Pilgrim Ways

and condemned to death. Imprisoned for three years, he was ultimately banished and escaped execution. His trial is believed to have taken place in a room over the Well Chapel. Fr.John Gerard SJ made the pilgrimage in order to be there on St.Winifrid‟s feast day, on November 3rd, 1593. He wrote that “for a quarter of an hour I lay down in the water and prayed. when I came out my shirt was dripping, but I kept it on and pulled all my clothes over it and was none the worse for my battle...” Fr.Gerard was subsequently arrested and was one of the few to successfully escape from the Tower of London. A gripping account of his life appears in The Autobiography of John Gerard: the hunted priest (Fount Books, 1959).

Many other Catholics who visited the well during those years were tortured and killed among them Edward Oldcorne, executed in 1601, and Henry Garnet, the Jesuit Superior, and St.Nicholas Owen, (the “Little John”) who made many of the hiding holes which saved the lives of fugitive priests, came in 1605. One year later both were dead.

Elizabeth gave instructions for special measures to be taken to suppress Catholicism in the Welsh Marches and “to pay particular attention to the pilgrimages to St.Winifried‟s Well. ” The ineffectiveness of their persecution is exposed by judicial complaints that a resident of Chirk was known to have been secretly attending Mass at Holywell and that several priests were known to operate in the vicinity. A letter sent in 1590 complains that pilgrims “still goe in heapes to the wonted welles.” The Lord President of Wales sought further reports of Catholic activity and learned in 1624 that “every year about midsummer many superstitious Papists of Lancashire and other more remote places go on pilgrimage.” The informer complained that such was the confidence of the pilgrims that they openly heard Mass in the Chapel “without contradiction.” Some of the names which emerged in 1629 as present on St.Winifrd‟s Day included some of the leading recusant families. Among them were Lord William Howard of Shrewsbury, Sir Thomas Gerard, Mr.Scarisbrick of Scarisbrick, Mr.Blundell of Crosby, Lady Falkland and an estimated gathering of 1,500 people.

Lancashire Catholics come in pilgrimage across the Mersey, walk over the Wirral, cross the sands of the Dee at low tide and make their way up the narrow valley. Beacons would be lit on the Wirral to signal for a boat to be waiting to take the pilgrims home (see Chapter Fifteen, Lancashire and Liverpool).

Inscriptions and dates carved into the pillars around the well bear witness to these postReformation pilgrimages. One shows the Greek Khi Ro inscription - Christ‟s name alongside the date 1627. Another shows the Jesuit monogram, IHS, and the date 1687.

In 1636 further attempts were made to suppress the use of St.Winifrid‟s Well and Sir John Bridgeman, Chief Justice of Chester, gave orders for the statue of St.Winifrid to be disfigured, and to report all the names of pilgrims to the Assize.

This did not prevent George Petre, the youngest son of Lord Petre, who died as a prisoner in the Tower, from buying the Star Inn. It was to be used for pilgrims but in reality it became a Jesuit house. During the Civil War the statue of the saint is thought to have been finally destroyed. The niche remained empty for 250 years until 1888 when St.Winifrid was restored to her place. Her Victorian effigy depicts her with the crook of an Abbess in one hand and the palm of martyrdom in the other. She has a double crown symbolising her lineage as the daughter of a prince and as a saint of the Church.