21 May 2020

Following in Christ’s footsteps
on the Day of Ascension

The Ascension Window in the North Transept (Jebb Chapel), Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Thursday 21 May 2020,

Ascension Day


The Readings: Acts 1: 1-11; Psalm 47; Ephesians 1: 15-23; Luke 24: 44-53.

There is a link to the readings HERE

Christ the Pantocrator in the dome of Saint George’s Church in Panormos, east of Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Our view of the universe, our understanding of the cosmos, shapes how we image and think of God’s place in it, within it, above it, or alongside it. And sometimes, the way past and outdated understandings of the universe were used to describe or explain the Ascension now make it difficult to talk about its significance and meaning to today’s scientific mind.

When we believed in a flat earth, it was easy to understand how Christ ascended into heaven, and how he then sat in the heavens, on a throne, on the right hand of the Father. But once we lost the notion of a flat earth as a way of explaining the world and the universe, we failed to adjust our images or approaches to the Ascension narrative. Ever since, intelligent people have been left asking silly questions:

When Christ went up through the clouds, how long did he keep going?

When did he stop?

And where?

Standing there gaping at the sky could make us some kind of navel-gazers, looking for explanations within the universe and for life, but not as we know it. In our day and age, the idea of Christ flying up into the sky and vanishing through the great blue yonder strikes us as fanciful.

Does Jesus peek over the edge of the cloud as he is whisked away like Aladdin on a magic carpet?

Is he beamed up as if by Scotty?

Does he clench his right fist and take off like Superman?

Like the disciples, would we have been left on the mountain top looking up at his bare feet as they became smaller and smaller and smaller?

But the concept of an ascension was not one that posed difficulties in Christ’s earthly days. It is part of the tradition that God’s most important prophets were lifted up from the Earth rather than perish in the earth with death and burial.

Elijah and Enoch ascended into heaven. Elijah was taken away on a fiery chariot. Philo of Alexandria wrote that Moses also ascended. The cloud that Christ is taken up in reminds us of the shechinah – the presence of God in the cloud, for example, in the story of Moses receiving the law (Exodus 24: 15-17), or with the presence of God in the Tabernacle on the way to the Promised Land (see Exodus 40: 34-38).

Saint Luke makes a clear connection between the ascension of Moses and Elijah and the Ascension of Christ, when he makes clear links between the Transfiguration and the Ascension. At the Transfiguration, he records, a cloud descends and covers the mountain, and Moses and Elijah – who have both ascended – are heard speaking with Jesus about ‘his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem’ (Luke 9: 30-31).

So, Saint Luke links all these elements as symbols as he tells this story. There is a direct connection between the Transfiguration, the Ascension and the Second Coming … the shechinah is the parousia. However, like the disciples in this reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we often fail to make these connections. We are still left looking up at the feet … an enigma posed by Salvador Dali over 60 years ago in his painting, The Ascension (1958).

Let us just think of those feet for a moment.

In the Epistle reading, the Apostle Paul tells the Ephesians that with the Ascension the Father ‘has put all things under [Christ’s] feet and has made him the head over all things’ (Ephesians 1: 22).

‘Under his feet’ … Salvador Dali’s painting of the Ascension, with its depiction of the Ascension from the disciples’ perspective, places the whole of creation under Christ’s feet. Of course, Isaiah 52: 7 tells us: ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns”.’

Feet are important to God. There are 229 references to feet in the Bible and another 100 for the word foot. When Moses stands before God on Mount Sinai, God tells him to take his sandals off his feet, for he is standing on ‘holy ground’ (Exodus 3: 5) – God calls for bare feet on the bare ground, God’s creation touching God’s creation.

Later, when the priests cross the Jordan into the Promised Land, carrying the ark of the Lord, the water stops when they put their feet down, and the people cross on dry land (Joshua 3: 12-17): walking in the footsteps of God, putting our feet where God wants us to, is taking the first steps in discipleship and towards the kingdom.

The disciples object when a woman washes and anoints Jesus’ feet and dries them with her hair, but he praises her faith (Luke 7: 36-50). On the night of his betrayal, the last and most important Christ Jesus does for his disciples is wash their feet (John 13: 3-12).

