The Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Martyrs_of_England_and_Wales
The Forty Martyrs of England and Wales[ or Cuthbert Mayne and Thirty-Nine Companion Martyrs are a group of Catholic, lay and religious, men and women, executed between 1535 and 1679 for treason and related offences under various laws enacted by Parliament during the English Reformation. The individuals listed range from Carthusian monks who in 1535 declined to accept Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy, to seminary priests who were caught up in the alleged Popish Plot against Charles II in 1679. Many were sentenced to death at show trials, or with no trial at all.
The first wave of executions came with the reign of King Henry VIII and involved persons who did not support the 1534 Act of Supremacy and dissolution of the monasteries. Carthusian John Houghton and Bridgettine Richard Reynolds died at this time.
In 1570 Pope Pius V, in support of various rebellions in England and Ireland, excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, absolving her Catholic subjects of their allegiance to her. The crown responded with more rigorous enforcement of various penal laws already enacted and passed new ones. 13 Eliz. c.1 made it high treason to affirm that the queen ought not to enjoy the Crown, or to declare her to be a heretic. "An act against Jesuits, seminary priests, and such other like disobedient persons", (27 Eliz.1, c. 2), the statute under which most of the English martyrs suffered, made it high treason for any Jesuit or any seminary priest to be in England at all, and a felony for any person to harbor or aid them. All but six of the forty had been hanged, drawn and quartered, many of them at Tyburn.
In Wales, the Catholic Church keeps 25 October as the feast of the Six Welsh Martyrs and their companions. The Welsh Martyrs are the priests Philip Evans and John Lloyd, John Jones, David Lewis, John Roberts, and the teacher Richard Gwyn.[9] The companions are the 34 English Martyrs listed above. Wales continues to keep 4 May as a separate feast for the beatified martyrs of England and Wales.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_martyrs_of_the_English_Reformation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Catholic_Martyrs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismemberment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_hanged,_drawn_and_quartered
Comments