I am honored to have a guest post by author Christina Croft in celebration of her new book, Martyrs of the English Reformation: 1535-1681.
Of the eight-hundred religious houses in England, none had a finer reputation for sanctity and learning than the London Charterhouse, where, in 1535, thirty Carthusian monks and eighty lay-brothers lived under the leadership of forty-nine-year-old Prior John Houghton. Short in stature and of slight physique, Prior Houghton’s ascetic appearance mirrored his innate humility.
‘He was,’ wrote a contemporary Carthusian, ‘…striving always to hide himself…and was ever desirous of being forgotten or deemed unworthy of special esteem.’
According to their Rule, the Carthusians did not involve themselves in political matters and, as guests were not permitted to enter the cloister, ‘one rarely heard an idle word, or a word about worldly affairs.’ Thus, when the King’s commissioners arrived to order the monks to take the Oath of Succession, declaring the King’s first marriage void, and ensuring that the throne would pass to the issue of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Prior Houghton replied that it was not his business whom the King chose to marry. Nonetheless, when pressed, he and the monastery’s procurator, Humphrey Middlemore, refused to take the Oath, for which they were imprisoned for a month in the Tower of London until the Bishop of York persuaded them that the succession was a merely a temporal matter so they could satisfy the King without troubling their consciences.
Soon after their release, however, the King’s private secretary, Thomas Cromwell, devised a new version of the Oath, which included a repudiation of the Pope and his authority. This left Prior Houghton in a terrible predicament, knowing that he could not swear to something that contravened his faith, but that failure to do so could lead to the dissolution of his monastery.
In the spring of 1535, as he was pondering the problem, Prior Robert Lawrence of Beauvale in Nottinghamshire arrived at the Charterhouse, troubled by the same dilemma. The two men agreed to spend three days together in prayer and penance before reaching a decision, and, on the second day, they were interrupted by the arrival of a third prior, Augustine Webster of Axholme, who agreed to participate in their triduum. When the three days were over, they decided to approach Cromwell to seek an exemption from taking the Oath on condition that they never spoke a word against the King.
Cromwell, however, coldly replied, “I admit no exception. Whether the law of God permits it or no, you shall take the oath without any reserve whatsoever, and you shall observe it too.”
As they refused to comply, they were held in the Tower of London pending a trial for treason in Westminster Hall on 27th April. Impressed by their obvious sanctity, the jury asked, ‘How can such holy men be guilty of treason?’ and said that they needed more time to consider their verdict. Irked by the delay, Cromwell repeatedly sent messengers to threaten the jury but they repeatedly refused to be swayed until Cromwell himself burst into the room, warning that they would be condemned as traitors unless they found the prisoners guilty. This time, with great reluctance, they yielded.
On the morning of 4th May 1535, as Sir Thomas More watched the priests being tied to pallets to be drawn to Tyburn, he remarked that they were ‘going as cheerfully going to their death as bridegrooms to their marriage.’
Prior Houghton was the first to face the executioner, reciting the thirtieth psalm – I will extol thee, O Lord; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me – as he ascended the cart beneath the gallows. When his prayers were completed, the cart was pulled from beneath him, leaving him hanging and writhing in a slow strangulation. While still alive, he was cut down and stripped naked, enabling the executioner to slice open his body and remove his entrails, which were thrown into a cauldron over a fire.
“Oh, most holy Jesus, have mercy on me!” he gasped as the executioner moved the knife towards his heart and made the fatal cut.
One after another, his fellow priors endured the same fate and, when the disembowelled corpses lay in a bloody heap on the ground, each was cut into four pieces and thrown into the cauldron. Once the flesh had boiled, the limbs were removed to put on display at different sites across the city, including the door of the London Charterhouse to which John Houghton’s arm was fastened.
This was but the beginning of the trials of the London Carthusians as, six weeks later, three more of the monks – Humphrey Middlemore, William Exmew and Sebastian Newdigate, followed Prior Houghton to Tyburn; and those who remained in the Charterhouse were constantly harassed and threatened until some were terrified into fleeing or taking the Oath. Eventually, the remaining ten were taken to Newgate and chained to pillars by their necks and ankles. Hearing of the sordid conditions in which they were being held, Sir Thomas More’s adopted daughter, Margaret Clements, disguised herself as a milkmaid and bribed the gaoler to allow her to place food in their mouths and to clean up the filth beneath them. When she was refused permission to visit again, she climbed onto the roof and pulled up the tiles to lower food down to them. Her activities were soon discovered and, as she was no longer able to feed them, nine of the ten prisoners starved to death. The tenth, a lay-brother, William Horne, was drawn to Tyburn on 4th August 1540 to be hanged and quartered.
In 1537, the London Charterhouse was dissolved and was eventually bought by Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, whose son, Philip, intended to restore it as a monastery, but he died in horrific conditions in prison as another Catholic martyr, before he could bring his plan to fruition.
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