Everything about Margaret Clitherow totally explained
Saint Margaret Clitherow (
1556 –
1586) is an English
saint and
martyr of the
Roman Catholic Church. She is sometimes called "the Pearl of
York".
Life
She was born as
Margaret Middleton, the daughter of a wax-
chandler, after
Henry VIII of England had split the
Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. She married John Clitherow, a butcher, in
1571 (at the age of 15) and bore him two children. She converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 18, in
1574. She then became a friend of the persecuted Roman Catholic population in the north of
England. Her son, Henry, went to
Reims to train as a
Catholic priest. She regularly held Masses in her home in the
Shambles in
York. There was a hole cut between the attics of her house and the house next door, so that a priest could escape if there was a raid. A house in the Shambles once thought to have been her home, now called the
Shrine of the Saint Margaret Clitherow, is open to the public (it is served by the nearby Church of
St Wilfrid's and is part of the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Middlesbrough); her actual house (10 and 11, the Shambles) is further down the street.
Martyrdom
In 1586, she was arrested and called before the York
assizes for the crime of harbouring Roman Catholic
priests. She refused to plead to the case so as to prevent a trial that would entail her children being made to testify, and she was executed by being
crushed to death – the standard punishment for refusal to plead. On
Good Friday of 1586, she was laid out upon a sharp rock, and a door was put on top of her and loaded with an immense weight of rocks and stones. Death occurred within fifteen minutes.
Canonization
She was
canonized in
1970 by
Pope Paul VI along with other martyrs from England and
Wales. The group of candidates canonized at that time is commonly called "The
Forty Martyrs of England and Wales". Her
feast day in the current Roman Catholic calendar is
March 26.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Margaret Clitherow'.
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