St Edmund Gennings and St Swithun Wells

On December 1oth 1591, fifty years to the day after Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham were executed, Londoners were able to witness another set of executions, those of a priest, St Edmund Gennings and of a layman, St Swithun Wells, who had made his house at Grays Inn available for St Edmund to celebrate Mass.

Arrested at the altar St Edmund was led away to prison still in his vestments and St Swithun. who had not been present, was arrested upon his return home. Both were executed outside the house, the priest being hanged drawn and quartered, the householder being hanged.

St Edmund Gennings
Modern statue in St Etheldreda's Holborn

Image: Lawrence Lew on Flickr


St Swithun Wells
Modern statue in St Etheldreda's Holborn

Image: Mary's Dowry Productions

There is piece about both of them from Mary' Dowry Films in connection with two films about the two martyrs here.

There is an online life of St Swithun Wells here. He had been born in Hampshire in 1536 and his name suggests devotion on the part of his parents to the local saint, St Swithun, whose shrine was in Winchester cathedral.

St Edmund Gennings was born in Lichfield in 1567, and his martyrdonm had a profound effect on recalling his brother to the Catholic faith and to discover his own vocation. The Oxford DNB life of St Edmund, with a link to that of his brother can be read here and there is another online life of him, with an early portrait, here.

St Etheldreda

Today is the feast day of St Etheldreda, the founder of what was to become Ely Cathedral, and who died in 679.

One of her hands is preserved in the Catholic church in Ely and there is another relic at St Etheldreda's in Holborn. Unfortunately I cannot find on the internet a picture of the hand preserved at Ely.

Her most obvious monuments are much later than her own time, and include the spectacular cathedral at Ely. This is a Norman and Early English structure which in the wake of the collapse of the central tower in 1322 was restored in spectacular fashion with the creation of the octagon at the crossing, the rebuilding of the western bays of the choir arm and the addition of the Lady Chapel, and later the top of the western tower. The result is some of the most exuberant and exhilarating architecture from medieval England.

This was not confined to the cathedral, and other examples of the period from the see of Ely include the church of St Etheldreda in Holborn. This is all that now remains of the bishop's London residence, and after along and chequered history after the reformation returned to Catholic ownership and use. I have attended a couple of EF Masses there offered by the Society of St Catherine of Siena. The website of the church is here. The interior is shown to the right.

Both the cathedral and the Holborn episcopal chapel have the nature, even if they are perhaps a generation earlier, of what is meant by the line from Kind Hearts and Coronets where the elderly canon says of the west window of his church "It has all the vitality of the age of Chaucer with none of the concomitant vulgarity"

For these wonderful buildings we have St Etheldreda to thank, as well as the skills of the masons who created them and the devotion which commissioned them.