John Ingram (martyr)

John Ingram
Born	1565 Stoke Edith, Herefordshire
Died	26 July 1594 Gateshead
Nationality	English
Occupation	Jesuit

John Ingram (1565 – 26 July 1594) was an English Jesuit and martyr from Stoke Edith, Herefordshire, who was executed in Gateshead on 26 July 1594, during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Life

Ingram was probably the son of Anthony Ingram of Wolford, Warwickshire, by Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Hungerford.

He began his education in Worcestershire and attended New College, Oxford. He then converted to Catholicism and studied at the English College, Rheims, at the Jesuit College, Pont-a-Mousson, and at the English College, Rome. He was ordained at Rome in 1589; and then, early in 1592, he went to Scotland. There he befriended many powerful people. He acted as chaplain to Walter Lindsay of Balgavie for 18 months.

Captured at Wark in Northumberland having crossed into England over the River Tweed on 25 November 1593, he was first imprisoned at Berwick, then at Durham, York, and in the Tower of London, where he was severely tortured and wrote twenty Latin epigrams, which survive.

One of Ingram's epigrams gives us a glimpse of his long ride from York to London:

My lesser jade often changed his whiteness,
and made be black too with the mud of his splashing.

And another on his arrival:

The day, on which the unquenched love of the Faith
made me behold the grim prison of the Tower.

He arrived at the Tower of London on Holy Saturday, 17 April 1593. He was hung by the joints of his fingers and arms, and was in extreme pain for so long that the feeling of his senses was taken completely from him. He was often put on the rack, and the Queen's torturer, Richard Topcliffe, remarked that he remained utterly silent and gave no information about persons and places. He was taken from London on 13 July to return to York prison with another Catholic priest, John Boste. The two prisoners' feet were tied under their horse's belly, for fear of them trying to escape. Care was also taken that the horses were kept far enough apart to prevent the prisoners having any communication with each other throughout the journey. When they arrived in York, Ingram was in solitary confinement in a stinking vault of a locked jakehouse for four days, without either bed to lie on or stool to sit on. From York he was transported to Newcastle and imprisoned in the Newgate prison there for four nights, probably from 19 to 22 July. A woman visitor to the prison was struck by the serenity and joy of the priest, who said that he had good cause to be merry, because his wedding-day being at hand, the bridegroom must be glad, for within ten days he hoped to enjoy his Spouse. She remarked that it was true his hope was good, but his banquet was deadly; but he answered that the reward was sweet. The serenity and courage of John Ingram is reflected in two letters he wrote from prison to his friends or fellow prisoners in the same prison: "I look for my trial on Thursday and consequently for my death in God's honour ( ...) in my pained body; my spirit is not pained, nor in any disaster, distress or durance."

Death and beatification

At Durham Assizes he was tried with John Boste and George Swallowell, a converted Protestant minister. There on 23 July 1594 Ingram and Boste were convicted under a law which made the mere presence in England of a priest ordained abroad high treason, even though there was no evidence that he had ever acted as a priest while in England. Matthew Hutton (1529-1606), the Bishop of Durham, acting for the Crown, preached a sermon before the judges, incensing them to prosecute with all vigour the justice, or rather cruelty, of the law against seminary priests, their aiders and abettors. There is evidence that someone in Scotland offered the English Government a thousand crowns to spare Ingram's life, all in vain. After the intervention of the Bishop of Durham before the court, the trial was a foregone conclusion and John Ingram, John Boste and a layman George Swallowell, a converted Protestant minister, were sentenced to death on Wednesday 24 July. When John Ingram was asked according to the usual formula, what he had to say that he should not receive judgement, he made this answer, "I say that I am a priest, and that my exercise and practice of priesthood cannot be made treason by any Christian law; and I beseech God to forgive both you and them that make it otherways. And I do with all my heart forgive you, and all my accusers and persecutors, and so I beseech God to have mercy upon me, and to strengthen me with patience and constancy in mine agony." As the authorities in Newcastle were responsible for executions on Tyneside, John was transferred to Newgate Prison in Newcastle and on the day of execution, Friday 26 July, he was taken from the prison across the bridge (now where the Swing Bridge is located) to the scaffold in Gateshead High Street which was directly opposite what was known at the time as the Papist Chapel, the Chapel of St Edmund Bishop and Confessor. Immediately prior to his execution he was held for a short while in the Toolboth in Gateshead, a small local gaol very close to the place of execution. The costs of the execution were as follows in Newcastle City Accounts Book: "Paide for charges att the execution of the semynarie priete in Gateside John Ingram – 2 shillings and 6 pence. Paide for hinginge his quarters of the gibbettes: 18 pence and for panyer which brought his quarters to towne 4 pence – 22 pence. Paide for a locke for towlboothe dore in Gateside – 3 shillings 4 pence."

