Saint John Kemble

He was born in 1599 at Rhydicar Farm, in the parish of St. Weonards in Herefordshire. ¹³ The Catholic Encyclopedia names his parents as John Kemble, of a family that had come from Kemble in Wiltshire, and Anne Morgan, of Skenfrith in Monmouthshire. ¹ Camm describes the border country of Herefordshire and Monmouthshire in those years as one of the most Catholic parts of England, where the great families kept the old faith and sheltered its priests. ³

The sources do not agree on how the Kembles of Pembridge Castle were related to him. Challoner and Camm call Captain Richard Kemble his nephew, and Camm calls George Kemble of Pembridge the martyr's elder brother. ²³ The encyclopedia calls George his uncle and Richard George's son, while also saying that in old age he lived "with his nephew" at Pembridge. ¹ Captain Richard Kemble is remembered for having helped Charles II escape at the battle of Worcester in 1651. ¹³

He went abroad to the English College at Douai, and Challoner, quoting the college diary, records that he was ordained priest there on February 23, 1625, sang his first Mass on March 2, and was sent on the English mission on June 4. ¹² He went home to Herefordshire, and Challoner says that on the mission "he was always esteemed a very pious and zealous labourer." ²

Almost nothing else is recorded of those decades. Camm says plainly that for the most part his life was uneventful: he lived at Pembridge Castle, near Welsh Newton, and went out from there across the country around it. ³ Camm describes the room shown as his, a seat on the stairs still called "Father Kemble's seat," and the chapel at the top of the house where he said Mass. ³ The altar from that chapel, and a small missal dated 1623 with his handwriting in it, were moved to the Catholic church at Monmouth. ³

How long he served is counted differently. Challoner had a printed account that made him a priest and missioner for fifty-four years. ² The current Roman Martyrology says that he exercised his ministry for more than fifty years in a time of persecution, and the decretal letter of his canonization, translated here from Latin, says the same: more than ten lustra, fifty years, of pastoral care in England. ⁴⁶

In 1678 the frenzy roused by Titus Oates and his pretended Popish Plot, as Camm puts it, set off arrests of priests everywhere. ³ Camm says that on December 7, 1678, the Privy Council ordered the Bishop of Hereford, Herbert Croft, to search for priests, and that he left the work to Captain John Scudamore of Kentchurch, who first took the Jesuit David Lewis and then went to Pembridge. ³ The encyclopedia says Kemble was in Hereford jail by November. ¹

He was told the searchers were coming. A bishop who gathered the memories of people who had known him wrote to Challoner that Kemble "replied that according to the course of nature he had but few years to live, and that it would be an advantage to him to suffer for his religion, and therefore he would not abscond." ² Camm adds that he gave himself up at the castle gate and was taken through the snow to Kentchurch Court, where Scudamore's wife and children were Catholics and devoted to him, and the next day to Hereford jail. ³

Scudamore's children visited him in prison, and he gave them the good things his friends sent him. Asked why, he said it was because their father was the best friend he had in the world. ²³

The encyclopedia says he was condemned at the end of March 1679 under the statute of 27 Elizabeth, one of the laws by which, as the decretal letter of his canonization recalls, Catholic priests had been forbidden since 1585 to exercise their ministry. ¹⁴ He was then ordered to London with Father Charles Baker, the name David Lewis used on the mission. ¹ Camm gives another order of events: the House of Lords sent for him on April 23, 1679, and after his return he was tried at the summer assizes at Hereford before Chief Justice Scroggs, indicted for saying Mass at Pembridge Castle. ³ Challoner's correspondent has him sent to London first and then back to Hereford for his trial. ²

The journey was hard on an old man. Challoner's correspondent says he "suffered more than a martyrdom" on it, because an illness let him ride only sideways, and he was made to go on horseback for much of the way. ² Camm reports that it is said he was strapped to his horse on the way to London and allowed to walk most of the way back. ³ In Newgate he was questioned by Oates and the informers Bedloe and Dugdale, and his own last speech says that Oates and Bedloe could charge him with nothing. ¹² He spent three more months in Hereford jail. ¹

On the day of his execution, the encyclopedia says, he smoked a pipe and drank a cup of sack with the under-sheriff before he left, and in Herefordshire a parting pipe or cup came to be called a "Kemble pipe" or a "Kemble cup." ¹ Camm names the under-sheriff as Humphrey Digges and adds that Kemble asked first for time to finish his prayers. ³

He was drawn on a hurdle to the common outside the city, which the encyclopedia calls Widemarsh and Challoner Wigmarsh. ¹²³ His last speech was printed soon after. "It will be expected I should say something, but as I am an old man, it cannot be much, not having any concern in the plot, neither indeed believing there is any," he began; since Oates and Bedloe had been unable to charge him with anything, it was evident "that I die only for professing the old Roman Catholic religion, which was the religion that first made this kingdom Christian." ² He asked forgiveness of anyone he had offended and forgave everyone who had wanted his death. ²

Then he took the hangman by the hand. "Honest Anthony, my friend Anthony, be not afraid; do thy office, I forgive thee with all my heart." ²³ He said three times "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit," and the cart was drawn away. ² The knot was badly placed, and he hanged for at least half an hour before he died, which Challoner believes was an accident. ² "The Protestants that were spectators of his exit acknowledged that they never saw one die so like a gentleman, and so like a Christian." ²

His head was cut off, and Challoner says Captain Richard Kemble asked for the body, carried it to Welsh Newton, and buried it in the churchyard there under a tomb. ² Camm describes the flat stone with a cross cut along its length and the words "J. K., who dyed Augt. 22nd, 1679." ³ Challoner's correspondent reported two cures there that he credited to the martyr, one of them, that of a deaf woman of the Scudamore family who prayed at the grave, witnessed by the correspondent himself. ² Camm names him as Bishop Matthew Pritchard, a Franciscan. ³

One of his hands is kept at St. Francis Xavier's church in Hereford, and Camm says the hand at Hereford is the left. ¹³ The encyclopedia notes a strange afterlife in print: a note to an edition of Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler tells the story of his last pipe and turns him into a Protestant who died under Queen Mary. ¹³

Paul VI canonized him on October 25, 1970, with the thirty-nine others of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, and the decretal letter of that day gives each of them a few lines. ⁴⁵ His, translated from the Latin, say that he was of Hereford and a priest of Douai, gave more than fifty years to pastoral care in England, and at the age of eighty won the palm of martyrdom at Wigmarsh in Hereford on August 22, 1679. ⁴ In his homily the pope said that these martyrs wished to be loyal to their country and their sovereign in everything that belonged to the civil order. ⁵

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

Saint John Kemble's feast day is August 22, the day of his death. The current Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, enters him on that day at Hereford, beside Saint John Wall, who died the same day at Worcester. ⁶

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. ⁷ Challoner was told that Catholics went to his grave on August 22 to pray, and Camm, who preached at the pilgrimage there in 1909, says it had been kept for more than two hundred years. ²³

Most of his priesthood left no record. For half a century he said Mass in an attic chapel and went out to the Catholics of the country around it, and the sources have little to tell of it beyond that he was pious and zealous. ²³

He could have hidden when they came for him, and did not. His reason was an old man's reason: he had few years left. ²

In prison he fed the children of the man who arrested him and called their father his best friend. ²³ At the gallows he took the hangman's hand and forgave him by name. ²

His last words were the words of Christ on the cross, said three times. ² The pilgrims who came to his grave afterward came to a churchyard that was no longer Catholic, and kept coming. ³