"A voice called, and I went. I went, because it called."
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—by Hanna Senesh (born as Hannah Szenes)

In progress.... What remains of him is not in the churchyard per se, but kept inside, displayed every now and then, at St. Oswald's, to remind us how he had died, that his relatives managed to save that much of him and no more.

Edmund Arrowsmith prayed for the well-being of England and forgave those who sent him to his death, it was said. His life preceded that of Hannah Szenes (1921-1944) by over 300 years.

She was Hungarian-born, a Jewish poetess. He was British-born, a Catholic clergyman.

Despite those differences, they had things in common. Both were executed in the country of their birth, in times of serious religious persecution. Political reasons were given for their deaths. She was killed by the Nazis, for being a spy, he, for "high treason", it having become a crime against his country to practice a religion not endorsed by a key British royal.

Each went abroad as a young adult. Each returned with the goal of assisting family and neighbors previously left behind. The price paid? Torture before death. They could have saved themselves by renouncing what they valued, but they did not.

HANNAH. Vile things are often said, in order to justify mis-treatment , within the hearing of ordinary bystanders. What was it like to be a child, to hear others say you deserved no rewards, but, instead, whatever criticism they heaped like heavy stones upon you?

Hannah's father left the human world when she was six, but she still had her mother and brother in Budapest. Due to their being secular, not practicing their ancestors' faith, she attended a Protestant school, as others' schools in that city were of lesser quality. (Its Protestant sect was not named in her biographies?) One undeniable discrimination was that the school charged Catholic children double to attend and Jewish children, triple. Thus, only the well-off received a good education, given they were born in what sociology professors might call "religious out-groups". She was lucky her mother could afford the school, but grew-up with further discrimination, denied rewards for literary excellence.

Do such things radicalize people, or merely make them braver?

Deciding to be a Zionist, as it gave her an opportunity to save herself, she moved to British-run Palestine. That move was just a few months before Hitler invaded Poland.

As WW II progressed, reports of the killings at home in Hungary grew worse. She volunteered to be part of a Special Operations group of almost 40; she would be trained in wireless operations and parachuted back in to Europe, to cross into Hungary. (Her mother still lived there.)

Hannah and two others were captured crossing the border. After her capture, she refused to assist the Nazis, kept secret her wireless codes. Her mother was brought to the same prison as part of the torture. A witness reported seeing Hannah with a broken tooth after an early and severe beating. Much worse would be done before it was over.

Hannah refused to wear a blindfold when placed before armed men after her trial. She was shot as a spy, before Russian troops marched into the city, too late to save her.

Her mother (Katerina) escaped from a "death march". She managed to hide until the Russians arrived in Budapest in Jan., 1945. Her mother would then rejoin Hannah's brother abroad, in Palestine.

Hannah's poems, partly written in prison, preserved by her mother, made it into the music world. They are still sung today. Persons unknown, but kind, put her body in the same cemetery in Budapest where her father lies buried. In the 1950s, her body was moved to Israel, to a cemetery where she is honored with other parachutists.

SOURCES: The Jewish Women's Encyclopedia, maintained at JWA.org. It holds a short version of the longer biography written by Judith Tydor Baumel. Baumel lists other sources, noting that Hannah's modern spelling is Hanna Senesh, non-Hungarian. That's phonetic, so easy for non-Hebrew children to sound-out and thus spell. Since her survivors became Israeli, the proper spelling would be in Hebrew characters, read right to left. There would be many fewer letters, as pronunciation of vowels is to be guessed from context, not content.

Hannah became religious only after experiencing religious discrimination, having been raised secularly. In contrast, Edmund was always reared religiously.

Their fathers both died before their mothers. Their mothers were "of means", able to raise them. Edmund's father left him differently, however.

EDMUND BRYAN. Did he see it happen? He was just a boy. Officials forcibly took his parents from the house. Bound with others, taken two by two, all the adults in the household were taken to the prison in Lancaster, for being of the wrong religion and not recanting. (A grandfather had previously died in prison.)

The officials left the boy and his even younger siblings behind, untended. Neighbors eventually discovered the children were at home alone and took them in. He was called Bryan Arrowsmith then, but would take the name Edmund later, inspired by an uncle who moved abroad early, in order to be allowed to teach and to keep his religion.

HIS FATHER, ROBERT ARROWSMITH. Young Bryan's father, described as a "yeoman farmer", was the parent whose own father had died in prison. When released, Robert Arrowsmith "went with a brother to Belgium and France", seeking safety. They spent time with another brother, Dr. Edmund Arrowsmith, at a university called the "English College" in Doaui (northern France, on the River Scarpe). Upon returning to England, Robert did not recover, being of poor health.

HIS MOTHER, MARGERY GERARD. The mother taken away was Margery, daughter of Nicholas Gerard, related to the Sir Thomas Gerards who had been living in Ashton, at first, in the house called Bryn Hall. When released, Margery would return to her children. A local clergyman helped neighbors see to their care. Thus, her son Bryan/Brian was raised religiously, able to attend a grammar school, described as at "Seneley Green, Ashton-in-Makerfield." The priest would help send Bryan abroad for his early advance education. (Notes- (1) This particular Ashton now has the church, St Oswald's, that cares for the remains. "In Makerfield" made clear which of multiple Ashtons was meant. (2) Wiki historians say the school was "founded using a capital sum bequeathed by Robert Byrchall, in 1589, and a plot of land granted by Sir Thomas Gerard." The latter would have been the Sir Thomas Gerard who died in 1601, Margery's uncle. He had been a "high sheriff" earlier.)

TRACKING GERARDS. PRE-MARYLAND, MOLYNEUX. The Sir Thomas who d. 1601 was a great-uncle on the mother's side, to the young Bryan who became Edmund later. That Thomas had been sent to the Tower twice for his Catholicism, the second imprisonment, in 1586, lasting three years. He was forced to turn property over to a Gerard turning Protestant early. The second punishment worked, from the viewpoint of the sending court, as he was written up as having stopped being a Catholic by 1590. He was burdened with many mortgages, not clear how much was needed to pay previous stiff fines for being Catholic, or, instead, debts made worse as he was not home to manage things. . Others said he then "lived a lewd licentious life", as a Protestant. While Protestant, he ordered his brother, Nicholas, father to Margery, forcibly carried to services at the parish church, that church, built by Catholics, now taken over for Protestants. Nicholas, with gout, reacted by disrupting the service, so apparently was not forced to go again. However well the Tower punishment had worked for a time, the first Sir Thomas Gerard returned to Catholicism before he died. The next Sir Thomas Gerard, Margery's cousin, married Cecily. Cecily was described as "a recusant and indicted thereof". "Recusant" meant Cecily could remain Catholic, but had to pay fines for refusing to attend Protestant services, telling us the well-off could hold-out longer, stay Catholic longer. They might provide local hidden churches for their neighbors of more ordinary means, until trained clergy could no longer be found. Gentry born later could and would search for safety by moving their estates, to Ireland, until that was not safe, then went off to Canada and Maryland. Some Quakers were said to do the same. In contrast, those staying in England had to convert, hide well, or die.

