Venite Prandete

SHAKESPEARE AND ANNE LINE THE CATHOLIC RESISTANCE Anne Line is one of the Forty Martyrs of the Reformation whose collective feast day is 25th October. Her individual feast day is the date of her execution - 27th February. She was executed for the crime of harbouring priests, an offence of treason under legislation of 1585. Her story is set out in a previous post. Martin Dodwell, in his biography of Anne Line, “The Neat-herd’s Daughter Anne Line: Shakespeare’s Tragic Muse”, observed that she was considered to be “in the words of the Jesuit Henry Garnet, ‘both the Martha and the Mary’” of the clandestine and dangerous Catholic mission. She dedicated her life and her meagre resources to supporting the underground network of Catholic clergy in England, protected and assisted by aristocratic Catholic families, until her arrest at a Mass and her subsequent execution. Sonnet 74 is a memorial to Anne Line and her execution, where, before being hanged, she borrowed the executioner's knife ...

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 fa...

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 count...

ST TERESA OF AVILA FEAST DAY 15th OCTOBER “Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes with which Christ looks out His compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.” St Teresa of Avila was born in 1515 AD, two years before the protestant reformation. She was declared a Doctor of the Church for her writings and teachings, which instructed on the way to inner peace and union with God. Her parents’ marriage was not particularly happy – her mother was crushed by an overbearing husband who was very strict with Teresa. As a teenager she cared only about boys, clothes and flirting. When she was 16 her father placed her in a convent, which she enjoyed, as the convent was less strict than her father. Convents at that time were often refuges for women who had nowhere else to go, not places of true vocations. Nuns frequently wore their veils attractively and...

THE LORETO NUNS - ST. MICHAEL’S PROTECTION OF THE LORETO CONVENT, YORK. The Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, (the Loreto nuns), were founded by Mary Ward, (1585-1645), who came from a recusant family in the turbulent period of Catholic persecution in England in the years following Elizabeth I. From the time of the Act of Uniformity, (1559), it was illegal to practice the Catholic faith in England. The Act of Supremacy required an oath swearing allegiance to the Queen as the head of the Church of England – excluding Catholics from all office - judges, justices, mayors, royal officials, clergy and all universities. The initial penalty for refusal to take the oath was loss of office. Four years later, however, the penalty had been increased to loss of goods and imprisonment for a first offence, with a second offence counted as treason and punishable with death together with forfeiture of all property to the Crown . The Act of Uniformity, (1558), had set the order of prayer to be that...