John Payne (martyr)

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Saint John Payne
Born 1532, Peterborough
Died 2 April 1582, London
Venerated in Roman Catholic Church
Beatified 1886
Canonized 1970 by Pope Paul VI
Feast
Saints Portal

Saint John Paine or Payne (1532 – 1582) was an English Catholic priest martyr, one of the Catholic Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

He was born at Peterborough in 1532 and was possibly a convert to Catholicism from a Protestant family. He was probably a mature man when he went to the English College at Douai in 1574, served there as bursar, and was ordained priest by the Archbishop of Cambrai on April 7, 1576. Shortly afterwards, on April 24, 1576, he left for the English mission in the company of another priest, Cuthbert Mayne. While Mayne headed for his native South West England, Paine resided for the most part with Anne, widow of Sir William Petre, and daughter of Sir William Browne, sometime Lord Mayor of the City of London, at Ingatestone, Essex, but also in London. Shortly after his arrival he converted (or re-converted) to Catholicism George Godsalve or Godsalf, of the diocese of Bath, a man who had gained the B.A. at Oxford and had been ordained a deacon in the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary, but who had then become a Protestant. Paine sent Godsalf to Douai, where he arrived on July 15, 1576 to be prepared for the Catholic priesthood, which he was to receive at Cambrai on December 22. Paine himself was arrested at Ingatestone and imprisoned early in 1577, but was soon released and went back to Douai that November. From there he probably returned to Ingatestone before Christmas, 1579.

Early in July, 1581, he and Godsalf, who had come to England in June, 1577, were arrested in Warwickshire whilst staying on the estate of Lady Petre (widow of John Petre, 18th Baron Petre), through the efforts of the informer George "Judas" Eliot (a known criminal, murderer, rapist and thief, who made a career out of denouncing Catholics and priests for bounty). After being examined by Walsingham at Greenwich, they were committed to the Tower of London on July 14. Godsalf did not give in but spent several years in prison, after which he was released from the Marshalsea in September 1585 and banished, dying in Paris in 1592.

As to Paine, a more significant catch, he was racked on the Council's orders on August 14, and again on October 31. On March 20 1581/2 he was abruptly woken, taken from his cell half dressed and delivered by the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Owen Hopton (c. 1524-1591) of Cockfield Hall in Suffolk to officers waiting to take him to Chelmsford jail, not being allowed to return to the cell to get his purse (which was stolen by the Lieutenant's wife, Anne Echyngham).

Paine was indicted at Chelmsford on March 22 on a charge of treason for conspiring to murder the Queen and her leading officers and install Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne. Paine denied the charges, and affirmed his loyalty to the Queen in all that was lawful (ie not contrary to his Catholicism or allegiance to the Pope), contesting the reliability of the murderer Eliot. No attempt was made to corroborate Eliot's story, which had already been rehearsed in large part at the trial of Edmund Campion on November 20, 1581. The guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion.

At his execution on the morning of the Monday April 2 (9 months after his imprisonment), he was dragged from prison on a hurdle to the place of execution and first prayed on his knees for almost half an hour and then kissed the scaffold, made a profession of faith and declared his innocence. Reinforcements had been sent from London to help the execution run smoothly. Lord Rich called upon him to repent of his treason, which Paine again denied. A Protestant minister then shouted a claim that years ago Paine's brother had admitted to him Paine's treason. Paine said that his brother was and always had been an earnest Protestant but that even so would never swear to such a thing. To bear this out, Paine asked that the brother, who was in the locality, be brought, but he was not found in time and the execution proceeded and Paine was at last turned off the ladder. The government's intentions for a smooth execution with minimal trouble and maximum propaganda value had failed - indeed, the crowd had become so sympathetic to Paine that they hung on his feet to speed his death and prevented the infliction of the quartering until he was dead. The executioner, the notoriously incompetent Simon Bull, was meanwhile rebuked for dithering over the quartering in case Paine revive and suffer further.

John Paine was one of the group of prominent Catholic martyrs of the persecution who were later designated as the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. He was beatified "equipollently" by Pope Leo XIII, by means of a decree of December 29, 1886 and was canonized along with the other Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI on October 25, 1970.

A Roman Catholic secondary school in Chelmsford town centre (towards Broomfield) is now named after him.

[edit] Sources

The most reliable compact source is Godfrey Anstruther, Seminary Priests, St Edmund's College, Ware, vol. 1, 1968, pp. 133-134, 311-313.