by Malcolm Brennan

THE FAITH FLOURISHES not alone in individual hearts but very notably in families and regions. An age like our own cherishes the individual heroism of our religion's champions, and this is not misplaced piety, but we, especially in America, sometimes fail to notice that belief has a corporate dimension, that its presence transforms not only individual believers but whole communities and cultures, and these in turn, by a kind of divine ecology, invigorate individual holiness.

Saint John Southworth was born in 1592 into a most Catholic family and in a region of England, Lancashire, where defenders of the old religion were numerous and staunch. John's father, a knight, had been heavily fined for refusing to attend the new religious services, and all adult members of his household with him. And he had been more heavily fined and imprisoned for having harbored St. Edmund Campion at Salmesbury, the family seat, during the Saint's glorious missionary year. When the head of a household was fined and imprisoned, his whole family endured the misfortune, especially the womenfolk, who had to cope and manage and make do and produce the fine and console the prisoner and most of all to strengthen in the family's hearts the very Faith which had brought on the domestic calamity.

John was only three years old when his father died, but he grew up secure and devout in his family's traditional Faith. He was sent to the English College at Douay in 1613, when it had fallen on very hard times, and ordained to the priesthood in 1618. Although he had taken the customary vow at Douay to become a missionary, he received permission to test a vocation to the Benedictines. After a year, however, he was ready to be sent to England as a secular priest.

Many details of St. John's thirty-five years as a missionary priest are buried in the secrecy of his daily life, but that endurance itself is amazing in an age when the ministries of many priests lasted only a matter of months or even days. When Fr. Southworth arrived in England, King James was negotiating with Spain's Philip III for the marriage of Prince Charles to the Enfanta Maria. The persecution of Catholics had therefore much abated, and there was general optimism among Catholics about the future. When the negotiations were abandoned, however, the strong anti-Catholic forces, mainly in Parliament, caused a resumption of the persecutions. After Queen Elizabeth, Catholics received decidedly gentler treatment from the Crown than from the other political forces in the country.

The first of Fr. Southworth's several imprisonments began in 1627 when he was arrested in his native Lancashire and sentenced to die for exercising the functions of a Catholic priest. Charles was now King, married to Henrietta Maria of France, and in deference to his Queen's religion, he was transferred to a prison in London called the Clink and was soon afterwards released. The ardent Protestants complained loudly about the government's softness on Catholics.

Fr. Southworth's history during the plague of 1637 shows the ambivalent position of Catholics as well as an important glimpse of his priestly zeal. The plague was a particularly virulent one and caused very revolting symptoms. As soon as they became apparent in any family, the entire household was required to stay in doors—almost insuring everyone's infection. Most families who could afford to do so had fled London for healthier climates, leaving behind the poorest classes. Relief for the destitute and stricken was provided by special assessments in the parishes, but known Catholics, of whom there seem to have been quite a few, were ineligible for this aid. Fr. Southworth worked tirelessly to bring alms to and to care for especially such families.

A report on these activities comes from a sub-curate of St. Margaret's parish in Westminster, William White. His parson had left the city for the duration of the plague and put White in charge. In a report to Archbishop Laud he complained that "two Popish priests, one called South[worth], who is and has long been a prisoner in the Gatehouse, but who lives about Clerkenwell. This man, under pretence of distributing alms sent from the Friars at Somerset House [the Chaplains of Queen Henrietta Maria] and other Papists, doth take occasion to go into divers plague-stricken houses in Westminster, namely into those of William Baldwin and William Stiles, in the Hemp Yard, Westminster, and there finding Baldwin near the point of death did set upon him to make him change his religion, and received the sacraments from him according to the Church of Rome, and so died a Romish Catholic. And in the same manner he also perverted William Stiles, who also died a Romish Catholic. And Southwell, to colour and hide these wicked practices, doth fee the watchman and other poor people thereabouts to affirm that he comes only to give alms; and thus under the pretence of relieving the bodies of poor people, he poisons their souls." A further danger, White reports, is that many of the converts and other Catholics attend Mass at the Queen's Chapel and so put her in danger of the plague.

The Rector of another parish also complained about similar activities by one Henry Morse, a Jesuit (now a canonized martyr), James Smithson, a prisoner in Newgate, and John Souther (Southworth) a prisoner in the Gatehouse.

