from Momentoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors, For Every day in the Year
January 8
THE WEAK MADE STRONG
THE ELEVEN MARIAN BISHOPS
BY permission of Gregory XIII, under the fresco of a prison, on the walls of the English College, Rome, the following sentence was inscribed : "For their Confession of the Roman See and the Catholic Faith, eleven Catholic Bishops died, after wasting away by a long imprisonment." That is, the Catholic Bishops whom Elizabeth found in their Sees on her accession, with the exception of Kitchen of Llandaff, one and all refused to take the oath of supremacy, and were deposed. Those who had been weak before, like Tunstall and Gardiner, and had accepted Henry VIII under the title of Head of the Church, were staunch now, for they had learnt where their error led. They were placed in private confinement or imprisoned, but on the breaking out of the Plague in London they were subjected to the galling custody of their Protestant successors in what had been their own palaces, and there in one or other prison in the end all died. Their end was in obloquy before men, but their sculptured effigies in desecrated cathedrals would never give God the glory of their broken croziers and empty thrones.
"They recovered strength from weakness, and became valiant in war; they had trials of mockeries and stripes, moreover also of bands and prisons, being approved by the testimony of their faith." HEB. xi. 34, 36, 39.
Hat tip to Fr. Tim at The hermeneutic of continuity
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