Saints celebrated on the 23th of June
SAINT THOMAS GARNET, PRIEST AND MARTYR
¹ Thomas Garnet S.J. was son of Richard Garnet, a constant professor and great sufferer for the catholic faith, and nephew or near kinsman to Father Henry Garnet, who suffered in St Paul's church-yard, May 3, 1606. After a pious education at home under the care of his father, who from his very birth had vowed and dedicated him to God and his church, he was sent abroad when he was 16 or 17 years of age, to the seminary just then erected at St Omer's, under the care of the fathers of the society of Jesus; and having there finished his humanity, he passed in in the the year 1595 into Spain to the English college of Valladolid, where he learned philosophy and divinity, and was made priest.
He was at upon the mission in the company of Mr Mark Barkworth, of whose glorious exit we have treated in the first part of these memoirs, and laboured with zeal in the vineyard of his Lord, for about six years, being remarkably industrious in endeavouring to bring the souls that were under his care to a thorough sense of solid piety, and to ground them strongly in virtue.
Having been a long time desirous of entering into the Society of Jesus, he was admitted by Father Henry Garnet his kinsman, then superior of the English Jesuits: but before he could go beyond the seas to make his noviceship, he was apprehended and committed prisoner to the Gate-House, and from thence was translated to the Tower.
His being a kinsman of Father Garnet, and having received a letter from him, was the occasion of his being strictly examined by secretary Cecil, (not without severe threats of the rack) concerning the gun-powder plot, then lately discovered; but as they could not find any manner of grounds for a suspicion of his being any way conscious of that execrable conspiracy, these threats proceeded no farther than the keeping him for eight or nine months in a close confinement, where with lying on the bare ground, and that in the severest season of the winter, he contracted rheumatic pains and a kind of a sciatica which stuck by him for the remainder of his life.
From prison, he was, with many other priests, sent into banishment 1606; and then repaired to Louvain, where at that time the English Jesuits had lately procured an establishment for a novitiate. Here he remained some months, giving great edification to his fellow novices, and then was sent back upon the mission; where being betrayed by one Rouse, an apostate priest, he fell again into the hands of the pursuivants. At this second apprehension he was brought before Thomas Ravis
bishop of London; by whom, and by Sir William Wade he was several times examined. In his examination he neither owned nor denied himself to be a priest, but refused to take the new oath; adding, that he was of opinion if any catholics had taken it, they did it out of fear, which he hoped would never prevail with him to act any thing against his conscience.
He was committed to Newgate, and not long after brought his trial at the Old Bailey, upon an indictment of high treason, for having been made priest by authority derived from Rome, and remaining in England contrary to the statute of Elizabeth 27. Three witnesses appeared against him, who deposed that whilst he was prisoner in the Tower, he had written in several places, Thomas Garnet, priest: upon this slender evidence, he was found guilty by his jury, and received the sentence of death with great joy apprehending nothing so much as, lest by the interest of friends, or by any other means, he should be deprived of that crown, which he had now so near a prospect of, as he often professed with tears to those who had access to him. And when some suggested to him how he might have an opportunity of making bis escape, he would not make use of it; choosing rather to obey a voice within, which said to him, noli fugere, don't run away.
When he was called forth to the hurdle, he obeyed the summons with a remarkable courage and cheerfulness and laid himself down, mare like one that was going to his marriage-feast, than to suffer a cruel and ignominious death. There was a great concourse of people, and many of the nobility and gentry at the place of execution amongst the rest, the Earl of Exeter, one of the privy council: who endeavoured to persuade the confessor to save his life by taking the oath: alleging that several priests had taken it, and that many more looked upon it a disputable matter, in which faith was not concerned; why therefore should he be so stiff, and not rather embrace the offer of the king's clemency, by conforming as others had done.
Father Thomas replied, My lord, if the case be so doubtful and disputable, how can I in conscience swear to what is doubtful, as if it were certain? No, I will not take the oath, though I might have a thousand lives.
Upon this, being ordered to get up into the cart, he cheerfully complied, and kissed the gallows, as the happy instrument which was to send him to heaven. He there professed that he was a priest, and a member of the Society of Jesus, though the least and most unworthy: that he had not indeed acknowledged this at his trial, not out of any fear of death, but that he might not be his own accuser, or put his judges under a necessity of condemning him against their conscience: that he had spent the nine years of his missionary labours in assisting and comforting the persecuted catholics, and in bringing back the sheep that were gone astray to the fold of Christ; but as for any treasonable design against the king or kingdom, he had never entertained any, nor ever been conscious to any.
A minister that was there asked him, If there was to equivocation in what he said? The confessor replied, No, sir; for if! had been minded to use equivocations, I might have taken the oath and saved my life; which oath I did not decline out of any unwillingness to profess my allegiance to the king, which I offered to do, and for that end produced at my trial a form of an oath of allegiance, drawn up according to what was looked upon satisfactory in the days of our forefathers, to which I was willing to swear: but this new oath is so worded, as to contain things quite foreign to allegiance, to which in my opinion no catholic can with a safe conscience swear.
Then crossing his hands before his breast, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, he looked upon this as the most happy day of his life, and himself most happy in being to die in so good a cause: and heartily prayed to God, that he would turn away his wrath from this nation, and not lay his death to their charge and in particular that he would forgive all those who had any ways concurred to his condemnation, and that he might one day see them happy with him in heaven. After which he recited the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Creed. Then having begun the hymn, Veni Creator, when he came to those words sermone ditans guttura, the cart was drawn away, and he was left hanging, till be had given up his pious soul into the hands of his Creator. For the people that were present, and my Lord Exeter in particular, would not permit the rope to be cut, till he was quite dead. He suffered at Tyburn, June 23, 1608. His execution is mentioned by Howes upon Stow, Collier, Salmon, &c.
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The year 1609 passed without the shedding of any catholic blood for religious matters: a thing the more to be remarked, because the like had not happened since the year 1580.
1610. In February 1610, I find in B. W's manuscript concerning the English Benedictine congregation, that F. Sigebert Buckley, the last surviving monk of the abbey of Westminster, departed this life in the 93rd year of his age: after having endured forty years persecution for the catholic faith, always shut up in one prison or another.
¹From Father Bartoli's History of the English Jesuits, 1. vi. chap. xiv. and Father More's History of the English province, 1. viii. n. 8.
Source: Bishop Richard Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, Volume 2
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