Given at Tyburn Convent at the Mass commemorating the 435th anniversary of the Martyrdom of Sts Ralph Sherwin, Edmund Campion SJ and Alexander Briant, on 1 December 2016.
‘Paid to a Frenchman who took away the priest’s bowels after he had been hanged: 20s; for coals to make the fire: 6d; for a wright’s axe, to behead the priest: 4s. 6d; for a hand axe and a cutting knife, to rip and quarter him: 14d; and for the horse which dragged him from the hurdle to the gallows: 12d; for four iron brackets, with hooks on them, to hang the priest’s four quarters on the four gates of the city: 3s. 8d; for an iron wedge to break up wood to make a fire on the moor: 18d; and for a shovel for the fire: 2s; to a mason for two days’ work, securing the brackets to the gates: 10d per day; for carrying the four quarters of the priest from gate to gate, and other charges, 2s; for straw, candle, drink; and string to bind the priests’ arms before he was executed: 9d; for a hinge for the door that the priest burnt while in prison, 6d; for drink which another prisoner had before he executed the priest: 2d.’
This is a list not from the London but from the Newcastle Corporation Accounts. It reminds us that priests up and down the land were being called to make the same sacrifice: the supreme sacrifice of offering their lives in witness to the truth of the Catholic faith.
Only when I returned to work at the Venerabile did I discover that we held in our archives the atlas which the college martyrs must have perused before they set out for the mission. It was printed in 1570, and contained detailed maps of every county in England and Wales. It was surely brought from England to prepare students for arrival on English soil.
Every Feast of St Andrew, I liked to imagine Fathers Sherwin, Campion and Briant gathered with Bishop Goldwell somewhere upstairs in the college poring over these maps on the eve of their departure northwards. I liked to imagine them then descending the 15th century staircase which is still there and ends before the archway into the old refectory, there to share their last meal in college before leaving the next day to travel northwards.
Of course, there sat with them at table one who would betray them: for, the very next day, as they set forth, a letter went from Via di Monserrato to Sir Francis Walsingham containing the names of the whole party.
On completion of my own studies, I decided with four others to travel home more or less the same route the martyrs had taken. Our first stop was Milan, where we met Cardinal Martini, successor to St Charles Borromeo, in his cathedral. As we spoke with him, we couldn’t but recall the scene depicted above the entrance to the college church, of the newly ordained Fr Sherwin lecturing to St Charles. He and his fellow-students had to sing for their supper in this way every night that they were given hospitality.
Many of us will have seen with our own eyes the letter which St Charles wrote to Rector Agazzari straight after they left, saying how much he’d enjoyed the visit of Campion and Sherwin and the others; and that he wanted all the students who were returning to the mission to stop by with him: a letter from a saint about saints. We said Mass before the relics of St Ambrose which repose in Milan Cathedral and imagined the martyrs praying before the same holy remains.
Following in their path, we made our way from Milan to Geneva. In Geneva, they’d sought out Beza, the Calvinist preacher, to have a dispute with him. Being rather more ecumenical ourselves, we sought out the headquarters of the World Council of Churches, to pray there for reconciliation among Christians in England and Wales.
From there, we headed for Rheims. That was the longest part of the journey. We built in time to pray alone. We were encouraged in this by remembering Campion, who knew particularly well his need of prayer, and used to walk ahead of the group for an hour every morning, communing with the Lord, praying, no doubt, for the grace to persevere in the enterprise on which they’d embarked.
In Rheims, we offered Mass in the cathedral and thought of the group praying before the same windows as we now contemplated. As we looked up at buildings which they’d seen with their own eyes, it was moving to think that it was here, in Rheims, that they received the chilling news that the Privy Council in London held now a visual description of every member of the party.
We thought of Bishop Goldwell who waivered. He was an old man of 79; and feared that he’d be instantly recognised; so he decided to return, making his lonely way back to Via di Monserrato. The rest of the group then divided into two: Campion in one group, Sherwin in another.
We stayed together and soon reached Douai, perhaps the most moving stop on the whole journey, because we found ourselves, by pure chance, in a hotel on the site of the old seminary. We didn’t realise we’d chosen that site till we walked out of the hotel and saw the name of the place, Place Carnot, the very site where Sherwin and Briant and others had entered seminary.
We said Mass at an exquisite little altar in a dusty side-chapel of the church of St Jacques. I had the privilege of presiding at that Mass. I’ll never forget looking up at the tabernacle and seeing under the canopy the words, 'Made in Westminster 16-something-early-17C', confirming that this was the old high altar from the seminary demolished at the revolution.
I remember still that the reading that day was the story of Moses and the burning bush. God's words to Moses, ‘Take off your sandals for the ground you stand on is holy ground’, had a particular resonance there when I thought of the martyrs who’d offered the sacrifice of the Mass on that very altar.
Those words had another resonance for our group, because we’d had a Mass at Castel Gandolfo with Pope John Paul two days after our diaconal ordination; and the reading we heard at Mass with the Pope had been the same account of God revealing himself to Moses in a burning bush.
From Douai we made for Calaisand so to Dover and on to London to end our pilgrimage here at Tyburn. Here we remained a good long while in silent prayer before each of us went his separate way. We’d arrived together at the English College some six years previously; Tyburn seemed the right place to part company.
In the years that have passed since, I’ve often found myself close by Marble Arch; and have loved to visit this chapel. Sitting here I find rekindled the spirit of mission with which I arrived here at the end of my training.
Of course, Tyburn is much changed now from how it must have looked in the late 16th century. But on a cold winter's morning such as this I find you can allow yourself, if you close your eyes, to imagine you hear the clop-clopping of horses’ hooves drawing our heroes that fateful 1st December on the back of hurdles: up Eastcheap and Poultry, into Cheapside then along Holborn and the length of Oxford Street up here to Tyburn where they beheld the gruesome V-shaped gallows which would be their Calvary.
As they approached journey’s end, Campion was said to have been particularly composed, seeming not to notice the taunts and insults of the onlookers. Sherwin, we’re told, was strong too, finding the courage to say, as he looked up at the white disc of a sun against a slate-grey sky, ‘Ah, Mr Campion, we shall shortly be above yonder fellow.’
They knew what they would next have to endure because the judge had told them:
‘Ye shall be drawn,’ he’d said, ‘through the open city of London upon hurdles to the place of execution, and there be hanged and let down alive and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight; then your heads be cut off, and your bodies be divided into four parts to be disposed of at Her Majesty’s pleasure. And God have mercy on your souls.’
The rest would be just as we heard described by the book-keeper of the Newcastle Corporation.
What strength, what faith, what pietas it must have taken upon their parts to go so meekly and willingly to their death, to this death.
Today we salute their extraordinary courage. We salute indeed every alumnus of the Venerable English College who went to his death in this way: we salute them, we honour them, and we thank them. For by their witness we are truly encouraged: encouraged, empowered, and yes, emboldened, for the mission ourselves.