Edmund Gennings

Edmund Gennings was an English Catholic priest and martyr of the Elizabethan persecution, born in 1567 at Lichfield in Staffordshire. He was brought up as a Protestant in accordance with the religious settlement of Queen Elizabeth I. In his mid-teens he became a page in the household of a Catholic gentleman named Richard Sherwood. Living among recusants, he was drawn to the old faith and converted to Roman Catholicism around the age of sixteen. At a period when the presence of Catholic priests in England was defined as high treason, he resolved to seek ordination abroad. In August 1583 he crossed to the Continent and entered the English College, then located at Reims, which trained clergy for the English mission.

He pursued his studies for several years and was ordained priest at Soissons in 1590. Shortly afterwards he was sent back to England. His active ministry lasted only a little over a year. In November 1591 he was celebrating Mass in the house of the recusant layman Swithun Wells in Holborn, London, when the dwelling was raided by the priest-hunter Richard Topcliffe. Gennings was arrested at the altar together with another priest, Polydore Plasden, and a number of lay people who had been present at the Mass. The capture formed part of a wider round-up of Catholics in the capital.

Brought to trial, Gennings was convicted of high treason for having been ordained abroad and having exercised his priesthood in England, offences under the statutes of 1585. On 10 December 1591 he was executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Gray's Inn Fields, close to the house in which he had been taken. He was twenty-four years old. Swithun Wells was hanged the same day near his own doorway. Contemporary Catholic accounts describe Gennings as meeting his death with courage and as praying for the queen even while undergoing the brutal penalties prescribed for traitors.

The martyrdom of Edmund Gennings had a notable sequel in his own family. His younger brother John, who had remained a Protestant, was so affected by Edmund’s fate that he converted to Catholicism, later became a priest, joined the Franciscan order, and composed a life of his brother. Edmund Gennings was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929 and was canonized by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. In the Roman Martyrology and in local calendars his feast is observed on 10 December, the day of his death; he is also commemorated with the other Forty Martyrs on 4 May.