The Martyrs' Friends

Extract

The apostolate of the Missionary Priests would have been I impossible without the heroic co-operation of the lay Catholics. As in the early Church, the faith lived in the houses of the faithful. No less than eighty laymen and women—a Quarter of the whole—find a place in the calendar of the martyrs. But there were many who suffered a slow martyrdom in prison, under conditions inconceivable to us, and whose sufferings have deceived scant recognition. The names of ten layfolk who died in prison are among the Dilati (those whose causes have been postponed through lack of evidence), but this list is woefully incomplete. There were many others who spent most of their lives in prison, but were let out to die. Richard Wenster, the Yorkshire schoolmaster, and Francis Tregian were there for more nan thirty years. Thomas Pound, after a similar ordeal, was sentenced in his old age to lose his ears for protesting against the martyrdom of Laurence Bailey in 1604. The sentence was commuted, but he had his ears nailed to the pillory in London and Lancaster. Roland Jenks the printer was sentenced to be nailed to the pillory by his ears and to release himself by cutting them off with his own hand. Yet none of these are martyrs properly so—called