Fathers and sons.

On this day when we keep the feast of the first canonised Martyrs of the English Reformation, SS John Fisher and Thomas More, I am mindful of those other Fathers who were led out from the Tower in May 1535, passing the Bell Tower in which Fisher and More were held, awaiting their fate. The three Carthusian Priors, Houghton, Webster and Lawrence, together with Frs Reynolds and Haile, were the very first to be executed for the Faith in that era.

During a recent visit to London I discovered that I was near to the site of the former Charterhouse and enquiring at the Gatehouse chanced upon a guided tour. I accompanied the guide for the first part of the tour only, in order to visit the present chapel, pictured above. This chapel, the guide informed the tour party, had been the Chapter House of the original monastery, and therefore the place where the three Priors, together with the community of the London Charterhouse, deliberated how they should respond to the situation of the King's claim of supremacy of the Church in England. The original Chapter House has been modified over the centuries but still holds, in the far corner, the remains of a sacrarium next to where a medieval altar, in the Chapter House, had once been.

The guide then showed us the site of the original monastery Church. The Church is long gone, but its site is marked out in stone on the grass at the very front of the present Charter House buildings. It was here, and on its High Altar, that Prior John Houghton celebrated the Mass of the Holy Spirit, during which the entire Community discerned the way in which they were called to respond to the King.

On the wall at the side of this site, a wall which was most probably the original north wall of the Church, there is a plaque commemorating the three Priors, the other priest members, and brothers of the Community, all of whom suffered torture and death, following their decision to witness to Christ, rather than to the King.

The place where the lawn and plaque is found, is bounded by a perimeter railing and is not a public place. Nonetheless, it is good to see that such a plaque is there with the names of all the Community.

These, our Fathers, and sons of the Most High, are worthy of great veneration, and we are humbled that this memorial to their great struggle and their great faith, is here in the middle of our busy capitol city.  

An old friend.

I was recently in the old city of London, looking up historical sites which hold so much importance for us. I walked along the Poultry and took the above photo at the building which occupies the site of the Poutlry Compter of old. 

The Poultry Compter was once what its name suggests, but it became a prison in Tudor times and one of the many 'holding places' of Catholics. It was a very primitive place. Here in the Spring of 1594 Fr John Gerard SJ was held. This great confessor of the faith speaks about his experience here in his autobiography.

Today, the location is very different now from how it was in Tudor times; the tower block on the corner of Poultry and Old Jewry could be found in just about any modern city. The Great Fire would have scoured out, to its fetid foundations, the old Poultry Compter.

Close by is the magnificent Guildhall where, three years later in 1597, Fr John Gerard was brought for interogation.

In this enormous medieval aula Fr Gerard, before a Royal Commission, was subjected to an intense session from Richard Topcliffe, the priest hunter. It is hard to picture it now, but then a whole State was intent upon extinguishing the Catholic Church, which had been the very heart of its life and formation up till that time.

London, in spite of its secularism, is rich with Catholicism, precisely because of such great confessors. Blessed Henry Garnet SJ was tried in the Guildhall in 1606 and condemned to death here. The Guildhall somehow survived the Great Fire, and preserves its memory of the old days. 

The secular age tries its best to maintain its project, but what these confessors of old witnessed to is the fullness of human life - the saving Mystery of Jesus Christ.