ST. Henry WALPOLE SJ

ST. Henry WALPOLE SJ was born in Docking in the county of Norfolk, in the year 1558.

After having studied in the University of Cambridge, and also in Grays Inn, London, spurred on by the martyrdom of St. Edmund Campion SJ, he left England to study at Rheims. Arriving there on 7th July 1582, he remained some months, until moving to the English College in Rome, where he was admitted as a pupil on the 28th April 1583. The following year he left and entered the Society of Jesus.

On the 15th December 1588 he was ordained a priest in Paris, and immediately was sent to Brussels as Chaplain to the English soldiers under Sir William Stanley. During this period he was stopped and incarcerated for five months, until his rescue.

Around the end of December of 1592 he was ordered to Seville, and after two months in that city was appointed Minister or rather Vice - Governor of the College of St. Alban at VALLADOLID.

In June of the following year, Father Persons SJ, his superior decided to order him to England, and after an expedition to Madrid to request alms to establish another college in St. Omer (in the Low Countries), he left for England, where he arrived on the 4th of December 1593.

With two companions he disembarked in Bridlington, but the following day they were stopped and incarcerated in the Castle at York. From there, he was moved to the Tower of London and left in the custody of Topcliffe, the notorious persecutor of priests. Between February 1594 and his death he was tortured in the keep fourteen times.

In the spring of 1595, he was returned to York to be processed, and on the 5th of November 1595, in that City, he was stripped, hung, drawn and quartered.

He was solemnly canonised by Pope Paul VI on the 25th of October 1970.