The last martyr of Tyburn

Today's saint is St. Oliver Plunket, Primate of Ireland in the seventeenth century and the last Catholic martyr of London's Tyburn tree. I do hope to make another pilgrimage to Tyburn someday, perhaps for next year's Martyrs' Walk. Last night EWTN aired a well-made hour-long biographical documentary on the saint that featured testimony from a number of scholars on Irish history. The documentary highlighted that one of Plunket's first acts upon returning to Ireland from de facto exile in Rome was to confirm 10,000 Catholics. (In those days, there was no provision in canon law for allowing priests to confirm, and almost all of the bishops had been purged from the land.) His sense of priorities seems perfectly in keeping with Pope Benedict's Wednesday audience address yesterday, in which the Holy Father said the two essential priestly ministries are "'proclamation' and 'power,' that is to say 'word' and 'sacrament.'" In his "Saints Alive" sketch for today, the late Fr. Robert McNamara of the Diocese of Rochester includes a colorful description of the men who ensnared St. Oliver in the bogus Titus Oates Plot:

Fortunately, the local British authorities did not molest Plunket for a couple of years. In 1673, however, a new persecution was launched and he had to go into hiding. Then in 1678 the royal government accepted as true the report brought in by an unscrupulous English clergyman that Catholics in the British Isles were preparing to welcome a Catholic invasion of Britain. Some worthless Irish ex-priests denounced Dr. Plunket as one of the conspirators. When a pro-British tribunal in Ireland could not find grounds to convict him, the royal government brought the archbishop to England, lodged him in the Tower of London, and in a mock trial brought in a verdict of treason and a sentence of death by hanging, drawing and quartering. The presiding judge revealed the real motive for the condemnation when he told the prelate in the open court, "The bottom of your treason was your setting up of your false religion." But true to the prayerful, resigned spirit Dr. Plunket had displayed throughout his captivity, he simply replied with joy, "Thanks be to God!"

At Tyburn gallows, Oliver inspired the vast crowd by his dignity and serenity. In the traditional speech that was allowed him before execution on July 11, 1681, he asserted his innocence of treason. He prayed for the king, he said, and for all his own enemies as well. Oliver Plunket was the last Catholic to be executed for his faith on the scaffold of notorious Tyburn Hill.