Robert Grissold

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Blessed Robert Grissold, Altarpiece in Warwick

Robert Grissold , also Greswold (* around 1575 in Rowington near Warwick , England ; † July 16, 1604 in Warwick) was an English lay Catholic , martyr and is a blessed of the Catholic Church.

Live and act

He came from a Catholic family in Warwickshire . His parents were John and Isabel Grissold of Poundley End, Rowington. The father worked as a weaver , the couple had a total of seven sons and one daughter.

Robert lived as a servant to a Lord Sheldon in Broadway , Worcestershire . In this position he met John Sugar , a converted Anglican who now worked as a Catholic priest at risk. At that time, the Catholic religion and its practice in England was strictly forbidden and punished in a draconian manner. Pastor Sugar was ordained in 1601 at the English exiled seminary in Douai founded by Cardinal William Allen and had now returned to England. Here he looked after the secret Catholic faithful in the counties of Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire.

Robert Grissold helped the clergyman in his home county of Warwickshire as a local guide. On July 8, 1603, an official search warrant was issued against the Catholics of Rowington to seize a priest suspected there. After an unsuccessful search, the priest John Sugar and his companion Robert Grissold were arrested at the nearby town of Baddesley, on the highway. His cousin Clement Grissold was the leader of the search party and wanted to let his relatives escape, but the latter refused. He declared that he did not want to leave the priest under any circumstances. Both were taken to Warwick Prison and held there for a year.

On July 13, 1604, John Sugar was sentenced to death by hanging and then quartering for serving as a Catholic priest . Robert Grissold's trial took place on July 14th. In the event of his affiliation with the Anglican Church and the recognition of the king as head of the church, he was offered freedom. He refused; the judge thereupon sentenced him to death by hanging as a “criminal” because he had supported a Catholic priest and was found with him.

execution

On July 16, 1604, the sentences were carried out on Gallows Hill in Warwick. John Sugar was dragged there by a horse on a wooden grate, Robert Grissold followed on foot. He was 29 years old at the time, the priest 42. Sugar was hanged, cut off while still alive, and then quartered . When Grisson saw the rope on which he was about to be hanged lying on the ground, he reverently dipped it in the blood of the priest who had just been dismembered. He called bystanders to witness that he was not dying of a crime or a thief, but only because he was following his conscience. Then he voluntarily climbed the ladder, forgave the persecutors and the executioner and was knocked off the rungs with the noose around his neck. He was buried intact near the gallows, while Sugar's head and body parts were displayed at the Warwick city gates as a deterrent.

Adoration

From the beginning, Robert Grissold was viewed and revered as a martyr. When in 1860, after the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England , the parish church of St. Mary Immaculate was built in Warwick, the town where he died, he was depicted there on a mural on the high altar. Along with John Sugar, he is one of the so-called "85 Martyrs of England and Wales" who were beatified by Pope John Paul II on November 22, 1987.

In Balsall Common ( Metropolitan Borough of Solihull ), County Warwickshire, the Cath. Parish church dedicated to the Blessed.

literature

  • Joseph Spillmann : History of the persecution of Catholics in England from 1535 to 1681 , Volume 4, pp. 10–15, Herder Verlag, Freiburg, 1905
  • Richard Challoner : Memoirs of missionary priests and other Catholics of both sexes, that have suffered death in England on religious accounts, from the year 1577 to 1684 , Volume 1, Philadelphia, 1839, p. 11 u. 12; (Digital scan)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Website for the parish church of St. Mary Immaculate in Warwick, with a mural of the martyr ( memento of the original from March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / stmary-immaculate.org.uk
  2. ↑ Website of the parish
personal data
SURNAME Grissold, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Greswold, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English lay Catholic, martyr and blessed of the Catholic Church
DATE OF BIRTH around 1575
PLACE OF BIRTH Rowington near Warwick , England
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 1604
Place of death Warwick