Cuthbert Mayne M (AC)
Born at Youlston (near Barnstaple), Devonshire, England, 1544; died 1577; beatified in 1886; canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales (general feast day is October 25); feast day was November 29.
Saint Cuthbert was raised as a Protestant by his uncle, a schismatic priest. His elementary education was provided at the Barnstaple Grammar School. He himself was ordained a Protestant minister when he was about 19 without an inclination or preparation for the role.
Cuthbert studied at Saint John's, Oxford, where he received his master's degree and met the still-Protestant Saint Edmund Campion. Like many converts to Catholicism, Cuthbert Mayne hesitated out of fear--of rejection by family and friends, of losing his appointments and falling into poverty--although his was convicted of its truth. At the urging of Campion, Mayne became a Catholic in 1570 (age 26) (another source says 1573 at Douai). He was forced to flee England when letters from Campion at Douai were intercepted by the bishop of London, who ordered the arrest of all mentioned in the letter. He went to the English College at Douai, which was founded in 1568, to study for the priesthood. He received his bachelor's degree in theology and was ordained there in 1575. The following year he was sent back to England with Saint John Payne to preach in the mission.
He became estate steward of Francis Tregian at Golden, Cornwall, and was arrested the following year with Tregian after the high sheriff, Richard Grenville searched Tregian's mansion and found Mayne with an agnus Dei around his neck. Mayne was taken to Launceston, thrown into a filthy prison, and chained to the bedpost.
At Launceston assizes during Michelmas, he was found guilty of having obtained from Rome and published at Golden a "faculty containing matter of absolution" of the Queen's subjects. (What they had actually found was an outdated announcement of the jubilee indulgence of 1575 published at Douai.) He was also charged with having celebrated Mass, because they found a missal, chalice, and vestments at Golden. But at the direction of Justice Manwood, after consultation with Grenville, the jury found him guilty of violating statutes 1 and 13 of Elizabeth and sentenced him to death. Several gentlemen, including Tregian, and their three yeomen were charged with abetting Mayne and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture of their property.
The circumstances were such that a majority of the judges of the country, gathered at Serjeants' Inn to reconsider the case, thought the conviction could not stand. But the Privy Council directed that the sentence be executed as a warning to priests coming from the Continent.
The day before his scheduled execution, Mayne was offered his liberty in exchange for his oath that the queen possessed ecclesiastical supremacy. He asked for a Bible, kissed it, and said: "The queen neither ever was nor is nor ever shall be the head of the Church of England." At the marketplace before his execution, Cuthbert Mayne aws not given the opportunity to address the crowd from the scaffold. When invited to implicate Tregian and his brother-in-law, Sir John Arundell, the saint replied: "I know nothing of them except that they are good and pious men; and of the things laid to my charge no one but myself has any knowledge."
Thus, Cuthbert was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Launceston on November 25 on the charge of treason because he was a priest who refused to accept the supremacy of Queen Elizabeth I in ecclesiastical matters. He was cut down before he died, but was probably unconscious before the disembowelling began. He was the first Englishman trained for the priesthood at Douai to be martyred (at that time the penal code distinguished between priests trained on the Continent and those "Marian priests," who had been ordained in England). For this reason, Cuthbert Mayne is the protomartyr of English seminaries. His feast is kept at Plymouth and in several other English dioceses (Attwater, Attwater 2, Benedictines, Delaney, Walsh).