Blessed James Duckett
The Revolutionary
Join me today to meet a blessed who found his calling in revolution.
Name: James Duckett
Life: died 1602
Status: Blessed
Feast: April 19
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Not too long before dawn, James Duckett turned himself in. What with the discovery of the mole inside his organization, the raid on his house, and Duckett’s dramatic escape, it had been a very strange night.
The 16th century was coming to its end in England. Queen Elizabeth I would have a few more years on the throne. In those years remaining to her she was determined to continue the policy started by her father, Henry VIII: England would have its own church, an English Church. For Elizabeth, Catholics were a political threat, potential allies of her enemies in Spain. But for ordinary people, this meant they were suddenly asked to acknowledge Elizabeth, and not the Pope, as the leader of the English Church. They would have to give up the Catholicism their ancestors had protected for the last thousand years.
And yet, putting an end to Catholicism in England would not be so easy. Despite the execution of many prominent Catholics, those who survived formed an underground Church.
Priests studied in then-friendly France, and returned to serve for as long as they could. They were being hunted by the network of spies that had been set up by Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. Many priests died heroic deaths, priests like Blessed James Fenn and Blessed Everard Hanse. And with every martyrdom, the network of underground Catholics grew a little more wary, a little more resilient.
But priests alone could not hold the Church together. The Church needed courageous laymen who would live secret Catholic lives. These laymen would have to take the lead in building hidden chapels, finding empty places where a quick wedding or other ceremony might be held, and encouraging one another during the persecution.
Elizabeth’s spies had now identified James Duckett as a node in that Catholic network. They knew Duckett was doing something, but from the outside it wasn’t obvious what the spies were observing. They could see that people kept going to the house of James Duckett. Many of the people going in and out were Catholics. Duckett was providing something to them, and the obvious reason for so many people to be coming to his house was that Duckett must have a secret chapel there. And that meant something important: James Duckett was either hiding, or he was being regularly visited by, a priest.
The spy network launched a two-pronged attack. The first prong was a group of armed men who would storm the house and hope to catch Duckett in his bed at midnight.
By this time, the spymaster Francis Walsingham was dead and parts of his network had fallen into the hands of his wily son in law, the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux. The Earl of Essex was taking no chances. And that was why there was a second prong to the attack: the Earl of Essex had placed a spy inside James Duckett’s house.
Ten weeks earlier, the spy had started befriending James Duckett. On the night of the raid, he came to James Duckett’s house, asking for protection. The spy said he was afraid of being raided at his own house. Might he just sit down in the kitchen near the warmth of the fire for that evening? Duckett had agreed.
The reason for having a man on the inside was that Catholics had gotten very good at hiding priests. Many houses had what came to be known as a priest hole, tiny spaces behind hidden entrances where priests could conceal themselves for days if necessary. The authorities were afraid that when they pounded on the door, Duckett would quickly bring the priest into that hiding place. That was why they had positioned a spy on the inside. Hopefully, when the authorities arrived, the spy could tell them exactly where the priest was.
As midnight approached, the spy sat up in his chair, ready to watch what Duckett did when there was a knock on the door. Then it came: a group of men, carrying a warrant signed by the Earl of Essex. The men burst in and searched the house. Inside, the spy waited for the secret priest to emerge. But nothing happened. The spy didn’t see a priest at all. All the searchers found were a few Catholic books and tracts. They left guards at the door in case they needed to come back, and went to ask the Earl of Essex what to do next.
The searchers didn’t understand what they had found. Neither did the Earl, but he at least knew that he was missing something. If there was no priest in the house, James Duckett must be doing something else. Had they detained Duckett? No, the searchers said, they had been looking for a priest, and since there was no priest they had left Duckett there with a guard posted. The Earl shouted at them to go back and pick him up.
Duckett, of course, had slipped out of a secret exit in his own house, and he was on the run in London. But the Earl of Essex was not above bending the law in his favour. The Earl let it be known that if Duckett did not turn himself in, Duckett’s friends would be arrested in his place. And so it was that, in the early hours of the morning, Duckett arrived to let himself be taken into custody.
James Duckett was an unlikely revolutionary. He had been born to a respectable family in the Northwest of England. His parents could afford to give him some education. Then, Duckett needed to find himself a trade. He came to London as an apprentice to a printer. Duckett was in London, learning to be a printer, when he had the first theological disagreement of his life.