Footprints … many of us have learned off by heart or have a mug or a wall plaque with the words of the poem Footprints in the Sand. We long for a footprint of Jesus, an imprint that shows where he has been … and where we should be going. The place where the Ascension is said to have taken place is marked by a rock with what is claimed to be the footprint of Christ. And, as they continue gazing up, after his feet, the disciples are left wondering whether it is the time for the kingdom to come, are they too going to be raised up.

Yet it seems that the two men who stand in white robes beside them are reminding them Christ wants them not to stay there standing on their feet doing nothing, that he wants us to pay more attention to the footprints he left all over the Gospels. Christ’s feet took him to some surprising places – and he asks us to follow.

Can I see Christ’s footprints in the wilderness?

Can I see Christ walking on the wrong side of the street with the wrong sort of people?

Can I see Christ walking up to the tree, looking up at Zacchaeus in the branches (Luke 19: 1-10), and inviting him to eat with him?

Can I see his feet stumbling towards Calvary with a cross on his back, loving us to the very end?

Am I prepared to walk with him?

Since that first Ascension Day, the body of Christ is within us and among us and through us as the Church and as we go forth in his name, bearing that Good News as his ‘witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1: 8).

Meanwhile, we are reminded by the two men in white: ‘This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’ (Acts 1: 11). Between now and then we are to keep in mind that the same Jesus is ‘with [us] always, to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28: 20).

The disciples who are left below are left not to ponder on what they have seen, but to prepare for Pentecost and to go out into the world as the lived Pentecost, as Christ’s hands and feet in the world, leaving behind us the footprints of Christ.

Saint Paul paraphrases Isaiah when he says: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’ (Romans 10: 15). Our feet can look like Christ’s feet. Our feet can become his feet until he returns in glory once again (Acts 1: 11), when he returns exactly as he ascended. And we need to keep the tracks fresh so that others may follow us in word, deed, and sacrament, and follow him.

The disciples are sent back to Jerusalem not to be passive but to pray to God the Father and to wait for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In time, the Holy Spirit will empower them, and they will be Christ’s witnesses not just in Judea and Samaria, but to the ends of the earth fulfilling that commission in Saint Matthew’s Gospel.

The disciples who are left below are left not to ponder on what they have seen, but to prepare for Pentecost and to go out into the world as the lived Pentecost, as Christ’s hands and feet in the world.

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Salvador Dali: The Ascension (1958)

Acts 1: 1-11

1 In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning 2 until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 4 While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This’, he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’

6 So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ 7 He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ 9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’

The Ascension depicted in an the Roman Catholic Cathedral Tuam, Co Galway (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Liturgical Colour: White, or Gold.

The Greeting (from Easter Day until Pentecost):

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Penitential Kyries:

God our Father,
you exalted your Son to sit at your right hand.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Lord Jesus,
you are the way, the truth and the life.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Holy Spirit, Counsellor,
you are sent to be with us for ever.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Collect of the Day:

Grant, we pray, Almighty God,
that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ
to have ascended into the heavens;
so we in heart and mind may also ascend
and with him continually dwell;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Introduction to the Peace:

Jesus said, Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
I do not give to you as the world gives (John 14: 27, 28)

Preface:

Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who after he had risen from the dead ascended into heaven,
where he is seated at your right hand to intercede for us
and to prepare a place for us in glory:

Post Communion Prayer:

God our Father,
you have raised our humanity in Christ
and have fed us with the bread of heaven.
Mercifully grant that, nourished with such spiritual blessings,
we may set our hearts in the heavenly places;
where he now lives and reigns for ever.

Blessing:

Christ our exalted King
pour on you his abundant gifts
make you faithful and strong to do his will
that you may reign with him in glory:

Dismissal: (from Easter Day to Pentecost):

Go in the peace of the Risen Christ. Alleluia! Alleluia!
Thanks be to God. Alleluia! Alleluia!

