The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England

by Peter Lake, Michael Questier

New biography of a Catholic martyr exploring the complicated and controversial story of her demise.>

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Leanda Lisle · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her York prison Margaret Clitherow practised for her execution. She stripped naked and put on a crude linen shift she had made, unstitched at the sides. Then she lay flat on the stones. The next day, March 25th, 1586, she lay down again, this time with weights laid over her, and was crushed to death. In 1970 the Catholic Church declared her a saint. But as Peter Lake and Michael Questier reveal, her fate was not only a consequence of Protestant persecution, but of a bitter ideological war between Catholics.

The arrival of Mary Stuart in England in 1568 had prompted a Catholic revival in the north. The hope was that the Mary would succeed Elizabeth. In the meantime the question for Catholics was to what extent they should defy the state in practising their faith. In particular, should they attend Protestant services, as required by law, or not? One Catholic priest, Thomas Bell, suggested Catholics attend Protestant services, but announce they did so, not out of any liking for the service, but as a demonstration of their loyalty to the Queen. Other priests feared that even this level of compromise would end in the acceptance of heresy. They preached separatism, with Catholics enduring the fines and imprisonment that followed.

The laity often simply switched position from recusancy to so called ‘church papistry’, depending on the intensity of the persecution and their personal difficulties at any one time. But here too there were those who took a harder line. Clitherow was one such. She had converted to Catholicism two or three years after her marriage to a York butcher in 1571. He remained Protestant while she fitted her duties as a wife, mother, and the manager of his shop, around her religious work and devotions. She turned her home into a mass centre, went out to visit Catholic prisoners, and urged others to do as she did. Her husband complained drunkenly about her enthusiasms, and even Catholics felt rather sorry for him. But others were also angered by her actions. Eventually the regime, under the Lord President of the North, the Earl of Huntingdon, decided to publicly shame this dissident voice.

The chief instigator of Clitherow’s arrest appears to have been her own stepfather, Henry May, who became mayor of York shortly before her trial. He wanted to produce enough evidence to bring her to heel, but not enough to make her a martyr. In the event the only real evidence against her came from a child witness. She was told they would not hang her on a boy’s word. All she had to do was make some public act of compliance. But May’s hopes for a show trial were dashed when Clitherow refused to plead. The punishment for this was the medieval sanction peine forte et dure. Desperate attempts were made to save her from this fate. Four women, asked to examine her, insisted she was pregnant. But some local worthies wanted her dead, pregnant or not. They got their way. Her ribs burst through her skin as she died slowly crushed under eight hundred weight, with a stone at her back.

On March 25th this year over seven hundred Catholics heard a Latin Mass held in Clitherow’s honour at York Minister, the first since the reformation. But Clitherow was in her life-time, and has remained, a controversial figure. Was she a saint or a suicide; a ferociously independent woman or the dupe of fanatics? Did she refuse to plead to ensure family and friends were not complicit in her death as witnesses and jurors? Or was it, as one historian has suggested, because she wanted to protect family property from confiscation? Peter Lake and Michael Questier certainly do not accept the latter. But nor do they simply reiterate more traditional views.

Taking a fresh look at the sources the authors place Clitherow’s life and death at the heart of local, national and international politics. There is fascinating material on the role of women in defying the persecution, and on contemporary works of propaganda such as Leicester’s Commonwealth (I had no idea a similar work was penned on Huntingdon). But the authors’ principal focus is the divisions between those priests who preached separatism and those who allowed a degree of church papistry. The issues at stake did not dissipate after Clitherow’s death, and the second part of the book describes how contemporaries understood her fate up to 1603. The real horror in this story unfolds here, for it lies is not in Clitherow’s death, awful as it was, but in the vicious squabbles to which underground groups are so subject. Priest betrays priest to terrible deaths at the hands of the state. Amongst them Bell, who eventually becomes a Protestant and thus ‘proves’ his old opponents correct in their claim that compromise was corrupting.

Lake and Questier argue that Clitherow refused to plead to deny the authorities a propaganda victory over defiant Catholics, and so as not to exacerbate Catholic divisions. She succeeded in the former but not the latter. This is an uncompromising book on an uncompromising woman, with little effort to dress up new, deeply researched arguments in the guise of a popular biography. But it seethes with passion: that of the men and women who killed and were killed, and of the authors in unearthing the murky realities behind the life and death of a Catholic icon.

an edited version of this review was published by the Literary Review

[Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

After visiting Margaret's house/shrine in York earlier this year I figured I should learn more about the woman herself. Her story is an interesting one but the execution of this book is rather dry and long winded.

[Jeanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent book not only about St. Margaret Clitherow, but the English Catholics and what they experienced via the Protestant church trying to force their conversion under threat of imprisonment, torture & death. 

It was very indepth & detailed about the life & amazing faith of this holy woman of God, wife, mother, businesswoman, & martyr as well as the religious persecution, political climate & mindset that all of the English Catholics dealt with & faced during that time in the church's history. I learned so much about this wonderful, inspiring woman.
We also see the strong, faithful Catholics who chose 'to obey the laws of God rather than the laws of men' (by not conforming, & giving in) vs. the Catholics who chose to coform for fear of the threats of persecution.

It listed source material & pictures , named many other English Catholics who also went through persecution & remained faithful;  who were imprisoned, tortured & martyred including priests who later also went on to become Saints.