Anne Line
| Saint Anne Line | |
|---|---|
Statue of St Anne Line at St Anne Line Junior School in Basildon, Essex, England, United Kingdom
| |
| Martyr | |
| Born | c. 1563 Essex, England |
| Died | 27 February 1601 (aged 38 - 39) Tyburn, England |
| Venerated in | Catholic Church Anglican Communion |
| Beatified | 15 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI |
| Canonized | 25 October 1970 by Pope Paul VI |
| Feast | 27 February (individual) 25 October (together with Forty Martyrs of England and Wales) 30 August (together with Saints Margaret Ward and Margaret Clitherow) |
| Attributes | dove, noose in neck, book or bible, |
| Patronage | childless people, converts, widows |
Anne Line (c. 1563 – 27 February 1601) was an English Catholic martyr. After losing her husband, she became very active in sheltering clandestine Catholic priests, which was illegal in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Finally arrested, she was condemned to death and executed at Tyburn. The Catholic Church declared her a martyr, and Pope Paul VI canonised her in 1970.
Biography
Anne is believed to have been born as "Alice Higham" or "Heigham", the eldest daughter of the Puritan William Higham of Jenkyn Maldon, Essex. William Higham was the son of Roger Heigham, MP, a Protestant reformer under Henry VIII.[1][2] A recent (2016) scholarly and extensively annotated biography has been published by Roger Scully S.J.[3] She was born circa the early 1560s, and at some time in the early 1580s converted to the Roman Catholic Church along with her brother William and Roger Line, the man she married in February 1583. Both Roger Line and William Higham were disinherited for converting to the Roman Catholic Church and Alice Higham lost her dowry.[1] Among Catholics, the married "Alice" became known as "Anne", presumably a name she took at her conversion.[4]
Roger Line and William Higham were arrested together while attending Mass, and were imprisoned and fined. While William Higham was released on surety in England, Roger Line was banished and went to Flanders.[5] Line received a small allowance from the King of Spain, part of which he sent regularly to his wife until his death around 1594.[6] Around the same time, John Gerard opened a house of refuge for hiding priests, and put the newly widowed Anne Line in charge of it, despite her chronic ill-health. For about three years Anne Line continued to run this house while Fr John Gerard was in prison. He was eventually transferred to the Tower of London where he was tortured, and from which he escaped. In his autobiography he writes:
After my escape from prison [Anne Line] gave up managing the house. By then she was known to so many people that it was unsafe for me to frequent any house she occupied. Instead she hired apartments in another building and continued to shelter priests there. One day, however (it was the Purification of Our Blessed Lady), she allowed in an unusually large number of Catholics to hear Mass … Some neighbours noticed the crowd and the constables were at the house at once.[7]
Arrest and execution
Line was arrested on 2 February 1601 when her house was raided during the feast of the Purification, also known as Candlemas. On this day a blessing of candles traditionally takes place before the Mass, and it was during this rite that the raiders burst in and made arrests. The priest, Fr Francis Page, managed to slip into a special hiding place prepared by Anne Line and afterwards to escape, but she was arrested, along with another gentlewoman called Margaret Gage. Gage was released on bail and later pardoned, but Line was sent to Newgate Prison.
She was tried at the Sessions House on Old Bailey Lane on 26 February 1601 and was so weak from fever that she was carried to the trial in a chair. She told the court that, so far from regretting having concealed a priest, she only grieved that she "could not receive a thousand more."[8] Sir John Popham, the judge, sentenced her to death for the felony of assisting a seminary priest.
Line was hanged on 27 February 1601. She was executed immediately before two priests, Roger Filcock and Mark Barkworth, who received the more severe sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering. At the scaffold she repeated what she had said at her trial, declaring loudly to the bystanders: "I am sentenced to die for harbouring a Catholic priest, and so far I am from repenting for having so done, that I wish, with all my soul, that where I have entertained one, I could have entertained a thousand."
