For some time, I had wanted to visit Holbrook church to see the huge monument to the infamous John Clench.
So, who was John Clench? - He was born in 1535, the son of John Clench of Wethersfield, Essex and Joan, daughter of John Amias of the same county,
He was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1556, called to the bar in 1563. He became recorder of Ipswich in 1575. In 1580 he was created serjeant-at-law, his patrons at the ceremony being the Earl of Oxford, Lord Wentworth, and Sir William Cordell. A year later, he was appointed one of the barons of the exchequer, and in 1584 he was translated to the Queen's bench.
He established his family in south-east Suffolk, in the neighborhood of Ipswich, where for many years he was the Town Recorder.
It was said that Elizabeth I referred to him as 'her good judge', but it is thought that he was never knighted for some reason. By 1602, being "so decrepit that he could not well travel outside his country", he was discharged from attendance at court.
He lived mainly on his estate in Holbrook and was involved in the affairs of the area in various capacities. He died in 1607 and is buried in Holbrook Church.
So, why do I call him `infamous`? Well, he was one of the two Judges who sentenced Margaret Clitheroe to a horrendous death because of her religious inclinations. She was nothing more than a Roman Catholic - like millions were, and still are today.
Holbrook Church near Shotley
From Wikipedia:
Margaret Clitherow was born in 1556, one of five children of Thomas and Jane Middleton. Her father was a respected businessman, a wax-chandler and Sheriff of York in 1564, who died when Margaret was fourteen. In 1571, she married John Clitherow, a wealthy butcher and a chamberlain of the city, and bore him three children; the family lived at today's 10–11 The Shambles.
She converted to Roman Catholicism in 1574. Although her husband, John Clitherow, belonged to the Established Church, he was supportive as his brother William was a Roman Catholic priest. He paid her fines for not attending church services. She was first imprisoned in 1577 for failing to attend church, and two more incarcerations at York Castle followed. Her third child, William, was born in prison.
Margaret risked her life by harbouring and maintaining priests, which was made a capital offence by the Jesuits, etc. Act 1584. She provided two chambers, one adjoining her house and, with her house under surveillance, she rented a house some distance away, where she kept priests hidden and Mass was celebrated through the thick of the persecution. Her home became one of the most important hiding places for fugitive priests in the north of England. Local tradition holds that she also housed her clerical guests in The Black Swan at Peasholme Green, where the Queen's agents were lodged.
She sent her older son, Henry, to the English College, relocated in Reims, to train for the priesthood. The authorities summoned her husband to explain why his oldest son had gone abroad, and in March 1586 the Clitherow house was searched. A frightened boy revealed the location of the priest hole.
Margaret was arrested and called before the York assizes for the crime of harbouring Catholic priests. She refused to plead, thereby preventing a trial that would entail her three children being made to testify and being subjected to torture. She was sentenced to death. Clench did try to change her mind, and enter a plea, and for this he must take some credit I suppose!
Although pregnant with her fourth child, she was executed on Lady Day, 1586, (which also happened to be Good Friday that year) in the Toll Booth at Ouse Bridge, by being crushed to death by her own door, the standard inducement to force a plea.
The two sergeants who should have carried out the execution hired four desperate beggars to do it instead. She was stripped and had a handkerchief tied across her face then laid across a sharp rock the size of a man's fist, the door from her own house was put on top of her and loaded with an immense weight of rocks and stones so that the sharp rock would break her back. Her death occurred within fifteen minutes, but her body was left for six hours before the weight was removed.
The uninspiring interior of Holbrook Church with the massive memorial to John Clench and his wife
On his memorial this inscription
See, carved in marble lies the reverend judge:
Earth turns to earth, and flesh is cased in dust,
But, borne aloft to halls of highest heaven
The soul lives ever in God's citadel."
What he and his fellow judge did seems very barbaric from our view some 420 years later, and indeed it was. I guess we must look at progress made in our justice system during the intervening years and the tolerance we have developed also and continue striving to progress. Religious intolerance during the period mentioned, carried on for some time being a large factor in the Civil War of 1640`s.
