Blessed ROGER CADWALLADOR, Priest, 1610

GLORIFYING GOD

Biography

When he was near his crown he wrote, "Comfort yourselves, my friends, in this that I die in an assurance of salvation ; which, if you truly love me as you ought to do, should please you better than to have me alive a little while among you for your content, and then to die with great uncertainty either to be saved or damned. If this manner of death be shameful, yet not more than my Saviour's was : if it be painful, yet not more than was His. Only have you care to persevere in God's true faith and charity, and then we shall meet again to our greater comfort that shall never end." On the morning of his execution, having spent some five hours in prayer, he took some broth and claret, to make himself strong, he said, like Bishop Fisher, to suffer for God, and dressed himself in a new suit of clothes as his wedding garment. On the scaffold, asked to give his opinion as to the oath, he replied that his opinion mattered little; they should regard rather the sentiments of the Church, for his swearing would neither diminish the Pope's authority nor increase the King's. His constancy under the terrible butchery which attended his end confirmed the faith of the Herefordshire Catholics.

" But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief . . . but if as a Christian let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in His Name." —1 PET. iv. 15, 16.