Blessed ROGER CADWALLADOR, Priest, 1610

LITTLE BELLS OF GOLD

Biography

As they had failed in their arguments, they turned to scoffing, and mocked him for having no tonsure,Hereford to Leominster, still wearing his shackles, though, owing to his extreme weakness, a boy was allowed to accompany him holding up their links by a string. After his condemnation to death, for some months before his martyrdom he was chained every night to his bed-post by an iron chain. One day the keeper led him to an obscure and loathsome place, and left him there chained to a post, unable to move more than two yards; at last the keeper's wife, moved with compassion, in her husband's absence let him loose. In his sickness in prison he was subject to ill-usage and slanders, yet nothing daunted his courage or cheerfulness, and to a friend he said, shaking his shackles as he lay prostrate, "Hear, O Lord ! these are my little bells."

wearing a beard, and dressing as a layman with a silk point to his hose. Then, as he refused the oath of allegiance, the Bishop commanded him to be heavily shackled, and to wear besides a great bolt. This, by reason of his sickness, was removed, but he was sent on foot from

" He clothed him with a robe of glory, and encompassed him with many little bells of gold, that a noise might be heard in the temple for a memorial to the children of his people."— ECCLUS. xlv. 9, 10, 11.

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.

Blessed ROGER CADWALLADOR, Priest, 1610

THE ETERNAL PRIESTHOOD

Biography

A NATIVE of Herefordshire, very learned and a noted Greek scholar, he began his priestly labours in England about 1594, and during sixteen years won many souls to the Church. Apprehended on Easter Day, in the house of Mrs. Winefride Scroope, near Hereford, he acknowledged to the Protestant Bishop that he was a priest, and added that he supposed that this would not be against him with the Bishop, whose special concern it was to maintain the sacerdotal dignity. " For, my Lord, either you must admit yourself to be a priest, or I can prove you to be no Bishop." 

The Bishop, Herbert Westphaling (above) insisted that Christ was the only sacrificing priest of the New Testament, in that sense of the word, which is not common to all Christians, and hoped thus to free himself from being a priest. On which the Martyr replied, " Make that good, I pray you, my Lord, for so you will prove that I am no more a priest than other men, and consequently no traitor or offender against your law"; on which one, Holkins, to cover the Bishop's disgrace, said that the King himself had said that these kind of men were so numerous that he should never have done if he put them all to death.

"But this (Jesus) for that He continueth for ever hath an everlasting priesthood."—HEBR. vii. 24