Fifty two of the men and women martyred for their Catholic faith between 1537 and 1680 met their deaths in York, the majority of them executed at the Tyburn on York Knavesmire. The last-but-one of them was Nicholas Postgate, the ‘priest of the moors’, in memory of whom the annual Diocesan Postgate rally takes place. There are a number of relics of Fr Postgate at Egton Bridge, many of them items from the chapel in the Mass House used by him, but there are also relics elsewhere.
Among the relics preserved in the church of the English Martyrs, York, only a stone’s throw from the site of the Tyburn, is the jaw bone of Nicholas Postgate. How it came to be there and its journeying since the death of the martyr, in so far as we can reconstruct it, makes a fascinating story.
We know that in the early days of the parish, its priest, Mgr Edward Goldie, obtained a number of relics from Jesuit sources. A letter from Fr J H Pollen SJ, writing from Farm Street on 2nd May 1895, promises a piece of Blessed Thomas More’s hat and a small relic of the Venerable Henry Walpole, though this latter was not to be exposed for veneration as Walpole had not reached the rank of ‘Blessed’. Fr Pollen promised to look out for further relics in time to come but the relic of Nicholas Postgate was not to arrive via him nor at this time.
The city of Durham had its own share of martyrs – ten of them, executed on Dryburn Field. Around about 1660 the secular mission in Old Elvet in Durham came into being, supported in its early days by the Witham, Forcer and Salvin families. Durham had a number of Catholic gentry residents and a surprising number of missions even including a Jesuit mission also in Old Elvet, separate from but alongside the secular mission. More than one of the Vicars Apostolic of the Northern District (effectively bishops for the whole of the North of England) lived at least part of the time at Old Elvet in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Old Elvet secular mission ultimately became St Cuthbert’s parish and we have solid evidence of the jaw bone being preserved at St Cuthbert’s from at least the middle of the 19th century.
It would appear that in January of 1944 the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, Joseph McCormack, made a gift of the jaw bone to English Martyrs parish (English Martyrs was at that time in the Diocese of Leeds; it was transferred to the Diocese of Middlesbrough in 1982.) There are four letters connected with the gift. The first, dated 29/01/44, is a letter from the bishop to Mgr Hawkswell, the parish priest of English Martyrs. Mgr Hawkswell himself has marked it as a ‘reply to my letter of thanks for the relic of Ven Nicholas Postgate’. In the letter, Bishop McCormack expresses his pleasure at being able to spread the cultus to the martyrs and that the Venerable Nicholas Postgate is one of his favourites.
Two further letters are addressed from Bishop McCormack to Henry John Poskitt, Bishop of Leeds. Both are dated 03/01/1945. The first is a copy of a deposition made in December 1926 by Canon William Brown who had gone to St Cuthbert’s as curate in 1874 and remained in the parish until his retirement 50 years later. Canon Brown was himself an historian, a member of the Durham and Newcastle Archaeological Society and vice president of the Surtees Society. Canon Brown’s deposition certifies that various relics were venerated in St Cuthbert’s at the time of his arrival there in October 1874, viz the right hand of Nicholas Postgate (minus its little finger), a lock of his white hair (preserved in ‘what seems to have been a lunette for a monstrance’), two vertebral bones and his lower jaw bone. There were also relics of the Venerable Thomas Thwing, martyred in York in the year after Nicholas Postgate. Canon Brown was able to state that they had been in the parish for some time before his arrival and that they were authenticated with the seal of William Hogarth, Bishop of Hexham from 1850. The other letter of the same date is a covering letter from Bishop McCormack adding only the information that he had not consulted experts to find out whether Canon Brown’s statement afforded sufficient evidence to justify public veneration of the relics if and when Venerable Nicholas Postgate should be canonised. The fourth letter is merely Bishop Poskitt’s letter forwarding the two above to Mgr Hawkswell. It can only be from forgetting the change of year that he dates it 04/01/1944.
Two questions arise: why might Bishop McCormack have given the relic to English Martyrs and why might he have sent Canon Brown’s deposition a year after the original gift? The answer to the first may well be connected with Bishop Poskitt of Leeds. The bishop, though himself a convert, may have felt some affinity with the martyr since ‘Nicholas Postgate’ is also sometimes rendered ‘Nicholas Poskit’ and he may have been keen to have a relic of his namesake in his diocese. English Martyrs would be the obvious place to display such a relic and we know that Henry Poskitt had already been generous to the parish donating both an altar missal and (it is believed) a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham when the new English Martyrs church was opened in 1932. (Poskitt was at that time seminary rector in Leeds.) As regards the deposition, it may have been that the parish priest in York was keen to have as much authentication in place as possible for the time when public veneration should be permitted. Equally, it may have been that Mgr Hawkswell was aware that Ampleforth Abbey also claimed to have the right hand of Nicholas Postgate! Whether it was known at the time that the relic at Ampleforth and the relic at Durham were both right hands is unclear. The current parish priest at St Cuthbert’s tells me, however, that at some stage the two were brought together with embarrassing consequences. Both hands are, inevitably, desiccated and incomplete so perhaps there is still room for hope? Only one who had seen the two together might say with any conviction. The ‘right hand’ at Durham remains in the parish but is locked away and the parish priest was unable to tell me without unpacking many boxes whether the vertebral bones and also the relics of Thomas Thwing remain. The lock of white hair mentioned in Brown’s deposition may be that now displayed in a reliquary at Egton Bridge.
