Memoirs of Missionary Priests (Vol I): and Other Catholics of Both Sexes That Have Suffered Death in England on Religious Accounts

Richard Challoner

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OVER two and a half centuries have passed since Bishop Challoner published, in two successive volumes, his famous Memoirs of Missionary Priests: the first part of the work appeared in 1741, and the completion a year later. Since then much additional material about the English martyrs and confessors has come to light ; many independent biographies have been written ; the promotion of the Cause of the martyrs has led to close investigation and renewed study of their lives; and the sum of all this has established, in regard to Challoner's work, so little calling for correction that its merits are even enhanced. Moreover, we have always to remember that the Bishop was never professedly a man of letters, a student in research. He was one of four busy prelates who between them shared the oversight of the Church's scattered flock through out the country, and his writing was accomplished in the midst of other duties which to him were of first importance. This is not the place for even the barest outline of the life of Richard Challoner ; but it is needful to bear in mind how very full a life it was, with the duties and preoccupations of his office, in order to appreciate the quality and quantity of his output of writing.

In some ways the Memoirs of Missionary 'Priests still remains without a rival of its kind. But Challoner's pages hold the record of a great number of men and women among whom are many lesserknown martyrs who as yet have found no separate biographies. Indeed, the material is often too slight to enable much to be written ; yet in the little that there is we are enriched. Who would willingly forget, for instance, a poor dyer, one Thomas Webley, who suffered at Tyburn for distributing a Catholic book, and refused at the gallows' foot to buy his life by renouncing the Pope? Another Webley was hanged at Mile End Green for aiding a priest-martyr. Let us remember, too, Thomas Hackshot, "a stout young man" who knocked a keeper down in order to give a priest the opportunity to escape. But the officer was only slightly stunned ; and coming to, he cried "Stop the traitor ! "—whereupon Hackshot was arrested and executed, after " divers torments" in his dungeon.

The risks gladly faced by the intrepid priests who came to England from abroad when the persecutions were at their height are graphically shown in this book.

In the 107 years—from 1577 to 1684—covered by Bishop Challoner's martyrology, some three hundred men and women are mentioned by name as having died in this country for the Catholic faith; and there is also a long list of confessors, of whom many perished in prison and others went into banishment. The story of these martyrdoms and sufferings, as set out in Challoner's simple, moving text, is one to turn to again and again. Now that this classic is once more available in e-format, it is to be hoped— it may confidently be expected—that Catholics will still further enlarge their knowledge of the martyrs. But for timely care, Dr. Challoner himself might have shared with Mr. Price, a gentleman of Lincoln, in the honour of being "murthered in hatred of his religion" ; for it is well known that the Gordon rioters in 1780 would have wreaked their violence upon the aged Bishop if they could have found him : as it was, the excesses of that outbreak hastened his end in the following year. He has left us a great legacy in his work and in his works.