ANN KILLINGATE, RECUSANT

 

WELCOME!

ANN KILLINGATE, RECUSANT 

The Manner of Execution at Tyburn 

As a specimen of the sufferings of the lay Catholics during the reign of Elizabeth, it has been thought proper to add the following narrative, translated from a Latin Manuscript, written in the year 1590.

Henry Killingate, Esq. resided near Sadbery, in the county of Durham. Some years ago he was denounced as a recusant by his brother Thomas, because he had been married, and his child had been baptised by a catholic priest. To escape the penalties of recusancy, Mr Killingate had the weakness to conform - but his wife Anne resisted every solicitation. Doctor Barnes, the bishop of Durham, had bound Mr Killingate in a large sum not only to attend the protestant service himself, but to take his wife with him; and he, to procure her consent, unexpectedly introduced to her a protestant clergyman, who began to dispute with her on religion: but Anne's agitation was so great, that it brought on premature labour, and her child expired immediately after the birth. 

As soon as she was able to go out, to free herself and her husband from molestation, she left the house, and for three years lived concealed among her relations. But the bishop suspecting what was the truth, that her husband connived at her absence, ordered forty horsemen to surround his house at the dead of the night, and to bring him a prisoner to Durham.

Elizabeth I. was Queen of England and Ireland
from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603.
Most barbaric torture of Catholic priests and
Catholic lay faithful
took place during her reign.

There he was twice brought before the Ecclesiastical Commission, and twice remanded to prison because he refused to give security for the appearance of his wife. But Anne, to relieve her husband, voluntarily surrendered herself. He was immediately discharged: she was placed in solitary confinement, till, on account of her advanced state of pregnancy, Mr Killingate obtained permission to take her to his own house. From thence, a month after her delivery she was carried back to prison, and was compelled every day for six weeks to hear the protestant service read in her cell. Those questions were also put to her, which proved fatal to so many other persons, by inducing them to give answers which were by law capital offences. But on all such occasions Anne maintained an obstinate silence. At Michaelmas, 1582, she was confined for fourteen days in a dungeon, where, through cold and the confined air of the place, she contracted a disease that terminated in a painful eruption.

In this state she was conducted to the court with other catholics, who were compelled to walk through the streets in pairs, intermixed with the felons. They were arraigned the last for recusancy and when it came to Anne's turn to answer to the question, are you guilty or not guilty, she replied, "I know not." 

"Have you been to [government enforced protestant] church," asked the judge. "No," she replied. 

"Then," said he, "you must plead guilty."

"I shall do no such thing," answered Anne, "you may make the best of my confession, but I will neither plead guilty nor not guilty." 

She was remanded to the bishop's prison at Auckland, and a fortnight later was called before him, Lord Huntingdon and several magistrates. They asked if she would take the oath of allegiance; and on her refusal, said that she refused the Queen that which was her right. 

"I give," said Anne, "to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is God's." [Mark 12:17]

"Then," one of them observed, "you mean to say that the queen is an infidel like Caesar. (To call her an infidel had been made a capital offence.) 

"No," she replied, "I do not. But you need ask no more questions, for I shall give no more answers."

From Auckland Anne was sent to the gaol at Sadbery, an old ruinous building, where she remained five days exposed to the weather from a hole in the roof, and in a state of utter destitution. At length her husband learning the place of her confinement supplied her with necessaries, but could not obtain leave to take her to his own house, when the time of her labour approached. The bishop named the midwife to attend her, and afterwards, refused her the aid of a nurse or servant. This was the most cruel period of her sufferings. Unable to supply her child with milk from the breast, she kept him alive with beer, and though for nine months, he seemed almost always on the point of death, he was as it were miraculously preserved.

York Castle 

At length she was transferred from Sadbery to the gaol at Durham, when she defeated every attempt to prevail on her to conform. Her constancy wearied out the bishop, and he at last sent her to the lord president at York. By him she was asked, whether she would go to church, and on her refusal was sent to prison to the castle. But her present situation seemed to her a paradise. She found herself in the company of Catholics, confined like herself for religion, who received her as a sister, and sought by their attention to console her for her past sufferings." 

Here our author passes to the history of some other Catholics, but sufficiently intimates by his manner, that she was still a prisoner at York when he wrote in the year 1590.

Source: Bishop Richard Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, Volume 2

⬅️ The Holy Martyrs of England and Wales