wfn.org | [ACNS] 470th Commemoration of the Martyrdom of St John Houghton

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

ACNS 3975     |     ENGLAND	|     06 MAY 2005

470th Commemoration of the Martyrdom of St John Houghton. London
Charterhouse

Ecumenical Service of Commemoration at Sutton's Hospital in Charterhouse

Between 1535 and 1540 seventeen monks and lay brothers of The London
Charterhouse, a Carthusian monastery, were put to death because they
would not accept the Act of Supremacy. The first to be executed was the
Prior of Charterhouse, St John Houghton. This took place on 4 May 1535,
together with the execution of the Priors of Beauvale (Nottinghamshire)
and Axholme (Lincolnshire), Richard Reynolds, a Brigittine Monk from
Syon and John Hale, Rector of Isleworth. These five were Proto-martyrs
of the Reformation era, a fact which is often forgotten or overlooked.

The site of the London Charterhouse is now home to Sutton's Hospital in
Charterhouse, a home, founded in 1611 for elderly gentlemen, known as
Brothers.

The Ecumenical Service to commemorate the Martyrs, attended by the
Bishop of London and Bishop George Stack, took the form of a procession
around the identifiable parts of the Charterhouse. In the present day
Chapel, the Chapter House of the original monastery, the order for
Vespers, based on that used at St Hugh's Charterhouse, Parkminster, was
sung.

A message was delivered by an envoy of the Carthusian Order,
representing both St Hugh's Charterhouse and La Grande Chartreuse near
Grenoble and both Bishops gave short addresses.

There was then an Act of Commemoration on the site of the old Priory
Church. In a moving ceremony, Brothers - elderly gentlemen who live at
Sutton's Hospital in Charterhouse - placed twenty roses into a model of
a Tyburn tree as the names of the martyrs were called.

During the course of the procession, a commemorative stone on the site
of the Great Cloister Garth, was dedicated.

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