The Ascension depicted in the East Window by Marion Grant (1951) in the Church of Saint George the Martyr, Southwark (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Hymns:

260, Christ is alive! Let Christians sing
259, Christ triumphant, ever reigning
634, Love divine, all loves excelling
693, Glory in the highest to the God of heaven

The Ascension (1885) … a window by Sir Edward Burne-Jones in the apse of Saint Philip's Cathedral, Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible Anglicised Version, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

The hymns suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

The Ascension depicted in a stained-glass window in Straffan Church, Co Kildare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Praying in Easter with USPG:
40, Thursday 21 May 2020,
Ascension Day

The Ascension depicted in frescoes in the dome inside the Daniel Pantanassa Church in the Ihlara Valley, Cappadocia, Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today, 40 days after Easter Day, is Ascension Day. I had hoped to celebrate the Ascension Eucharist later this morning in one of the four churches in the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes. But all our churches remain closed because of the restrictions imposed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, I am also continuing to use the USPG Prayer Diary, Pray with the World Church, for my morning prayers and reflections throughout this Season of Easter.

USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is the Anglican mission agency that partners churches and communities worldwide in God’s mission to enliven faith, strengthen relationships, unlock potential, and champion justice. It was founded in 1701.

Throughout this week (17 to 23 May 2020), the theme of the USPG Prayer Diary is ‘Ascension Day: Mystery and Infinity.’ The Rev’d Canon Richard Bartlett, Director of Mission Engagement at USPG, introduced this theme in the Prayer Diary on Sunday morning.

Thursday 21 May 2020 (Ascension Day):

Lord Jesus, may the mystery and wonder of your Ascension give us a fresh perspective in this time of uncertainty and worry.

The Readings:

Acts 1: 1-11 or Daniel 7: 9-14; Psalm 47 or Psalm 93; Ephesians 1: 15-23 or Acts 1: 1-11; Luke 24: 44-53.

The Collect of the Day:

Grant, we pray, Almighty God,
that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ
to have ascended into the heavens;
so we in heart and mind may also ascend
and with him continually dwell;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God our Father,
you have raised our humanity in Christ
and have fed us with the bread of heaven.
Mercifully grant that, nourished with such spiritual blessings,
we may set our hearts in the heavenly places;
where he now lives and reigns for ever.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Searching for the missing
gaps in the stories of
the Lichfield Martyrs

Lady Eleanor Davies was sent to Bedlam after she poured tar over the altar in Lichfield Cathedral, occupying the bishop’s throne and declaring herself the primate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Market Square in Lichfield, with its statues of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, has been the home for markets since King Stephen granted the first markets charter in 1153. It has also been the scene of many events in Lichfield’s history.

In the 1550s, during the reign of Queen Mary, Thomas Hayward, John Goreway and Joyce Lewis were burnt at the stake on the Square, and when Edward Wightman was burnt at the stake here in 1612 he was the last person to be executed in England in this way. George Fox, the founding Quaker, famously stood barefoot in the snow in the Market Square in 1651 and denounced the city: ‘Woe to the Bloody City of Lichfield.’

The plaques on the north side of Saint Mary’s Church, facing the square, commemorate Thomas Hayward and John Goreway, who were executed here in September 1555; Joyce Lewis of Mancetter, executed on 18 December 1557; Edmund Gennings, who was born Lichfield 1567, who disembowelled alive and executed in London 1591 for his Catholic beliefs and canonised in 1970; and Edward Wightman was burnt at the stake here in 1612.

It is surprising, given the form of execution of Hayward and Goreway, that we know so little about their biographical details, the beliefs that led to their executions, or even the precise date of their death.

John Foxe, who was consistently over-indulgent in his details of the lives and deaths of Puritan martyrs, offers little detail about Hayward and Goreway, except to say they were ‘two ignorant artificers’ who were condemned to death for ‘the confession of a good faith.’ He provides no specifics about their beliefs or the charges against them, but merely assures his readers that these two faced death with ‘great courage and constancy’ and that they ‘sealed their testimony with blood, praying and singing praises to God in the flames till they expired.’

But Foxe does not say where and when they were tried or who sentenced them. Nor, indeed, does he tell us on what day they were executed – or even if they died on the same day in September 1555.

A plaque at Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield, recalls the martyrdom of Joyce Lewis of Mancetter, Thomas Hayward and John Goreway (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

On the other hand, we know much more about three other martyrs commemorated in Lichfield: Joyce Glover, Edmund Gennings and Edward Wightman.

