John Boste

John Boste was an English Catholic priest and martyr of the Elizabethan penal laws, born at Dufton in Westmorland in the north of England about 1544. He studied at Queen's College, Oxford, from about 1569 and was elected a Fellow of the college in 1572. In 1576 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church at Brome in Suffolk. He later resigned his fellowship, left Oxford, and went to the English College then established at Reims to prepare for the priesthood.

He was ordained priest at Reims on 4 March 1581 and set out for the English mission at the end of April that year. For roughly twelve years he worked chiefly in the northern counties, especially Westmorland, County Durham, and neighbouring districts, and was regarded as an active, prudent, and effective missionary among recusant households. His ministry was clandestine, since under statute the presence of a seminary priest in England was high treason.

Boste was betrayed by Francis Ecclesfield (also given as Eglesfield), who pretended Catholic sympathies, and was arrested on 5 July 1593 while saying Mass at Waterhouses, the house of William Claxton near Durham. He was taken to the Tower of London and severely tortured, including on the rack, then sent back north for trial. Condemned at the Durham assizes for high treason on account of his priesthood, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Dryburn, just outside Durham, on 24 July 1594. His remains were treated according to the usual penalties for treason; no verified burial place is recorded.

He was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929 and canonized by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. His individual memorial is kept on 24 July; he is also commemorated with the Forty Martyrs and among the martyrs of England and Wales.