St Margaret Clitherow – 25 March
By Catherine Sheehan
Among a collection of unfinished poems written by English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) that were discovered after his death was one titled “Margaret Clitheroe”.
Hopkins, a Jesuit priest and convert to the Catholic faith, was deeply moved and inspired by the story of this young Catholic woman, known as the “Pearl of York”, who had been martyred for her faith in the 16th century. She was cruelly executed by being crushed to death. His poem states,
Heaven turned its starlight eyes below
To the murder of Margaret Clitheroe.
She was a woman, upright, outright;
Her will was bent at God. For that
Word went she should be crushed out flat….
Born in Yorkshire, England, in 1556, Margaret lived through a time of fierce persecution of Catholics. Under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII, the practice of Catholicism was outlawed and adherence to the Church of England brutally enforced.
Margaret married John Clitherow in 1571 and together they had three children. She converted to Catholicism in 1574 and practiced the faith in secret. She was fined numerous times for not attending Church of England services and was imprisoned several times in York Castle. Her husband, a non-Catholic, supported his wife in her faith and willingly paid her fines.
Margaret put her own life in severe peril by hiding Catholic priests, mostly Jesuits, in her house and allowing the Catholic Mass to be celebrated there secretly.
In 1586 the Clitherow home was searched by authorities and a young boy, terrified for his own life, revealed to them the location of the “priest hole” where Margaret hid the priests. She was arrested but refused to plead her own case in order to prevent her children being forced to testify and possibly tortured. When asked if she wanted to confess she replied, “No, no, Mr. Sheriff, I die for the love of my Lord Jesu.”
Even though Margaret was pregnant with her fourth child, she was “pressed to death” on 25 March 1586. She was stripped naked, with a handkerchief tied over her face, and made to lie on top of sharp rocks. Her own door was then place on top of her, weighed down by heavy rocks. She died after fifteen minutes.
In his poem Hopkins writes,
When she felt the kill-weights crush
She told His name times-over three;
I suffer this she said for Thee.
After that in perfect hush
For a quarter of an hour or so
She was with the choke of woe. –
It is over, Margaret Clitheroe.
Margaret was canonised in 1970 among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. She is the patron saint of converts, martyrs, and the Catholic Women’s League.