Edmund Duke

Blessed Edmund Duke (1563-1590), Catholic priest and martyr.

He was born in Kent in 1563. Only the sparest details are known of his life. He arrived to study for the priesthood at the English College at Rheims on March 3 1583 and was ordained to minor orders there on September 23 1583. He was subsequently was sent to Rome and entered the English College there on August 22 1584. He was ordained to the priesthood in the Lateran Basilica on September 3 1589. Leaving the city for England, he set out on September 15 and on October 15 reached Rheims, where he stayed until setting off for the English mission on March 22 1590 with three other priests, the Yorkshiremen Richard Hill and John Hogg and Richard Holiday. The group landed on the Northern coast, but made the mistake of keeping together, which made them too conspicuous. They fell under suspicion in a village in County Durham, were found out and imprisoned in Durham. Given the 1585 Act making it a capital offence to be a Catholic priest in England the terrible sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering was inevitable. The trial was at Durham and the sentence was carried out there at Dryburne on May 27 1590. Most unusually the record of the event has survived in the registers of St Oswald's parish, Durham.

With the priests were executed four common criminals felons, who declared that they, too, died Catholics. In the crowd were a good number of Catholics and reportedly when the priests' heads were as customary cut off and held up, only the officers and a Protestant minister or two would say "God save the Queen". It is also said that two Protestant spectators, Robert Maire and his wife Grace, were converted to the Catholic faith.

Edmund Duke was declared Blessed (the last stage prior to sainthood) by Pope John Paul II on November 22 1987.

ources

The most reliable compact source is Godfrey Anstruther, "Seminary Priests", St Edmund's College, Ware, vol. 1, 1968, pp. 107, 167, 170, 172.