English Dominican Sanctity (II)

Extract

The dominant note of English Dominican life from the accession of Elizabeth to the end of the Penal days was heroism. Often with a prison for a convent and a dungeon for a cell the friars suffered all cheerfully for the salvation of souls. They kept alive the Province not for the sake of the Province but for the maintaining of Catholic Faith in their native land. Reduced to the rank of a Congregation for want of a central house, they sent their recruits to foreign Provincials who in splendid charity trained them for the religious life and apostolate.

Heroism of the highest order is seen in the life of the martyr, the Venerable Robert Nutter, the English Dominican nearest to the supreme honours of the Church. He, and his brother John who was beatified in 1929, were Lancashire men and members of Brasenose College, Oxford, and both were admitted to the English College at Rheims, where Robert, though reputed the younger, was ordained priest on January 6th, 1582, nine months before his brother. Immediately following his ordination he set out for England and landed on the south coast, probably at Portsmouth, from whence he made his way into Hampshire where he worked until his first arrest, February 2nd, 1584.