+ Blessed GEORGE HAYDOCK, Priest, 1584

A ROYAL HYPOCRITE

ARRESTED as a priest in February 1582 in St. Paul's Churchyard, he was confined in the Tower, where he was robbed of all his money, and suffered much from the hardships of his imprisonment, and from a lingering disease that he had contracted in Italy. On February 7, 1583, he was sentenced to death for having been 'made priest by the Pope's authority beyond the seas. He attributed this happy event to the prayers of St. Dorothy, Virgin and Martyr, whose day it was, and he marked it in the Calendar of his Breviary, which he left to Dr. Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, then a prisoner in the Tower (see also Last Years). But to his sorrow he heard that the Queen had changed her mind, and that he was not to suffer. His Confessor, however, a man of great experience, encouraged him by the assurance that these rumours were industriously spread abroad only to represent the Queen as averse from these cruelties, and to remove any odium from her, as if they were extorted from her against her inclinations. The falseness of the Queen's reported leniency was proved by the event. Father Haydock, without a sign of any pardon, was hung at Tyburn, and the whole butchery performed February 12, 1584.

"They spoke indeed peacefully to me : and speaking in anger of the earth they devised guilt."—Ps. xxxiv. 20.