Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Sunday, 21 August 2016

Pilgrimage to the grave of St John Kemble


Today we continued our retreat at Belmont with the Offices and High Mass, an excellent lunch in the refrectory and then went off in the drizzle on pilgrimage to the grave of St John Kemble, who was martyred in 1679 at Hereford, in the churchyard at Welsh Newton, a few miles to the south west of Hereford.


Welsh Newton, Brothers at St John Kemble's grave (3).JPG

 Fr Jerome and the Brothers on the Retreat in Welsh Newton churchyard

Image: Oxford Oratory 

Fr Jerome had planned to take us there but we found that as tomorrow is the feast day of St John we could join in the annual walking pilgrimage to his grave which took place this afternoon.

There is an online account of St John and his life and martyrdom at John Kemble (martyr) and there is an article about him from the Catholic Herald from 2010 at The English martyr hanged at the age of 80.There is another account of him from the Herefordshire past website at Saint John Kemble – Martyr.

One of the Saint's hands is held as a relic in the church of St Francis Xavier in Hereford, and there is an account of what looks very much like a miracle wrought at his intercession in 1995 through the use of the relic at St. John Kemble's Severed Hand


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