Feastday: December 10
Birth: 1559
Death: 1591
One of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. He was born in Louth, Lincolnshire, England. Converted to the faith, he studied for the priesthood at Reims, France, and in Rome. After ordination in 1588, he returned to England. Eustace was taken prisoner because of his missionary work and executed at Tyburn, England.
Eustace White, one of the Catholic Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Born in Louth, Lincolnshire in 1559, he converted to Catholicism and was disowned by his father. He travelled to Europe to study for the priesthood and was ordained, probably at the Venerable English College, Rome in 1588. He returned to England for his ministry later that year - the year of the Spanish Armada. He thus began his ministry just as anti-Catholic feeling was reaching fever pitch.
A conversation with a fellow traveller led to his arrest in Dorset three years later in 1591. White put up a very articulate defence in the West Country but had no chance to defend himself in the London court where he was tortured. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn later that year.
Quote
- "The morrow after Simon and Jude's day I was hanged at the wall from the ground, my manacles fast locked into a staple as high as I could reach upon a stool: the stool taken away where I hanged from a little after 8 o'clock in the morning until after 4 in the afternoon, without any ease or comfort at all, saving that Topcliffe came in and told me that the Spaniards were come into Southwark by our means: 'For lo, do you not hear the drums' (for then the drums played in honour of the Lord Mayor). The next day after also I was hanged up an hour or two: such is the malicious minds of our adversaries."—In a letter written to Father Henry Garnet from prison, 23 November 1591.
