Saint Henry Morse

Henry Morse was born at Brome in 1595. His father & mother were Robert & Margaret Morse of Tivetshall St Mary. Margaret usually went home to her mother & father, Mr & Mrs Collinson, at Brome to have her children. Henry was the 7th son in their family of 14 children.
Henry's childhood was spent at Tivetshall. He & his family were members of the Church of England although his father was suspected of being favourable to Roman Catholics. In 1583 he had been reported to the Bishop's Court in Norwich for having secretly attended a Roman Catholic Mass in the parsonage at Stuston. He had also been reported for having given hospitality to a priest called Montfort Scott who was later executed. Henry possibly had some of his early education at Norwich Grammar School but more probably all his early education was at home. In 1612 he went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He didn't stay long in Cambridge before going on to Barnard's Inn in London to study law. It was probably while studying law that he became interested in Catholicism.

Priests were known to work among the students & the students themselves had sympathies with the many priests who were unjustly condemned by the judges. The meaning of the savage sentence of hanging, drawing & quartering was well known to Henry even at this early stage. Henry's older brother, William, had also been studying law but gave it up & went to Douai in France, became a Catholic & was ordained priest in 1617. It is possible that another brother, Robert, became a Catholic because he married Margaret Bedingfeld of Oxburgh Hall. They lived at Stuston Hall, the site of which is on the right of the old road (now blocked off) which used to form the cross-roads at the junction of the Diss to Oakley road with the Norwich to Ipswich road.

In May 1614 Henry went to Belgium & then on June 5th of the same year he arrived at Douai. Shortly after this he became a Catholic. In 1615 he came back to England & was arrested at the port because he refused to take the Oath Of Supremacy & he was imprisoned for four years. In 1618 James I banished a large number of priests & other Catholics including Henry. In August 1618 he was back at Douai under the name of Ward. He used many aliases during his life in order to confuse the government spies. By December 27th 1618 Henry had arrived at the Venerable English College in Rome & in early 1624 he was ordained priest.

In 1624 he returned to work in England from a house called St Anthony's on the north bank of the Tyne near Newcastle. The house was the home of a courageous lady called Mrs Dorothy Lawson who made her home a centre for Catholics. She did outstanding work for the poor of Newcastle & was well known by those in power. The authorities were not inclined to stop her Catholic activities in case they ended up with a riot on their hands. In 1624 the plague which was spread by millions of black rats broke out in Newcastle & Henry worked non-stop to help those who caught it.

In 1626 Henry & another priest, John Robinson, were arrested by government agents & put in Newcastle prison before being moved to what was called the worst prison in England, York prison. In March 1630 Henry was deported. He went back to Belgium & became an army chaplain to the English & Irish mercenaries who were in the Spanish army in the Netherlands. In 1633 he got back into England & worked for the poorest of the poor in London during the plague of 1636-1637. He and John Southworth got money from foreign embassies to help relieve the sufferings of the poor. Their most illustrious helper was the then Queen of England, Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I. Three times Henry caught the plague but survived (perhaps because of his close contact with the plague when he worked in Newcastle).

In 1637 Henry was caught & imprisoned. He was convicted of being a priest but for some reason he was put back in prison without sentence being passed. Later in 1638 Queen Henrietta asked her husband, Charles I, to pardon Henry & so he was again deported & once again he became an army chaplain. In 1643 he got back into England in disguise & worked in Cumberland. The Civil War was in full swing. One night Henry was called out on a sick-call & on his way he was arrested by some soldiers who guessed he must be a priest because they thought it most unlikely that any man would venture out at night during a civil war without any kind of weapon. The soldiers set off for Durham but on the way they stayed the night at the house of a Justice. The Justice was away but his wife who was a Catholic guessed that Henry was a priest & during the night she managed to get him out of the house & into the hands of an escape network set up to help priests on the run. He was on the run for six weeks before he was again caught & put in Durham gaol before being put on a coal-boat for London. Because of the stormy weather the boat had to put into Yarmouth. Henry's brothers Robert & George went to Yarmouth to see if they could gain Henry's freedom but they didn't succeed.

On New Year's Day 1645 Henry was indicted under the old charge of being a priest but there was no trial because he had been convicted on this same charge in 1638. He was sentenced to be hung drawn & quartered & on the morning of February 1st 1645 he was drawn on a hurdle by four horses with a cavalry escort of 50 outriders from Newgate to Tyburn where the sentence was carried out. The ambassadors of France & Portugal attended the execution & asked Henry for his blessing. On October 25th 1970 Henry Morse was Canonized by Pope Paul VI. His Feast Day is February 1st.

NOTES Brome, Stuston & Tivetshall St.Mary are villages in our Catholic parish of Diss.

1 Henry's brother Robert's daughter married John Castleton of Stuston. There are many Castletons buried in the chancel of the church at Stuston. Robert Morse was also buried at Stuston.

2 The carved plaques of St. Henry which can be seen on the wall in our church porch of the Holy Trinity in Diss was copied from a drawing made by a Catholic prisoner in Newgate, a Mr.Gifford, on the night before Henry was executed. The original drawing hangs in the Carmelite convent at Lanherne in Cornwall.

3 Mr.Gifford was released from Newgate & brought out the drawing plus ten other miniatures. He gave them into the care of his sister who was in the Carmelite convent which had been founded in Antwerp in 1619. In 1794 the Carmelites set off back to England & founded the convent at Lanherne. They brought with them the drawings. They also have skull of St. Cuthbert Mayne.