Blessed Edward Colman

Edward Colman or Coleman (17 May 1636 – 3 December 1678) was an English Catholic courtier under Charles II of England. He was hanged, drawn and quartered on a treason charge, having been implicated by Titus Oates in his false accusations concerning a Popish Plot. He is a Catholic martyr, beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929. He was born at Brent Eleigh, Suffolk, son of the local vicar Thomas Colman and his wife Margaret Wilson; he was a cousin of the Salisbury MP, Richard Colman, who died in 1672, and through Richard's wife Anne Hyde a distant connection of Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge, receiving an MA in 1659. Colman, who had been reared as a strict Puritan, converted to Roman Catholicism in the early 1660s. He has been described as a man of considerable charm and ability, but lacking in common sense or political realism. Sir Robert Southwell, who knew him well, called him "a man who must run himself into the briars". He was married: his wife was known to be a woman of great charm, but little else seems to be recorded of her. In appearance he was strikingly pale and emaciated, due it was said to his practice of regular fasting; his white face being all the more noticeable because he always wore a black periwig. In June 1661 he became a gentleman pensioner to Charles II. He was a charismatic advocate of the Catholic cause and is credited with several high-profile conversions, including possibly the future James II, although the details of that conversion are shrouded in mystery, due to the King's insistence on secrecy. It was more likely the Jesuit Emmanuel Lobb who received James into the Catholic Church. In 1673 James appointed Colman secretary to his wife, Mary of Modena, despite warnings from several quarters, including Charles II himself, that he was not a man to be trusted.