John Payne (martyr)
| Saint John Payne |
|
|---|---|
| Martyr | |
| Born | 1532 Peterborough |
| Died | 2 April 1582 Chelmsford |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Beatified | 1886 |
| Canonized | 1970 by Pope Paul VI |
Saint John Payne (1532–1582) was an English Catholic priest and martyr, one of the Catholic Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
John Payne was born at Peterborough in 1532. He was probably a mature man when he went to the English College at Douai in 1574, served there as bursar, and was ordained priest by the Archbishop of Cambrai on 7 April 1576.
Shortly afterwards, on 24 April 1576, he left for the English mission in the company of another priest, Cuthbert Mayne. While Mayne headed for his native South West England, Payne resided for the most part with Anne, widow of Sir William Petre, and daughter of Sir William Browne, sometime Lord Mayor of the City of London, at Ingatestone, Essex, in whose house was a "priest hole", but also in London. The missioner passed as a steward of Lady Petre. Shortly after his arrival he converted (or re-converted) to Catholicism George Godsalve or Godsalf, of the diocese of Bath, a man who had gained the B.A. at Oxford and had been ordained a deacon in the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary, but who had then become a Protestant. Payne sent Godsalf to Douai, where he arrived on 15 July 1576 to be prepared for the Catholic priesthood, which he was to receive at Cambrai on 22 December. Payne himself was arrested at Ingatestone and imprisoned early in 1577, but was soon released and went back to Douai that November. From there he probably returned to Ingatestone before Christmas, 1579.
Early in July 1581, he and Godsalf, who had come to England in June 1577, were arrested in Warwickshire whilst staying on the estate of Lady Petre (widow of William Petre), through the efforts of the informer George "Judas" Eliot (a criminal, murderer, rapist and thief, who made a career out of denouncing Catholics and priests for bounty). After being examined by Walsingham at Greenwich, they were committed to the Tower of London on 14 July. Godsalf did not give in but spent several years in prison, after which he was released from the Marshalsea in September 1585 and banished, dying in Paris in 1592.
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