Ralph Corbie

Ralph Corbie, whose surname is also spelled Corby, was born on 25 March 1598 in Dublin, Ireland. His parents, Gerard Corbie and Isabella Richardson, were English recusants from County Durham who had fled to Ireland to escape the penal laws against Catholics. The family later settled in the Spanish Netherlands, a principal refuge for English Catholics in that period. Corbie was educated at the Jesuit college of Saint-Omer and continued his studies in Spain at Seville and at the English College in Valladolid. In 1626 he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Watten, near Saint-Omer.

After completing Jesuit formation and ordination to the priesthood, Corbie was sent to the English mission around 1631. For about twelve years he ministered in secret among recusant Catholics in County Durham, the ancestral region of his family. Under English law it was high treason for a priest ordained abroad to enter or remain in the country, so his work was carried out under constant risk of arrest. His years on the mission coincided with rising political and religious conflict that led into the English Civil War, when Parliamentary authorities were often especially severe toward Catholic clergy.

In 1644 Corbie was captured in County Durham together with the secular priest John Duckett. The two were taken to London, imprisoned, and condemned to death for high treason on account of their priesthood. On 7 September 1644 they were executed at Tyburn by hanging, drawing, and quartering. Contemporary notices of the martyrdom describe Corbie as meeting his death with composure, and the two priests were allowed some contact in prison before they were put to death.

The Corbie family was unusual for the number of its members who entered religious life. Gerard Corbie later became a Jesuit lay brother; Isabella entered the Benedictine convent at Ghent; and at least two of Ralph's brothers also joined the Society of Jesus. Ralph Corbie was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929 among a large group of English and Welsh martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He has not been canonized. He is commemorated on 7 September, the anniversary of his martyrdom, and is numbered among the beatified martyrs of England and Wales.