About The Shambles, York:
The Shambles is a famous, narrow medieval street in York, England, featuring 14th-century timber-framed, jettied buildings (Jettying is a building technique used in medieval timber-frame buildings in which an upper floor projects beyond the dimensions of the floor below). Known for once hosting butcher shops, it is now a bustling tourist attraction, famously resembling Diagon Alley from Harry Potter.
For Catholics, it offers an important shrine dedicated to Saint Margaret Clitherow.
About Margaret Clitherow (c. 1556 – March 25, 1586):
Also known the “Pearl of York,” Margaret was an English Catholic martyr executed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I for her faith.Born Margaret Middleton in York, England, to Protestant parents (her father was a sheriff and church warden), she grew up in the established Church of England following the Reformation. In 1571, at around age 15, she married John Clitherow, a prosperous butcher and city chamberlain who remained Protestant but was tolerant of her beliefs. A few years later (around 1574), she converted to Catholicism, driven by a conviction that the Protestant church lacked true substance and inspired by the sufferings of Catholic priests and laypeople.
Despite her husband’s Protestant affiliation (and his brother being a Catholic priest), Margaret became deeply devout. She harbored fugitive Catholic priests in hidden rooms in her home and elsewhere in York, enabling secret Masses during a time of severe persecution when practicing Catholicism was illegal and punishable by death.
She was imprisoned multiple times for recusancy (refusing to attend Protestant services) and her activities, yet she remained steadfast.
In March 1586, she was arrested for sheltering priests. Charged at the York assizes, she refused to enter a plea to avoid implicating her children and servants as witnesses (and possibly to accept a more “honorable” death). As a result, she was sentenced to peine forte et dure—being pressed to death.
On March 25, 1586 (Lady Day, which coincided with Good Friday in some calendars), she was taken barefoot to the tollbooth on Ouse Bridge. Laid on the ground with a sharp stone under her back, her arms outstretched in the form of a cross, a door was placed over her and weighted with stones until she was crushed. She endured about 15 minutes of agony, repeating “Jesu! Jesu! Jesu! have mercy on me!” She reportedly sewed her own shroud the night before and faced her fate with calm and joy.
Her execution was particularly brutal, and even Queen Elizabeth I reportedly expressed disapproval, suggesting a woman should have been spared such a fate. Margaret is remembered as the first woman martyred under Elizabeth’s religious laws for this cause. She was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI and canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
We celebrate the Feast of Saint Margaret of Clitherow on March 26 (or March 25 in some traditions).
Patronage Businesswomen, converts, martyrs, Catholic Women’s League, Latin Mass Society
Margaret Clitherow (née Middleton, c. 1556 – 25 March 1586) was an English Catholic recusant known as The Pearl of York. She was pressed to death for refusing to enter a plea to the charge of harbouring Catholic priests. She was canonised in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.
Life
Margaret Clitherow was born in 1556, the youngest child of Thomas and Jane Middleton née Turner. Her father, a respected freeman,[clarification needed] was a businessman who worked as a wax-chandler. He also held the office of Sheriff of York, in 1564, and was churchwarden of St Martin’s Church, Coney Street between 1555 and 1558. He died when Margaret was fourteen.
On 1 July 1571, Margaret married John Clitherow, a wealthy butcher and chamberlain of the city, who was also a widower with two sons. She gave birth to three children, and the family lived at what is today 10–11 The Shambles.
Margaret converted to Roman Catholicism in 1574. Although her husband belonged to the Established Church, he was supportive of her choice, as his own brother William was a Roman Catholic priest. He paid the fines she was assessed for not attending church services. She was first imprisoned in 1577 for failing to attend church, and two more incarcerations at York Castle followed. Her third child, William, was born in prison and she learned to read and write while incarcerated.
The Black Swan, Peasholme Green, York
Margaret risked her life by harboring and maintaining priests, which was a capital offense. She provided two chambers, one adjoining her house and, with her house under surveillance, she rented a house some distance away, where she kept priests hidden and Mass was celebrated through the thick of the persecution. Her home became one of the most important hiding places for fugitive priests in the north of England. Local tradition holds that she also housed her clerical guests in The Black Swan at Peasholme Green, where the Queen’s agents were lodged.
She sent her eldest son, Henry, to the English College, relocated in Reims, France, to train for the priesthood. Her husband was summoned by the authorities to explain why his eldest son had gone abroad. On 10 March 1586 the Clitherow house was searched. A frightened boy revealed the location of the priest hole.
Margaret was arrested and called before the York assizes for the crime of harbouring Catholic priests. She refused to plead, thereby preventing a trial that would entail her three children being made to testify, and being subjected to torture. She was sentenced to death.
Although pregnant with her fourth child, she was executed on Lady Day, 1586, (which also happened to be Good Friday that year) in the Toll Booth at Ouse Bridge, York, by being crushed to death (peine forte et dure), the standard inducement to force a plea.
The two sergeants who should have carried out the execution hired four desperate beggars to do it instead. She was stripped and had a handkerchief tied across her face. She was then laid across a sharp rock the size of a man’s fist. The door from her own house was put on top of her and loaded with 7 or 8 hundredweight (112+ pounds) of rocks and stones, so that the sharp rock would break her back. Her death occurred within fifteen minutes, but her body was left for six hours before the weight was removed. Her body was buried secretly in accordance with Catholic rites.
After the execution, John Clitherow remarried for a third time and remained a Protestant.
Her sons Henry and William became priests, and her daughter Anne a nun.
Margaret Clitherow’s life was recorded in John Mush’s Trewe “Reporte of the Lyfe and Marterdome of Mrs Margarete Clitherowe”, which he wrote within three months of her death. The English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem honoring “God’s daughter Margaret Clitheroe.” The poem, entitled “Margaret Clitheroe” was among fragments and unfinished poems of Hopkins discovered after his death and has been called “a tribute to the woman, to her faith and courage, and to the manner of her death”.
Margaret Clitherow was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI and Canonised on October 25, 1970 by Pope Paul VI among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Their feast day in the current Roman Catholic calendar is May 4 in England and October 25 in Wales. She is also commemorated in England on August 30, along with martyrs Anne Line and Margaret Ward. The three were officially added to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar with a feast day of August 30.
A relic, said to be her hand, is housed in the Bar Convent in York.
Traveling to the Shrine of Saint Margaret Clitherow in York, England:
Address: 35–36 The Shambles. 35, 36 Shambles, York YO1 7LZ, UK
Relics, including her right hand, are preserved at places like St. Mary’s Convent in York.