Two remarkable and, as may be well believed, supernatural events occurred (which may be fittingly recorded here) with regard to the cruel and shameful death of Edmund Arrowsmith, a Roman Catholic priest of the county of Lancaster, in the year 1628. He was born at Haddock in the parish of Winwick, five miles from Warrington and seven from Wigan. His father was Robert Arrowsmith, a yeoman, and his mother Margaret Gerard, of the ancient and noble family of that name. His immediate ancestors had suffered much for their religion. Edmund, their son, having been received into the College at Douay in 1605, was eventually ordained priest at Arras on December 9th, 1612. A year afterwards he was sent to England to minister to his fellow religionists. One of his flock being exasperated against him because he refused to marry him to his first cousin and had rebuked him for evil-living, informed against him to the vigilant authorities; and Arrowsmith, being apprehended, was sent to Lancaster Castle, “for not having taken the oaths, and upon vehement suspicion that he was a priest and a jesuit.” The judge on circuit was Sir Henry Yelverton.
“Are you a priest, sir?” asked the judge, when the accused person was brought before him.
Arrowsmith, signing himself with the cross, replied, “My lord, I would to God I were worthy.”
On the judge repeating the question Arrowsmith replied coolly, “I would I were.”
When the accused, in reply to a minister on the bench, suggested a disputation regarding religion, and claimed to defend his Faith, the judge silenced him at once, and declared that he would not allow him to make any defence at all.
“I am ready, my lord, bear in mind,” replied Arrowsmith, “not only to defend it in words, but in deeds, and to seal it with my blood.”
The judge then told him, in an insulting and savage manner, that he should die, and see his bowels burnt before his very face.
“And you too must die, my lord, and that within a year.”[49]
Two indictments were framed against him: one for being a priest and a jesuit, and the other for disparaging Protestantism; on these he was found guilty of high treason, and ordered to die according to the law. To the gaoler of the prison, the sheriff brought express commands from the judge to load him with the heaviest irons in the Castle, and to lodge him in a small cell where he could not lie down. This occurred on the 26th of August, 1628, and he suffered death on the 28th of the same month. He was dragged on a hurdle from the Castle to the place of execution, having received absolution from a fellow prisoner, Mr. Southworth, in the Castle yard. He was bound on the hurdle, and for greater ignominy with his head to the horse’s tail. The gallows and boiling caldron were set up about a quarter of a mile distant from the Castle. The devotion and piety of this holy and zealous man were as remarkable as his constancy and fortitude,—graces which edified those who witnessed his sad end. He offered himself up as a sacrifice thrice: once upon his knees at the foot of the ladder, again on the ladder, which he kissed, and a third time just before the halter was fastened round his neck; and then prayed fervently, “O Sweet Jesus, I freely offer Thee my death, in satisfaction for my sins.” Then he was cast off, suffered to hang until he was dead—an act of mercy, by no means ordinary or common—cut down, disembowelled, and quartered; his head being placed on a pole amongst the pinnacles of the Castle. It is recorded that the judge being vexed and annoyed with the clever and luminous answers which Arrowsmith made when under examination, in the hearing of so many, appeared to take a special pleasure in viewing the execution from his lodgings, through a perspective glass; that he had the curiosity to examine the four quarters of his body, which, by his command, being brought to his apartment, he made an unnatural and shocking comparison between them and a haunch or two of venison with which he had that day been presented; and that he deliberately kicked the right hand of the body in contempt. On leaving the town he ordered the martyr’s head to be placed on a pole six yards higher than the pinnacles of the Castle.
The judge, sitting at supper at an inn on January 23, 1629, upon return from circuit, felt a heavy blow, as if someone had struck him on the back of the head; upon which he fell into a violent rage with, and severely rated, the servant who was waiting upon him; who protested that he had not struck him, nor did he see anyone strike him. A little while afterwards, the judge felt another blow like the first; and, as some records say, a third just as the meal was being ended. The blows he himself evidently thought to have come from the hand of divine justice, for he exclaimed in fear and trepidation: “That dog Arrowsmith hath killed me.”[50] In great terror he was carried to bed, and dying the next morning, the prophecy of the holy priest regarding his death was exactly fulfilled.