The English Martyrs

Extract

“Of twisted scarlet, the work of an artist, with precious stones cut and set on gold ...” (Ecclesiasticus, XLV. 13). Nor this nor any text, inspired word of God, can be too high for these, his Saints, canonised or uncanonised, to whom He gave the great gift of martyrdom.

In early times, the Church rightly set her precious stones in the Mass, cut them out in the first Litanies, wove their scarlet threads of love and fame into and out of the histories of the first great basilicas, in Rome and elsewhere. We bless and revere the practice of the Church, then as now, and in all humility follow it, in speaking of our own later Martyrs, since there is no time with God . . . “Jesus Christ yesterday, and to-day and for ever.”

It is true that we in these islands would not have the Faith, humanly speaking, did not in God’s Providence some early missionary bring and preach it to our forefathers; but it is as least as true that we could never have kept the Faith were it not kept for us by those whom we have come to call the English Martyrs. This name is peculiar to that company of men and women who were put to death for their Faith, and for that only, between the years 1535 and 1689; that is, from the beginning of Henry VIII’s hist claim to be Head of the Church, to the Titus Oates Plot and the wave of anti-Catholic feeling in the reign of Charles II.