Martyrs of the English Reformation

As the world figures such things, Father Kirby's missionary career was a failure because it lasted only a matter of hours. He was seized immediately upon landing at Dover in June 1580. Yet in the spiritual order, his efforts for the salvation of his countrymen are apparent in the earliest surviving records of his life, and those efforts continued through the period of his captivity until his hanging—and no doubt even until today his heavenly intercession is still available to those who invoke his name. Sancte Lucas, ora pro nobis!

Those early records, from the seminary at Douay where he went shortly after his conversion to prepare for the English mission, tell of his notable piety and particularly of his remarkable patience in bearing a painful disease for the love of Christ. Not so much to relieve the pain caused by 'the stone' as to restore his bodily strength for his vocation, he submitted without a whimper to a gruesome operation. While the operation was successful, yet he remained frail all of his life, so that he must have suffered more than most from the ordinary inconveniences of life and the hardships of prison.

In September 1577 he was ordained, but he patiently delayed the saying of his first Mass until October 18, the feast day of his namesake, and "partly for devotion, and partly for improvement in learning" (according to Bishop Challoner) was then sent to the English college at Rome. Here he had the opportunity of adding to his penances the performance of alms deeds for his countrymen. A modern biographer says: "During his stay at the college he practiced great charity toward his countrymen in Rome who needed help, Catholic and non-Catholic. He helped them from his slender purse, he won friends for them among members of the Pope's Court, he gave away the shirt off his own back [literally], and once went forty miles out of Rome to see someone safe on their way. We have these facts from his own avowal, wrung from him at the moment of his martyrdom, by the treacherous ingratitude of his accuser, Munday, to whom he had shown special kindness in Rome, though, even at the time, he saw through his insincerity."

After preparing himself with such fervor during Lent "as was a matter of edification for all Rome" (Fr. Persons), he set out for England in that gallant and pious band which included St. Edmund Campion, St. Ralph Sherwin, and others, and made his way eventually to Dunkirk. He crossed over to Dover in June 1580, was captured, and soon found himself in the Gatehouse prison in Westminster with many other Catholics, including perhaps the Fr. Lawrence who had reconciled him to the Church. After several months he was transferred to London Tower for torturing at about the same time that St. Ralph Sherwin was sent there from the Marshalsea. Among the many questions put to him, one was the notorious "bloody question," which was phrased something like this: If the Pope were to land a military force in England against her Majesty, whose side would you favor? The legal impropriety of such a hypothetical question notwithstanding, it was an ingenious way of driving a prisoner to a point of either apostasy or treason. Even a man with the genius of Campion could do little more than decline to answer, which is what Fr. Kirby did.

Five days after his arrival in the Tower, St. Luke was subjected to "the Scavanger's Daughter." This was a hinged hoop of iron; the prisoner was required to kneel and draw himself into a ball, the hoop was placed under his legs and across his back, and then drawn tight, the torturer helping the fit by kneeling on the prisoner's shoulders. The strange name of the instrument is a corruption of the name of its inventor, Sir William Skevington, Lieutenant of the Tower under Henry VIII. Among other things, it caused a flow of blood from the nostrils and sometimes from the tips of the fingers and toes.

Torture in England differed from that on the Continent, where generally the tradition of Roman law prevailed. There, where conviction for a capital crime could not be based on circumstantial evidence, torture was permitted for obtaining the direct evidence of a confession, and it was hedged round with an elaborate body of law; but in England, where a jury could convict on the basis of any sort of evidence that struck its fancy (modern rules of evidence not having developed until the eighteenth century), there was no need to acquire evidence by torture, and so no need for a body of law that regulated it. When English monarchs began to use torture, therefore, it was without any legal safeguards whatever. The legal justification for torture in the Roman systems was to be found in the law of evidence, while in England its only legal justification was the monarch's immunity to suit by a subject.

Father Kirby was tried and found guilty with Father Campion and the other priests on November 16, 1581. One exchange from the record of the trial gives something of its flavor:

"Sledd, a witness, deposed against Kirbie, that being sick beyond the seas, this Kirbie came unto his bedside and counselled him to beware how he delt with any matters in England, for there would come a great day wherein the Pope, the King of Spain, and the Duke of Florence should make as great an alteration as ever was. He deposed that Kirbie was at a sermon of Dr. Allen's [founder of the Douay seminary], who then persuaded the priests and Seminary men to take their journey into England to remove the Englishmen from their obedience to her highness, and to persuade them to aid the Pope and his confederates.

"Kirbie—'As I hope to be saved at the last doom [Last Judgment], there is not one word of this deposition that concerneth me, either true or credible. Neither at any time made I the least mention of that alleged day: neither was I present at any sermon so preached; but I always bore as true and faithful a heart to her Majesty as any subject whatsoever did in England; insomuch that I never heard her Majesty evil spoken of but I defended her cause, and always spake the best of her highness. It is not unknown that I saved English mariners from hanging only for the duty I bore her Majesty, with the love and goodwill which I bore to my country.' "

Though found guilty with the rest, most of whom were executed in December, St. Luke was kept in prison until the end of May, the last four weeks in chains. Martyrdom often entails not only the endurance of physical pain but also the tedious and cautious and charitable endurance of fools and liars. Besides Munday and Sleed already referred to, was one John Nichols, a Calvinist preacher who periodically harangued the Catholic prisoners. Some years earlier in France he had converted to Catholicism but had apostatized upon returning to England, and he had written several exposés of the nefarious Papists. "It can scarcely be believed what praises are lavished on this gull," Father Persons had written. A letter from Saint Luke about him shows the kind of men the martyrs had to deal with, the nature of the evidence brought against them, and a good bit about the saint himself, and it is therefore worth quoting in full:

"A true copy of a letter sent by Mr. Kirby to some of his friends.