BECOMING EDMUND, ONCE ABROAD. With all of that known to him, once sufficiently grown, young Bryan Arrowsmith would try to solve the problem of not enough trained clergy for his family and neighbors. He made multiple attempts to find a ship willing to take one of England's Catholics to Europe for education , given that local education as a Catholic was a forbidden thing. Most refused to take him elsewhere.

Why go abroad for an education? The hundreds of monasteries of England had been reduced to a few, just those serving London gentry. Since the monasteries had been the colleges of the time, as well as the leprosariums, the hospitals, the alms houses, the horticultural centers, and more, many important facilities had been closed down, buildings sold, done everywhere, except at a few spots around London.

To give an idea of what had been closed, only Oxford, Cambridge and Christ Church remain today. (London gentry who sent their sons there would have been too angered by their closure. Henry VIII did not dare try to sell their dorm buildings as mansions for the wealthy, as he did elsewhere. Henry could merely begin a shift in thinking at the prestigious schools.)

Bryan, soon to be Edmund, did not live in the time of King Henry, but much later, the laws growing much worse, some royals bigger dictators than before. Helped by local clergy, finally finding a shipmaster who would take him abroad, Bryan went to the English College at Douai, where he would take the name of Edmund at his religious confirmation. Delayed in finishing, having gone home to wait out an illness, he would not take his vows as a priest at Douai until 1612, at about age 27.

THE STEPS. Historically, the monasteries were dissolved first. It was next declared a crime to train for the priesthood inside England, as that could be done in houses, in churches, if monasteries were gone. By Edmund's time, even more activity had become criminal. Now, going abroad to study his own religion was added to the list of treasons.

PARATROOPERS AND PRIESTS. The "official hate list", by then, in England, particularly included his religion's Jesuits. As had the 40 Israeli paratroopers dropped in to Hungary, England's Jesuits agreed to martyrdom if needed. Allegiance to God and neighbor and family took priority over allegiance to dictator-style rulers.

In England, punishments escalated if a caught clergy was Jesuit. If one Jesuit is bad, then all Jesuits were worse? If killing each one encountered was not enough, making the pain more fantastic was then required?

To make punishment worse than death, torture had to be added. How much torture, how bad? Watch the movie Braveheart.

After his illegal education and illegal taking of priestly vows, but not yet a forbidden Jesuit, the Bryan now called Edmund returned to his family's part of England. That was in 1620.

He was imprisoned for his faith the first time, under King James. Again, that was before he became a Jesuit. He would die, however, early in the reign of James's son, Charles I. Charles was Catholic, unlike his Presbyterian-reared and -minded father, James. Maybe that had given hope to the increasingly few congregations in hiding?

However, Charles I was mindful, as James had been, that the Anglican Protestants were heavy in Parliament, so could turn against those not identical in faith. If Edmund and others expected Charles, once made King, to stop the persecutions of the non-Anglican Catholics, they were mistaken.

Hannah took the perhaps radical step of Zionism after her discrimination worsened. Edmund's response to increased discrimination was not Zionism, but to give-up his thus far ordinary priesthood to become a Jesuit missionary. The Jesuits, when on missions, did not sit still at one church. They instead rotated, to serve the many locations needing and wanting priests, but which increasingly lacked even one.

While rotating across towns needing priests, those stopping for a day stayed at night with whomever had room. Widows and the wealthy often offered their homes for this. Once priest-hunters began to prowl, the sympathetic wealthy might put little hiding places behind interior walls. When historians speak of "priest holes", that is what they mean. Would Hannah's set of 40 or so parachutists lasted longer if they had made their way to similar hiding holes, before capture?

Trained to expect adverse circumstances, the Jesuit missionaries knew martyrdom was possible. Then, as times grew worse, they realized it was likely, then, eventually, certain. Was handling torture part of the training? He did not become a Jesuit until around four years before his death. Did he find someone who could train him on English soil? Maybe at a foreign embassy?

What else let him survive ,as a practicing Catholic, as long as he did? Perhaps this-- Their area had been so distant from London? With persistent persecution of the congregations, those still wanting their parents' faith were reduced to meeting privately in houses. With persistent killing of their priests as the next reaction, meeting privately was not enough.

Catholicism died in England.

Catholics became as missing from England, as Jewish people would be from Germany and from Hungary after Hitler's rule.

They were missing even in the more adamantly Catholic north of England. Its turning point was prompted by something historians called the Pilgrimage of Grace.

The missing-ness of Catholics in England remained true, for almost two hundred years. Then, Irish Catholics began migrating in. Catholic churches would be allowed again, but not until about 25 years before the Irish Potato Famine (the latter in Queen Victoria's rule, 1837–1901).

THE ONCE CATHOLIC NORTH. Edmund was born at Piele Hall in Haydock in northern England. Haydock exists today. It lies not quite an hour northeast of the big shipping port of Liverpool, about the same distance south of another old place called Preston. Piele Hall does not. Archeologists and antiquities people tried to save the reportedly moated grounds from development, but failed.

Preston's name is significant. It meant "Priests' town", known for old-time monasteries and priories. The north end off England had became a melting pot over the ages. Old Celtic/Irish religious groups would have been there first, then Anglo-Saxons, heading west, then Danish/Jutes, staying more east, each leaving traces in their part of future England, in archeology, in language, in place names, in beliefs and customs, including those affecting religion.

Each newer ethnicity arriving might wipe out some aspect of the old, but might also bring new ways. Consider the Normans. "North men" contracts to nor'men. Stories vary, but they had come from the north, from Scandinavia, said to be kicked out of there, not welcome back. What was their original crime? The Icelandic Chronicles supposedly tell about the nor'men leaders "borrowing" other Vikings' cattle. They were not executed for what was regarded as a heinous crime in that culture, as their leader had been nobility, the Icelanders said, allowed to escape execution, providing he never returned. Some say his group then sailed down the coast and tricked a French king the group contemptuously called "Charles the Simple". The first trick was to get that Charles to give them gold to leave. Given gold, they came back later and demanded more, but wanted territory this time, in return for leaving him alone. The place given to them would be named Normandy, a fitting name for nor'men.

