By CANON TOM DAKIN

Fifteen men, eleven priests and four laymen, were put to death for their Catholic faith on Lancaster Moor? Why? Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558. She took the Protestant option, replacing the Roman Missal with Cranmer's Prayer Book. As priests grew old Catholicism would fade away. Events proved otherwise. In 1569 there was the Revolt of the Northern Earls demanding a return to the old Catholic order. Belatedly, to assist this revolt, Pope St Pius V in 1570 excommunicated Elizabeth and absolved her subjects from allegiance to her. When, in 1574, priests ordained in William Alien's seminaries at Douai and Rome began to arrive in England they were regarded as the Special Service agents parachuted into France during the last war to be hunted by the Gestapo and tortured for information. Alien, in his 'Defence of English Catholics', 1584, is obviously embarassed by the excommunication of Elizabeth. He says that 'Catholics were persuaded that they might lawfully obey her as their Queen and Governess, notwithstanding the said sentence'. From 1585 the very presence of a priest ordained abroad would be an act of treason; it was death also to anyone who sheltered a priest.

During the reign of Elizabeth 300 entered the country; between 120 and 130 were caught and executed. We may speculate how different the position might have been if Pope Pius V had not published his bull of 1570. The tragedy was this: "By the early l58os the English ministers were set in their belief in a grand Catholic plot in which the mission of the seminarians played an important role which justified the most rigorous measures of oppression. With far fuller knowledge of the evidence we realise that this was an inaccurate perception of Catholic activities...Caught between the fears of the regime and the contradictory practices of their own superiors, the heroic priests were the hapless victims, protesting their genuine innocence to captors who had strong grounds for refusing to believe their protests". That is the background. We became an underground church.

Local men had the task of guiding priests to welcoming houses. Bl John Finch was born at Eccleston, near Leyland. He was betrayed by a man who pretended to be a Catholic and persuaded John to obtain a priest to celebrate Christmas, 1580, in a 'safe'house. John and the priest were both arrested before daybreak on Christmas Day. After imprisonment in Salford and Preston he was passed to Lancaster and executed on April l8th, 1584. We know little of the Venerable Laurence Bailey except that he was a miller and was condemned for assisting a priest to escape from the pursuivants. He suffered in August 1604.

Bl.Roger Wrenno was a Chorley weaver. It was in his house that Bl. John Thules was arrested. They escaped from Lancaster Castle but lost their way in the dark and were re-arrested. They were offered their freedom if they would take the oath of allegiance devised by James I in 1606. "Write me", said Thules, "an oath which contains nothing but civil allegiance and I will take it". Wrenno was again offered the oath on the scaffold when the rope broke. His answer was to astound the sheriff by the speed with which he remounted the ladder. They suffered on March l8th, 1616. The last of the four laymen was a special case. Richard Herst was a Lancashire farmer. He was in a field ploughing when three men came to arrest him as a recusant - one who refused to attend the Sunday service at his parish church. There was a fine for non-attendance. A maid-servant gave one of the men, called Dewhurst, a clout on the head. Whether he was dazed or just clumsy he stumbled over a furrow and broke his leg. The leg became infected and he died within a fortnight, having testified that Richard Herst was in no way to blame. The notorious judge Yelverton, sitting at Lancaster, directed that Herst should be found guilty of murder as an example to other recusants. Three of the jurors went to see the judge but he was determined to have his way - except that Richard was offered his freedom if he would take an oath that a Catholic could not accept. He was hanged at Lancaster the day after St Edmund Arrowsmith with whom he had been imprisoned. He wrote a letter to a priest friend at 8 o'clock on the morning of his death. No protest. No recriminations. He asks that his family be cared for - he had a wife and six children - and that his debts should be honoured. Otherwise the letter is full of what we call the virtue of hope, of quiet anticipation of his union with Our Lord.