By Malcolm Brennan

SAINT MARGARET was born in Cheshire into a gentleman's family, and in 1588 was living in London in the service of a great lady. When she heard about the harsh imprisonment of Father William Watson, her heart went out to him and she resolved to come to his assistance.

Father Watson had been sent on the English mission shortly after completing his education at the English College at Rheims.

By Malcolm Brennan

SAINT MARGARET was born in Cheshire into a gentleman's family, and in 1588 was living in London in the service of a great lady. When she heard about the harsh imprisonment of Father William Watson, her heart went out to him and she resolved to come to his assistance.

Father Watson had been sent on the English mission shortly after completing his education at the English College at Rheims. Landing in 1586 with Father Richard Leigh and three other priests, Father Watson was captured almost immediately and cast into the relatively lax Marshalsea Prison. Here he agreed to leave the country in exchange for his freedom, but before he could obtain passage abroad he was rearrested by Richard Topcliffe. This character, a fanatic priest-hunter for Queen Elizabeth, was often at odds with less zealous persecutors of Catholics, and he confined Father Watson in Bridewell Prison. The rigors which he imposed induced Father Watson to attend Protestant services at the church of Bridewell; but afterwards he repented and in reparation he publicly declared his remorse in the same church. At this, Topcliffe redoubled Father Watson's sufferings, and after a month the prisoner was moved to a solitary cell high up in the prison building.

It was these things that stirred the compassion of Saint Margaret and moved her to comfort him. With her mistress' permission, she made up a basket of provisions and went to the prison, only to be turned away; no visitors for the priest. Prisons in those days were not equipped or organized for long periods of incarceration, because serving time in prison was not an ordinary judicial punishment—the usual punishments being fines, the stocks, mutilation, and execution. (In imitation of the Mediterranean countries which used incarceration in the galleys as a more humane form of punishment than mutilation or execution, the northern countries, without galleys, later invented penitentaries.) In any case, a prisoner in the Elizabethan period, who was temporarily awaiting trial or punishment, had to depend on family or friends for his care and feeding, or he had to survive on such gruel as the jailer's tenderness could induce him to part with.

Undeterred at the rebuff and the prison regulations, Margaret proceeded to cultivate the friendship of the jailer's wife, and gradually the two women cajoled the jailer into allowing Margaret to attend upon Father Watson. However, she had to be searched before and after every visit, a guard had to be present while she was with the priest, and no whispering was allowed. The precautions were observed strictly at first, so that even the loaves which Margaret brought were broken open in the search for secret messages. But eventually, she became such a familiar figure, and her good works were so patently sincere, that her search became perfunctory and she and the prisoner could occasionally speak privately.

Father Watson had observed the location of his cell and confided to Saint Margaret that if he had a rope long enough, he could lower himself from the window and escape. Margaret procured the rope, smuggled it to him wrapped in a clean shirt, and the two of them agreed on a night and an hour. Saint Margaret was to have a boat and boatman ready at the appointed hour, but late in the day her man backed out of the adventure. Fearful that she had arranged nothing but the priest's death—for she could not warn Fattier Watson—she was in a terrible state of despondency, but she happened to meet a young man she had not seen in some time, John Roche, an Irish servingman. His solicitude at her distraught state finally brought her to confess the problem, and this providential friend promptly agreed to man the get-away boat.

At the agreed time Father Watson lowered himself from the window. However, he discovered himself still high in the air when he came, as it were, to the end of his rope. (Among Saint Margaret's many talents was not the ability to manage jailbreaks.) Father Watson let go, crashed noisily into a shed, and tumbled onto the ground rather badly wounded. Assisted by Margaret in the dark night, he was able to scramble into the boat before the hue and cry became effective. Because they were being pursued, John Roche exchanged clothes with Father Watson to aid his disguise; and indeed, when Roche was captured, after having put the priest safely away, his captors imagined that they had caught the priest. When his identification was finally made, Venerable John Roche cheerfully admitted his part in the escape and steadfastly refused to reveal the priest's whereabouts.

On the evidence of the rope left behind, Saint Margaret was arrested the next day just as she was preparing to change her lodgings. She, too confessed her role in the escape and showed not the least trace of remorse for it. According to Saint Robert South well, reporting to his Jesuit superiors, "She was flogged and hung up by the wrists, the tips of her toes only touching the ground, for so long a time that she was crippled and paralysed, but these sufferings greatly strengthened the glorious martyr for her last struggle." To no avail were the threats of suffering and death, nor the promises of liberty if she would help to find Father Watson, or beg the Queen's pardon, or go to a Protestant service. A modern biographer reports that "Margaret Ward refused to ask pardon for an offense against the Queen, which she had not committed, and expressed her belief that the Queen herself, if she had the compassion of a woman, would have done as much under similar circumstances. With regard to going to church, she had been convinced for many years that it was not lawful to do so, and she would lay down many lives, if she had them, rather than act against her conscience or do anything against God and His holy religion." The escape took place on either the 10th or the 18th of August 1588. On the 23rd Saint Margaret Ward and Venerable John Roche were tried and convicted, and both were hanged at Tyburn on the 30th.

IT WOULD BE EDIFYING to tell the holy life and the good works of Father William Watson following upon the bloody sacrifices of Saint Margaret and Venerable John. But Father Watson's life is anything but edifying. He was in constant dispute with other priests on the English mission; he became the most extravagant and vicious controversialist in the unfortunate division that developed between the Jesuits and the secular priests; and there is reason to believe that he even betrayed to the authorities some priests who were planning a prison escape. He developed the conviction that if only Catholics would resolve to become good and obedient subjects of the Queen, then the government would leave them unmolested. (What should we call this—foolish detente —silly ecumenism?) To this end he entered into secret negotiations with Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury, to devise an oath of allegiance to the Crown which would be acceptable to the government and to Catholics—but to no avail, undoubtedly because the two allegiances were irreconcilable. After Queen Elizabeth's death, Father Watson wrangled an interview with King James I to alleviate the conditions of Catholics; but the King took him for a fool and continued the persecutions.

Do we conclude, then, that Margaret's and John's heroic efforts were misplaced—good in intention, no doubt, but better not to have been made? This holy woman, with her feminine instinct to care and sacrifice for others, and this holy man, with his servant's instinct to defer to another's well-being—they surely imagined themselves to be laying down their insignificant lives so that the educated and ordained William Watson could carry out the work of the Lord. But retrospect can reveal to us what their humility concealed from them: they were not minor instruments for the great work of Father Watson; rather, he was the minor tool for their glorious achievement, martyrdom. For it is the blood of martyrs that glorifies Our Lord and makes the Faith to grow, not clever schemes.

Dr. Malcolm Brennan is a regular contributor to these pages. He is a Professor of English at The Citadel. He and his family attend Holy Family Chapel in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the Mass Centers of the Society of Saint Pius X.