05 works, Today, September 7th, is John Duckett's day, his story illustrated #250

Unknown artist

James Duckett was  Beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929

St James’ church, Spanish Place in London

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“A tryptich showing some of the martyrs who died for the Catholic faith from 1535 – 1680. In the centre is the triple gallows known as the ‘Tyburn Tree’.

John Duckett (1613 – 7 September 1644) was an English Catholic priest and martyr.

John Duckett was born at Underwinder, in the parish of Sedbergh, in Yorkshire, in 1603, the son of James and Francis Duckett. He was a relative, possibly grandson of James Duckett who had been executed at Tyburn on 19 April 1601 for printing Catholic books.

Leymonnerye, Léon (1803 - 1879)

College of Arras in Paris, c. 1858

Pencil

Carnavalet Museum, History of Paris

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He was baptized on 24 February 1614 and educated at Sedbergh School. At the age of seventeen, he entered the English College, Douai; he was ordained a priest by the Archbishop of Cambrai in 1639 and was then sent to study for three years at the College of Arras in Paris.

He is said to have had an extraordinary gift of prayer, and as a student would spend whole nights in contemplation. After Paris it came time to embark on the English mission, but on his way he spent two months in retreat under the direction of his uncle, John Duckett, prior of the Charterhouse at Nieupoort.

He arrived at Newcastle upon Tyne around Christmas 1643, Duckett worked largely in the North and laboured for about a year in Durham. It was in the time of the Civil War and he was arrested by Roundhead soldiers only a few months later, on 2 July 1644, at Redgate Head, Wolsingham, County Durham, while on his way to baptize two children. Taken to Sunderland, he was examined by a Parliamentary Committee of sequestrators and placed in irons. 

Unknown artist

40 Martyrs of England and Wales

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He admitted he was a priest and so was taken to London with the Jesuit Ralph Corby, arrested about the same time near Newcastle-on-Tyne. They were both confined in Newgate, where they were the cause of crowds of Catholics gathering. On these and on others who encountered them they made an impression by their cheerfulness and sanctity. 

Daphne Pollen, (1904–1986)

Forty Martyrs of England and Wales

Martyrs of England and Wales including three Carthusians

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Daphne Pollen, 1904–1986, was born into a wealthy family.

 

Daphne attended the Slade School of Art, and developed a particular gift as a muralist. By 1923, aged only nineteen, she was working on an immensely ambitious work; a sixty-foot mural of ‘Christ Healing the Sick’ in the church of All Hallows, Poplar. The church was badly damaged in 1942 during the Blitz, and was demolished in 1952, so this work has been lost.

 

However, also in 1923, she went with her family to India to see Lutyens’ work at New Delhi, and found a fellow Slade alumnus was also travelling on the boat: Arthur Pollen. They fell in love, and in 1926, she married him, and converted to Catholicism. 

 

After her marriage, her practice as an artist declined as her domestic commitments increased, but such work as she did, like her husband’s, was focused on Christian themes, and Catholic church art in particular, though she was also a competent portraitist. ‘The Forty English Martyrs’ was painted in 1968. This was commissioned by the Society of Jesus at a time when Philip Caraman and John Walsh SJ were working towards the canonisation of the English martyrs.

 

The Pollens’ belief in the importance of religious art was transmitted to the next generation.  Both their sons, the architect Francis Pollen (he designed Worth Abbey in Sussex) and the stained-glass artist Patrick Pollen, worked regularly on religious subjects throughout their respective careers. More on Daphne Pollen 

Unknown artist

Supremacy and Survival: The English Reformation

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He was brought to trial on 4 September and given the inevitable sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering. Corby was offered a reprieve, but deferred in favor of the younger Duckett, who refused to walk away and leave his friend. Both were executed at Tyburn in London on 7 September 1644.

Both priests were declared Blessed by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929. More on John Duckett

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