St Margaret Clitherow - the Pearl of York
St Margaret was baptised a Protestant but converted to Catholicism in 1574, three years after marrying John Clitherow, a wealthy butcher and Chamberlain of York. They had three children. John Clitherow remained a Protestant but was sympathetic to the Catholic Church and supportive of his wife in her faith; often paying her fines for not attending the services of the Established Church. These offences caused her to be imprisoned on three occasions.
An Act of 1584 made the harbouring of Catholic priests a capital offence and Margaret risked her life by taking out two rooms to hide and maintain the priests and allowing Mass to be celebrated. She sent her elder son, Henry, to be trained as a priest at the English College in Rheims which caused her husband to be questioned as to why his son had gone abroad. Their house, in the Shambles, was searched and a priest-hole discovered. Margaret was arrested and summoned before the York Assizes on a charge of harbouring Catholic priests. She refused to plead since this would have entailed her three children being forced to testify with a threat of torture. She was found guilty and sentenced to death. The execution, by means of crushing to death, took place in the Toll Booth on Ouse Bridge. Margaret was pregnant with her fourth child at the time and it took 15 minutes for her to die in extreme pain. Her body was disposed of but the exact location of her burial place is not known.
Representations of Margaret show her carrying either a book or a pair of shoes. If the former, this could be a copy of the Douai-Rheims Bible, first published in 1582 and small enough to be carried about, or, a reference to her shoes which she had given to her daughter and a silent invitation to walk in her footsteps.
Margaret was canonised on 25th October 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. She is the Patron of the Catholic Women’s League.
“She was a woman, upright, outright;
Her will was bent at God. For that
Word went she should be crushed out flat.”