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John Jones was born to a Catholic family in Clymag
Faur in the county of Canaervon in Wales around the year 1530. In his youth
Queen Mary Tudor accomplished the restoration of the Catholic Church after the
brief reign of Edward VI had taken the Church of England into the Calvinist
fold. Mary's accession had allowed the English friars who had fled into exile to
Flanders and Scotland to return and in April 1555 the friary at Greenwich, in
which Mary and Elizabeth had been baptised, was reopened. John joined the friary
and took the name Godfrey Maurice, becoming known for his piety. At Mary's
untimely death in 1558, however, her half-sister Elizabeth assumed the throne
and it was not long before Catholics were once more persecuted in England. John
Jones, although still a novice was forced to flee to France. The English
Observant Franciscans fled to a friary in Pontoise where John was professed and
trained. He was probably ordained a priest at Rheims, where there was another
friary of the exiled English Province.
Towards 1590 John was sent to the friary of Ara Coeli in Rome, the General
headquarters of the Order. From there he wished to return to England to take
part in the mission to care for faithful Catholics, who risked their livelihoods
and often their lives to sustain their missionary priests. The priests
themselves were subject to the dreadful death of hanging, drawing and quartering
as traitors for the simple fact of exercising their priesthood. John begged an
audience with the Pope and Clement VIII embraced him, gave him a solemn blessing
and told him: “Go, because I believe you to be a true son of Saint Francis. Pray
to God for me and for his holy Church."
In England John Jones exercised an heroic hidden ministry, animating the
Catholic faith among recusants[1] and prudently seeking to reconcile those who
had submitted to Elizabeth's Church of England. The existence of a missionary
priest in England was one of frequent moves, constant vigilance and continued
flight from Elizabeth's vigilant secret services, supervised by William Cecil
and Francis Walsingham.
Despite his care, John Jones was caught in late 1595 or early 1596 by Richard
Topcliffe, who nurtured a cruel hatred for the Catholic faith and was sanctioned
by the Queen to maintain a private torture chamber in his house for the Catholic
priests he apprehended. John Jones was accused of being a spy and sent to the
notorious Clink prison, from which we derive the expression “being in clink”.
There he languished for nigh on two years awaiting trial. In prison Jones
continued his ministry and converted many, including Saint John Rigby, who was
himself martyred two years after John Jones (on 21st June 1600). On 3rd July
1598 John Jones was finally brought to trial for having exercised his ministry
as a Catholic priest in England. He was sentenced to hanging, drawing and
quartering at Saint Thomas Watering, but was meanwhile imprisoned at Marshalsea
prison. The Jesuit Henry Garnet recounts in a letter that on 12th July 1598 John
was tied to a trellis and dragged to the place of his torment. He was held there
for an hour before execution during which time Topcliffe harangued the crowd
with his supposed crimes. Garnet recounts that the crowd was touched more by
John's prayers than by the calumnies of his torturer and executioner. His
remains were hung up on the road between Newington and Lambeth.[2]
With John Wall and 38 other English martyrs, John Jones was beatified by Pius
XI on 15th December 1929 and canonised by Paul VI on 25th October 1970.
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[1] Catholics who did not submit to Elizabeth's Church were forced to pay a tax and refused the right to hold any office in the land (rather like the Christian dhimmi in lands controlled by Muslims). Because they refused to take communion at Easter in their local parish churches, they were deemed to “recuse themselves” from the church and were thus recorded as “Recusants.” This title became a badge of pride for Catholic families who refused to submit over the centuries. Some Catholics conformed outwardly, so avoiding the tax, while retaining a spiritual resistance. These latter were termed “Church Papists” because although they outwardly conformed to the Church of England, inwardly they still retained their allegiance to and communion with the Church of Rome. Many think that Shakespeare was such a “Church Papist”. Often a Catholic husband would conform so as to avoid the household paying taxes, while his wife would recuse and bring up the children as Catholics.
John Wall was born in 1620, probably at Chingle
Hall, near Preston in Lancashire. As a young man he entered the English College
in Douai where he was taught by the famous Dr. Kellison. In 1641 he transferred
to the English College in Rome, where he was ordained a priest in 1645. After a
brief spell as a missionary in England he returned to Douai and asked to enter
the Franciscan College of St. Bonaventure which John Gennings had erected there
in his restoration of the Franciscan Province of England. In January 1651 he was
accepted into the Order and took the name Joachim of St. Anne. Five friars from
that friary had already been martyred.
John Joachim, although only 6 months professed was appointed Guardian of the
college and later Master of Novices. In 1656 he assumed the false name Francis
Webb and re-entered England as a missionary in Worcestershire. He remained there
for 22 years ministering to the Catholics of the area. In 1678 he went to London
to meet the Jesuit Claude de la Colombière, and the two spoke together of their
desire for martyrdom. The context of this meeting was the renewed persecution
that was unleashed in the wake of the murderous lies of Titus Oates and his
invented Catholic plot against King Charles II.
Returning from this encounter, John was staying with a friend in Rushock Court.
There he was mistaken for one of the so-called plotters, Francis Johnson, and
arrested. When he refused to swear to the religious supremacy of the King, he
was imprisoned for five months of dreadful suffering. At the end of this time,
on 25th April 1679, he was condemned to death for high treason, since he was a
priest who had been ordained abroad and returned to exercise his ministry in
contravention to the Elizabethan anti-Catholic laws. He argued in vain that
Charles II's amnesty of 1660 should have covered him, as indeed it should.
Instead he was sent to London to be interrogated by Oates, Bedloe, Dugdale and
Pranse. He was found innocent of the accusation of complicity in the “Papist
Plot” but because of his priestly ordination and ministry, his death sentence
was nevertheless confirmed and he was sent back to Worcester, where he was
hanged on 22nd August 1679.
His fellow friar William Leveson, whose own brother Francis Leveson would
himself be martyred at the age of 34 in 1680, looked after John Wall in his last
days in prison. He recounted the condemnation and death of the martyr in a
letter. John Wall's body was buried in the cemetery of the church of St. Oswald
in Worcester, and his head returned to Douai, where it was venerated as a holy
relic.
Along with John Jones and 38 other English martyrs John Wall was beatified by
Pius XI on 15th December 1929 and canonised by Paul VI on 25th October 1970.
O God, who did marvelously create human beings, and still more marvelously redeem them, grant us Thy grace that with the knowledge Thou has given us, we may resist sinful desires and deserve to attain eternal bliss. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
