Saint Cuthbert Mayne

Cuthbert Mayne (c. 1543–29 November 1577) was an English Catholic priest executed under the laws of Elizabeth I. He was the first of the seminary priests trained on the Continent to be martyred. Mayne was beatified in 1886 and canonised as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970. Mayne was born at Youlston, near Barnstaple, Devon, the son of William Mayne. He was baptised at the Church of St Peter, Shirwell on 20 March 1543/4, the feast day of St Cuthbert. An uncle who was a Church of England priest paid for him to attend Barnstaple Grammar School. Mayne was instituted rector of the parish of Huntshaw in December 1561. He attended Oxford University, first at St Alban Hall, then at St John's College, and was awarded a B.A. on 6 April 1566 and M.A. on 8 April 1570. On 27 April 1570, the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I and those who obeyed her laws and commands, releasing her subjects from their allegiance to her. At Oxford, Mayne met Edmund Campion and other Catholics, such as Gregory Martin, Humphrey Ely, Henry Shaw, Thomas Bramston, Henry Holland, Jonas Meredith, and Roland Russell. At some point, Mayne, too, became a Catholic. Late in 1570, a letter addressed to him from Gregory Martin, urging him to come to Douai, fell into the hands of the Bishop of London, and he sent a pursuivant to arrest Mayne and others mentioned in the letter. Warned by Thomas Ford, Mayne evaded arrest by going to Cornwall and then, in 1573, to the English College, Douai, now in northern France. Mayne was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church at Douai in 1575 and on 7 February in the following year he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Theology of Douai University. On 24 April 1576, he left for the English mission in the company of another priest, John Payne. He soon joined the household of Francis Tregian at Golden in the parish of Probus, Cornwall where he posed as his steward.