| BLESSED THOMAS JOHNSON
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| Carthusian martyr, died in Newgate
gaol, London, 20 September, 1537. On 18 May, 1537, the twenty choir monks and
eighteen brothers remaining in the London Charterhouse were required to take the
Oath of Supremacy. Of these choir monks Thomas Johnson, Richard Bere, Thomas
Green (priests), and John Davy (deacon) refused; and of the brothers Robert
Salt, William Greenwood, Thomas Redyng, Thommas Scryven, Walter Pierson, and
William Horne. On 29 May all were sent to Newgate, where they were chained
standing and with their hands tied behind them to posts in the prison, and so
left to die of starvation. However Margaret Clement, who as Margaret Giggs had
been brought up in the household of St. Thomas More, bribed the gaoler to let
her have access to the prisoners, and disguised herself as a milkmaid and
carried in a milk-can full of meat, wherewith she fed them. After the king's
inquiry as to whether they were not already dead, the gaoler was afraid to let
her enter again; but she was allowed to go on the roof, and uncovering the
tiles, she let down meat in a basket as near as she could to their mouths.
However they could get little or nothing from the basket, and as the gaoler
feared discovery, even this plan was soon discontinued. Greenwood died first (6
June), then Davy (8 June), Salt ( 9 June), Pierson and Green (10 June), Scryven
(15 June), Redyng (16 June). It is probable that then Cromwell interfered and
ordered those still living to be given food in order that they might be
preserved for execution; for Bere did not die till 9 August, nor Johnson till 20
September. Horne survived, and though he could never be induced to quit his
religious habit, was not attainted till 1540, when he was hanged, disembowelled,
and quartered at Tyburn (4 August) with the five Praetermissi Robert Bird
(layman), Lawrence Cook (Carmelite Prior of Doncaster), Thomas Epson
(Benedictine), Giles Heron (layman), and probably with William Bird (Rector of
Fittleton and Vicar of Bradford, Wiltshire). All ten Carthusians were beatified
by Leo XIII on Dec., 1886. Blessed Richard Bere (Abbot of Glastonbury
1493-1525), and became a Carthusian on Feb., 1523. Blessed Thomas Green has been
identified by Dom Bede Camm with Thomas Greenwood (B.A., Oxon, M.A., Cantab,
1511), who became Fellow of St. John's College Cambridge in 1515 and D.D. in
1532.
John B. Wainewright From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright © 1913 by the Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright © 1996 by New Advent, Inc., P.O. Box 281096, Denver, Colorado, USA, 80228. (knight@knight.org) Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent). |
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