MARGARET CLITHEROW, “THE PEARL OF YORK”
One step to appreciating Anglo-American, and European history—obvious to most people but elusive to me for too long--is beginning to comprehend the bloody and burning ferocity of the conflict between the two chief branches of Christianity.
Margaret Middleton was born in York about 1586. She married a well-off butcher and chamberlain of the city, John Clitherow. They lived, with their eventual three children, at what is now 10-11 The Shambles, a narrow York street now almost wholly commercial. During the reign of the Protestant Elizabeth I, Margaret, aged about 18, converted to Roman Catholicism. John stayed Church of England, but he, the brother of a Catholic priest, supported Margaret. He paid her fines when she failed to attend Anglican services. The punishment for that heinous offense increased to incarcerations, three terms of which Margaret served. She bore her son William in prison.
As a result of several failed Catholic plots to unseat her, Elizabeth I launched fervent persecutions of Catholic priests. Priests became fugitives, hidden from “priest hunters”—many of whom were freelance bounty hunters-- in “priest holes”: places of concealment, often literal holes in floors and walls. A hiding place in the north of England was Margaret’s house. Assisting priests in such a way was made a capital offense by the Jesuits’ etc. Act of 1584.
When the Clitherows sent their elder son to study for the priesthood in Reims, authorities began investigating why he had been sent abroad. A monk was found in her house.
After Margaret’s arrest, she refused to offer a plea because a trial would subject her children to interrogation and possibly torture, and because, as she stated, she had committed no offense. Margaret was subjected to “peine forte et dure” (Law French: “hard and forceful punishment”) to extract a plea or inflict death, whichever came first (The most notorious “pressing” case of in what would become the United States was that of Giles Corey, during the Salem witch panic, in September 1692). On Lady Day (Annunciation), which that year was also Good Friday, 25 March 1586, she was taken to the Toll Bridge on the River Ouse in York. The sergeants who were supposed to execute her bowed out, and hired four wretched mendicants to carry out the work. Margaret, 28 or 29 years old, was stripped. A handkerchief was draped over her face, and she was laid upon her back upon a sharp rock the size of a fist, intended to break her spine. The door from her house was placed on top of her. Weight totaling more than 700 pounds was piled on the door, killing Margaret, and the unborn child she was carrying, within 15 minutes. The weight was not removed for some six hours. Margaret’s shrine is on the site of what was long thought to be that of her husband’s butcher shop (35 The Shambles), though it might have been across the narrow street.
The oldest surviving Catholic convent in Great Britain—which for years operated in secret—is the Bar Convent, established in 1686 on Blossom Street, at Mickelgate Bar in York. A priest hole in the floor upstairs, that is now a chapel, is visible a few feet away from a relic, said to be Margaret’s left hand. in a kind of bell jar.
