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"Mr Sheriff, I do not die for the plot but for my Catholic religion. Be pleased to acquaint his Majesty that I have never offended him in any way. I pray God give him His Grace and the light of Truth. I forgive all who have in any way wronged me and brought me to this death, and I desire the forgiveness of all the people."
These were Fr Postgate’s words on the scaffold at the Knavesmire – an interesting phrase especially in the light of the fact that the charges against him were a travesty of the Truth.
When we think of another trial, the one that gives the ultimate meaning to the trial of Fr Postgate and of all other martyrs, St John tells us that at his trial Our Lord said to Pilate, "I came into the world for this; to bear witness to the truth and all who are on the side of Truth listen to my voice." Pilate, the worldling, the arch-cynic putting what was expedient before all else replied, "Truth? What is that?"
We know from what we read in the Gospels and in the writings of the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, that Pilate didn’t scruple at massacring people if it suited his purposes and yet he did not want to condemn Jesus to death but it was expedient.
There are accounts that at Fr Postgate’s trial in the Guildhall in York the judge tried to be as impartial as possible but he was still convicted.
What led to this clearly unjust situation?
For several years the penal laws against priests had not been enforced in all their one time ferocity, had they been, it would have been well nigh impossible for Fr Postgate to achieve what he did.
Many of you will know of the famous letter that Fr Postgate sent in 1664 to the President of his old Alma Mater, the English College at Douai. He informs Dr Leyburn that in 34 years he had baptised 593 people, conducted 226 weddings, 719 burials and states that with converts added on, he had increased the Church by 2,400 Souls - in Blackamoor, that is, the area where we are today, he said he had 600 penitents.
I think any of us priests in these easier days would be delighted to echo those numbers in our own ministry.
Fr Postgate was a prudent man being a founder member of a fund set up to help ill and infirm priests – theYorkshire Brethren Fund – he wasn’t at the Fund’s first AGM in 1672 held near Bootham Bar but he made his views known through one of the priests who was able to attend.
He did attend a meeting at Peasholme Green in York in 1676.
So here we have the picture of an elderly priest (extremely old considering the average life expectancy in the17th Century) who had worked hard and fruitfully and was making plans for the time when he could no longer maintain his busy ministry.
So what happened? A perfect storm.
A powerful Protestant faction in Parliament and the Court were fearful about the future. Charles II was not enforcing the Penal laws, he was known to be sympathetic to Catholics and was unlikely to have a legitimate heir, to make things worse, his brother James was going to succeed him as king but James was a Catholic and on the death of his first wife had remarried a younger women who might (and actually did) provide him with a legitimate male heir.
Then into this mix was added the completely fictitious Popish plot concocted by an amoral charlatan, Titus Oates. He conned his way through Cambridge, never graduated, but by pretending that he had, persuaded an Anglican bishop to ordain him. He went on to accuse an innocent man of horrible crimes to take his job but his lies were found out and he was jailed for perjury. He escaped and became a chaplain on a Royal Navy ship but was thrown out of the Navy for forcing his attentions on a young sailor.
At the same time that he was writing anti Catholic tracts he smooth-talked his way into being received into the Catholic Church and was even accepted for priestly formation at theEnglish College in Valladolid. Fortunately, the façade of piety soon slipped, and he was expelled.
He would go on to say that he had simulated conversion in order to spy on the English Catholics on the continent – perhaps that was one of the few true things he ever said.
Oates reported the so-called plot to a London magistrate, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey who was later found murdered – Catholics were blamed and one of Sir Edmund’s servants, John Reeves who had worked as an excise man in Whitby swore revenge. It was Reeves, who seeking revenge, came back to the Whitby area. It was Reeves who arrested Fr Postgate, the scene was now being set for the judicial murder of an innocent Christ like old man on the Knavesmire.
Charles II could have stopped it, after all a Catholic priest, Fr John Huddleston had saved his life after the battle of Worcester and this same priest was in due course to receive him into the Catholic Church and give him absolution and Viaticum on his deathbed. Charles knew the Popish plot was nonsense, he had personally questioned Titus Oates and had seen through his lies, but the king was afraid of the powerful backers of the fantasy, they too knew it was all lies, but power and status was more important to them than Truth and the lives of the innocent.
When the French ambassador on behalf of Louis XIV asked Charles to save the life of the highest-ranking victim of the plot, St Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, he told the ambassador that he knew Plunkett was innocent, but the time was not right to take so bold a step as to pardon him – in other words he was afraid to stand up for the Truth - it was not expedient.
"Truth what is that?" asked Pontius Pilate.
The enemies of the Truth try to suppress it in every generation but cannot because Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the living unconquered embodiment of the Truth, he was there at the trial of Fr Postgate and gave his martyrdom and indeed every martyrdom worthy of the name an incalculable value because he unites them with his own Passion and Resurrection.
This is a great consolation for us but also a serious challenge especially in our own day when celebrities, politicians and social influencers talk about My Truth as if the Truth is merely a subjective uninformed opinion. So the sanctity of Marriage and family life is undermined and human life itself when it is most vulnerable at its beginnings or when old or ill is seen to be disposable – again expediency is all that matters.
How stupid do they think we are? But the past in various guises keeps coming back – didn’t Titus Oates and his supporters think their contemporaries were stupid and wide open to manipulation?
Behind all of this is the oneJesus called the Father of lies – Satan.
St John Paul II in his letter Veritatis Splendor teaches us ; -
Called to salvation through Faith in Jesus Christ, the true light that enlightens everyone, people become light in the Lord and children of light and are made holy by obedience to theTruth. This obedience is not always easy. As a result of that mysterious original sin, committed at the prompting of Satan, the one who is a liar and the father of lies man is constantly tempted to turn his gaze away from the living and true God in order to direct it towards idols exchanging the truth about God for a lie. Man’s capacity to know the truth is also darkened, and his will to submit to it weakened. Thus giving himself over to relativism and scepticism he goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from the Truth itself.
But no darkness of error or of sin can totally take away from man the light of God the Creator. In the depths of his heart there always remains a yearning for absolute truth and a thirst to obtain full knowledge of it.
On the day of his execution people remarked how cheerful Fr Postgate was.
Stoicism? Stiff upper lip? Putting on a brave face?
None of these things, as he wrote in his marvellous hymn;
O sweetest Lord, lend me the wings
Of Faith and perfect love
That I may fly from earthly things
And mount to thee above
Fr Postgate’s whole life wast angible proof that
the Truth will set you free,
His martyrdom, his witness in other words, was his final and most sublime vindication of everything he proclaimed about his sweetest Lord, who from the first moment of his life to its ending with the crown of martyrdom showed that for Fr Postgate He was the Way, the Truth and the Life.