Their French neighbors and wives tried to Christianize them. Evidence that this great effort had not yet succeeded was the nor'mens decision to invade England.

The Normans later progressed in skills and hopefully in their Christianity. Their monument-building would end with beautifully constructed church buildings with arches, as seen in old ruins left by the plain-living Cistercian clergy, said to sing "a capella", without instruments. The Cistercians would be forced out later by attacks of a political sort, their offshoots in Europe said to be the Trappist monks.

Before the Cistercians left, Robert the Bruce brought his Scottish troops down to burn Lancaster and other towns. The Bruce had supported Braveheart, as the Welsh attempted to survive.

Henry the VIII delivered the next blow to regional cultures. He was to decide in the 1500s that it was best for everyone outside London if he could make money by selling their monasteries as mansions. (The alternatives not done tell the truth about motive? He could have given the lands to the village tenants who farmed them and had been supported by the monks' knowledge, but he did not. He could have returned each monastery dormitory back to the old gentries who had donated the lands to the monks, but he did not. The other choices were never discussed?) His supporters justified his actions by using a propaganda device known as stereotyping. ("If one monastery is too empty and worthless, then all monasteries are too empty and worthless". It's in the same vein of logic as "If one man in shorter than most women, than all men are shorter than all women".)

Who would now have to "make-do" with less? Rural people who had become accustomed to a decently educated clergy or to hospital beds or agricultural advice or a bread-and-bed stop when traveling without much money. This affected the "Priests' town", long ago shortened to Pres'ton.

In Edmund's time, lots of the disappearing clergy in northern England were never replaced by ministers of the King's faith, had visiting ministers at best. Churches would instead be dismantled, their stones to be used in other buildings. The names of certain places could not be wiped out, however. Those persisting were Friarsgate and Priests' town and Maudland.

Once enough was taken, the people in northern rural areas were left only with "chapels". That seemed to be a "code word" for small churches without ministers, where the lay people had to "make do" by leading services themselves. It was a short step, from that, to new denominations. They were not Catholic, but not the King's faith either.

What remnants of the old Priests' Town did survive into the 1800s, when St Oswald's came about? Preston still had Friarsgate. a name appearing in multiple other places in England. At one point, streets were laid through an old Preston estate called Maudland. Workers found the remains of "St. Mary Magdalen", the place said to distribute alms to the poor. "Maud" was a nickname, some think, for Magdalen. (A Magdalen in biblical times could be male or female, merely a person from a land/lan/len called something like Magda. At Preston, the almshouse Mary Magdalene was named for the remembered Mary from that place.)

Britain, happily, became the nice place we hear about today. It eventually decided not to discriminate any longer. "Western Rite" (Catholic) churches were allowed again, as the Irish began to arrive, with a willingness to revive Catholicism.

PRESTON ARCHEOLOGY.
With considerable religious history buried under Priests' Town (Preston), would it be a surprise that residents' neighboring towns, such as Haydock, took their ancestors' religion seriously?

Preston's St. Walburge would be built on the site believed to be the main old monastery. Backing this, excavations for the foundation turned up an old stone coffin of the right era, near skeletons, whose wooden coffins may have rotted. Walburge, seen in Germany as Walburgia, was a Germanic saint's name befitting Anglo-Saxon rule, which produced separate kings over Northumbria and Mercia. The Anglo-Saxon's emerging Christian clergy would send missionaries from England, into northern Europe, named St. Ewald the Fair and St. Ewald the Dark. ("Ewald" was not what their mothers called them as babies, but, instead, symbolic of their mission. "Ewald" meant a bringer of new laws. The two Ewalds tried to Christianize the Viking end of the Germanics, whose pillages and killings created problems for neighbors. They needed better laws, in order to reform. The Ewalds succeeded with some approached, who agreed that the new laws would be superior. Those locals followed and taught the new rules in their own families, some calling their sons Walter in memory, once the Ewalds were gone. The Ewalds almost convinced a leading Duc to convert, but an important chieftain convinced him not to, presumed motives to lose pillage bounty and other indulgings allowed under the laws of their old gods. )

In a foreboding for Rev. Arrowsmith, the Ewalds were martyred, one especially cruelly. What happened to Edmund was, in that sense, part of an old pattern.

His family's home, now in Merseyside, was still part of old Lancashire in his day. Hall gone, a Piele Road still exists. (His priestly rotation was thought to center on the manor house of a James Gerrard at Brindle, the Rev. Father said to travel the local lanes, to visit and minister to the sick. What was left of the family at some point left Haydock and Brindle, not clear who left and when, some or all ending at or near Denham, its name meaning a hamlet of the Danes. The Denham area still has a place called Gerrards Cross, viewable online in Michelin maps as northwesterly of Denham, near Denham Green and Higher Denham.)

Court cases such as his would see trial up at Lancashire's governing town, Lancaster.

When the Rev. was a boy, his family called him Bryan (a re-spelling of his mother's home-place of Bryn?). His confirmation event, agreeing with the vows his parents made at Baptism to raise him, was done when abroad to study, his father to die while he was gone. To signify his own choice, he chose the name Edmund. It remembered a Saint whose beliefs and deeds and life he respected. The name honored that uncle on his father's side who was a professor at Douai. In some Germanic styles of naming, the individual could use his confirmation name as one of two or three middle names. One of the middle could be substituted for the first. Bryan Edmund became Edmund Bryan. (Old-time Scandinavians, Frankish Germanics and others who came through the US Midwest did similar name reversals, often to prevent confusion with an older person who "had dibs" on the original first name.)

"Edmund" is thought to be of very old Germanic or Celtic heritage inside England, not a newer Scandinavian or Norman name. Who was the original Edmund of note? A much appreciated English king, one who ruled over the old Kingdom of East Anglia.

Incoming Vikings not yet Christianized tied the original Edmund to a tree. They shot him through with arrows, hence, the title of St. Edmund the Martyr. Very old church art still depicts that death. Coins minted by King Edmund's officials show his name with the word REX, but no date. Without a date, his parentage among the possible old kings is thus hard to pick, according to Wiki historians. (A current version of the Wiki article on the first St. Edmund, viewed in 2019, seemed otherwise good, but confused two things, the remembering of a long ago saint's deeds and beliefs on one day a year or the naming a monastery after him, mis-understood as joining a cult. Is someone who celebrates Martin Luther King Day or Independence Day a cult member? Were the Lutherans who named a son Martin, Presbyterians who named a son Calvin, Methodists who named a son Wesley cultists? And so on.)

