In late January 1645, Henry Morse, a Norfolk man, was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey: "You must go to the place from whence you came," the judge told him, " there to remain until you shall be drawn through the open city of London upon hurdles to the place of execution, and there be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight, then your head to be cut off and your body divided into four parts, to be disposed of at his Majesty's pleasure." To which the judge dutifully added the words: "And may God have mercy on your soul."
Mercifully Morse was allowed to hang until he was dead, before his body was cut down and the rest of the sentence carried out. That night his four quarters were displayed on the city gates and his head on London Bridge. His death was the last vengeful act of the pursuant Francis Newton, and the sentence passed, that reserved for persons found guilty of "High Treason". Seven years previously, and again at the instigation of Francis Newton, Morse was tried and found guilty of the charge of being a priest, but not guilty of persuasion, (inciting disloyalty among the king's subjects). But now Parliament and not the king were in the ascendant, and given that only weeks previously they had beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury, the execution of a Roman Catholic priest, and a Jesuit at that, was, as we say, "small beer".
Apart from its intrinsic worth, this focus on the life of Henry Morse, will help to put the English occupation of Ireland in context. Barbarous that occupations was, but there was a clearly discernible political rational to it, that in its own way, was as brutal in England as it was in Ireland. So what then was the background to the execution of Henry Morse?
Having studied at Corpus Christi College, in Oxford, Morse, at the age of 17, moved to Barnards Inn in London to study law. But two years later he left, and intending to become both a Catholic and a priest, he travelled to the English seminary at Douai. There, (and following in the footsteps of an older brother), he became a Catholic. But his studies for the priesthood were delayed, when, on his return to England, and without a trial, he was imprisoned for four years. He had returned to England, intending to put his affairs in order, before studying for the priesthood, but, (in modern parlance), on entering the country, he failed the test of his Britishness. Asked on his arrival at Dover, he refused to take the oath of allegiance and supremacy.
Had Morse arrived elsewhere in England, he might have had a less arduous experience. But at Dover, anti-Catholic sentiment was especially high. It was there that a captured priest was dressed in a bare skin and set upon by dogs for the amusement of the public. And it was a place where Catholic religious artifacts were held up to public ridicule and sold off to the highest bidder in the street. That said, little is known of Morse's time in prison, beyond his own brief statement that he was sent there. But Fr Richard Blount, writing about this time, gives a good insight into prison conditions, as well as into the circumstances of lay Catholics. Aware of the fate of nine priests he tells us that they faced starvation because of the meagre sum that they were allowed to spend on food, and of what happened to those who could not pay. "All this winter" he tells us, "they were put down to the common prison, without fire, beds or mats to lie on and with a hundredweight of Irons upon them." He knew of one who had died, and of another who was dying. As for lay Catholics he described their situation as the "most miserable" yet endured. "Many fall away", while "those that stand are ruined in their temporalities."
It was no less dire at York, where years later and as a young priest, and again without a trial, Morse spent another four years in prison, and here too there was a special regime for Catholics, both lay and clerical: "At their first committing and entry every Catholic yeoman pays ten shillings for fetters, every gentleman twenty shillings, every squire forty . . . Among "gentlemen", the writer explains, "they number priests, though in other usage they esteem them for the worst". Having worked among the victims of plague in Newcastle and Durham, and because his priesthood had not been proven, Morse worked clandestinely as a priest among his fellow prisoners: giving alms, attending the sick and offering special spiritual assistance to those facing execution. On his release from prison, he was sent into exile for life. But three years later, in 1633, he was back in the English "mission", and working in the London district.
In the late summer of 1635 the first case of plague was reported on the outskirts of London, in the parish of St. Jiles in the Fields, and as it spread, the regulations that had been introduced to cope with plague in 1625, were re-introduced. Justices of the peace were now empowered to cause "every house wherein lies anyone who has been visited with the plague, to be shut up and watched by day and night." Special plague inspectors or "searchers" were sworn in, with watchers, barriers, and bearers, each with his settled wage. The taking in of lodgers was forbidden all householders; while a special tax for the relief of the stricken was levied on each parish, with the justices empowered to construct pest-houses, timbered huts where the victims could be segregated. But as no Catholics appeared on parish registers, they had no entitlement to official help, and not withstanding the precarious lives of priests, it fell to them to organise Catholic relief. Among those appointed to the task was Henry Morse who, as a priest and exile, was doubly at risk should he fall into the hands of the purusivants, which was what happened, and lead eventually to his execution at Tyburn.
Now this loathing and persecution of Catholics didn't exist in a vacuum. From the time that Henry V111 declared himself to be head of the Church in England, until long after the execution of Henry Morse, English political life was in ferment, and at its heart, in the time of Morse, was a struggle for power between the Monarch and the high Church of England and the protestant Parliament. While negotiations were going on to secure a Spanish bride for Charles Prince of Wales, the outright persecution of catholics was eased. But when these negotiations failed in 1625 the persecution of Catholics increased. Heavier fines were levied on recusants and pursuivant's went about the hunting of priests with renewed confidence. They were powerful and unscrupulous men, who, as one judge reminded Henry Morse, could send a priest to his death even if their testimony was "worthless". But in many instances, their preferred option was to use their power for personal gain; to extort large payments from Catholic families in return for the priests freedom. And no less a part of this same process was the execution of the then Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud.
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© Cormac McCloskey
Note: This blog, "The trouble with Ireland is . . . .4", has not been previously published as there is a gap (unintended) of several hundred years between the period covered in "3" and that covered in "4" I may get around to filling the gap.
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