Saint Anne Line

Anne Line (c. 1563 – 27 February 1601) was an English Catholic martyr. After losing her husband, she became very active in sheltering clandestine Catholic priests, which was illegal in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Finally arrested, she was condemned to death and executed at Tyburn. The Catholic Church declared her a martyr, and Pope Paul VI canonised her in 1970. Anne is believed to have been born as "Alice Higham" or "Heigham", the eldest daughter of the Puritan William Higham of Jenkyn Maldon, Essex. William Higham was the son of Roger Heigham, MP, a Protestant reformer under Henry VIII. A recent (2016) scholarly and extensively annotated biography has been published by Roger Scully S.J. She was born circa the early 1560s, and at some time in the early 1580s converted to the Roman Catholic Church along with her brother William and Roger Line, the man she married in February 1583. Both Roger Line and William Higham were disinherited for converting to the Roman Catholic Church and Alice Higham lost her dowry. Among Catholics, the married "Alice" became known as "Anne", presumably a name she took at her conversion. Roger Line and William Higham were arrested together while attending Mass, and were imprisoned and fined. While William Higham was released on surety in England, Roger Line was banished and went to Flanders. Line received a small allowance from the King of Spain, part of which he sent regularly to his wife until his death around 1594. Around the same time, John Gerard opened a house of refuge for hiding priests, and put the newly widowed Anne Line in charge of it, despite her chronic ill-health. For about three years Anne Line continued to run this house while Fr John Gerard was in prison. He was eventually transferred to the Tower of London where he was tortured, and from which he escaped. In his autobiography he writes: Line was arrested on 2 February 1601 when her house was raided during the feast of the Purification, also known as Candlemas.