when, a week later, Cromwell visited them there, they again refused to swear to an article which, they said, was plainly contrary to the Church’s teaching.
The Carthusians were soon joined by another religious, Richard Reynolds of the Brigittine monastery of Sion, “the most learned monk in England” and on April 29th the four of them were together charged with treason. Because of their Carthusian vow of silence, they refused to speak in their own defence. The jury refused to condemn the four monks until Cromwell threatened them too with the king’s anger and so carried the verdict. A week later, Thomas More, from his cell, watched them setting out on their last journey to Tyburn ‘cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage.’
Three weeks later three more Carthusians, Humphrey Middlemore. William Exemewe and Sebastian Newdigate were summoned by Cromwell to his house and there ‘refusing constantly to admit the king’s supremacy’ were committed to the Tower. Tied by iron collars on neck and legs and chained to posts they were left for seventeen days. Still refusing to submit on June 11th, they were brought before a special commission, found guilty of treason, and a week later executed at Tyburn. For two years more Henry sought to destroy the resistance of the London Carthusians. Some of them finally submitted. Ten who still resisted were imprisoned in Newgate, tied to posts and left to die slowly of disease and starvation. All died but William Horn, a lay brother who miraculously survived to die on the scaffold with More’s son-in-law in 1540.”
John Fisher and Thomas More were canonized by Pope Pius XI on 19th May 1935. John Haughton was canonized as one of the Forty Martyrs by Pope Paul VI on 25th October 1970.
Illustrations: Thomas More https://faithmag.com/st-thomas-more-man-all-seasons
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