How did martyrdom become normal by the time of Edmund Arrowsmith's confirmation? Families further from London tended to stay Catholic longer. Privileges were promised to the wealthy upon conversion to the royal's choice of faiths. Lands of relatives could be assigned to one who co-operated. Baronetcies were offered for purchase Some had souls for sale. Others did not.

As people resisted, called "stubborn" by their persecutors, punishments escalated. Steep fines for "recusants" were just the first stage. Women held out longer than did the men. Priests had to hide to avoid death, with the wealthy women in their congregations best able to build the needed hiding closets.

Some sources describe the "show trials" used to convict.

COURT TESTIMONY. More things are of record, but not researched by this writer. Father Arrowsmith was said to have stayed silent in court. He was tried the Assizes in Lancaster, having been questioned previously by a Protestant Bishop obliged to make the royals happy.

By not answering questions, he would avoid incriminating anyone else tracked to the place or time he had said a Mass. They did not have our Constitution, so his failure to answer each question was treated as another crime. Puritans and others might be persecuted as well, for not conforming fully to the King's faith. The chief problem? A failure to separate church from state. That failure let the same parties make rules for both church and state, to use the monies of one to finance the other. Which particular religious groups would be punished depended only upon which last group took charge of a state's religious rules. This was true even when the secular Oliver Cromwell took over in later decades. (He gave preference to nonconformists, then had his troops invade Ireland and confiscate Catholic lands there, with the inevitable atrocities that might be expected.)

MODERN FREEDOMS. How did modern freedoms arrive?

Changes took several hundred years. Martyrs died, so people would have stories to tell. "Yes, he existed. We have his hand, as you can see, as proof. We have only his hand, as they would not let his relatives bury him whole.")

Christianity had begun that way. Stories were told. Some persecutions under the Roman rulers so old, so common, causing some saints to be grouped together as a type, or as legends only, with symbolic names, real ones not written down. (Lucia, her name symbolizing one who could see truth even though blinded by torture in her persecution, a saint depicted by Lutheran and Methodist Scandinavians as carrying a candle, a light in their long nights.)

In later eras, documentation was required, before calling the saintly sainted. Their early surnames were the place from which they came or their father's first name or their occupation. Records remain in France to document Joan of Arc's honest court testimony, burned at the stake because of her honesty, by officials of her own church.

John Wycliff's death at an English stake is of record. Burned for his emerging Protestantism, that martyr was not the first to write a bible in the vernacular, the people's tongue, merely was too early in doing it for England, not yet a tolerant place.

Previously, there had been a vernacular bible for the Goths, well-accepted by its "target audience". Its author was said to have refused to translate some testament stories of kings battling, as the Viking-like among the Goths were already too militaristic.

There had also been the "vulgate", by the professor called Saint Jerome. He combined dialects, took an average of the "vulgar", not meaning what it does now. It then meant commoner dialects that were merging and emerging, for example, Celtic with commoner Latin, and that were, in his era, beginning to turn in to French, Italian, Spanish and Romanian, etc, the set now called the Romance languages.

Neither of those translating authors, into Gothic or into vulgar Latin. was burned at the stake. Perhaps they were lucky not to be in old-time England when they wrote their new bibles?

Puritan ministers of the same era as the English Jesuits fled to America, some said, to avoid what happened to the Jesuits. The Jewish population, in the time of the Virgin Queen, was mostly required to leave England, if perfectly ordinary. They were allowed to stay only if they could help her financially, in some big, special way.

Thirteen years after Rev. Father Edmund's death by torture, the Puritan sorts saw their own persecution stop. Theirs stopped first, under Cromwell, 1641. Catholics were not "emancipated" in England until much, much later, 1826, too late to help Rev. Armstrong.

People of Jewish faith, who had once sought safety in Vienna and Germany and Poland, were perhaps the last to be restored in England. They would be fully re-welcomed later, especially when fleeing Hitler in the 1940s.

ARROWSMITH'S CRIME. What caused someone to turn him in? He had held masses and rendered services that rich and poor would have attended together for maybe five years (often at Arrowsmith Hall in Hoghton, near Preston? or at whatever hall in Ashton was currently occupied by his mother's Gerards? The meeting places often lumped together as "Bryn Hall", though not all had had that name?)

No one reported him for a long time.

Even in a courtroom, testimonies vary. A listener looks for their common threads. All stories of his accusers involve a man named Holden. The stories all involve Holden wanting to marry. They all involve his not being willing to follow rules, to wait a bit, to make a sacrifice, rather than indulging himself immediately.

The story closest to all of these points says that Holden was a Catholic man living with a Protestant woman. They wished to be married/remarried as Catholic, so requested that Fr. Arrowsmith take their vows. The priest asked that they first wait two weeks and live apart in that time. This matched the Puritan custom (seen once they populated the towns around Boston), of stating intentions first, often a month before allowing the actual marriage. In Arrowsmith's case, having to wait angered the couple.

A different story said that the highly-born Holden man wished to marry his first cousin's granddaughter. Since Mr. Holden's parents had also been first cousins, Fr. Arrowsmith thought any children would be too closely related. He, thus, refused to marry them. If the couple disagreed, they could appeal by going over his head religiously, inside his church's hierarchy and court system, to see if the higher-ups would over-rule Rev. Arrowsmith. At that point, not wanting to wait for another ruling, Mr. Holden became angry and turned Protestant, in order to be married quickly. (The story did not say what variety of Protestant was chosen.)

In both stories, the man was named Robert Holden. In both stories, he and his beloveds were not willing to "turn the other cheek", but turned spiteful. They turned Father Arrowsmith in to authorities. (The couple would have known very well that his punishment, if convicted, on even petty charges, would be a horrid death, Braveheart style, given he was a Jesuit. Such executions were done as public spectacles, outdoors, in a town square. Never a secret, the point of public display was to create terror, instill fear.)

One of the officers ordered to capture the clergyman must have been sympathetic, so warned him ahead of the chase. Edmund tried to leave the area.

The historical society of one of the towns where he served has searched records and found the location of his capture. He tried to jump his horse over a stream at Brindle Moss, but was caught when the horse balked. They have some details about his family (BrindleHistoricalSociety.org.uk).

