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Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Blessed GEORGE HAYDOCK Priest, 1584

SORROW TURNED TO JOY

Biography

HE was the son of Verran Haydock, the representative of an ancient Catholic family of Cottam Hall, Lancashire; his mother, a Westby of Westby, York.



When on her deathbed, to console her sorrowing husband, she pointed, with the infant George in her arms, to the motto embroidered at the foot of the bed, " Tristitia vestra in gaudium vertetur." But the joy prophesied was not to be of this world. The widowed husband, seeing how persecution was ravaging the Church in England, to offer some reparation made over his property to his son William, and went over to Douay with the two others, Richard and George, all three to be trained for the priesthood. The father became procurator of the Douay College in England, and filled the office with great success. Richard after varied missionary work died in Rome, and George returned to England as a priest in February 1581, and was betrayed on arriving by an old tenant of his father's who had apostatised. His aged father on the previous All Souls' Eve, when about to say the accustomed midnight Mass, seemed to see his son's severed head above the altar, and to hear the words," Tristitia vestra, &c," and, swooning away, gave back his soul to God to find his sorrow turned to joy.

"Your sorrow shall be turned into joy."— JOHN xvi. 20. This was also the Haydock family motto.

See also A ROYAL HYPOCRITE



1 comment:

Catholic Conclave said...

The fine timbered Ancestral home of the Haydock family, Cottam Hall was demolished around 1860. Henry de Haydock was a member of parliament for Preston in 1330 and was no doubt one of the Cottam Haydocks.

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