Edmund Arrowsmith

Saint Edmund Arrowsmith SJ
Martyr, Priest
Born	1585 Haydock, England
Died	1628 (aged 42–43) Lancaster, England
Venerated in	Catholic Church
Beatified	15 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI
Canonized	25 October 1970, Vatican City, by Pope Paul VI
Major shrine	Catholic Church of St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith, Ashton-in-Makerfield, England
Feast	28 August

Saint Edmund Arrowsmith, SJ (1585 – 28 August 1628) is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales of the Roman Catholic Church. The main source of information on St Edmund is a contemporary account written by an eyewitness and published a short time after his death. This document, conforming to the ancient style of the "Acts of martyrs" includes the story of the execution of another 17th-century Recusant martyr, Richard Herst.

Edmund was born at Haydock, Lancashire, England in 1585, the eldest child of Robert Arrowsmith, a yeoman farmer, and Margery Gerard, a member of an important Lancashire Catholic family. Among his mother's relations was Father John Gerard, who wrote The Diary of an Elizabethan Priest, as well as another martyr, the Blessed Miles Gerard. He was baptised Brian, but always used his confirmation name of Edmund. The family was constantly harassed for its adherence to Roman Catholicism. One of his grandfathers, died a confessor in prison. His parents were taken to Lancaster jail; the four children, were cared for by neighbours.

In 1605, at the age of twenty, Edmund left England and went to the English College, Douai, to study for the priesthood. He was soon forced to return to England due to ill health, but recovered and returned to Douai in 1607.

He was ordained in Arras on 9 December 1612, and sent on the English mission a year later. He ministered to the Catholics of Lancashire without incident until around 1622, when he was arrested and questioned by the Anglican Bishop of Chester. Edmund was released when King James I of England ordered all arrested priests be freed. He joined the Jesuits in 1624.

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