Priest hunter

As the Catholic bishops from the reign of Queen Mary were dead, imprisoned or in exile, and those priests they had ordained were dying out or converting to Protestantism, William Allen conceived the idea for a seminary for English Catholic priests at Douai, where several of the chief posts were held by refugee professors who had fled Oxford University upon the reimposition of Protestantism in England.

In the autumn of 1577, Queen Elizabeth's Principal Secretary, Francis Walsingham canvassed the Anglican bishops for a list of recusants in their dioceses and how much each was worth.

[7] Described by Father John Gerard as "old and hoary and a veteran in evil", Topcliffe ultimately fell from favour with the Queen and was imprisoned very soon after his role in the arrest, trial, and execution of the underground priest and secret poet, Fr.

[11] In early July 1581, John Payne, while staying on the estate of Lady Petre in Warwickshire, was denounced by informer George Eliot, a spy in the employ of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.

Starting in the 1640s, James Wadsworth, Francis Newton, Thomas Mayo, and Robert de Luke formed a partnership to hunt down Catholics in the London area and handed them over to the authorities for a reward.

Even though Archbishop O'Hurley revealed under interrogation that he was not involved in anything except his religious mission and that he had refused to carry letters from the Cardinal Protector of Ireland to the leaders of the Second Desmond Rebellion, Sir Francis Walsingham suggested he should be tortured.

Although the Irish judges repeatedly decided that there was no case against O'Hurley, on 19 June 1584 Loftus and Wallop wrote to Walsingham "We gave warrant to the knight-marshal to do execution upon him, which accordingly was performed, and thereby the realm rid of a most pestilent member".

Irish nationalist John Mitchel, a Presbyterian from County Londonderry, later wrote, "I know the spots, within my own part of Ireland, where venerable archbishops hid themselves, as it were, in a hole of the rock...

Imagine a priest ordained at Seville or Salamanca, a gentleman of a high old name, a man of eloquence and genius, who has sustained disputations in the college halls on a question of literature or theology, and carried off prizes and crowns -- see him on the quays of Brest, bargaining with some skipper to work his passage... And he knows, too, that the end of it all, for him, may be a row of sugar canes to hoe under the blazing sun of Barbados.

"[19] In 1713, the Irish House of Commons declared that "prosecution and informing against Papists was an honourable service", which revived the Elizabethan era profession of priest hunting.

In cities and towns the Catholic clergy were concealed in cellars or garrets, and in the country districts they were hid in unfrequented caves, in the lonely woods, or in the huts of the Irish peasantry.

De Burgo tells us that this persecution and hunting of priests was most bitter towards the close of Anne's reign and the commencement of George I; and he says that none would have escaped were it not for the horror in which priest-catchers were held by the people, Protestants as well as Catholics.

On Sundays and Feast Days he celebrated Mass at a rock, on a remote mountainside, while the congregation knelt on the heather of the hillside, under the open heavens.

While he said Mass, faithful sentries watched from all the nearby hilltops, to give timely warning of the approaching priest-hunter and his guard of British soldiers.

Hence the discovering and prosecuting of priests was carried out in large part by men who travelled the country for that purpose and were hired by grand juries or the Dublin executive.

His credentials were accepted by the underground Archbishop, but in November 1717, Garcia voluntarily read aloud the Oath of Abjuration inside a Church of Ireland parish and, in a resulting series of mass arrests, the government apprehended, "the provincial of the Dominicans, two Jesuits, one Franciscan, and three secular priests."

[25] In his native Spain, Garcia's mother was reportedly so distressed to learn of her son's actions, "by means of the Irish papists who live in Cadiz, [that she] is so far from helping him that she would join with the Inquisition to burn him alive and in so doing she would believe to do God service."

The last mention of Garcia that appears in government documents from the era explains that as of 15th February 1723, the authorities had recommended him as a Protestant missionary in British-ruled Minorca, but it remains unknown whether he ever went there.

[26] In the Slieve Beagh mountains of County Monaghan, a large Celtic cross now tops a Mass rock known as Leacht a 'tSagairt ("The Priest's Flagstone").

[27] Another oral tradition version of the same events credits the killing to a Yeomanry unit from Clogher and gives the slain priest's name as Father Milligan.

The same source also alleges that Shane Bernagh, after learning almost immediately afterwards of the priest's murder while in hiding nearby, "swore that he would have a Yeoman's life for this".

After capturing the priest during Mass, beheading him inside a house at Killowen near Kenmare, and bringing his severed head to Cork City, the six conspirators learned that Catholic Emancipation had just been signed into law and that no reward would be given.