Mathew Flathers

Mathew Flathers (Matthew; alias Major) ( 1580 – 21 March 1607) was an English Roman Catholic priest. He is a Catholic martyr, beatified in 1987.

Life Born at Weston, West Riding of Yorkshire, Flathers was educated at Douai, graduating on 5 June 1605. He was ordained at Arras on 25 March 1606. After ministering for a short time to Catholics in Yorkshire, he was apprehended again at Upsall Castle through the efforts of Stephen Proctor, Timothy Whittingham, and Thomas Posthumous Hoby.

Brought to trial at York on the charge of being ordained abroad and exercising priestly functions in England, Flathers was offered his life on condition that he take the recently enacted Oath of Allegiance. On his refusal, he was condemned to death and taken to the common place of execution outside Micklegate Bar, York.

There Flathers was hanged, drawn, and quartered; biographers recorded that after he was cut down alive, a man "with a halberd stroke him upon the head and cutt off a peece, another with a sword cutt him overthwart the face", and a third "with a hatchet cutt off his head". Various sources give the year of his death as 1606, 1607,