His biographers include some inside his own religion. They have access to records that describe his education, his mission in Lancashire, and so on. (There's a book by Fr. John Hogan at CTSbooks.org. See also a short bio at jesuit.org.uk.)

If trying to research Robert Holden, it's harder. There were many neighbors named Holden. Perhaps not all were of the same male DNA. (There are/were multiple places called Holden. A man and his servant could both call themselves "of Holden", shortened to Holden, after leaving that place. )

DEATH. Edmund's death was barbaric.

Pieces of his body were cut off or cut out, most done while he was still conscious, before the final step, that making death final by decapitation. The parts were burnt or boiled. (Were the first pieces done in front of him, while conscious? Stories vary; either method would remove meat from bone and prevent odors. Odor prevention was needed, as no normal burial was allowed the victim.)

The goal was then for officials to distribute parts of the accused to different places, to prevent relatives from recovering their loved one's body. A letter from a man named Holme, quoted in a different source, described how Edmund's distribution went awry. His relatives managed to recover his hand. They would rather have buried his whole body, but that grace and mercy were not permitted.

The hand had a hidden advantage. It was easy to move, easy to hide. later on.

Different private chapels held family tombs, given that recusant Catholics and, later, illegal Catholics, might not be allowed a public burial in their town's cemetery. The first chapel to house his hand was at Bryn Hall, of the Gerards, so on his mother's side.

The larger remains of Hannah Szenes were last moved to a place symbolic for Zionists, to Israel. Father Arrowsmith's tiny part was last removed to St. Oswald's Church, also symbolic. Descendants of his mother's family, the Gerards of Bryn, with their neighbors, built and then attended that church, located at Ashton-in-Makerfield, where some had always been.

(HISTORY NOTE: Some Gerards in his era gave up their family's long-cherished religion in order to be eligible for a lord's privileges, causing "Sir" in front of their name, with a listing in "Peerage" books . Hopefully, they were tolerant of those who stayed unprivileged, let them keep "their father's God". Part of the family kept its wealth in almost modern times, to benefit in the late 1700s, by having a canal go through and by discovering coal on their land.

THE NUMBER FORTY. How long did each set of Martyrs last? The persecuted Protestant and Jewish and Jesuits groups will have different dates.

Is there a list of Hanna Szenes' almost forty parachutists? Fr. Arrowsmith, sometimes shown with SJ appended, for Society of Jesus, is on a list of forty or so Catholic priests martyred horribly, in the name of English royals who were harsher then, not the nice people we see today. There is a broader list with non-clergy. Some Catholic women were killed in horrid ways, but only two, as the royals of England saved the worst deaths for Catholic men.

AFTER EDMUND. Out of bad things, good may come? But, not right away?

In the decade after Arrowsmith's death, a relative inside his mother's family of Gerards was said to make his way to Maryland. He was there to help Lord Cecil Calvert set-up a colony offering religious freedom. The King's Church (Anglicans) would be the majority religion still, but not the only religion. That relative, named Molyneaux, returned to England. However, other Molyneaux relatives would be found in Maryland and nearby Virginia soon after.

One hundred and fifty years after the death of Edmund Bryan, writers of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights included the right to stay silent. They forbade takings without compensation. They began to separate church from state, though Massachusetts, its former Bay colony, settled by Puritans, then one of the original thirteen states, would not forbid towns from subsidizing favored churches until the 1820s.

Two hundred years after Edmund's death, England stopped the mis-labeling of petty offenses as "high treason". This was accomplished by the "Offences against the Person Act of 1828".

Two hundred and fifty years after his cruel and unusual punishment, Britain forever forbade anyone being drawn, hanged and quartered for any reason. Although officials had quit its actual use earlier, the official step in making the change a lasting one was the "Forfeiture Act of 1870". Its authors also stopped the forfeiting of family land and residence that impoverished the accused's family. (Source: Wikipedia, "Hanged, Drawn, and Quartered", mentioning Acts of 1820 and 1870, and more.)

FILLING IN THE BLANKS: The Gerards' relationships, their dates of involvement inside Ashton through the 1820s, a letter in the 1600s by a Mr. Holme to a Mr. Metcalf about Arrowsmith's body parts, and a pamphlet in the 1700s, proposing a miracle for a 12-year old boy, were covered in modern language, in a paper of 2013, by David W. Atherton and Michael P. Payton, called "Faith and Martyrdom: The Holy Hand of Saint Edmund Arrowsmith".

They had multiple old sources. The two earliest cited actual legal records still existing two to three centuries ago. These investigations were:
1741 "Memoirs of Missionary Priests and other Catholics of Both Sexes that have Suffered Death in England on Religious Accounts. Vol. 2", Bishop Challoner

1737 "A True and Exact Relation of the Death of Two Catholicks who Suffered for their Religion at Summer Assizes, held at Lancaster in the Year 1628", by Father Cornelius Murphy. When the Jesuits able to serve hidden congregations had slowed to a trickle, Murphy was perhaps among the last Jesuits to serve the Brindle area where Arrowsmith had been captured a century earlier.

Murphy's book was in 1737, not long after the 1734 conversion, into a workhouse, of a confiscated home and private chapel in Brindle thought to be owned, but then deserted, out of fear, by one of the Gerards, after the "Stuart UpRising" of 1715. (Source said to be " Forfeited Estates Papers", Gerard spelled as Gerrard, cited in "Red Letter Men of Brindle" at monlib.org.uk, written circa 1946 by "Abbot Bede Turner" of Ampleforth. The Abbot's mother "was born a Waring in Denham Hall near Brindle in 1825". He was said to write from memory, so rarely gave sources. An example of his style, "Judge Yelverton was out for blood. He had boasted in London that he was not afraid to hang a priest.")

SMALL MIRACLES. Some believe in miracles. Some do not. There was little science centuries ago. No one used the term "psychosomatic illness", because that term did not yet exist.

In 1739, a pamphlet describing Edmund's history told another story, of a twelve year old who lived in Widnes, with recent medical problems, unable to stand. The issues of this Thomas Hawarden disappeared after his mother successfully pleaded that Edmund's saved hand be brought to their house, the story among the evidence that the whereabouts of the part stayed known by locals. The pamphlet said neighbors, including some Protestants, were witnesses tot eh boy's quick recovery.

Those not believing in minor miracles can, upon seeing the hand, have a different benefit. They can remember the sacrifices made by too many traveling the early road to the major miracle of later religious freedom.

THE END OF EDMUND'S STORY, THE 1930s.
More from Atherton and Parker--

"In 1932, the then parish priest of St. Oswald's, James O'Meara, wrote to the Archbishop of Liverpool, asking him to authenticate the relic."