Clearly, the problem of the two right hands (if that is what they are) casts a shadow over the jaw bone and makes it necessary to try to get back a little further in the story. The chapter on Nicholas Postgate in Dom Bede Camm’s Forgotten Shrines (published in 1910) not only tells the story of Postgate’s life and describes the places associated with him but also lists and describes the relics preserved in various locations at the time Dom Bede was writing. At St Cuthbert’s in Durham he viewed the hand along with two locks of white hair, the lower jaw bone and a vertebra of Thomas Thwing at Durham. Significantly, Camm quotes from Bishop Challoner’s Memoirs of Missionary Priests that Fr Postgate’s quartered body was given to his friends and was buried though the place of burial is not known. If the same was true of Thomas Thwing then clearly it would not have been difficult for loyal Catholics living in York in 1679 and 1680 to have obtained and kept together relics of both martyrs. Likewise, Challoner (writing prior to the French Revolution) states that one of Nicholas Postgate’s hands was preserved at Douai College and Camm expresses the belief that this is the hand that he has seen at Durham along with the other relics. What then might be the linking stages of the story?
York is known to have had a number of Catholic gentry residents in the late 17th century, any one of whom might have preserved the relics. Although the Bar Convent was not yet itself established in 1679/80 there were members of Mary Ward’s Institute living in the city in a house in Castlegate and also with the Thwing family just outside the city. Since the hand of Margaret Clitherow found its way into the nuns’ possession, might they not also have preserved in the first instance the relics of Postgate and Thwing, especially as the Thwings were sheltering them? This may be speculation but it is certainly reasoned. It is equally reasonable to suggest that whoever preserved the relics might have passed them on to the church authorities and that the relics were taken to Douai College, alma mater of Postgate and Thwing, to inspire the students preparing there for the English mission. (Tales of martyrdom were seen as great inducements to future missionaries and physical evidence, presumably, all the more so.)
Why then might they have returned and why to Durham? In 1790 France was in the grip of revolutionary fervour and it was clear that religious institutions were in great peril. Douai College would, indeed, be seized and its students eventually forced to flee back to England. If the college authorities did foresee the threat then the perfect opportunity to make safe precious relics came in 1790 when William Gibson, up until then President of Douai College, returned to England to take up his appointment as Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District with his residence at Old Elvet in Durham. No proof of this scenario exists but it or some similar one seems perfectly plausible.
To return to Camm, he mentions relics of Nicholas Postgate and Thomas Thwing being found together also at Oscott College. Does this argue further for the genuineness of those at Durham? The fact that he does not mention a lock of white hair amongst the relics he was shown at Egton Bridge but mentions two locks at Durham supports our supposition that a gift was made in the same way that the jaw bone came to York and perhaps around the same time.
As regards the hand at Ampleforth, Dom Bede in 1910 believes this to be a left hand. A paper which contained the relic bears writing in a 17th century hand stating that the hand is of Nicholas Postgate and that with it is a cloth dipped in his blood. Dom Bede draws on the account of Fr John Knaresborough (another early chronicler of the lives of the martyrs) that he received a piece of cloth which had been dipped in Fr Postgate’s blood at his execution by Thomas Garlick, a servant of Mr Tunstall of Wycliffe, who passed it to Mrs Fairfax of York who passed it to him. That particular piece of cloth was at Dodding Green, near Kendal, at the time of Camm’s writing but, by association, he suggests that the Fairfaxes were the most probable source for the hand preserved at Ampleforth. Camm describes the Ampleforth hand as missing its thumb and forefinger. Bizarrely, the photograph of the hand at Durham reproduced opposite page 284 of Camm’s book makes that appear rather like a left hand – but perhaps the image is reversed in printing!
To return finally to the jaw bone at York, it is displayed at English Martyrs as that of Nicholas Postgate and alongside the other martyrs’ relics supplied in the 19th century by Fr Pollen and perhaps by others subsequently. A new ‘martyrs’ chapel’ was fashioned in 2007 to give the relics a dignified and suitable home and to encourage their veneration by parishioners and by visitors to the church.
Fr Dominique Minskip
PLEASE NOTE: English Martyrs is now the administrative address for the Postgate Society rather than Osmotherley. Since the existing membership lists are quite definitely out of date, Fr Dominique would be pleased for members to write confirming their names and addresses in order for them to receive future bulletins. New members are welcome, subscription being by any desired donation to ‘The Postgate Society’.