Possible Shakespeare allusions
It has been argued that Shakespeare's poem The Phoenix and the Turtle was written shortly after her death to commemorate Anne and Roger Line, and its setting is the Catholic requiem held in secret for her.[9] This theory was first suggested in the 1930s by Clara Longworth de Chambrun in her novel My Shakespeare, Rise!, and is linked to claims that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic sympathiser.[10] The theory was revived and developed by John Finnis and Patrick Martin in 2003. It has been extended by Martin Dodwell to suggest that Shakespeare takes the fate of Anne and Roger Line to symbolize the rejection of Catholicism by England, and he then returns to this allegorical scheme in the play Cymbeline.[5]
A series of other Shakespearean allusions to Anne Line have been proposed by various scholars (Colin Wilson, Gerard Kilroy) most notably in The Tempest and in Sonnet 74.[5]
Veneration
Anne Line was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929. She was canonised by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970, as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Her feast day, along with all the other English Martyrs, is on 4 May. However, in the Catholic dioceses of England, she shares a feast day with fellow female martyr saints, Margaret Clitherow and Margaret Ward on 30 August. The three were officially added to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar with a feast day on 30 August.[11]
The St. Anne Line Catholic Junior School in Wickhay, Basildon, Essex, is named for her.[12] So is the Catholic parish of St Anne Line, Great Dunmow, Essex,[13] where local tradition has it that her family lived in the Clock House, Great Dunmow.[14] Additionally, the Catholic parish of St Anne Line in South Woodford, London, also is named after the saint and possess a large stone carved statue of her inside the church.[15]
See also
From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia
Anne Line — English martyr, d. 27 Feb., 1601. She was the daughter of William Heigham of Dunmow, Essex, a gentleman of means and an ardent Calvinist, and when she and her brother announced their intention of becoming Catholics both were disowned and disinherited. Anne married Roger Line, a convert like herself, and shortly after their marriage he was apprehended for attending Mass. After a brief confinement he was released and permitted to go into exile in Flanders, where he died in 1594. When Father John Gerard established a house of refuge for priests in London, Mrs. Line was placed in charge. After Father Gerard's escape from the Tower in 1597, as the authorities were beginning to suspect her assistance, she removed to another house, which she made a rallying point for neighbouring Catholics. On Candlemas Day, 1601, Father Francis Page, S.J. was about to celebrate Mass in her apartments, when priest-catchers broke into the rooms. Father Page quickly unvested, and mingled with the others, but the altar prepared for the ceremony was all the evidence needed for the arrest of Mrs. Line. She was tried at the Old Bailey 26 Feb., 1601, and indicted under the Act of 27 Eliz. for harbouring a priest, though this could not be proved. The next day she was led to the gallows, and bravely proclaiming her faith, achieved the martyrdom for which she had prayed. Her fate was shared by two priests, [Bl.] Mark Barkworth, O.S.B., and Roger Filcock, S.J., who were executed at the same time.
Roger Filcock had long been Mrs. Line's friend and frequently her confessor. Entering the English College at Reims in 1588, he was sent with the others in 1590 to colonize the seminary of St. Albans at Valladolid, and, after completing his course there, was ordained and sent on the English mission. Father Garnett kept him on probation for two years to try his mettle before admitting him to the Society of Jesus, and finding him zealous and brave, finally allowed him to enter. He was just about to cross to the Continent for his novitiate when he was arrested on suspicion of being a priest and executed after a travesty of a trial.
[Note: In 1970, Anne Line was canonized by Pope Paul VI among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, whose joint feast day is kept on 25 October.]
MORRIS, Life of Fr. John Gerard; CHALLONER, Memoirs, I, 396; FOLEY, Records S.J. I, 405; VII, 254; Douay Diaries, p. 219, 280; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. Rutland Coll. Belvoir Castle, I, 370; GILLOW, Bibl. Dict. Eng. Cath.
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Martin Dodwell, "Revisiting Anne Line: Who Was She and Where Did She Come from", Recusant History, Vol. 31, No. 3 (May 2013), pp. 375-89. London: Catholic Record Society.
- Back to citation Conelly, Roland (1997). Women of the Catholic Resistance in England, 1540-1680. The Pentland Press. pp. 107–111. ISBN 1858215099.
- Back to citation Robert E. Scully SJ in Weber, Alison (2016). Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World). London: Routledge. p. Chapter 13. ISBN 9781472424914.
- Back to citation Kelly, Christine J., "Anne Line", ODNB; online edition, January 2009, accessed 11 March 2013.
- Back to citation occurrence 5.0 Back to citation occurrence 5.1 Back to citation occurrence 5.2 Dodwell, Martin. Anne Line: Shakespeare's Tragic Muse. Brighton: The Book Guild, 2013.
- Back to citation "Oct 25 - St Anne Line d.1601 - Catholicireland.net". Catholicireland.net. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
- Back to citation John Gerard S.J. The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, p.84. Oxford: Family Publications, 2006.
- Back to citation Quinn, Stanley. "St. Anne Line." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 25 December 2012
- Back to citation Times Literary Supplement, 18 April 2003, p.12-14
- Back to citation Longworth, Clara, My Shakespeare, Rise!, London: 1935
- Back to citation "General Convention Virtual Binder". www.vbinder.net. Archived from the original on 13 September 2022. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
- Back to citation "St Anne Line Catholic Junior School – Wickhay, Basildon, Essex SS15 5AF". www.st-anneline-jun.essex.sch.uk. Archived from the original on 7 April 2016. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
- Back to citation "parish website". St Anne Line, Great Dunmow. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
- Back to citation "The Clock House". Listed Buildings of England. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
- Back to citation St. Anne Line Catholic Church