Feastday: January 22
Death: 1592
English martyr. Born at Durham, he departed his homeland and studied at Reims before receiving ordination there in 1587. The following year he sailed home and worked to promote the Catholic cause in the dangerous atmosphere of Elizabethan England. Arrested in 1591, he was tried and condemned for being a priest and was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. During his imprisonment, he converted six other prisoners to the Catholic faith. Beatified in 1929.
William Patenson (born in Yorkshire or Durham; executed at Tyburn, 22 January 1591–2) was an English Roman Catholic priest and martyr. He was beatified in 1929.
Life
Admitted to the English College, Reims, 1 May 1584, he was ordained to the priesthood in September 1587, and left for the English mission 17 January 1588–9.
On the third Sunday of Advent, 1591, he said Mass in the house of Lawrence Mompesson at Clerkenwell, and while dining with another priest, James Young, the priest-catchers surprised them. Young found a hiding-place, but Patenson was arrested and condemned at the Old Bailey after Christmas. According to Young, while in prison he converted and reconciled three or four thieves before their death. The night before his martyrdom, according to Richard Verstegan, Patenson converted six out of seven felons who occupied the condemned cell with him. Because he did this, he was cut down while still conscious and quartered alive.
Sources
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wainewright, John B. (1911). "Ven. William Patenson". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company. p. 542.
- John Hungerford Pollen, Acts of the English Martyrs (London, 1891), pp. 115–117
- John Hungerford Pollen, English Martyrs 1584–1603 (London, 1908), pp. 208, 292
- Richard Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, I, no. 94 (London, 1843), pp. 292–293
- Thomas Francis Knox, Douay Diaries (London, 1878), pp. 201, 217, 222
