+ Saint JOHN RIGBY, Layman, 1600

FETTERS UNLOOSED

Biography

At the next assizes he again refused to go to church, and the judge ordered his feet to be put in irons. A strong pair of shackles, which the confessor kissed and blessed with the sign of the cross, were then riveted on his legs. The next day as he stood at the Sessions house the irons fell off his legs on to the ground, at which he smiled and begged the keeper to rivet them on faster. The keeper did so with all care, but again they fell. Then he called again to the keeper to make them secure : " For I esteem them," he said, "jewels too precious to be lost." But the keeper's man, being much amazed, refused to put them on again, so another was ordered to do so. Then Mr. Rigby, remembering that a Catholic maid called Mercy had that morning told him that in the night she saw in her dream his irons fall off his legs, said to his keeper, " Now the maid's dream is found to be true." He added he hoped it was a token that the bands of his mortality would shortly be loosed, and so it proved. He won his crown, June 21, 1600, St. Thomas' Waterings, London. "

Chaucer's pilgrims at this place

"Thou hast broken my bonds : I will sacrifice to Thee a sacrifice of praise."—Ps. cxv. 16.