When he was re-imprisoned, Fr. Southworth addressed a peitition to the Queen, which "sheweth that the petitioner having visited some sick of the plague, as he hath daily done since the plague began, and welcomed them and others ready to starve and perish with alms given by Your Majesty and other charitable people; in the latter end of this labour Mr. White, curate of Westminster, coming near to the place where the petitioner was, and seeing him come out of an infected house, was much offended therewith, complained of him, and so far prevailed that Sir Dudly Carlton, Clerk to His Majesty's Privy Council, directed a warrant to the Keeper of the Gatehouse, commanded him to take the petitioner in his charge and detain him in prison, which he hath done ever since. May it therefore please Your Excellency to move His Majesty that, being that the petitioner laboured only to preserve the poor from perishing (which he thought would neither offend His Majesty nor the State) it would graciously please His Majesty to give the petitioner leave to go to his friends for means, that he himself not now perish in prison. And the petitioner will (as in duty bound) ever pray for both your Majesties."

Although "the premises were proved against him by sundry witnesses, yet by the Queen's and Windebank's powerful means, his final trial was put off, to the great discontent of the people," one of the Protestants complained, "and he was not long after released." This same Francis Windebank, Secretary of State to Charles I, was instrumental in obtain Fr. Southworth's freedom on several occasions. Such practices were naturally frustrating to the priest-catchers and led to such complaints as that of John Gray. He represented the Privy Council that "having warrant from the Board [Council] for the apprehending of Jesuits and seminary priests, by virtue of which he hath taken and apprehended diverse of them to the number of thirty-two, which were by him brought before this Hon. Board by special order from the same appointed to be committed to several prisons in and about London. But now so it is, may it please your good Lordships, that they have liberty and are all abroad out of prison, without any order from this Hon. Board, and do lie lurking in divers places within the cities of London and Westminster and the suburbs thereabout, perverting His Majesty's liege subjects, not hundreds, but thousands." The Privy Council authorized him to capture them again. As Parliament gained ascendency over King Charles, and as events pressed onward toward the King's execution, Windebank fled the country and became a Catholic.

THROUGH THESE great upheavals, St. John continued with his missionary activities, a business much more serious than the mere fall of kings. His last bout with the law occurred in 1654 when he was captured by a pursuivant named Jeffries. Accused of treason and of being a priest, St. John denied the former charge and acknowledged his sacred orders. Several sympathetic friends urged him to deny his priesthood, saying that the government had no proof of it and could not make the charge stick in court. This was a delicate matter. In his petition to the Queen while imprisoned during the plague, although he was accused of administering the sacraments according to the Church of Rome, he had been able to make a defense which made no reference at all to his priesthood. But in the present situation, a positive denial of his priesthood would have been required. He declined to purchase his freedom in this way. He was accordingly tried, found guilty and sentenced to the death of a traitor.

A large crowd gathered to witness his execution and an eyewitness recorded his last words. He said, "Good people, I was born in Lancashire. This is the third time I have been apprehended [he was not counting his re-apprehensions], and now being to die, I would gladly witness and profess openly my faith for which I suffer. And though my time being short, yet what I shall be deficient in words, I hope I shall supply with my blood, which I will most willingly spend to the last drop of my faith. Neither my intent in coming into England, nor practice in England, was to act anything against the secular government. Hither I was sent by my lawful superiors to teach Christ's faith, not to meddle with any temporal affairs. Christ sent his apostles; his apostles their successors; and their successors me.... My faith and obedience to my superiors is all the treason charged against me; nay, I die for Christ's law, which no human law, by whomsoever made, ought to withstand or contradict.... To follow his holy doctrine and imitate his holy death, I willingly suffer at present; this gallows (looking up) I look on as his cross, which I gladly take to follow my dear Saviour. . . . How justly I die, let them look to who have condemned me. It is sufficient for me that it is God's will; I plead not for myself (I came hither to suffer) but for you poor persecuted Catholics whom I leave behind me."

He requested the prayers of all present who were Catholics—not the heretics. "Which done," our witness continues, "with his hands raised up to heaven and his eyes (after a short prayer in silence) gently shut, thus devoutly demeaned, he expected the time of his execution, which immediately followed, which he suffered with an unmoved quietness, delivering his soul most blessedly into the hands of his most loving God, who died for him, and for whose sake he died."

The Spanish ambassador bought the butchered corpse for forty shillings, had it embalmed and reassembled, and shipped it to Douay. There it was venerated until the French Revolution, the college being suppressed in 1793. When the buildings were seized and sealed, certain devout members of the college stole into the chapel and removed the body to a secret place deep in one of the buildings. The buildings were used first as a spinning factory, then as a cavalry barracks, and in 1926 were demolished to make way for a railroad. The hidden remains of St. John Southworth were discovered at that time. The body rests now in Westminster Cathedral in a glass feretory dressed in red vestments and in a remarkable state of preservation.

Saint John Southworth was canonized in 1970.

"Martyrs of the English Reformation", formerly called "English Martyrs" is written each month by Dr. Malcolm Brennan, Professor of English at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.