My "Birthday Book of the English Martyrs" tells me that on this date (6 May) three holy martyrs died for the Catholic Faith!
Who are they? I hear you ask.
Well, the first two are Blessed Edward Jones and Blessed Anthony Middleton. Both Priest trained at Douai. Both captured in London. Both sentenced to death in 1590 by the draconian laws in force at the time. Both martyrs.
Blessed Edward was martyred opposite a grocer's shop in Fleet Street. It had been in this shop that he had been 'taken'.
Blessed Anthony was captured at a house in Clerkenwell and it was opposite this dwelling that he suffered for the Faith. My book gives a quote. Mounting the scaffold the martyr said:
"Since it is not lawful to speak, behold! The Roman Catholic faith which by my speech I cannot, by my death I will confirm!
Both priests were hanged drawn and quartered - alive. We are told that their deaths caused much discontent among the populace.
Fifty-four years to the day (6 May 1644) the Parliamentarian forces under the Earl of Manchester had just taken the city of Lincoln. Many valuable prisoners were rounded up, and included in this number was Venerable (I don't think he is a Blessed yet) Robert Price; a well-known and staunch recusant gentleman of Washingley in Huntingdonshire (and a neighbour to the earl).
At this point he was a colonel in the royalist forces. The parliamentarian soldiers, many of whom knew him by site, routed him out from the other military prisoners. . .
'Art thou Price the Papist'? they asked insolently.
The Colonel replied with dignity: 'I am Price the Roman Catholic.' Whereupon, according to the records, they shot him dead on the spot.
Oh Blessed Company of Holy Martyrs.
Please pray for us who are lukewarm in spirit!
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