Bl. John Thules and Roger Wrenno

John Thules, of Whalley, England, was ordained a priest in Rome around the age of twenty-four. Returning to England, he served his country's persecuted Catholics for over twenty years. In Lancashire, he was arrested by the Protestant authorities and imprisoned with a Catholic weaver, Roger Wrenno. Father Thules converted four thieves imprisoned with them. The priest and Roger were sentenced to death for their faith. After Father Thules had been executed by drawing and quartering, Roger was placed in the noose to begin his execution, but the rope broke, sending him tumbling to the ground, still alive. The sheriff immediately offered him a second chance to escape death if he would agree to deny his faith. But instead, Roger, who had apparently experienced a supernatural vision, ran to the scaffold ladder and eagerly scaled it, telling the sheriff, "If you had seen that which I have just now seen, you would be as much in haste to die as I am now." He was thereupon hung.

John Thulis (Thules) (c. 1568 – 18 March 1616) was an English Roman Catholic priest. He is a Catholic martyr, beatified in 1987.

Life

Thulis was born at Up Holland, Lancashire, probably about 1568. His baptism is recorded in the Whalley Parish Register on the 28th of December, 1568, the son of William. He arrived at the English College, Reims, 25 May 1583, and received tonsure from Cardinal Louis de Guise on 23 September following. He left for Rome, 27 March 1590, where he was ordained priest, and was sent on the English mission in April 1592.

He seems to have been a prisoner at Wisbech Castle, Cambridgeshire, when he signed the letter of 8 November 1598, in favour of the institution of the archpriest, and the letter of 17 November 1600, against it. Later he worked in Lancashire, where he was arrested by William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, and was committed to Lancaster Castle.

There Roger Wrenno, a weaver, was confined. They managed to escape one evening just before the Lent assizes, but were recaptured the next day. After that he was imprisoned with thieves, four of whom he converted. These were executed with Thulis and Wrenno. Thulis was hanged, drawn, and quartered; the quarters were set up at Lancaster, Preston, Wigan, and Warrington. Wrenno was hanged next, and, the rope breaking, he was once more offered his life for conformity; but he ran to the ladder and climbed it.

A metrical account of their martyrdom, as well as portions of a poem composed by Thulis, were printed by John Hungerford Pollen in his Acts of the English Martyrs (London, 1891), 194-207.