The Percy family proved to be an exciting and faithful one during the persecution of the Catholics under Henry VII and Elizabeth I. This martyr's father was executed at Tyburn for taking part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Some consider him a martyr, but only his son wears the crown of glory on the Church calendar.
Under Catholic Queen Mary, Blessed Thomas Percy was given back his hereditary titles, plus some:
Earl of Northumberland and the Baronies of Percy, Poynings, Lucy, Bryan, and Fitzpane.
Here is a section from Wiki on him:
On Elizabeth's accession the earl, whose loyalty to the Catholic Church was known, was kept in the North while the anti-Catholic measures of Elizabeth's first Parliament were passed. Elizabeth continued to show him favour, and in 1563 gave him the Order of the Garter. He had then resigned the wardenship and was living in the South. But the systematic persecution of the Catholics rendered their position most difficult, and in the autumn of 1569 the Catholic gentry in the North, stirred up by rumours of the approaching excommunication of Elizabeth, were planning to liberate Mary, Queen of Scots, and obtain liberty of worship. Earl Thomas with the Earl of Westmorland wrote to the pope asking for advice, but before their letter reached Rome circumstances hurried them into action against their better judgment.
After the Rising of the North failed, Thomas fled to Scotland, where he was captured by the Earl of Morton, one of the leading Scottish nobles. After three years, he was sold to the English Government for two thousand pounds. He was conducted to York and beheaded in a public execution, refusing an offer to save his life by renouncing Catholicism.[1] His headless body was buried at the now demolished St Crux church in York. His wife survived him, as did four daughters who were his co-heirs. The earldom passed to his brother.
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| Sacred Heart, Petworth |
He was beatified in 1895, and in some places his feast is tomorrow and in others November 14th. I pray to him today for myself, my son, my readers, Great Britain.
May I mention his daughter, Mary Percy, who became a nun at the Benedictines in Brussels. That order has many connections to foundations in England.
See here for more interesting bits:
01 Mar 2014
I
have already written about St. Thomas More's granddaughter and great
granddaughter on this blog. See links. I have read the biography of one,
which is no longer in print, Dame Gertrude More by Dame Frideswide ...
01 Mar 2014
Nuns
in Persecution Part Two. Posted by Supertradmum. I have been
researching the number of women who left England in order to become nuns
on the continent, owing to the persecution of the Catholic Church in
Great ...
01 Mar 2014
St.
Margaret Clitherow's sons and daughters carried on the holiness of
their saintly mother. Two of her sons became priests and her daughter,
Anne, became a nun with the Ursulines in Louvain.
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/
01 Mar 2014
The
first of two of the reasons why I am posting this series on recusant
nuns rest in my conviction that unless there are relationships among
Catholics, some type of Catholic community, the Faith will die in many
areas.
and
01 Mar 2014
Thomas
More's House ... and breaking rank with the highly politicized and
nationalized Anglican identity. That such great families as the Mores,
Garnets, Clitherows, Vauxs, Herberts and others fled to the continent
and that the daughters and granddaughters became nuns forms a pattern of
connected to the universal Church. The danger of too many American and
English Catholics today is that they do not firstly identify as
Catholics, but either as Americans or English.
and
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2013/06/repost-on-thomas-more-and-john-fisher.html