This… is Shambles. A street in the city of York. Its overhanging,
medieval timber frame structures make it a quite popular tourist spot today. But
the history of Shambles offers more than just preserved architecture and the history of the
butchers’ trade in the 15th and 16th centuries. It offers us the tale of “The Pearl of York,”
the lady who defied Queen Elizabeth the First’s religious persecution. Welcome to Nutty History,
this is the Untold Story of the Tudor Woman that was Crushed to Death. Accused of harboring
Jesuits, Margaret Clitherow’s trial took place at Guildhall of York. But Margaret was cemented in
her convictions. She refused to be tried by the jury or acknowledge the charges against her. She
boldly claimed that she has made no offense for which she should confess guilt. She even demanded
that there should be no trial as there hasn’t been any offense against the law. Margaret had
ulterior motives behind avoiding a trial. If she had cooperated and then been brought to trial, her
children would have been used as witnesses against her. So, she chose to accept the death sentence
instead. “Peine forte et dure” means being pressed to death. This was the legal punishment assigned
to those who refused to make a plea and stand trial in Elizabethan England. On March 15th,
1586, a day after her arraignment, Judge George Clinch read out her sentence. She showed no
remorse towards the punishment and instead scornfully remarked "God be thanked, I am not
worthy of such a good death as this." What we know of her martyrdom mostly comes from her confessor
John Mush’s book “Life of Margaret Clitherow.” As Father Mush was a Catholic priest himself, he
couldn’t risk attending court in person. Someone else had to be his eyes and ears on the streets
of York and at the Lent Assizes. There are few who believe that this witness was perhaps a young
Guy Fawkes. The same guy who goes: The Catholic Encyclopedia has detailed her martyrdom. Although
she was probably with child, this horrible sentence was carried out on Lady Day, 1586,
or Good Friday according to New Style. She had endured an agony of fear the previous night, but
she was now calm, joyous, and smiling. She walked barefoot to the tollbooth on the Ouse Bridge, for
she had sent her hose and shoes to her daughter Anne, as a token that she should follow in her
steps. She had been distressed by the ministers and even now was urged to confess her crimes. "No,
no, Mr. Sheriff, I die for the love of my Lord Jesu," she answered. She was laid on the ground,
a sharp stone beneath her back, her hands stretched out in the form of a cross and bound
to two posts. Then a door was placed upon her, which was weighted down till she succumbed to the
weight. Her last words during the painful fifteen minutes were "Jesu! Jesu! Jesu! have mercy on me!"
During the late 1560s and 1570s, England was going through a religious upheaval. Elizabeth the first,
the new young queen was trying to undo everything her elder half-sister and
predecessor Mary the first had imposed on the country during her reign. Specifically,
Catholicism and the persecution of Protestants. So, Elizabeth the first was obviously contrary
to Mary and reimposed Protestantism and was against Catholics. In the era when Elizabeth the
first made attending Protestant church service every Sunday necessary by law, many Catholics,
who stayed true to their faith unobtrusively, would sneak off to attend illegal Catholic Mass
after the Protestant Church service. Even though any sort of Catholic worship was deemed punishable
by law, Margaret Clitherow was an unapologetic Catholic. She didn’t bother to hide her faith,
instead, she joined York’s recusants. These were dissenters who shunned the official church
services and objected to swearing allegiance to the queen. An act itself enough to be prosecuted
for treason. Over the next ten years, Margaret Clitherow got well acquainted with York’s prison.
