Saint Henry Walpole

He was born at Docking, in Norfolk, in 1558, the eldest son of Christopher Walpole and his wife Margery, heiress of Richard Beckham of Narford. ¹ Jesuit Collections says he spent seven years at the grammar school in Norwich and three at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and began reading law at Gray's Inn in 1578. ¹⁴ Challoner says instead that he studied partly at Oxford and partly at Cambridge. ²

The sources disagree about the state of his faith. Challoner says he was born of Catholic parents and read so much controversy that he could defend his religion against all comers. ² The curia's page says he was born Catholic but was unsure which way to go in the religious quarrels of the day, and Jesuit Collections calls his Catholicism lukewarm. ³⁴ The encyclopedia says simply that he was converted by the death of Campion. ¹

He attended the disputations Campion held with Anglican divines, and in December 1581, Jesuit Collections says, curiosity took him to Tyburn to see Campion and two companions die. ³⁴ He stood so close that a drop of the martyr's blood fell on his clothes, which the curia's page says confirmed his sense that God was calling him to follow Campion. ³⁴⁵

He wrote a poem on Campion's death, "Why do I use my paper, ink and pen," which was printed in 1582. ⁴ Garnet, in a letter Challoner prints, says it was so much noticed that the gentleman who published it, its author being unknown, was condemned to lose his ears and to spend the rest of his life in prison. ² Jesuit Collections names him as Stephen Vallenger and adds that William Byrd later set some of the verses to music. ⁴

He went abroad and reached the English College at Reims on July 7, 1582. ¹⁵ The college diary, as Challoner quotes it, called him "a discreet, grave, and pious man." ² On April 28, 1583 he was admitted to the English College in Rome, and in 1584 he entered the Society of Jesus, on February 2 by the encyclopedia's date and on February 4 by the curia's. ¹³ Challoner adds that three of his brothers followed him into the Society. ²

Italy did not agree with his health, and he finished his studies at Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine. ¹² He was ordained deacon at Metz and priest at Paris on December 17, 1588. ¹⁵ He then served as chaplain to the English Catholics in the Spanish army in the Low Countries, and in 1589 he was captured and held for a year at Flushing; Challoner says one of his brothers obtained his release. ¹²³ Afterward he worked at the English seminaries in Spain, Challoner says at both Seville and Valladolid, where he was vice-rector, and was sent back to Flanders on business for the new college at St. Omer. ²⁸

The encyclopedia dates his departure for England to 1590. ¹ Challoner, the curia and Jesuit Collections all put it in December 1593. ²³⁴ With the southern ports closed by plague, the curia says, he sailed with his brother and an English soldier in a French ship bound for Scotland, and on December 4 they were put ashore at night at Flamborough Head in Yorkshire. ²³ The East Anglian calendar gives Bridlington and December 6. ⁸

He was free for less than a day. Challoner says he was taken within twenty-four hours at a place called Killam, and carried to York three days later. ² The curia says he was resting at an inn when he was arrested, betrayed by a fellow passenger who was earning his own way out of prison; the Singapore page calls the informer a Scottish prisoner. ³⁵ At York, examined by the Earl of Huntingdon, Lord President of the North, he admitted freely what he was. ²³

From York he wrote to a fellow Jesuit that he did not yet know what would become of him, "but whatever shall happen, by the grace of God it shall be welcome." ² When the priest-hunter Richard Topcliffe threatened to make him talk in the Tower, he answered that he hoped God would never let him, for fear of any torment, do anything against God, his conscience, "or to the prejudice of justice and the innocence of others." ²

On February 25, 1594 he was sent to the Tower of London. ²⁴ He was tortured there fourteen times, which he said himself in court before he died. ²³ Henry Garnet, superior of the English Jesuits, wrote that the usual torture was to hang a man by the hands for six or seven hours in irons that cut into them. ² The curia says Topcliffe spread the sessions over a year so that he would not die of them by accident. ³

Garnet also wrote that Walpole had no bed, no clothes and nothing to cover himself in the bitter cold, until the lieutenant of the Tower himself gave him a little straw out of pity. ² Jesuit Collections says that in his cell he cut inscriptions into the wall, and quotes John Gerard, a later prisoner in the same cell, who found his name carved there with the orders of angels chalked on either side and the names of Mary and of Jesus above. ⁴

In the spring of 1595 he was sent back to York for trial. ¹⁴ Garnet says that on the journey he never lay on a bed, and that in the York prison he prayed on his knees most of the night on a mat three feet long. ² He was tried on Thursday, April 3, for being a priest ordained abroad who had come home. ²³⁴ The curia's page notes that the man who had once trained as a lawyer defended himself well. ³

In Challoner's account of the trial, when the judge said that a priest who did not give himself up within three days of landing was a traitor, Walpole answered, "Then I am out of the case," since he had been taken "before I had been one whole day on English ground." ² The judges then asked whether he would acknowledge the queen's supremacy in religion, and he refused. ²³ He told the jury, "I confess most willingly that I am a priest, and that I am of the Company of Jesus or a Jesuit, and that I came over in order to convert my country to the Catholic faith." ² They found him guilty, and he was sentenced on the Saturday. ²

On Monday, April 7, he was drawn to the gallows outside York with Alexander Rawlins, a seminary priest, who died first while Walpole was made to watch. ² He was offered his life if he would conform, and refused. ² On the ladder he said he was at peace with all the world and prayed for all, above all for those who had brought about his death, then said the Our Father aloud and began the Hail Mary, and before he could finish it he was turned off the ladder. ²³ He was thirty-seven. ⁴

Paul VI canonized him on October 25, 1970, among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. ⁶ The decretal letter of that day, translated here from Latin, says that he was born at Docking in Norfolk, studied at Norwich, Cambridge, Gray's Inn and Rome, was seized on his return to England, was most grievously tortured in the Tower of London, and was tried and killed at York on April 7, 1595. ⁶

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

Saint Henry Walpole's feast day is April 7, the day of his death. The current Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, enters him that day at York together with Blessed Alexander Rawlins, both of them imprisoned and cruelly tortured for their priesthood under Elizabeth I and then hanged and disemboweled. ⁷ The calendar of the Diocese of East Anglia keeps him on April 7. ⁸

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. ⁹

He came to his vocation through someone else's death, standing in a crowd at Tyburn. ³⁴ Fourteen years later he died the same way, for the same reason. ²⁴

Of his whole priesthood in England, he had less than a day free. ² The rest was prison, where he argued with ministers, wrote letters, made verses and prayed on a mat on the floor. ²

His letters from York ask for prayers and for a book or two, and say that if he cannot have the books, God is at hand and is the eternal wisdom. ² He wrote that he was astonished that so vile a creature as himself should be near the crown of martyrdom. ²

At the end he was interrupted in the middle of the Hail Mary. ²³