One of Duckett’s friends turned out to be a secret Catholic. And as they talked, James Duckett realized that he had never thought to question the England he had grown up in. To many older people, Queen Elizabeth’s rulings seemed like a terrible break with the past. But to younger men like Duckett, this was the way it had always been. But now he was asking questions. What had the Church been doing for a thousand years before the Anglicans? Did all that tradition have to be lost?
Duckett was feeling the weight of history. His friend gave him an apologetic book, with the wonderful 16th century title The Firme Foundation of Catholike Religion against the Bottomless pitt of heresies. It was one of many books and pamphlets in which England’s secret Catholics made their case to anyone who would listen.
Duckett read the book and his certainties were shaken. He cut back his activities at the Protestant church he had attended. He was trying to figure out what he believed. But spies were always watching, and Duckett’s absence was noted. Someone was sent to figure out what was going on.
The watchers realized that when he was in the print shop, sitting on his chair, he often pulled out a well-worn book and read it. He hid the book under the pillow on his chair when he wasn’t reading it. When Duckett was out on an errand, the watchers went in and checked the book: it was the Firme Foundation that his friend had given him. On the strength of this, Duckett was brought before an Anglican Minister to be examined.
Now at this point, Duckett didn’t have to get in trouble. He could have said that he was busy, or travelling, or probably even admitted that he was having a crisis of faith.
But Duckett discovered at this moment that he had in him the makings of a revolutionary, or perhaps we should say of a counter-revolutionary. Being questioned by someone whose authority Duckett did not particularly respect made him say exactly what he thought. Duckett told the man he hadn’t been to church because he had questions, Catholic questions, and wouldn’t be back until he had seen evidence that the Anglicans could answer his newfound questions, which meant he probably wouldn’t be back anytime soon.
This was enough to get him tossed into prison. Many men in Duckett’s position would have sobered up and changed their minds. But going to prison only made Duckett more certain that he wanted to be part of the Catholic cause. His one-man revolution had begun.
In 16th century England, an apprentice was subordinate to a master and owed him a duty of loyalty, a duty that went both ways. The master printer got Duckett out of jail. And that might have worked, except Duckett had no intention of mending his ways. Soon he was back in prison for ignoring and defying the Anglican authorities. His master bailed him out, again, but this time more reluctantly. Duckett was good at his work, a fine apprentice, but the master printer wanted to stay out of politics, which meant staying away from religious controversy. And so Duckett regretfully left his apprenticeship, determined to go his own way.
James Duckett was now pretty well committed to the Catholic cause. He wasn’t afraid of getting in trouble. So he went looking for a Catholic mentor where he knew he would be sure to find priests: in prison. Eventually he found a Father Weekes, a priest likely awaiting execution. Weekes guided Duckett into Catholicism, and when he was sure of the young man’s sincerity, he pointed Duckett toward the underground Catholic community in London.
Of course there was a Catholic network in London, as in England more generally. Catholics did what they could to help. Wealthy and powerful lay Catholics had the most power, and they often became major nodes in the Catholic network. Some built chapels on their estates. One priest celebrated mass at the house of a wealthy man who put on vestments and served as the priest’s acolyte. But the man knew the dangers, and he kept a sword handy in case they were interrupted by Walsingham’s spies. And in fact, in the middle of the mass, some spies did burst through the door. The wealthy man sized them up and didn’t draw his sword. He let his servants swarm the spies and drag them away. Afterward, he went down and confronted the spies. When they accused him of wearing Catholic vestments, he scoffed at them. A ridiculous piece of fake news, he said, as he reached into his coin purse and began handing out gold.
James Duckett was in no position to pay spies to keep silent. Now that he was not going to become a master printer, he had to work for a living. And over the next few years, he became a crucial part of the Catholic network in London. There was always a need for messengers, couriers, and so on. Eventually he met someone through the network: the widow Anne Hart. She shared his revolutionary instinct, and the two were married.
What could one man do to help the Catholic cause? The answer that came to Duckett was that he could make vestments, for these were always in short supply. In the past, a priest would own some sets of liturgical vestments. But now, it was very dangerous for a priest to travel with vestments, since having them would give away the priest’s identity. Lay Catholics compensated by trying to have vestments ready at every secret chapel, which meant there was suddenly a constant need for new vestments. One of the earliest memories of James Duckett’s son was of his father, when he wasn’t at work, keeping himself busy by assembling vestments for this purpose.
And then one day, James Duckett realized that there was something else he could do to help. Indeed, it was something he was unusually well-suited to do.
He could make books.
Duckett wasn’t going to be a printer. He didn’t have the resources or the equipment to do that. What Duckett had was the knowledge of how the printing world worked. He knew how to get a manuscript to a printer, then get the prints to a bookbinder. James Duckett was going to run an underground publishing house.