At first , she was fined for not attending the church, according to the 1559 Injunctions which
formed part of the Elizabethan Settlement. Margaret’s husband, a Protestant, paid her
fines. For reasons unknown, John Clitherow, or Mr. Margaret Clitherow, had no problem with his
wife being a catholic or raising their children catholic, despite being well aware of how this
was against the law. Margaret got incarcerated first in 1577, for repetition of the misdemeanor
of defying the law for attending Protestant church service. It was noted by the parish
register that Margaret at that time was with child and gave birth to her third offspring, William,
in the prison. Despite that, Margaret would get arrested twice more in 1580 and 1583, spending
more than a year in prison on both occasions. However, in the third instance, she made good use
of the time she had on her hands and learned to read and write. Her fourth arrest on March 10th,
1586 was on grounds larger than failing to attend church services. The council of North,
the Queen’s official representatives in this part of England summoned John Clitherow to explain the
absence of his son Henry but John claimed he had no knowledge. This led to a prompt search of the
Clitherow home and a frightened servant revealed to authorities, Margaret’s biggest crime. The
existence of a priest hole, a secret room where Margaret had sheltered and protected catholic
priests during the time they were being hunted down. When authorities found this secret room,
it was empty, there were no Catholic priests in there. But authorities found vestments and bread
left from the Mass and that was enough evidence to arrest Margaret. She was arraigned four days
later and charged with the crime of harboring and maintaining Jesuits and seminary priests,
traitors to the Queen's majesty and her laws. The reason for her downfall came from the desire to
emulate the nobles who were known to discreetly harbor priests and aid them to stay incognito
disguised as schoolmasters or music teachers for the house’s children. But nobles had the space,
finances, and means to support and conceal priests. The Clitherow house on the other
hand was not able to do it in the middling sort of household on the bustling Shambles in
York as efficiently as required. Today that house, 35-36 Shambles serves as her shrine.
Nearly twenty years before Margaret Clitherow nee Middleton was born, Henry the eighth was
ruling as the second Tudor King of England. In his stubbornness to divorce his first wife,
Catherine of Aragorn, who by the way failed to give him a male heir, Henry the eighth defied
the pope and set up the Church of England. This started a religious civil war between
Catholics and the new church’s Protestants. After Henry the 8th’s male successor, Edward,
died young and childless, his elder daughter Mary inherited the royal crown of England.
During Mary’s rule, reforms and restrictions were aimed at restoring the Catholic Church’s
ascendancy in England. Most controversially, she ordered 280 Protestants torched at the stake as
heretics. A fact that would later cement her reputation as “Bloody Mary.” Mary’s successor,
Elizabeth I, torched five Anabaptists at the stake during her 45-year reign; ordered the
deaths of around 800 Catholic rebels implicated in the Northern earls’ revolt of 1569; and
had at least 183 Catholics, the majority of whom were Jesuit missionaries quartered as traitors.
They say every story is like a coin and has two sides. The same goes for the story
of St. Margaret, the Pearl of York. During the 1580s, there was a major three-way power
struggle underway behind the scenes in York. The first party was the Council of The North,
which as we explained earlier, was the Queen’s official representative in this part of England.
The second party was York’s city council led by a Lord Mayor. And the third party
was the Church of England headed locally by the Archbishop of York. All of these three
vied for the Queen’s favor and they knew the best way to earn it was to persecute
Catholics. But there is a twist in this story. The then Lord Mayor of York was Henry Maye,
stepfather of Margaret who was elected not even a month before Margaret’s arrest for harboring
Jesuits. It was a scandal! Margaret’s mother had died a year ago and Henry had remarried but
he was still legally her stepfather and they had an amicable relationship. The representatives of
the Council of the North must have been rubbing their hands together to get a win over the City
Council. Both parties then, as well as the Church, had motive enough to investigate Margaret further.
When whispers went around that she might be hiding priests and allowing Mass to be said in her house,
which body would have acted first? We already know that it was the Council of the North that summoned
John but it was the city council that raided the Clitherow residence. Opinions on Margaret
Clitherow have varied throughout history. Many of her contemporaries deemed her to be mad while
Henry May, Lord Mayor of York, and Margaret’s stepfather claimed that Margaret had taken her
own life. Somewhat unusually, Elizabeth I herself seemed to condemn the punishment of Margaret,
writing a letter to the people of York which stated that Margaret should have
been spared the terrible fate on account of her gender alone or her possible pregnancy.
In more recent history, Margaret has been revered rather than condemned,
being canonized by Pope Paul VI in October 1970 as one of forty English martyrs. It
was also Pope Paul VI who first called Margaret ‘The Pearl of York’. Would you like us to cover
more personalities like her from the Nutty archives of History? Tell us in the comments,
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