BL. RICHARD HILL, PRIEST AND MARTYR - 27 MAY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MAY

Saints celebrated on the 27th of May

WELCOME!

BLESSED RICHARD HILL, PRIEST AND MARTYR

[Blessed Richard Hill was an] English Martyr, executed at Durham, May 27, 1590. Very little is known of him and his fellow-martyrs, John Hogg and Richard Holiday, except that they were Yorkshiremen who arrived at the English College at Reims, Holiday on September 6, 1584, Hill on May 15, 1587, and Hogg on October 15, 1587; that all three were ordained subdeacons at Soissons, March 18, 1859, by Monsignor Jerome Hennequin, deacons May 27, and priests September 23 at Laon by Monsignor Valentine Douglas, O.S.B.; that they with their fellow martyr Edmund Duke were sent on the English mission on the following March 22 and were arrested in the north of England soon after landing; that they were arraigned, condemned, and executed at Durham under the statute 27 Eliz c. 2. With them suffered four felons who protested that they died in the same faith.

Divers beholders, when these martyrs were offered their pardons if they would go to [government enforced Protestant] church, said boldly that they would rather die themselves than any of them should relent, one saying (he had seven children) "I would to God they might all go the same way in making such confession" ... When their heads were cut off and holden up, as the manner is, not one would say "God save the Queen" except the catch-polls themselves and a minister or two.

Two Protestant spectators, Robert Maire and his wife Grace, were converted. The place at which the Martyrs were executed was called Dryburn, and afterwards the legend sprung up that it was so called because the well out of which the water was drawn to boil their quarters suddenly dried up. The place however had this name before their deaths.

Source: John Bannerman Wainewright, Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913

⬅️ The Holy Martyrs of England and Wales

PRAYER:

Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that we who know how courageously your holy martyr Richard confessed the faith, may experience his goodness as he intercedes for us with you. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.