Polydore Plasden

St Polydore Plasden, one of the Catholic Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. A native of London, he studied for the priesthood at Rheims and Rome and was ordained in 1586 before being sent back to England soon after. Saint Polydore was born in 1563, the son of a London horner. He was educated at Reims and at Rome, where he was ordained priest on 7 December, 1586. He remained at Rome for more than a year, and then was at Reims from 8 April till 2 September, 1588, when he was sent on the mission. While at Rome he had signed a petition for the retention of the Jesuits as superiors of the English College, but in England he was considered to have suffered injury through their agency. He was captured on 8 Nov., 1591, in London, at Swithun Wells' house in Gray's Inn Fields, where St. Edmund Gennings was celebrating Mass. At his execution he acknowledged Elizabeth as his lawful queen, whom he would defend to the best of his power against all her enemies, and he prayed for her and the whole realm, but said that he would rather forfeit a thousand lives than deny or fight against his religion. St. Polydore was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. By the orders of Sir Walter Raleigh, he was allowed to hang till he was dead, and the sentence was carried out upon his body.

He was beatified in 1929, and was canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

External links

* [http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=5535 Catholic Online]