Joyce Lewis, also known as Jocasta Lewis, who was executed in Lichfield in 1557, was the only daughter of Thomas and Anne Curzon of Croxall in Staffordshire, and a granddaughter of Sir John Aston of Tixall. Her first husband was Sir George Appleby of Appleby, Leicestershire, and they were the parents of two sons.

Her husband died in 1547 at the Battle of Pinkie, and Joyce then married Thomas Lewis of Mancetter on 10 September 1547. Thomas Lewis had acquired part of the manor of Mancetter during the reign of Edward VI, and the family lived at the Manor Farm, south of the Manor House.

At the time, it is said, Joyce Lewis was a pious Catholic. However, according to John Foxe’s partisan accounts, she began to question her faith after Lawrence Saunders was burnt at the stake in Coventry on 8 February 1555.

Her decision to become a Protestant was also influenced by her neighbour, John Glover of Mancetter, a brother of Robert Glover who was executed in Coventry the same year. Her previously devout Catholicism was replaced by ‘irreverent behaviour in church.’

Her ‘irreverent behaviour’ was reported to the Bishop of Lichfield, Ralph Baines, who sent a citation which, it is said, Lewis forced the official to eat. The bishop then bound her husband to a sum of £100 to bring his wife to trial within a month, which he did in spite of pleading from her friends.

Joyce Lewis spent a year in jail in Lichfield before she was taken to be burnt at the stake in the Market Place, beside Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield, on 18 December 1557.

The plaque in Lichfield commemorating Edmund Gennings, born in Lichfield and executed in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Edmund Gennings (1567-1591) was born in Lichfield, possibly the son of John Gennings or Jennings, an innkeeper and bailiff, and was brought up a Protestant. At the age of 16, he became a page in the household of Richard Sherwood, a Catholic, and when Sherwood left England to become a priest, Edmund followed. He studied at the English College at Reims, and was ordained priest at the age of 23 in 1590.

Gennings returned to England after his ordination, under the assumed name of Ironmonger. He landed at Whitby and headed for Lichfield to seek out his family. There he found all his relatives were dead except one brother, John, who was born in Lichfield about 1570 but had left for London.

Edmund searched for his brother in London for a whole month, and found him just as he was about to give up his search. Far from winning over his brother to Catholicism, John pleaded with Edmund to leave, worried that he too would become suspect.

Gennings returned to France, but was back in London by 1591. However, his missionary career was brief. He and Polydore Plasden were seized by Richard Topcliffe and his officers while he was saying Mass in the house of Saint Swithun Wells at Gray’s Inn in London on 7 November 1591.

Gennings was hanged, drawn and quartered at Gray’s Inn Fields. His execution was particularly bloody. Topcliffe ordered the rope to be cut down when he was barely stunned from the hanging. It is said that as he was being disembowelled he said, Sancte Gregori ora pro me (‘Saint Gregory, pray for me’). Hearing this, the hangman swore, ‘Zounds! See, his heart is in my hand, and yet Gregory is in his mouth. O egregious Papist.’ Swithun Wells was hanged immediately afterwards.

Edmund Gennings was canonised as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970. His feast day, along with that of the other 39 martyrs, is on 25 October. A Roman Catholic in the New Invention area of Willenhall is dedicated to him as Saint Edmund Gennings.

Ten years after the martyrdom of Edmund Gennings, his brother John became a Roman Catholic. He entered Douai College was ordained priest in 1607. He was sent back to England as priest in 1608, and began to work for the restoration of the English province of Franciscans. He sought out Father William Staney, the Commissary of the English friars, and became a Franciscan in either 1610 or 1614 – the date is uncertain.

John Gennings also wrote a biography of Edmund Gennings, published in Saint-Omer in 1614. At the Franciscan convent Ypres in Flanders, he was joined by several English Franciscans, marking the beginning of a new English Franciscan province, of which he was ‘Vicar of England.’ He died at Douai on 12 November 1660.

The plaque in Lichfield recalling the execution of Edmund Wightman (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Edward Wightman (1566-1612) of Burton-on-Trent who was burnt to death in the Market Square, Lichfield, on 11 April 1612, was the last person in England to be burnt at the stake for heresy. But we know little about Edward Wightman, for little of his own words and none of his writings survive. What we do know paints a sorry story of religious conflict and intolerance.

