quis sui Ordinis sub Henrico VIII. martyrium subiit."1 The change of the name Greenwood to Green, is perhaps to be accounted for because the community already numbered one of the former name, that is, the lay-brother, William Greenwood.—ED.] 1 Van Ortroy, Vie de Fisher, pp. 41, 49, 126. Cf. Hendriks, pp. 223 and 228; Cooper, Athena Cantabrigienses, vol. i. p. 64. IX. THE BLESSED JOHN STONE, AUGUSTINIAN. Canterbury, 12 May, 1538. WHILST the ancient religion flourished in our land, the metropolitan city of Canterbury was, as might be expected, a place in which the various Regular Orders were desirous to establish houses of their institutes. The Benedictines had their great Abbey of St. Augustine, as well as the Cathedral Priory of Christ Church. The different Orders of Friars, the Carmelites, Dominicans and Franciscans, had likewise their own establishments, and amongst others the Augustinians, in their two branches of Canons Regular and Hermits or Friars, were settled there from an early date. The Canons held the Church of St. Gregory, from a period but little after the Norman Conquest, and the Friars had a home in the parish of St. George from the year 1325, in the reign of Edward II. The house had attained a certain celebrity as the convent of the learned John Capgrave, the writer of valued commentaries on various books of 1 Tanner, Notitia Monastica, pp. 210, 225. Holy Scripture and of the Lives of the Saints, so well known as the Nova Legenda. But a still greater honour to the house and to the Order, was that it should have been the religious home of the Blessed John Stone, one of the martyrs for the Faith under Henry VIII. It is well known how eager the King was to gain the sanction of learned men and of those esteemed highly by the nation to his unholy and schismatical projects. Wealth and honours were offered to those who complied. Those who resisted the tyrant's will were threatened with his terrible. vengeance. Similar preludes, according to the traditions of the Order, preceded the martyrdom of Blessed John Stone. We are told that he was a Doctor in Theology, in great repute for his learning and still more esteemed for the sanctity of his life, one of those, in a word, who, if he could have been won over to the unrighteous cause, would have greatly influenced public opinion in favour of the King's designs. What measures were taken to bring about this desired end, we are not told; but whether they were promises or threats or both, they signally failed to shake the constancy of the servant of God. The result was that he was thrown into prison, and as his execution was delayed till the later period of Henry's persecution, it is possible that his confinement lasted for several years. But, far from being daunted by this cruelty, we find that he added voluntary mortifications to his enforced sufferings. Nicholas Harpsfield, Archdeacon of Canterbury, in his work published under the name of Alan Cope,1 less than thirty years after the martyrdom of the holy friar, records an account he had heard from a most credible witness, an intimate friend of Stone's, of a preternatural occurrence which took place during the time of his imprisonment. "While he was yet in prison before his martyrdom, it happened that on one occasion, when he was offering his fervent prayers to God, after an uninterrupted fast of three days, he heard a voice, but without seeing the presence of any one, calling him by name and exhorting him to be of good courage and not to hesitate to suffer with constancy for the truth of the opinion which he had professed. The consequence of this heavenly message was, that the holy man thenceforth felt in himself such a renewal of force and alacrity, that no persuasions and no terrors could avail to disturb the resolution with which he maintained his devotion." The circumstances of the martyrdom have not reached us in detail; but a strange light has been thrown on the event by the recent publication of the Ninth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission.2 In the account-book of the City Chamberlain of Canterbury, we have the various charges, to which the Corporation was put, for the execution of the iniquitous sentence. We are told the cost of the timber for the 1 Alan Cope, Dialogi Sex. Antwerp, 1566. Dial. vi. p. 995. gallows, the wages of the carpenter, of the men who digged the holes and fixed the gallows, of the drink with which they refreshed themselves, and of the carriage of the gibbet from Stablegate to the Dongeon, now called Dane John, which was not the usual place of execution, but was in this case chosen for some reason unknown. Then come the hurdle, the horse to drag it, "two half-penny halters," the wood for the fire, the kettle in which the quarters. were to be parboiled, the hire of the men who were to take the quarters to the city gates, the women. to scour the kettle, and lastly, the executioner. In this matter-of-fact manner, as a question of shillings and pence, are mentioned the instruments, now to become sacred, by which this glorious martyrdom was to be consummated, and those holy limbs hereafter to be glorified in Heaven. Posuerunt morticina servorum tuorum, escas volatilibus cæli; carnes sanctorum tuorum, bestiis terræ.1 Carnes sanctorum tuorum, et sanguinem ipsorum effuderunt in circuitu Jerusalem, et non erat qui sepeliret2—" They have given the dead bodies of thy servants to be meat for the fowls of the air; the flesh of thy saints for the beasts of the earth." "The flesh of thy saints and the blood of them they have shed round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them." The date of this martyrdom has not been accurately determined. In the new Office the day is given as iv. Idus. Maii, i.e., the 12th of May, 1538. In some authors it is said to have taken place soon 1 Ps. lxxviii. 2. 2 I Mach. vii. 17. |