Venerable Nicholas Postgate, Martyr

Extract

Nicholas Postgate was born in 1596, in the parish of Egton, some miles from Whitby, in the North Biding of Yorkshire. In a Recusant List of 1604, of Egton, is mentioned the martyr’s mother . . . “All Recusants (that is, all these who are mentioned in this list as given) for eight years past,” says the entry. A further note adds: “Jane Postgate widowe, doth keep in her house William Postgate, her father, a Recusant who teacheth children”. Again another note: “Jane Postgate, widowe. . . (and others) have had children baptised privately of late years.”

Probably, then, Nicholas Postgate was one of these children, most carefully sealed to God by some zealous priest working secretly, since twenty of the sixty Recusants returned on Egton’s list had been so named since Lady Day in 1603. This bitter year would allow of none but secret work. Perhaps the risks run by this and other priests were the seed of the glorious harvest the little Nicholas was one day to gather for God. His family name is usually said POSKITT or POSKETT, and is not uncommon in Yorkshire. His father seems to have been one William Postgate, of a Kirkedale House estate, and his mother a Watson. Later, Fr. Postgate was to use her maiden name as an alias, stating that he was “of that kindred.” No doubt his boyhood was familiar with hunted Catholicity, with details of recusancy, and that staunch Yorkshire resistance to all forms of persecution, which helped to breed in him the stuff of which all the Martyrs were made.