Saints celebrated on the 9th of July
Prayer to the Angels and the Saints
Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.
In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.
Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.
Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.
BLESSED ADRIAN FORTESCUE, MARTYR
Blessed Adrian Fortescue was a Knight of Saint John, martyr; he was born about 1476 and was executed July 10, 1539.
He belonged to the Salden branch of the great Devonshire family of Fortescue, and was a true country gentleman of the period, occasionally following the King in the wars with France (1513 and 1522), not unfrequently attending the court, and at other times acting as justice of the peace or commissioner for subsidies.
HE WAS KNIGHTED IN 1503
He was knighted in 1503 (Clermont; but D.N.B. gives 1528), attended the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520), and late in life (1532) became a Knight of St John.
When Anne Boleyn became queen, Sir Adrian (whose mother, Alice Boleyn, was Anne’s great-aunt) naturally profited to some extent, but, as we see from his papers, not very much. The foundations of his worldly fortunes had been laid honourably at an earlier date.
He was a serious, thrifty man painstaking in business, careful in accounts, and a lover of the homely wit of that day. He collected and signed several lists of proverbs and wise saws, which, though not very brilliant, are never offensive or coarse, always sane, and sometimes rise to a high moral or religious level.
HE WAS PUT UNDER ARREST
All of a sudden this quiet, worthy gentleman was overwhelmed by some unexplained whim of the Tudor tyrant. On August 29, 1534, he was put under arrest, no one knows why, but released after some months. On February 3, 1539, he was arrested a second time and sent to the Tower. In April he was condemned untried by an act of attainder; in July he was beheaded.
THE CHARGES
No specific act of treason was alleged against him, but only in general "sedition and refusing allegiance". The attainder, however, went on to decree death against Cardinal Pole and several others because they "adhered themselves to the Bishop of Rome". Catholic tradition was always held that Sir Adrian died for the same cause, and modern Protestant critics have come to the same conclusion. His cultus has always flourished among the Knights of St John, and he was beatified by Leo XIII in 1895.
(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913 - 📷 1. Bl. Adrian Fortescue, 2. Tower of London)
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