In 1934, Archbishop Downey, Catholic, gave reluctant approval for showing the hand to the public. He said that "There is no existing documentary evidence of the authenticity of this relic". (Note that DNA testing did not yet exist.)

However, Downey added that he had to respect the fact that the local congregation had always and consistently maintained that the hand existed, that the hand was of Rev. Arrowsmith.

HOLME'S LETTER, BODY PARTS. Documenting a chain of possession began with a macabre testimonial letter from a Henry Holme, signed by two witnesses, addressed to Mr. Thomas Metcalfe. It was very old, dated November 5, 1629.

Mr. Holme claimed to have obtained the hair and some ribs of victim Arrowsmith, with other requested parts, "and I sewed it up with my own hands, and so did deliver it to my daughter, who brought it to you, which you did acknowledge at your coming up to the Castle".

He re-asserted the parts "were the relics of Mr. Arrowsmith who was executed here at Lancaster the 25(8) of August, 1628, upon the statute of persuasions. I did deliver this to you in July, 1629……."

The notary-like signatures of witnesses indicated the person testifying in 1629, almost a year after the death and delivery of parts in 1628, was indeed Mr. Holme. The letter cited two more, earlier witnesses, who saw Holme's taking of the parts in 1628, one a man Holme describes as a jail-keeper; the other, John Southworth. We recognize Southworth as another prisoner, also educated at Douai, condemned to death in 1627, but taken out of Lancaster and released to the French ambassador in 1630. Southworth would still be martyred, but in a later year, 1640, when he was recaptured back in England and pled guilty to the crime of being a priest.

The opportunity to take the parts arose, how? Holme said those "distributing" the parts had been first sent elsewhere, briefly, asked to take two of the body's four quarters up to the Judge who had ordered the execution.

The letter was quoted verbatim in the book by Cornelius Murphy, written a century after Arrowsmith's death. Older records and other sources could still be found at Lancaster when Murphy wrote. Hence, numbers such as the "(8)" above would refer to a book footnote citing some specific older record or source.

The Judge was described elsewhere as a Puritan. It's not known how many Puritans approved of his actions. However, the better Puritans "voted with their feet", going to Winthop's and Saltonstall's settlements in the America's, before the same was done to their ministers.

Was the Judge, in ordering Edmund's execution, trying to convince the long ago ruling royals that the Judge was loyal to an extreme? "Please ignore my non-conforming religion, as look at the awful things I've done for you." The oddity? Now the King was Catholic, so why would he be pleased? Catholic in name only?

Not all Puritans were like the torture-ordering Judge.

The Lancaster area supposedly had many Puritans. Importantly, those in charge had a hard time finding someone in the area, anyone, willing to work as the Jesuit's executioner.

OBJECTIONS. After seeing a copy of the letter of testimony from Homes, we'd expect the Bishop's objections to have been two. Arrowsmith's hand is never mentioned specifically as the delivered part. Nor is it said, for which client of Metcalfe, the parts had been requested. An unbroken possession of the stated body part by one chain of command could not be guaranteed.

The location of the "congregation-in-hiding", the fellow Catholics left behind at the Gerards' Ashton, had shifted over time. After Edmund's death, by their long-accepted rules, with no priest, they could have prayers done by the congregation or by their deacons, hinting how later denominations began. No full Mass was possible, with all of its parts, the priest's parts, until a priest was again available. When a priest was available, they could hear Mass at "Bryn" (meaning any of the Ashton places where the Gerards could house a forbidden priest).

The hand could be..
*at Bryn proper (the original Gerard place)
*at the newer "family seat" of the Gerards (the several halls used by them, all inside their Ashton), then
*at the nearby site of St. Oswald (set up by one of the men called Sir William Gerard, in 1822, after Catholics became legal again).

Would the hidden client of Metcalf would have been the Gerards? With both motive and opportunity?

OPPORTUNITY- They had the money to pay for the services of him and Holme, plus "hush money" if needed, for the jailer, not necessarily secretive, unless he were also a Catholic-in-hiding.

MOTIVE- They had loved Edmund's mother, Margery, their close relative. They had appreciated Edmund's years of risking his life, so they could have the same church services as their grandparents. They needed someone like Mr. Metcalf to keep their names hidden , as they had already been punished too much.

Some say the hand was delivered to Edmund Bryan's mother.

What did the Bishop reject? Legal chain of command. However, the bones collected were both the right ones, people believed and argued, as always under guard, always seen in the correct places, at the needed times.

What did the Bishop accept? Consistency. That the congregation caring for the body part had always, consistently, since the beginning, maintained both that it was Arrowsmith's hand and also that they had had continuous possession of it, others speculating or knowing its storage spot had been a shelf in a Gerard tomb.

The following is in progress, may be cut later
CENOTAPH, OR TRUE BURIAL? The situation was similar to that of the bones of US Civil War soldiers, when gathered up some months after their deaths in battle on enemy land, with too much flesh, any ability to id remains gone. Were all the bones gathered up? Or, did some remain, behind a rock, under a fallen tree? Had dogs or bears or wolves run off with too much, while the still-living troops stayed away?

Sometimes bones were gathered later from well-rotted battle detritus. Had any bones from "the wrong side" been mixed in? Had all been gathered? How would you know?

People hoped the gathered bones of loved ones were reburied at a National Cemetery. For an unknown number, maybe a majority at memorials without individuals' names, bones were not, could not be gathered. Those are the cenotaphs, the bodiless graves.

ZION'S HISTORY AFTER HANNAH. Zionists favored creation of an Israeli state, in order to ensure religious freedom for Jews. By itself, that was a noble goal.

The problem? The land was popularly viewed as "only a desert", a stereotype, so mis-viewed as "empty". The land taken by the British for the promised Zion was not empty, but long-held by roaming tribes, who rotated their herds across its varied spots to keep them watered and fed, oasis to oasis, market town to market town. People felt it was possible to co-ordinate, achieve a balance?

Then, something changed. More and more of the Jewish faith moving to Israel came from other parts of the Middle East, not from "the diaspora", not from the parts of Europe where Jewish suffering had been so great, so they truly understood persecution. Too many incoming Middle Easterners never experienced the Nazis forcing removal from homes, a confiscation of their property. They never experienced rides in cattle cars to camps, deaths in large numbers by gas or starvation or medical torture, in the Nazi camps.

