St Margaret Clitherow

The Latin Mass Society Committee in 2006 chose St Margaret Clitherow – ‘the Pearl of York’ – and St Richard Gwyn as the LMS’s Patron Saints. In the February 2008 issue of Mass of Ages, Alan Frost told the story of St Richard Gwyn. Now Fr Antony Conlon, LMS National Chaplain, tells us about St Margaret Clitherow.

In the early 1980s, BBC Radio Four broadcast a play which focused on the life of Margaret Clitherow. Surprisingly – considering how Catholic themes are generally presented by the media – it was factual, and very sympathetic. Close attention to the dialogue and the nuances of the play suggested that the author may have been someone who had lived through a twentieth century experience that in some sense mirrored that of the latter half of the sixteenth. As the play unfolded, the tragic turn of events that changed England and Wales for ever had just begun and the forced public destruction of Catholic books, images, vestments and Mass plate was witnessed in part by the child Margaret. It was only much later that she recalled its effect.

Margaret’s life began and was lived exclusively in the city of York, in those Tudor times the second city of the kingdom. Details of the full extent of Catholic fervour in the city at the time are difficult to assess. Records are less than complete (cf Aveling, J.C.H., Catholic Recusancy in the City of York, 1558-1791, pp. 15-19). She was born in either 1555 or 1556, the daughter of Thomas and Jane Middleton – her father being a Sheriff of the city. He died while she still very young and her mother then married Henry May, a vintner, who had very quickly and enthusiastically espoused the new religion, a career move which saw him rise eventually to Lord Mayor of the city, at the time of Margaret’s arrest. She would have been too young to have remembered the daily practice of the old faith in Queen Mary’s reign, and was brought up a Protestant. In 1571 she married John Clitherow, a butcher who lived in the ‘Shambles’, the oldest part of the city.

John was a conformist, though he had a brother, William, who was priest-educated at Douai. Sometime 1n 1574, Margaret became a practising Catholic, her conversion brought about by reading. She later said she had been brought up so strictly a Protestant “so as not to suspect that was any other way to God” (Butler’s Lives of the Saints, vol V, seventh ed. 1954, p. 107). Thereafter she began to lead a life of extraordinary holiness and dedication to the Faith, giving hospitality to priests and encouraging others to convert. Her husband remained a Protestant but was sympathetic to his wife’s activities. Two of her sons, Henry and William, both went abroad to train for the priesthood, the one to Rome and the other to Douai. A daughter Anne later became a nun in St Ursula’s in Louvain. It appears that Margaret was one of those devout and apostolic members of the faithful who just could not but get involved in spreading the faith. Her biographer, Fr John Mush, says that she also found time to learn to read English devotional books and enough Latin to be able to pray the Day Hours (Aveling, J.C.H., op.cit. p. 75). Her husband paid the fines which were imposed upon her and endured patiently the prison sentences which from time to time she served in York Castle. Her house became a Mass centre and a hide for priests, as well as a place where children could learn their catechism.

In 1572 the Earl of Huntingdon, a cousin of the Queen and appointed Lord President of the North, arrived in York. He was a determined enemy of the old religion with a clear agenda to stamp it out. At first he had little success because of the large number of recusant officials on the council. But from 1578 onwards he imposed stricter fines and greater prohibitions from various trades on those known to be of the Catholic persuasion, in the hope of encouraging the apostasy of those who were thus penalised. Greater rigour was also applied to those convicted. By this policy, Margaret Clitherow eventually was brought to her death. Tried at York Assizes on 14 March 1586, her indictment included “harbouring Jesuit and Seminary priests, hearing Mass and such like”. She refused to plead, in order to spare her family and friends from being called to testify against her. On the following day a nervous boy was found to testify but she still refused to plead. The judge immediately sentenced her to be pressed to death. It was later verified that she was expecting a child – a fact which under English law should have spared her from death. However, in her case that mercy was not granted – the only known occasion when such a consideration was not admitted. On the Feast of the Annunciation 1586, she was executed according to the sentence pronounced in court.

She was laid upon a sharp rock, her hands stretched out in the form of a cross and tied to posts, and a door placed on top of her. This was then loaded with a great weight of rocks and stones. She died after about fifteen minutes of agony.

On Sunday 25 October 1970 she was canonised in Rome by Pope Paul VI together with thirty-nine other English martyrs for our holy religion, in the presence of the entire English hierarchy and over ten thousand pilgrims from these shores.

Plans are being investigated for a Pilgrimage to York to venerate a relic of St Margaret Clitherow, possibly for this autumn. Similarly, it is hoped to organise a Pilgrimage to Wrexham Cathedral, North Wales, to venerate relics of St Richard Gwyn. Announcements will be made when arrangements have been completed.

[Taken from "Mass of Ages" May 2008, The Latin Mass Society's quarterly magazine]