This self-proclaimed prophet was born at Wykin Hall, Burbage, near Hinckley, Leicestershire, on 20 December 1566. His parents later moved to nearby Burton-upon-Trent, where his father was probably master of Burton Grammar School and later the first headmaster of Repton Grammar School.

By the mid-1590s, Edward was an important figure in Puritan circles in Burton, and played a leading role in some remarkable events in the town in 1596, when Thomas Darling, a 13-year-old schoolboy, alleged that he been possessed by a devil sent by a witch, Alice Goodridge. Wightman’s involvement in the case became a turning point in his life.

The death of Sir Humphrey Ferrers of Tamworth Castle in 1608 brought Wightman’s views to public attention (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

After the death of Sir Humphrey Ferrers of Tamworth Castle in 1608, Wightman was heard expressing the ‘damnable heresy’ that ‘the soul of man dies with the body and does not participate in either of the joys of Heaven or the pains of Hell, until the general day of Judgment, but rests with the body until then.’

He began publishing books, stopped attending the parish church and became more radical and more heretical. During a visit to Burton by the Bishop of Lichfield, Richard Neile, in February 1611, Wightman was presented by the vicar and churchwardens. Wightman was arrested and questioned by the bishop at the house of the Chancellor of Lichfield, Dr Zachary Babington, in Curborough, outside Lichfield.

Within days he was taken to Westminster. In jail, he condemned the baptism of infants, rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, and claimed Christ was only a man ‘and a mere Creature and not both God and man in one person.’

He was discharged in mid-June, but was summoned by Neile 4 September, and his trial began in the Consistory Court in Lichfield Cathedral on 19 November. On the second day of the trial, 26 November, the crowd was so big – perhaps as many as 500 – that the trial was moved to the larger space in the Lady Chapel.

Bishop Neile’s Chaplain, who assisted in prosecuting Wightman, was William Laud, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, who was later executed in 1645.

Throughout the trial, it seems, Wightman made no attempt to defend himself. On 5 December, he was brought before the court for the last time, and was condemned for holding ‘wicked heresies … and unheard opinions, by the instinct of Satan.’

He was brought to the Market Square in Lichfield on 20 March 1612 to be burned at the stake. But, as the fires were lit, his courage failed him. He quickly cried out that he would recant. By then he was ‘well scorched,’ and the crowd ran forward to put out the flames, some of them suffering burns in the process.

A form of recantation was hastily prepared, and he was unchained and brought back to gaol. But back in the consistory court a few weeks later, he refused to recant again and ‘blasphemed more audaciously than before.’ On 11 April 1612, Wightman was led to the stake once again. This time, he was not given a second chance. A contemporary account says he ‘was carried again to the stake where feeling the heat of the fire again would have recanted, but for all his crying the sheriff told him he should cost him no more and commanded faggots to be set to him where roaring, he was burned to ashes.’

For some, Wightman symbolises the cruelty of a past age. Others have seen him as an early martyr for the English Baptists or Unitarians. But most historians dismiss him as being mentally unstable, a mad enthusiast, deranged, a spectacular curiosity or a deranged fantasist.

His execution may have inspired the founding Quaker, George Fox, in 1651, when he stood barefoot in the Market Square and denounced the city: ‘Woe to the Bloody City of Lichfield.’ Fox may also have been thinking of Thomas Hayward, John Goreway and Joyce Lewis. Frances Wightman moved with her children to London, and their descendants emigrated to Rhode Island. Finally, and after the restoration of Charles II an act was passed in 1677 ‘forbidding the burning of heretics.’

There is no plaque in Lichfield, nor anywhere nearby, to commemorate James Harrison, who was born in the Diocese of Lichfield and who became one of the York martyrs when he was executed in 1602.

Harrison was born in the Diocese of Lichfield, perhaps in Comberford, although we do not know where exactly or when. He studied at the English College at Reims in the Champagne district of France. He was ordained there in September 1583, and he returned to England a year later, in 1584, to work with the Catholic mission in England.

Harrison worked for about four years without coming to the notice of the authorities, until he was apprehended and arrested in Comberford in 1588 along with Thomas Heath, a tenant of the Comberford family, who was sheltering him.

