THE P RTAL


Jermyn Gardiner


by Joanna Bogle


HAVE YOU HEARD of Blessed Jermyn Gardiner? No, nor had I. Which is a pity because his story is an interesting one. He was the last Catholic martyr to perish under Henry VIII, and he is said to have been “stirred to courage” by the example of St Tomas More, who was beheaded on the orders of the king in June 1535.


We need to remember that Henry VIII lived and


died a right-wing, fanatical Catholic: he never went to anything other than a Latin Mass, he denounced as heretics anyone who opposed traditional Catholic doctrines, and he wanted all this on his own terms. More had died because he saw the real issues that were being raised: he opposed the king’s bigamous marriage to Anne Boleyn and he would not accept the king as head of the Church and the consequent break with the successor of St Peter in Rome.


Threats to Henry’s authority Jermyn Gardiner, a nephew


of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was a layman and held a position as a clerk or official at court. As the 1540s opened, Henry was obsessed with eliminating what he saw as threats to his authority. He wanted to embark on a campaign against the Protestants, who were growing in number and gaining popular support. Gardiner, a loyal Catholic, was to be one of the team supporting the king in crushing such dissent, and one of the victims was to be Tomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was showing strongly Protestant tendencies.


Tables turned But this was not really about the truths of the Catholic


Faith: eventually under an agreed deal, Cranmer was temporarily reprieved along with other officials, and the tables were turned on Jermyn Gardiner, who was accused of being a traitor to the king. He had been used by Henry as a pawn – his own religious beliefs were sincere, and of a different order from those of the king, and he believed in the reality of the Church and the truths of its teachings


In 1544 he was arraigned and tried on the grounds


that he sought to “deprive the King of his dignity, title, and name of Supreme Head of the English and Irish Church”, and the penalty for this was death. He was executed at Tyburn in March 1544, and with him died John Larke, who had been rector of Chelsea, and John Ireland, who had been Tomas More’s chaplain.


At the last minute, Gardiner and


the others were offered the chance of a reprieve if they would recant their opinions, but they refused to do so. Te issue was one of loyalty to the Church.


The Pilgrimage of Grace It had been eight years since


More had died: the country had been in ferment. Anne Boleyn had perished on the scaffold in 1536 aſter a brief marriage to the king and the birth of a daughter. Te Pilgrimage of Grace, a great gathering of people seeking to plead with the king not to destroy the old monasteries and sanctuaries, had


been crushed and its leaders slaughtered. Te Abbey at Jervaulx in Yorkshire -- the Abbot had been a leader in the Pilgrimage of Grace - had been blown up by gunpowder.


Faithful Jermyn Gardiner was an official who could have


thrown in his lot with the king, and announced his unconditional support for Henry as head of the English Church – this would have saved his life. He remained faithful to what he knew was right, to the universality of the Church in union with the successor of St Peter. Instead of being one more official caught up in the politics of his day, he became a martyr, declared Blessed by the Church. He was beatified in 1886.


March 2011


Page 7


A Recusant Martyr


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