As Israel's Zionist population mix changed, those with empathy for what was being done to the Palestinians thus shrank. With each new Israeli expansion, the death ratio was repeatedly lop-sided, as many as five Palestinians typically killed per Israeli death. That "over-kill" reportedly has endured? Each time modern Israel expands its borders, conflict and killings predictably escalates? We have a feeling Hannah Senesh might not have approved?

A third, later, set of emigrants came as a group to Israel, less damaging. They were more like the early-arriving European Jews, with a memory of purges. They came more out of Slavic rule (Russian, Ukrainian, etc). More educated than the Middle Eastern influx, they were accordingly more capable of making a living in a city. They, thus, had less need to confiscate others' farms or orchard land out in Palestine's countryside.

Yet, the problem of excessive rural takings, due to the victimized being the wrong religion (not-Jewish), persists.

THE CALVERTS IN MARYLAND, AS EDMUND BRYAN DIED. Steps toward England's modern religious freedom began out in the American colonies. Which relative of Edmund's first tested Maryland, after Edmund's death? The first Richard to Maryland was a brother to the third Baronet called Sir William Molyneux (noted by local historian circa 1900 , in a book kept at a library built by American Andrew Carnegie). It's a topic hard to research, as the British generally did not yet use middle names to avoid mistaken identities.

Was he Richard Molyneaux, grandson of Cecily and baronet Sir Thomas Gerard, the one who married a Gerard (Frances Gerard, daughter of Gilbert Gerard)? He was said to be in Maryland 1634-1635. He returned to England, but other people named Molyneaux would be found in Maryland shortly, as the area settled later.

Leonard Calvert would become the first British governor of the new Maryland colony. His brother Cecil Calvert was the first "Lord Proprietor" (like the CEO of a corporation), so also involved in Maryland's start. One of Cecil Calvert's financiers was clearly from Edmund's mother's side, a Sir Thomas Gerard of Bryn, but not clear which Thomas Gerard, in which generation.

A different relative, a Dr. Thomas Gerard, arrived in Chesapeake Bay in 1638. Eventually owning land in both Virginia and Maryland, he quickly served as a juryman and burgess. Two decades later, involved in Fendall's Rebellion, the doctor was at first banished, but then forgiven, on condition of paying a fine in tobacco to the current Lord Proprietor and not holding office again. Said to begin with a tract of 1000 acres and to end owning 16,000, the doctor was heavily involved in setting up a manorial system, not a good thing, if it began with indentures, shifted to slavery.

GEORGE CALVERT. More remarkable was Cecil Calvert's father, George Calvert, born in Edmund Arrowsmith's generation. He saw the need for a place where both Protestants and Catholics could live together, without interference, then made it happen, twice.

Previously, George Calvert had asked King Charles I for a grant of land in the Chesapeake Bay region. That was in progress by 1632, when Cecil's father, George, died. George Calvert also bought a small interest in a second land company in Virginia in 1609, dated after the fiasco at Jamestown in 1607.

Perhaps informed by whatever caused Calvert's early ownership in Virginia, one Molyneux whose name is known went there, the Jane Molineux/Molyneux who married a Thomas Farley in Nov. 1622, in the Worcester area of Britain. A Thomas and Jane Farley were then named on the ship list of Anne/Ann, arriving with a servant in the James City area of Virginia, in Feb., 1623. (The places were so-named, as they honored royals, King James for the county-like city, and Elizabeth the Virgin Queen, one old meaning of virgin merely being unmarried, with chasteness possible, but not required. ) The Farleys' plantation was in censuses naming Archer's Hope as a separate place. A tree written by her and Thomas' true direct descendants, who ended in West Virginia, cites her Molineux cousins in Maryland.

King James, father to Charles, still lived. George Calvert resigned a bit earlier, in Feb., 1625, from his royal positions as Lord and Secretary of State and as a supervisor of fisheries. He had just received a negative reaction by encouraging James' son Charles to marry a Spanish princess. Due to the two large countries' failures to separate church and state, her countrymen might have been equally displeased by Britain's forced Protestantism, as the British were by the forced Catholicism in the country of the princess.

It was only five years after Calvert's buying of land in Newfoundland, Canada. He had planned ahead. (He had put in a fishery and sent settlers there, causing a place near his land's southern tip to now be called Calvert.)

Calvert resigned his posts, declaring immediately afterward that he was becoming openly Catholic. If he hadn't resigned, British laws would have reduced his rights anyway. King James may have been grateful to be told personally, early, not by a Sheriff seeking escaping Calverts.

Recall that 1625 was the year that Edmund Arrowsmith took a deeper step into clergy-work and joined the Jesuits. Both men, Calvert and Arrowsmith, thus "took a stand", at around the same time, as King James' death drew nearer. {Some dates may be wrong. In progress is a rechecking of Maryland and Calvert dates, relative to the death of King James.]

Why was George Calvert not punished for his open Catholicism, not given a prison sentence? Was a coming change of kings believed to benefit him? There is some history of "royal favorites" excused from religious requirements. William Shakespeare's parents were Catholics, yet the Virgin Queen favored him, attended his plays.

Some Jewish people were exempted from harsher controls by others against their Judaic faith. Some historians of cities say that, forbidden from owning land, European Jews were perhaps the first ethnic group to become totally urban, with all the occupational and, then, the educational advantages, that would mean later on, some rising to be bankers and financiers. (Jewish townspeople were first brought in to England as permanent settlers by the Normans. They came as business people, not as the usual mix of farmers and military cannon fodder and servants. Several centuries later, their families were ordered to leave England under the "Edict of Expulsion" of 1290. It was not clear that all did so. Some were officially re-invited back in, by Oliver Cromwell, some centuries later. )

In James' case of favoring Catholic George Calvert, historians say also that James' mother, Mary Stuart, had been Catholic. When James, her first and only child, was only 13 months old, her son was already half-orphaned by his father dying in the family garden, after an explosion. His mother would be accused and imprisoned by Protestant lords, with vile things said to justify that. Her quick remarriage after his father's death did nothing to protect her from the imprisonment, only caused more vile things to be said. (Reportedly helping to send great-uncle Sir Thomas Gerard to prison was his arguing in defense of the reputation of James' mother Mary. )

Lessons had been learned by Henry's daughters watching Henry VIII convince others to rid him of a string of wives. (Read the apocryphal book of Susannah to see where Henry might have discovered the strategy to use. Did his fans drop Susannah's story from the bible because it revealed too much?)