His severed head was placed on a spike and displayed on the bridge across the Tyne. Holtby gives an account of Ingram's preparations, the prayers he said, his words to the bystanders, and of the execution itself: "I take God and his holy angels to the record, that I die only for the holy Catholic faith and religion, and do rejoice and thank God with all my heart that hath made me worthy to testify my faith therein, by the spending of my blood in this manner." He was asked to pray for the Queen and he prayed God that she might long reign to his glory, and that it might please him to procure her to live and die a good Catholic Christian prince. With rope around his neck he said more prayers, ending with the psalm Miserere mei Deus (Have mercy on me, O God, in your kindness), after which, making the sign of the Cross upon himself and saying, "In manus tuas ,,." (Into Thy hands I commend my spirit), the ladder was turned; and being dead, he was cut down, bowelled, and quartered.

In the Tower of London, John Ingram had written these words of an epigram in Latin,

The expectation of a bloody death is another death,
which grins at me, her grey hairs steeped in gore.

Another epigram read:

Rocks are quarried, the entrails of the earth, that Dives may have living rock for his tomb.
No tomb seek I; and yet shall there be a living tomb for my lifeless body – the carrion-crow.

In Rome, at the English College, when the news of his martyrdom reached there, the staff and students sang the Te Deum in the college chapel and wrote against his name "Martyro insigni coronatus".

He was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI and his anniversary is 24 July.

His martyrdom is commemorated each year by faithful Catholics who gather at St Andrew's Anglican Church in Newcastle, which is situated where John Ingram was held in the Newgate Prison prior to his execution. After a brief service of prayer, they walk along the route taken by the execution party, from Newcastle to Gateshead High Street, crossing the river Tyne over the Swing Bridge, where the medieval bridge stood. The Annual John Ingram Walk concludes with service of prayer at the Anglican church of St Edmund (Holy Trinity Church) which is situated in the High Street. The Catholic priest who leads this Walk usually delivers a homily at St Edmund's. At the time of Protestant Reformation this church was referred to as "the papist chapel", and the authorities chose to execute John Ingram directly in front of this chapel, dedicated to St Edmund of Canterbury, as a warning to any Catholics on Tyneside, of which there were many, should they think of refusing to comply with the requirements of the Queen, her Privy Council, and her Protestant bishops.

The brothers of the St Vincent de Paul Society Conference at Corpus Christi Catholic Church in the Bensham area of Gateshead initiated the annual walk in his honour, a few years after the Canonization of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI, and after speaking to the elderly Father Starr, a Catholic priest who had had a personal devotion to the Gateshead martyr for many years and had made a walk in his honour. Their motive from the start was to promote the cause for the canonization of John Ingram.

See also

• Catholic Church in the United Kingdom
• Douai Martyrs

References

• Paul J Zielinski, (2019) "John Ingram Priest and Martyr 1565-1594 a personal presentation of the Gateshead martyr in the Elizabethan era." 2019 Private Publication in Gateshead. Signed copies of the book are obtainable from the author. Address: St Augustine's Presbytery, Wealcroft, Felling, Gateshead NE10 8QS. United Kingdom. Cheques should be made out to PAUL ZIELINSKI. The Book costs £5-99, plus £2-50 postage (UK) and packing. For sending abroad, postage is £5-00. The book is also available in St Mary's Cathedral Book Shop, (Pauline Books and Media) Clayton Street, Newcastle upon Tyne.Telephone number 0191 231 6060.

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Ven. John Ingram". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.