Saint Edmund Arrowsmith

He was born in 1585 at Haydock, in the parish of Winwick between Wigan and Warrington, and christened Brian. ¹²⁴ His father, Robert Arrowsmith, was a yeoman, and his mother, Margery, came of the Gerards, an old Catholic family. ¹² Challoner says his grandfather Thurstan Arrowsmith died a prisoner for the faith, and Jesuit Collections says it was in Salford jail. ¹⁴

When he was a small child the searchers came to the house, Challoner says, tried every bed with their swords, tied the parents and the household two by two and drove them off to Lancaster jail. ¹ Four little children, Edmund among them, were taken from their beds and left standing in the cold in their nightclothes, until neighbors came in and dressed them. ¹⁴ Jesuit Collections puts his age at about five. ⁴

After his father died, an old priest took the boy into his service and saw to his schooling. ¹⁵ Challoner and Camm say that on the way to school he recited the little hours of Our Lady's office with his brothers, and Vespers and Compline on the way home. ¹²

At about twenty he reached the English College at Douai, in December 1605 by Challoner's date. ¹²³ He was confirmed there and took the name Edmund, which Challoner, Camm and the curia say was the name of his uncle, Dr. Edmund Arrowsmith, a priest and professor at the college. ¹²³ Jesuit Collections says he took the name of Edmund Campion as his patron. ⁴

His health was poor. He had to go home to recover partway through his studies, and the printed account of his death says he was twice so ill at Douai that he received the last rites. ¹² He was ordained priest at Arras on December 9, 1612, and on June 17, 1613 he was sent on the English mission. ¹²

He went back to his own county. The printed account of 1630 describes him as "a man of mean presence but of great innocency in his life, of great sincerity in his nature, of great sweetness in his conversation, and of great industry in his function," and "ever of a cheerful countenance." ¹ Jesuit Collections, drawing on those who knew him, calls him short, chatty and humorous, and says that although his health was never good he rode all over Lancashire with the books and vestments for Mass in farmhouses and cottages. ⁴

A fellow priest remembered that he was so eager to argue with Protestants that he often told him, merrily, "to carry salt in his pocket to season his actions," and that once a Protestant gentleman who had set out to mock him swore that he was "either a foolish scholar or a learned fool." ¹ When he was arrested the first time, Challoner says, he was brought before the Bishop of Chester, whom the Singapore page names as John Bridgeman, and was so pressed by the ministers at the bishop's table that he told the bishop to turn all his dogs loose against him at once. ¹⁵ He was released when King James I pardoned the Catholic priests in English prisons. ¹³⁵

He had wanted to be a Jesuit since making the Spiritual Exercises at Douai. ¹³ He entered the Society in 1624 by Challoner's, Camm's and Jesuit Collections' date, and in 1623 by the curia's and the Singapore page's. ¹²³⁴⁵ He did not go abroad for his novitiate; Challoner says he made a retreat of two or three months in Essex, and Jesuit Collections speaks of a hidden novitiate at Clerkenwell in London. ¹⁴

In the summer of 1628 he was working around Brindle. ²⁴ The printed account says he was betrayed by a young man whom he had rebuked for an incestuous marriage. ¹⁵ Camm, collecting the local tradition, tells it more fully: two first cousins had been married by the Protestant minister, he was arranging a dispensation so that the marriage could be made valid, and he would not use it until they had lived apart for two weeks, and in their anger they sent word to the justice of the peace, Captain Rawsthorn. ² Jesuit Collections tells the same story of a married couple. ⁴

He fled on horseback. His own account at the trial, as Challoner prints it, was that a man rushed at him from a hillside with a drawn sword, drove him into the moss, cut his walking stick off at the hand, and with others took him to an alehouse, searched him to the skin and drank nine shillings of his money in an hour. ¹² The printed account adds that though he was well mounted, his horse could not be made to go at any speed, and that a kinsman riding with him ran away. ¹ In the tradition Camm gathered at Brindle, the horse refused to jump the moss ditch, and Jesuit Collections says the same. ²⁴

On August 26 he was brought to the bar before Sir Henry Yelverton, indicted under the name Rigby. ¹ "Sirrah, are you a priest?" the judge asked, and he answered, "I would to God I were worthy." ¹ A minister on the bench told the court that if nothing were done with him "he would make half Lancashire Papists." ¹ He offered to defend his faith in open disputation and to seal it with his blood, and when Yelverton told him he would die and see his bowels burn before his face, he answered that the judge must die too. ¹

No proof was offered that he was a priest. ¹³ A servant of the justice swore that he had tried to make him a Catholic, and the justice's son, a boy of about twelve, said without oath that he had tried to turn him from Protestantism. ¹² The jury found him guilty of high treason. ¹ The decretal letter of his canonization, translated here from Latin, says he was condemned for persuading people to embrace the teachings of the pope. ⁶ At the sentence he fell to his knees and said "Deo gratias" aloud, and then in English, "God be thanked." ¹⁵ He was loaded with the heaviest irons in the castle and put into a hole so small he could not lie down. ¹³

He was executed on Thursday, August 28, about noon, a day earlier than the other condemned prisoners, and Challoner's account says the judge watched from a window. ¹ As he crossed the castle yard, John Southworth, a priest condemned the year before and reprieved, gave him absolution from a window, as they had agreed. ¹ At the gallows, beside a fire and a boiling cauldron, the old minister called him by his alias and offered him the king's mercy if he would conform. "Good sir, tempt me no more," he said. ¹

From the ladder he told the crowd, "Nothing doth so much grieve me as this England, which I pray God soon convert." ¹² He prayed for the king and forgave his persecutors, was offered his life once more, and refused. ¹⁵ His last words were "Bone Jesu." ¹² He was left to hang until he was dead, and then quartered; his head was set on the castle, and Yelverton, leaving town, sent back an order to raise it higher. ¹³

The Martyrology says he was put to death even against the wishes of the Protestants of the place. ⁷ Camm quotes the Life of 1737: no one would act as executioner, until a deserter under sentence of death agreed to it for forty shillings and his freedom. ² Jesuit Collections speaks of an ex-prisoner paid forty shillings. ⁴

His hand was saved. Jesuit Collections says it was rescued by an unknown sympathizer, and Camm that it was kept for generations by his relatives the Gerards at Garswood. ²⁴ It is now at Ashton-in-Makerfield, in St. Oswald's church, Camm says, and known as the Holy Hand. ²⁴ Camm, writing in 1910, reports many cures attributed to it and pilgrims coming every week to be touched by it. ² He was canonized by Paul VI on October 25, 1970, among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. ⁶

None of the sources consulted for this page names Saint Edmund Arrowsmith as the patron saint of anything, so no patronage is given here. ¹²³⁴

Saint Edmund Arrowsmith's feast day is August 28, the day of his death. The current Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, enters him that day at Lancaster, a priest of the Society of Jesus who was hanged under Charles I, charged with being a priest and with having led many to the Catholic faith. ⁷ The Jesuits in Singapore keep August 28 for him. ⁵

In England he is also kept with the English Martyrs on May 4, the feast the National Calendar for England gives to the men and women martyred for the Catholic faith from 1535 to 1680. ⁸

He was a child standing in the cold while his parents were marched off to jail, and he grew up to do the work they had been punished for sheltering. ¹⁴⁵

Those who knew him remembered his jokes as well as his zeal, and a friend wished he would be more careful. ¹⁴ He was caught in the end through his own strictness about a marriage. ¹²

He prayed at the foot of the ladder that his death might be offered for his sins: "I freely offer Thee my death, O sweet Jesus, in satisfaction for my sins." ¹⁵

What he said of England from the ladder was a grief and a prayer at once. ¹²