James' mother had previously asked her queenly cousin Elizabeth Tudor to be the baby's godmother, to which the queen had said yes. This was apparently reluctantly, as she did not appear for the baptism. To further please Elizabeth, his mother then abdicated her Scottish crown, causing a mere baby to be named King of Scotland. That did not stop her cousin's jealousy, as James' mother would be put in the Tower of London for life, while her son was reared in a faith not his parents'.

His mother's imprisonment caused James to have no half-siblings. Closer relatives rearing him would die, leaving a powerful Protestant in-law in charge. James was reared essentially as a Presbyterian, helping to make that the official religion of Scotland, the Scotch-Irish church to be Presbyterian in northern Ireland.

In the late teens of James, his long-imprisoned mother would be executed by the order of her queenly cousin. Elizabeth told the public that Mary Stuart wanted the English crown, so had plotted against Elizabeth. Was this strategy picked up from her father Henry the VIII, witnessed by her, as he convinced others to eliminate both Elizabeth's mother and then her favorite stepmother, from among his string of wives?

In private, did she fear that the imprisoned Mary Stuart would exact revenge for her years without more children, that her prisoner had never forgotten the knife held to her belly by extremist Protestants when pregnant with James, had not forgotten the deliberate estrangement. Did Elizabeth exact revenge for her own childlessness by not attending the baptism of James? Speculations abound.

Would a lesson for James have been that he needed to marry an unusual kind of Protestant, from elsewhere, so the queenly cousin would not be jealous, kill her too? He married Anne of Denmark. That place's combining of state with church made her Lutheran. She could find no Lutheran troops in Scotland and England to support her and take the crown away from Elizabeth, would she? He couldn't know Anne of Denmark would later defy them all, by turning Catholic.

Maybe James had forgotten his mother in the tower and her execution. Maybe not. Maybe he forgot his wife? Maybe not.

James clearly wanted his son Charles to inherit the throne, having written a book on this idea, that God desired bloodline kings to rule, regardless of their faith ("the divine right of kings"). Did "divine right" remind anyone of the rules of former Viking invaders, that their gods picked rulers by choosing the victors in battle? Allowing successful kills a sign of "the gods' approval"?

For George Calvert, he might have been one Catholic that James dared to favor in 1625, if hoping not to "stir up" the Protestants who had "done in" his mother. He might hope that they would allow Anne of Denmark's son by him, Catholic-raised by Anne, not Protestant James, to reign as Charles I.

King James found a loophole for Calvert. It was not big enough to benefit all English Catholics. It did not save Edmund Arrowsmith. He granted Calvert some land and a Lordship, not in Britain itself, as the land would only be confiscated if granted to a Catholic. He chose a colony, specifically, Ireland. Calvert could again be called Lord, again be designated a "Baron", and again receive a lordly income by renting out a lord's large quantity of land, but, this time, outside Britain proper.

George Calvert's settlers founded the first town to be called Baltimore, in Ireland, ahead of Baltimore, Maryland. George Calvert would sell and leave Ireland later, to go to his fishery in Newfoundland, moving a big household. Was it 40 people by then?

The year of George Calvert's leaving Ireland was 1628, the year Edmund Arrowsmith was martyred. The execution was too close-by? In the name of James's son, but with the condemning Judge not necessarily favoring James' Catholic son, Charles I.

Cromwell's army would, soon enough, dispossess too many in Ireland. His officials and soldiers would confiscate considerable land there, just as certain Tudors had done previously in Britain. Britain's first and too-short experiment with democracy under Cromwell would fail, as his era's version of democracy included too few rights, too little "balance of powers", nothing to stop a majority from victimizing a minority. It took considerable experimenting to achieve the "balance of powers" needed, Napoleon in France in the early 1800s not doing things right either.

George Calvert would do something brave two more times. First, he wrote religious tolerance into the charter of his Newfoundland fishing colony. A biography for him by historians at Wiki says it was called Avalon, after the legendary place in Britain where Christianity had been introduced. However, two things went awry in Canada. First, he found the Newfoundland seacoast too frozen for fishing. Second, fish demand and fishing income were in sharp decline (some said, to a sixth of former levels).

George Calvert asked the next ruling king, James' son, Charles I, for some place warmer.

George Calvert received permission, and next took his big household to the Chesapeake Bay area (future Maryland and Virginia), doing so in 1629. George died in 1632, but had already written a charter for future Maryland, to guarantee religious tolerance there as well.

All three men, King James, then Edmund Arrowsmith, then George Calvert, died before King James' son, Charles I, could make the land grant in future Maryland final. That would happen later, locking in religious rights for Calvert's sons and others needing religious freedom.

Paperwork archived at Georgetown Univ. in DC (library.georgetown.edu) shows a grant made by Lord Baltimore (Charles Calvert), to Stephen Mankinds in 1688, to create St Thomas Manor, which existed until 1961. Pieces changed hands, with a James Grey conveying some to Richard Molyneux SJ, a Jesuit, on 12/20/1743, that Molyneux said elsewhere deceased by 1767, pre-Revolution. The next, Jesuit Robert Molyneux, was active at Georgetown when still a college and wrote a first catechism while in Baltimore.

The Arrowsmith name as Catholic lived on for a time in Preston. A Robert Arrowsmith, banker, discussed in his will an allotment for sons who became priests. He was on record public life recommending that and others among the well-to-do try to do better for England's poor, with a positive response.


TIMELINE
As of this writing, details and links to Maryland sources are at MDroots.thinkport.org, a teaching tool authorized by the Government of Maryland. The author of the Calvert material is Maryland Public Television, which runs thinkport.org to benefit teachers.) ∼"Born 1585 at Haydock, England as Brian Arrowsmith; preferred his confirmation name of Edmund.

Son of the farmer Robert Arrowsmith and Margery Gerard Arrowsmith.

Entered Douai College in 1605, he was forced to quit due to ill health.
Ordained in France in 1611.

Worked among beleaguered English Catholics in Lancashire for 15 years.
Even in these oppressive times he was known for his pleasant disposition, sincerity, and energy.

Edmund was arrested in 1622 for his faith.

Edmund was unexpectedly freed by a pardon issued by King James I.
After making the Spiritual Exercises, Edmund entered the Jesuits in 1623, and returned to Lancashire for the remaining five years of his life.

Betrayed by the son of the landlord of the Blue Anchor Inn in south Lancashire, he was arrested by priest hunters, and imprisoned for his vocation.

Died martyred on 28 August 1628 by hanging, drawing and quartering at Lancaster, England; his hand is preserved as a relic in Saint Oswald's Church, Ashton-in-Makerfield, England

Canonized in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales"