Nicholas Garlick
[1] Although he was described as "well seen in Poetry, Rhetoric, and philosophy," he remained at Oxford for only six months and left without taking a degree, perhaps because of the required Oath of Supremacy.
"[3] Three of his pupils became priests; one of them, Christopher Buxton, was himself later martyred, while another, Robert Bagshaw, witnessed his teacher's martyrdom, and ended his life as President of the English Benedictine Congregation.
[8] He was finally arrested with fellow priest Robert Ludlam on 12 July 1588 at Padley, at the home of the famous recusant family the FitzHerberts.
The house was raided by George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who was looking for John FitzHerbert; the finding of two priests as well was, according to Connelly, "an unexpected bonus".
[8] Garlick and Ludlam, John FitzHerbert, his son Anthony, three of his daughters, Maud, Jane, and Mary, and ten servants were arrested, and taken to jail.
[11] The three priests were found guilty of treason, and were condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered; the sentences were to be carried out the next day: "That you and each of you be carried to the place from whence you came, and from thence be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, and be there severally hanged, but cut down while you are alive; that your privy members be cut off; that your bowels be taken out and burnt before your faces; that your heads be severed from your bodies; that your bodies be divided into four-quarters, and that your quarters be at the Queen's disposal; and the Lord have mercy on your souls.
"[13] Garlick used the time to give the people a long sermon on the salvation of their souls, ignoring the attempts of officials to make him stop.
[15] A poem by an anonymous writer, who seems to have witnessed the executions, describes the scene as follows: When Garlick did the ladder kiss, And Sympson after hie, Methought that there St. Andrew was Desirous for to die.When Ludlam lookèd smilingly, And joyful did remain, It seemed St. Stephen was standing by, For to be stoned again.And what if Sympson seemed to yield, For doubt and dread to die; He rose again, and won the field And died most constantly.His watching, fasting, shirt of hair; His speech, his death, and all, Do record give, do witness bear, He wailed his former fall.
Garlick's student, Robert Bagshaw, writes as follows: "And the penner of this their martyrdoms, who was also present at their deaths, with two other resolute Catholick gentlemen, going in the night divers miles, well weaponed, took down one of their heads from the top of a house standing on the bridge, the watchmen of the town (as was afterwards confessed) seeing them and giving no resistance.
"[18] Dr. Cox, a Derbyshire historian writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, and quoted by Sweeney, mentions a tradition that Garlick's head was buried in the churchyard at Tideswell.
[19] The three priests were declared venerable in 1888, and were among the eighty-five martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Pope John Paul II on 22 November 1987.
