John Gennings

John Gennings (c. 1570 – 12 November 1660 in Douai) was an Englishman who was converted to Catholicism through the martyrdom of his elder brother Saint Edmund Gennings during the English Reformation. He restored the English province of Franciscan friars. His name is sometimes spelled Jennings.

Edmund Gennings converted to Catholicism at the age of about sixteen, and soon after went to Rheims to study for the priesthood. On returning to England, he met his younger brother, John, near Ludgate Hill, and spoke to him without disclosing his identity. He said merely that he was a kinsman, and asked the young man what had become of his brother Edmund. John told him that He had heard he was gone to Rome to the Pope, and was become a notable Papist and a traitor both to God and his country, and that if he did return he would be hanged infallibly. Edmund, not judging the time right to begin an attempt at converting his brother, told him who he was, but without mentioning his priesthood. The brothers separated soon after, and Edmund continued his short ministry until he was arrested on 7 November 1591, after saying Mass in the house of Swithun Wells at Gray's Inn. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered on 10 December, outside that house.

John Gennings, who subsequently wrote a Life of his brother, recounts his own conversion through his brother's martyrdom. On page 98, of the Life (which was published in 1614 at Saint-Omer), speaking of himself in the third person, he writes,

Being received into the Church, he entered Douai College, was ordained as a priest in 1607, and the following year was sent upon the English mission. Here he conceived a wish for the restoration of the English province of Franciscans, and sought out Father William Staney, the Commissary of the English friars, and from him received the habit (became a Franciscan), either in 1610 or 1614 (the date is uncertain). After this, he went for a time to a convent of the Franciscan order at Ypres, in Flanders, where he was joined by several English companions, amongst whom was Christopher Davenport, known in religion as Franciscus a Sancta Clara, afterwards a famous controversialist. Thus was the foundation of a new English province laid, and Father William Staney recognising the zeal of John Gennings, now gave into his hands the seal of the old province of the English Observants.

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