ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 13th of December
SEVEN PRIESTS AND CONFESSORS, MARTYRS
In the December following the execution of Mr Barlow, I find seven priests at once condemned in the sessions at the Old Bailey, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, for their character and priestly functions.
They were condemned on the 8th of December, and were to have been executed on the 13th. At the desire of the French ambassador, the king being willing to have them reprieved and banished, sent a message to both houses of parliament, to know their thoughts upon the matter. This message being sent December the 11th, from the lords to the house of commons, and there read, it was singly voted upon these following priests: Resolved, that John Hammon, John Rivers, alias Abbot, Walter Coleman, and N. Turner, priests, shall be put to execution according to law. (See Nelson's Impartial Collections, vol. ii. p. 731, 732, &c.) However, his majesty having been pleased to grant his reprieve to all the seven, on the Thursday following. December the 14th, both houses agreed to join in a petition, that his majesty would take off the reprieve, and order all the seven to be executed. To which his majesty, on December the 16th, returned his answer, that he would take the matter into consideration.
This reprieve of the condemned priests, who were shortly after reduced to the number of six, by the death of one of them, was perpetually objected to the king by the parliament: till his majesty, answering from York their petition concerning the magazine of Hull, &c., told them, concerning the six condemned priests, it is true they were reprieved by our warrant, being informed that they were (by some restraint.) disabled to take the benefit of our former proclamation, since that, we have issued out another, for the due execution of the laws against papists, and have most solemnly promised, upon the word of a king, never to pardon any priest without your consent, who shall be found guilty by law desiring to banish these, the six,"having herewith sent warrants to that purpose, if upon second thoughts you do not disapprove thereof. But if you think the execution of these persons so very necessary to the great and pious work of reformation, we refer it wholly to you, declaring hereby, that upon such your resolution, signified to the ministers of justice, our warrant for their reprieve is determined, and the law to have its course." So far the king. And my Lord Clarendon, in his History (vol. i, part 2, p. 490) tells us that this unexpected answer did not a little disturb the parliament. because the king, by referring the matter to them, removed the scandal from himself, and laid it at their doors and certain it is, that we hear no more of this affair, and that these condemned priests were all suffered to linger away their lives in Newgate, though no less than eight of their brethren were executed in different parts of the kingdom, within the compass of that one year, 1642.
It remains, that we should here put down the chief particulars we have been able to discover concerning these seven condemned priests; and first, as to their order; Father Angelus Mason, in his preface to his Certamen Seraphicum, tells us, that excepting Father Coleman, who was a Franciscan, all the rest were either of the secular clergy, or of the venerable order of St Bennet [St Benedict]. Then as to other particulars, to begin with those that were first by parliament voted to die.
1. John Hammon, or Hammond, was a priest of Douay college, ordained and sent upon the English mission in 1625. He was a gentleman of learning and merit, a leading man amongst his brethren; a member of their chapter; and superior of the secular clergy in the west of England.
2. John Rivers, alias Abbot, a Londoner, was also a priest of Douay college; he was ordained in 1612, at which time I find he left the college, in order to enter the Society of Jesus. But this design proved ineffectual, for by the account of Father Angelus, above quoted, when he was condemned to die, he was still a secular priest.
3. Walter Coleman was descended from a good family in Staffordshire, who, going abroad, studied his humanity in the English college of Douay, then returning home, after some years spent among his friends, being disgusted with the pleasures and vanities of the world, he determined to leave all, and to follow Christ in a life of poverty, humility, and mortification. Upon this he entered among the English Franciscans in their convent at Douay, where he was called father Christopher, of St Clair. He died in Newgate, anno 1645. He was author of a small poem, called, The Duel of Death. See more of him in Certamen Seraphicum, p. 184, &c.
4. John Turner was a priest of the English college of Douay, ordained and sent upon the mission in 1625. He seems to have survived all the rest in prison, and consequently to have endured the longer martyrdom.
5. The other three, (whose names are not recorded in Mr Nelson's collections) were, as far as I can gather from other records, Mr Henry Myners, who died prisoner of the common side of Newgate, Father Lawrence Mabbs. O. S. B., who died prisoner in the same jail, anno 1641. And Father Peter Wilford, O. S. B., called in religion Father Boniface, who died in the same prison, March 12, 1646, being fourscore years of age, or upwards. B. W., in his manuscript, says ninety.
Father Mason, in his Certamen Seraphicum (p. 192) speaking of Father Coleman, gives this short eulogium of all his six companions; that they had all laboured for a long time upon the mission, with great fruit in gaining souls to God: that they had suffered all the incommodities of a prison for many years; that they were condemned merely on account of their priesthood; and that they received the sentence of death with great joy, giving God thanks that they were thought worthy to suffer in his cause.
Source: Bishop Richard Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, Volume 1
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