Pilgrim Ways

sheltered him in her own house at the Shambles, in York. In 1586 York's sheriffs searched her house and she was arrested . She was executed by being pressed to death in the Tollbooth on Ousebridge. She was stripped, laid on the ground and her hands tied - outstretched in the form of a cross - to two stakes. A door was laid on her and stones heaped on to a weight of six hundredweight. As she died she was heard to say: "Jesu, Jesu, help me. Blessed Jesu, I suffer this for Thy sake." A relic from her body is venerated at St.Mary's Convent in York.

On June 3rd Francis Ingleby followed Margaret Clitherow to his death. Executed at York's Tyburn, Knavesmire, this was about a mile and a half beyond Micklegate Bar, on the London road, near the York race course. Margaret Clitherow had come here on secret pilgrimages, some at midnight and made barefoot from her home. praying that like those already executed for their faith, she too would gain a martyr's crown. As Francis Ingleby was taken to his death a young man, Robert Bickerdyke, was walking nearby and when he heard Ingleby described as a traitor he said "No, no thief, but as true as thou art." For this, Bickerdyke, who was born at Low Hall, near Scotton, also paid with his life.

Oxford Dom Bede's epic pilgrimage then moves on to Oxford, where he reminds us of the three Anglican bishops - Latimer, Cranmer and Ridley - who were executed by Queen Mary. Here he traces the ancient Manor of Holywell, where Oxford recusants secretly heard Mass. The Manor took its name from a well which was dedicated to St.Winifrid and St.Margaret and which drew many pilgrims. They continued to come secretly under the favour of the Napier family who owned the manor, and this family would in due course, give a son, George Napier, as a martyr for the faith.

Brindle and Hoghton Tower In Lancashire, Dom Bede's quest for the forgotten shrines takes him to the triangle formed by Blackburn, Chorley and Preston, commencing at Brindle and Hoghton Tower (see Chapter Fifteen, Lancashire and Liverpool). He takes us to Winnick, where St.Edmund Arrowsmith, the Jesuit martyr, was born; and to Gregson Lane, in Brindle, where tradition has it that Fr.Arrowsmith said his last Mass. At the turn of the last century, the then occupant of the house, a Mr.Walmesley, claimed that a cross of light appeared at intervals on the wall of the room where that last Mass was said. In 1628,at the age of forty-three, Edmund Arrowsmith was apprehended and was executed at Lancaster.

Mawdsley Elsewhere in Lancashire, Dom Bede is keen that we visit the village of Mawdsley "at the very heart of that blessed land where the faith still flourishes." Here, St.John Rigby, celebrated for his youthful courage and purity, was born, at Harrock Hall. John Rigby's feast day is celebrated on June 26th. Nearby was Lane End House, home to the family which produced John Finch, a young layman executed at Lancaster in 1584. Through marriage they were connected with the Haydocks of Cottam Hall (who also produced a martyr, George Haydock, executed at Tyburn in 1583). Mawdsley is the birthplace of James Mawdsley, the young Catholic layman sentenced in 1999 to seventeen years imprisonment in Burma for protesting against the atrocities committed by the Burmese military regime. His is a modern form of witness. Appropriately enough a Vigil marking his imprisonment was held in Westminster cathedral's chapel of the martyrs , where Lancashire's St.John Southworth is