After his release, Harrison moved to Yorkshire. By early 1602, he was ministering among Catholics in Yorkshire and was living in the house of a man named Anthony Battie or Bates. While he was there, Harrison and Battie were arrested, put on trial in York and sentenced to death for high treason.

The charge against Harrison was that he performed the functions of a Catholic priest, while Battie was charged with harbouring Harrison. They were hanged, drawn and quartered on the morning of 22 March 1602.

For many years, the English Franciscans at Douai, including John Gennings from Lichfield, kept Harrison’s head as a relic. Although he has not been canonised among the English Martyrs, he is counted among the York Martyrs, and he was declared ‘Venerable’ by Pope Leo XIII in 1886.

Lady Eleanor Davies was sent to Bedlam after pouring over the altar in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A generation later, Lady Eleanor Davies (1590-1652), a prolific writer and self-styled prophet, who published almost 70 pamphlets during her lifetime. Although she was not burned to death, her religious oddities also found expression in Lichfield.

She was the fifth daughter of George Tuchet (1551-1617), 11th Baron Audley and later 1st Earl of Castlehaven in the Irish peerage. She was learned in Latin, theology and law. She married the poet and lawyer Sir John Davies in 1609, and they were the parents of three children.

In 1625, she published her first pamphlet, A Warning to the Dragon and All his Angels, which related the Book of Daniel to political events of the day. Davies disliked his wife’s actions and burned at least one of her manuscripts. She responded by dressing like a widow and predicted he would die within three years – he died in December 1626.

Eleanor married her second husband, Sir Archibald Douglas, in 1627, but he too destroyed her manuscripts. After smuggling her illegally printed prophecies into England from Amsterdam, she was arrested, fined £3,000 and imprisoned. She had difficulties in trying to recover her portion of the family inheritance after being widowed and after her brother Mervin Audley, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, was executed in 1631 on charges of rape and sodomy.

After her release, she was arrested again and sent to Bedlam after she poured tar over the altar in Lichfield Cathedral, occupied the bishop’s throne and declared herself the primate in 1637. She was moved to the Tower in 1638, but was released in 1640. She was arrested twice more for debt and infringing publishing laws. In all, she published 69 tracts before she died in 1652 at the age of 62.

Surprisingly, her nephew, George Anselm Tuchet (ca 1618-ca 1689), became a Benedictine monk at Saint Gregory’s in Douai in 1643. He was the Roman Catholic chaplain to Queen Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, from 1671 until he was banished from England in 1678. He was debarred by an Act of Parliament in 1682 from succeeding to his brother’s earldom and estates.

Father Anselm was a contemporary of the Benedictine monk Father Francis Crathorne (ca 1598-1667), who was held in regard as a poet and a scholar, and who spent his last years at Comberford Hall.

He was born in Yorkshire ca 1598 and was professed at Saint Gregory’s in Douai on 29 June 1621. Saint Gregory’s, the oldest of the English Benedictine continental houses, was founded in 1606 in Douai, now in northern France.

Crathorne was at Saint Vaast in 1624, a Benedictine monastery in Arras, then part of the Habsburg-ruled Spanish Netherlands until it was captured by France in 1640. By the 1630s, Crathorne was part of the English Benedictine community at Saint Edmund’s in Paris. Saint Edmund’s Priory was established in Paris in 1616 by a group of English monks from Saint Laurence’s, Dieulouard.

The Benedictines had continued to appoint titular abbot and priors to the cathedrals and abbeys run by the Benedictine before the Reformation, and in 1657 Crathorne was elected the nominal Prior of Rochester Cathedral. These were Cromwellian days and he was still living in exile in France.

Crathorne sat in the Chapter of the English Benedictines in 1657 as the Procurator of the Province of Canterbury. At the Chapter of 1661, he became a Definitor of the Regimen. By then, the Caroline Restoration had created a more tolerant climate for Catholics and Crathorne returned to England as a Benedictine missionary.

Robert and Catherine Comberford seem to have had a private Catholic chapel at Comberford Hall, and Crathorne spent his last days there, living with the Comberford family until he died at Comberford Hall on 19 April 1667, in his 69th year.

The Benedictine monk Francis Crathorne spent his last years at Comberford Hall, where he died in 1667 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)