George Haydock

George Haydock (born 1556; executed at Tyburn, 12 February 1584) was an English Roman Catholic priest. He is a Catholic martyr, beatified in 1987. He is not to be confused with his relative, also a priest, George Leo Haydock (1774–1849).

Life He was the youngest son of Evan Haydock of Cottam Hall near Preston, Lancashire, and Helen, daughter of William Westby of Mowbreck Hall, Lancashire. After his wife died, Evan Haydock took up studies at the English College, Douai, and was ordained. He returned to England, where he worked for some years before becoming an agent or procurator of the college. His sons Richard and George followed him to Douai. Richard became a doctor of divinity in Rome.

From Douai, George Haydock went to the English College, Rome. He was ordained priest (apparently at Rheims), on 21 December 1581.

He arrived in England in mid-January 1582 and was arrested around 4 February while visiting an old acquaintance named Hawkinson. In the five years since they'd last met, Hawkinson, a former Catholic, had apostatised and having then encountered Haydock in London, informed the priest hunters Norton and Sledd.

Haydock spent a year and three months in confinement in the Tower of London, suffering from a malarial fever he first contracted in the early summer of 1581 when visiting the seven churches of Rome. About May 1583, though he remained in the Tower, his imprisonment was relaxed to "free custody", and he was able to administer the Sacraments to his fellow prisoners. During the first period of his captivity he was accustomed to decorating his cell with the name and arms of the Pope scratched or drawn in charcoal on the door or walls, and through his career, he remained faithful to the spiritual authority of the Papacy. In October 1580 he entered the English College at Rome. Hemerford is described as "a short man with a dark beard, severe of look but of a sweet disposition".

Ordained in Rheims in March 1583, he arrived in Hampshire in June. He was obliged to stay in a village while the blacksmith replaced a shoe on his horse, and a passerby denounced him as the priest who had preached in the barn. He was imprisoned at Winchester and then brought to the Marshalsea where he was indicted for conspiring with John Mundyn for the death of the Queen. From there he was committed to the Tower. Hemerford was tried and found guilty, despite a defective indictment, on 7 February 1584, and hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on 12 February.

John Mundyn John Mundyn or Munden was born in the Manor of Coltley in Dorset. He entered Winchester College in 1555 at the age of twelve, and attended New College, Oxford, but was deprived for failing to communicate since the accession of Elizabeth. He then became for a time a schoolmaster in Dorset. In 1580 he left to study civil law at Douai, then at Rheims. In October 1581 he entered the English College in Rome. By June 1582 he was back at Rheims and left for the English Mission the following August.

In February 1583, while riding from Winchester to London, he happened on Hounslow Heath a magistrate from Dorset who recognised him. Mundyn was then arrested. Walsingham was so dissatisfied with Mundyn's answers when questioned that he gave the priest a blow to the face that affected Mundyn's hearing for several days. Mundyn was remanded to the Broad Arrow Tower at the Tower of London. Mundyn was tried for conspiring against the Queen and condemned on 6 February 1584.

James Fenn and Thomas Hemerford were beatified by Pope Pius XI in December 1929. Their feast day is 12 February.

Death Early on Wednesday the 12th the five priests were drawn to Tyburn on hurdles; Haydock, being probably the youngest and certainly the weakest in health, was the first to suffer. All were hanged, cut down before dead, and dismembered alive.