By LouAnn Edwards
Book: St. Margaret Clitherow “The Pearl of York”
Wife, Mother, martyr for the Catholic Faith under Queen Elizabeth I by Margaret T. Monro
The story of St. Margaret Clitherow is a story that touched me in a way no other has. It wasn’t just about her bravery during the hideous, horrific way she was tortured and put to death. No, there was something more. Her cheerfulness and laughter weren’t just some act intended to throw off her tormentors—it was an integral part of who she was. She only answered to God in the end and she never took her eyes off HIm. Not once.
Margaret Clitherow was born on July 1, in 1571 in England. She came from a Protestant family but was one of the first converts of the missionary priests who were coming into the country from 1574 onward during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This occurred just after the Papal excommunication of Elizabeth. To be a Catholic in England in 1585 was a crime of treason and a felony.
Margaret married John Clitherow, a York butcher, who chose to remain a protestant but supported Margaret’s conversion and was careful to ignore the priests whom Margaret brought home to say Mass. Things were beginning to get worse for Catholics at that time and judges had spies everywhere to report on citizens’ activities. Margaret believed that nothing ought to be allowed to come before obedience to God. Her priest confidant, Father Marsh, assured her that anyone who obeyed wicked laws shared in the guilt of those who enacted them!!
The local council found out about the priests saying Mass in Margaret’s home and she was summoned before them. Instead of cowering in fear, Margaret was calm, merry and smiling. They immediately sent her to prison to be alone in a cell. After two days, Margaret was allowed a visitor, her good friend Ann. It was reported that the two carried on laughing about the broken cups and plates in the cell and the poor quality of the spoons they were given!
The day that Margaret was taken to trial there was a huge crowd in the streets. They were amazed to see her not only relaxed but joking! In court the charge against her was that she was guilty of “harboring Jesuits and seminary priests, traitors to the Queen” and that she had attended Mass. At that point, Margaret knew that nothing could save her life unless she agreed to their demands that she allow a trial and force her husband and children to testify during it. She refused.
Her sentence was announced. “You must return from whence you came, and there, in the lowest part of the prison be stripped naked, laid down, your back upon the ground and as much weight laid upon you as you are able to bear, and so to continue three days without meat or drink, and the third day to be pressed to death, your hands and feet tied to posts, and a sharp stone under your back.”
Margaret never let them win, quick witted and sharp to the end. Minutes before her execution began, she was ordered to pray for the Queen. Margaret obeyed by saying “I pray for Elizabeth, Queen of England that God turn her to the Catholic Faith!” As she was positioned over a sharp stone the size of a man’s fist, a door was laid over her. Four hired beggars began to lay the weights upon her and between seven and eight hundred pounds of weights came crashing down upon her. As she felt them, she said “Jesu! Jesu! Jesu! have mercy on me”.
St Margaret Clitherow died on March 25, 1586 and was canonized in 1970 as one of the forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Saint Margaret Clitherow pray for us!