And so it was that James Duckett went back into the book business. All sorts of Catholics were writing tracts, defending themselves in print. Their words remained even after they had died.
As a result of his new trade, Duckett had previously been found with Catholic books. No one realized that they were books that he had produced, but Duckett went to prison for several years just for owning them. When he left prison, Duckett immediately returned to publishing. And he was so successful that his house had come to the attention of the Earl of Essex.
So now Duckett’s house was raided again. In order to keep his friends out of prison, Duckett had surrendered. He went to jail, again. But this time, he was in a better position.
The case against him was pretty weak - the Earl of Essex’s own spy had seen nothing untoward. Moreover, Anne was in the late stages of pregnancy, and the sight of her petitioning the Earl for her husband to be released began to turn opinion in Duckett’s favour. Finally the Earl had had enough, and Duckett was set free.
Of course, Duckett had absolutely no intention of halting his activities.
He was now churning out books, using his network to get them printed and bound, then feeding them into the Catholic network. Then Duckett was betrayed by the wife of a man he trusted. Duckett was arrested again, and put into one of London’s jails underground. It was a terrible, moist, disease ridden place, so dark and humid that all his clothes were soon covered with a black fungus.
The indefatigable Anne managed to wrangle a meeting with her husband. She expected him to be downcast. He was grinning and happy. Duckett was one of those men who never seemed to lack for grace to bear up in these conditions. Even more than that, he was a happy warrior. He seems to have been genuinely delighted to cause so much trouble for authorities he thought were in the wrong. And he was by now such a major player in the underground Catholic network that several prominent London men, both knights, helped get him out of jail again - and London’s underground Catholic publisher was back at work.
Then Duckett was betrayed again - and this time, there seemed to be no escape.
A bookbinder named Peter Bullock had been arrested. The judge in charge in his case was John Popham, famous for his harsh punishments. So Peter Bullock tried to buy some goodwill from the judge by abandoning his own Catholic beliefs and selling out London’s underground Catholic publisher. He told the judge that he knew for a fact that Duckett was publishing the works of Saint Robert Southwell, whom Elizabeth had executed five years earlier. Bullock assured Judge Popham that he was willing to testify against his former colleague.
Finally, here was the evidence the state needed to take care of Duckett once and for all. But when they raided his house, there was a problem. Duckett had indeed produced Saint Robert Southwell’s book. But the publishing business was so brisk that he was already out of stock. Instead, the searchers found a totally different stock of Catholic books in his house.
James Duckett did not look sorry for what he had done when he was brought into court. The man on trial before him was a Catholic priest, and Duckett had cheered and shouted encouragement for the priest until Judge Popham shouted at him to quiet down. Now the jury listened to the evidence against James Duckett. The prosecution’s star witness accused Duckett of having produced a certain book. But when they went to his house, they found different books - still illegal, Catholic books, no doubt, but not the ones the star witness was talking about. The whole thing seemed fishy, and the jury returned their verdict. Not guilty.
And that was when Judge Popham stood up and said no. He told the jurors to be silent. There had been a crime here. The possession of the books that Duckett had was a crime. Publishing them was a crime. Popham told the jury to go back and think again. They got the message, and this time, Duckett was found guilty. The judge sentenced him to death.
And as for the star witness against Duckett, Peter Bullock, the judge sentenced him to death too. In a cruel twist, both the publisher and his betrayer would ride to their deaths at the same time.
Before his execution, Duckett had some time alone with his wife, Anne. She was crying. But the great revolutionary was smiling. Duckett asked her if she wouldn’t be happy if he had gotten a promotion, say if he had been made the secretary or treasurer to the royal court. But he was going to be a martyr for the King of Kings. His calling was far, far higher.
And so it was that James Duckett found himself in a cart with Peter Bullock, his betrayer, on their way to die.
Duckett’s part in the Catholic counter-revolution was over - well, almost. There was no more publishing to do. But there was one last node that Duckett could conceivably add to the Catholic network, and that was the other man in the cart with him. And so, as the cart rattled along to the place where they would be hanged, Duckett set about saving his betrayer. Duckett told Bullock that he had no hard feelings. But would Bullock consider repenting and returning to the Church in his last moments? Duckett explained that he was hoping for an answer soon, because they didn’t have all day. The ride to the gallows was not long, but it was long enough. Blessed John Duckett and the man he had brought back to the faith died as Catholics together.
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A wonderful story and clear evidence, if any be needed, that today's institutionalized social division is not new.