Robert Nutter

Robert Nutter was an English Catholic priest of the Dominican Order who was put to death for his priesthood under the Elizabethan penal laws. He was born at Burnley in Lancashire, in the north of England, around the middle of the sixteenth century; an exact year of birth is not securely recorded. His brother John likewise became a missionary priest and was executed at Tyburn in 1584. Robert studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, but left without taking a degree, a pattern familiar among recusants who would not subscribe to the religious tests of the established church. In 1579 he went to the English College then at Rheims, was ordained priest in 1581, and was sent on the English mission the following year.

His ministry in England was repeatedly interrupted by arrest. He was confined in the Tower of London, where he is reported to have been held in the pit and tortured, and he was banished from the realm more than once. Each time he returned to continue priestly work. After further imprisonment, including time in Newgate, he was held for many years at Wisbech Castle in Cambridgeshire, a principal prison for Catholic clergy. During that long confinement he was received into the Order of Preachers and made profession as a Dominican while still a prisoner.

In 1600 he was taken from Wisbech to Lancaster for trial. He was condemned under the statute that made it high treason for a priest ordained abroad to remain in England. On 26 July 1600 he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Lancaster, together with the priest Edward Thwing. The precise disposal of his remains after the execution is not recorded in surviving sources.

Nutter was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 22 November 1987 among the Eighty-five Martyrs of England and Wales. He has not been canonized. His memory is kept on 26 July, the date of his death, and he is also commemorated with the English and Welsh martyrs. He is remembered especially in Lancashire and within the Dominican Order as a priest who persisted in returning to a forbidden ministry and who entered religious life under imprisonment.