Blessed THOMAS PERCY, Layman, 1572

20 THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER

Biography

A GALLANT sight must have been the men of the Rising on the march. Nobles, knights with their tenants equipped for war, labourers and peasants unarmed but stout of heart, all wearing the Red Cross, their Standard the Five Sacred Wounds ;

its bearer, the grey-haired Richard Norton, late High Sheriff of Yorkshire. Among their chaplains, B. Thomas Plumtree, and heading the force the Earl and his brave-hearted Countess. They advanced as far south as Clifford Moor, near Wetherby, but their divided counsels and want of supplies forced them to retire, and at the advice of the Earl, anxious to avoid useless bloodshed, they dispersed. The cold-blooded revenge of Elizabeth displayed at once her avarice and cruelty. The gentlemen and yeomen were allowed to escape with a fine, but the peasants were hung by hundreds. The Earl fled to Scotland, and, consenting to meet an envoy from the Regent, was treacherously captured and confined in Lochleven. Thence after two years and a half imprisonment he was handed over to Elizabeth, who thirsted for his blood, for 2000 pounds. He was conveyed to York, where, after refusing to save his life by apostasy, he won his crown, August 22, 1572.

"But they appointed him thirty pieces of silver, and from thenceforth he sought opportunity to betray Him."—MATT. xxvi. 16.

Blessed JOHN FELTON, Layman, 1570

CHAMPION OF THE POPE

As a cruel persecutor of the faith she had sworn to defend, Elizabeth was excommunicated and deposed by St. Pius V, February 24, 1570, and the Bull of excommunication was found on May 25, the Feast of Corpus Christi, on the gates of the Bishop of London's palace, where it had been placed by John Felton, a brave and zealous Catholic gentleman. After this act he refused to fly, trusting, he said, to God's grace for whatever might happen, and when the escort arrived for his arrest, he voluntarily surrendered himself. Both at his apprehension and his trial, he openly acknowledged having posted up the Bull, and said that, as he held the Pope to be the Vicar of Christ, what came from him ought to be duly venerated. Notwithstanding this public confession, he was three times racked in the vain hope of extracting from him admission, compromising others. In his satin doublet, on the day of his martyrdom, as he faced the crowd, calm and unmoved, he looked indeed a royal champion, and he told the people that he died for the Catholic faith. His last words on being disembowelled were " Jesus, Jesus." He sent the Queen, from the scaffold, a ring worth ^400, showing he bore her personally no ill-will. He suffered, St. Paul's Churchyard, London, August 8.

"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church."—MATT. xvi. 18.

Other martyrs connected with the Excommunication
Martyrs connected with the Excommunication: Thomas Plumtree p., 4 Jan., 1571; John Storey, D.C.L., 1 June, 1571; Thomas Percy. Earl of Northumberland, 22 Aug., 1572; Thomas Woodhouse p., 13 June, 1573.

Blessed THOMAS PLUMTREE, Priest, 1572

THE VOICE OF THE PREACHER

Biography

BORN in the Diocese of Lincoln, a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1546, he was made Rector of Stubton in his native county. He resigned his benefice on the change of religion under Elizabeth, and became a schoolmaster at Lincoln, but was obliged to resign the post on account of his faith. But it is as chief chaplain and priest of the army of the Northern Rising that he won the martyr's palm. His voice seems to have been like the Baptist's and to have stirred high and low alike. His call to abandon heresy and to rally to the standard of the faith ran through the northern counties, and hundreds came in response to his summons. He appears to have been celebrant of the Mass in Durham Cathedral immediately preceding F. Holmes' sermon and the public Absolution which followed. On his capture after the failure of the Rising, he was singled out as a notable example of the priests who had officiated. On the gibbet in the market-place at Durham 

he was offered his life if he would embrace heresy, but he refused, and dying to this world received eternal life from Christ. He suffered January 4 1572, and was buried in the market-place.

Wherein I labour even unto bands, but the word of God is not bound.—2 TIM. ii. 9.