The Oaten Hill Martyrs were Catholic Martyrs who were executed by hanging, drawing and quartering at Oaten Hill, Canterbury, on 1 October 1588. These four were beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929. Wilcox and Widmerpool at least share the feast day of 1 October. [1]
Robert Wilcox was born in Chester, England in 1558 and entered the seminary at Rheims when he was twenty-five years old. He was ordained on 20 April 1585 and was sent to England with other priests seeking to expand the Catholic faith and deal with the country's expanding Protestantism under Queen Elizabeth I on 7 January 1586. Wilcox arrived in England on 7 June 1586 but was arrested almost immediately at Lydd in Kent, near to where he entered the country. As a captive, he was sent to the Marshalsea prison where he was examined on 15 August 1588. Here he admitted he was a Catholic priest and was sent for trial with the others to Canterbury, England.
Wilcox was the first of the four to be executed. It is recorded that he told his companions to be of good heart. He was going to heaven before them, where he would carry the tidings of their coming after him.
Edward Campion was a pseudonym used by Gerard Edwards, a Catholic priest.
Robert Widmerpool was arrested for giving aid to a Catholic priest.
Christopher Buxton was a Catholic priest, born in Derbyshire. He was a scholar of Nicholas Garlick at the Grammar School, Tideswell, in the Peak District, studied for the priesthood at Reims and Rome, and was ordained in 1586. He left Rome the next year, and soon after his arrival in England was apprehended and condemned to death for his priesthood. Being so young, it was thought that his constancy might be shaken by the sight of the deaths of his companions, and his life was offered him if he would conform to the new religion; but he answered that he would not purchase a corruptible life at such a price, and that if he had a hundred lives he would willingly surrender them all in defence of his faith. While in the Marshalsea Prison he wrote a Rituale, the manuscript of which is now preserved as a relic at Olney, Buckinghamshire. He sent this manuscript to a priest, as a last token of his friendship, the day before he was taken from the prison.
This article incorporates text from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia by Bede Camm, a publication now in the public domain.