Note 173 — Chapter LXX

— Father Edward Oldcorne and Brother Ralph Ashley are both, along with others, now styled by Rome, “Venerable Servants of God.” The Decree introducing the cause of these “English Martyrs,” dated 1886, and signed by the present Pope, Leo XIII., is kept in the English College at Rome, where Oldcorne had himself entered as a student a little more than three hundred and four years previously, namely, in 1582.

Through the truly kind courtesy of the Right Rev. Monsignor Giles, D.D., President of the English College, Rome, the writer was privileged to see, along with the Rev. Father Darby, O.S.B., and some other gentlemen, this Decree in the afternoon of Saturday, the 13th of October, 1900, the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor, King of England. In the forenoon of the same day the first great band of the English Pilgrims for the Holy Year, the Year of Jubilee, had received, in St. Peter’s, the Papal Blessing, amid great rejoicing, the apse or place of honour in this, the largest Church in Christendom, being graciously accorded to these fifteen hundred British Catholic subjects of Her late Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.