"My most hearty commendations to you and the rest of my dearest friends. If you send anything to me, you must make haste, because we look to suffer death very shortly, as already it is signified to us. Yet I much fear lest our unworthiness of that excellent perfection and crown of martyrdom shall procure us a longer life.

Within these few days John Nichols came to my chamber window with humble submission, to crave mercy and pardon for all his wickedness and treacheries committed against us, and to acknowledge his books, sermons, and infamous speeches to our infamy and discredit, to be wicked, false and most execrable before God and man: which for preferment, promotion, hope of living, and favor of the nobility, he committed to writing and to the view of the world. Whereof being very penitent and sorrowful from his heart, rather than he would commit the like offense again, he wisheth to suffer a thousand deaths. For being pricked in conscience with our unjust condemnation, which hath happened contrary to his expectation, albeit he offered matter sufficient in his first book of recantation for our adversaries to make a bill of indictment against us, yet he minded [i.e., intended] then nothing less, as now he protesteth. He knoweth in conscience our accusations and the evidence brought against us to be false and to have no colour of truth, but only of malice forged by our enemies. And for Sledd and Munday, he is himself to accuse them of this wicked treachery and falsehood and of their naughty and abominable life, of which he is made privy and which for shame I cannot commit to writing. In detestation of his own doing and of their wickedness, he is minded never hereafter to ascend into pulpit nor to deal again in any matter of religion, for which cause he hath forsaken the ministry and is minded to teach a school, as I understand by him, in Norfolk. In proof whereof he showed me his new disguised apparel, as yet covered with minister's weed.

I wished him to make amends for all his sins, and to go to a place of penance, and he answered me he was not yet conformable to us in every point of religion, nor ever was: but lived at Rome in hypocrisy, as he hath done ever since in his own profession. Again, he thought that if ever he should depart the realm, he could not escape burning.

He offered to go to Mr. Lieutenant [of the Tower, Sir Owen Hopton] and Mr. Secretary Walsingham [a factotum of Elizabeth] and declare how injuriously I and the rest were condemned, that he might be free from shedding innocent blood; albeit he was somewhat afraid to show himself in London, where already he had declared our innocent behaviour, and his own malicious dealing towards us in his book and sermons.

To give my censure and judgment of him, certain I think he will within a short time fall into infidelity, except God of His goodness in the meantime be merciful unto him and reclaim him by some good means to the Catholic faith. Yet it should seem he hath not lost all good gifts of nature, when as in conscience he was pricked to open the truth in our defense and to detest his own wickedness, and treacheries of others practiced against us to our confusion. Now I see, as all the world hereafter shall easily perceive, that rather than God will have willful murder concealed, he procureth the birds of the air to reveal it.

I am minded to signify to Sir Francis Walsingham this his submission unto us, except [i.e., unless] in the meantime I shall learn that he has, as he promised faithfully to me, already opened the same. Mr. Richardson and Mr. Filbie [priest prisoners, like Mr. Hart below] have now obtained some bedding, who ever since their condemnation have laid upon the boards. Mr. Hart hath had many and great conflicts with his adversaries. This morning the 10th of January he was committed to the dungeon, where he now remaineth. God comfort him; he taketh it very quietly and patiently: the cause was, for that he would not yield to Mr. Reynolds of Oxford in any one point, but still remained constant the same man he was before and ever. Mr. Reynolds, albeit he be the best learned of that sort, that hath from time to time come hither to preach and confer, yet the more he is tried and dealt withal, the less learning he showed. Thus beseeching you to assist us with your good prayers, whereof now especially we stand in need, as we by God's grace shall not be unmindful of you, I bid you farewell this 10th day of January, 1582.

Yours to death and after death,
Luke Kirby

 

John Nichols did indeed confess his false accusations, but Sir Owen Hopton suppressed the confession. Nichols later confessed also to Lord Burleigh, a principal advisor to Queen Elizabeth, and Burleigh indicated that they knew all along that Nichols was a liar. The next year Nichols found himself imprisoned in Rouen, and Cardinal Allen, whom he had slandered unforgiveably, forgave him and obtained his release.

Blessed William Filby's body was still hanging when St. Luke Kirby was brought to Tyburn's 'triple tree'. Standing in the cart beneath the gallows, he declared that he was innocent of the treason alleged against him and was in fact about to die for the Catholic faith. A number of officials and ministers—including Munday, who, unlike Nichols, had no conscience at all—began long altercations with Saint Luke on points of law and points of doctrine, and thus he had little opportunity to compose himself or recollect his thoughts for the awful event impending. Perhaps because of his patience and longsuffering they imagined his character to be weak, or perhaps they were desperate to replace their discredited apostate Nichols with a man of more substance; whatever the motive, they tried in several ways to induce him at first to denounce the Pope and finally to yield in any slight point of doctrine or practice.

At last, not quite despairing, the preachers asked Saint Luke to pray with them, in English, in his last moments: they would pronounce the prayer and he, if he found nothing objectionable, would repeat the words after them. " 'Oh,' quoth he again, 'you and I are not of one faith, therefore I think I should offend God if I should pray with you,' at which the people began to cry, 'Away with him!' So he saying his Pater Noster in Latin ended his life." After the hanging, his body was gutted and quartered.

Saint Luke Kirby was executed on May 30, 1582, and canonized in 1970.