Saint Henry Morse

Henry Morse (1595 – 1 February 1645) was one of the Catholic Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Henry Morse was born a Protestant in 1595 at his grandmother's house at Brome in the English county of Suffolk, the son of Robert Morse, a minor landowner of Tivetshall St Mary, Norfolk. At the age of 16, Henry went to study law at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and continued at Gray's Inn, London. Upon his father's death in 1614, he went to France to join his brother William, who was at Douai studying to be a priest. Morse converted to Roman Catholicism at the English College, Douay. He returned to England to settle some financial arrangements and was arrested at Dover for refusing to take the Oath of allegiance and confined to Southwark gaol. Morse remained incarcerated with a number of priests for four years, until King James I of England ordered amnesty and banishment for about 100 priests, in furtherance of negotiations to arrange a Spanish marriage for his son Prince Charles. He arrived back at Douai in August 1618 and was sent to the English College in Rome to commence his studies. While there, he used the alias "Henry Claxon" to shield his identity from the Crown's spies. He was ordained at Rome and left for the English Mission on 19 June 1624. Morse was assigned to assist the Jesuits at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where later that year there was an outbreak of plague. Morse and his companions nursed the sick. The following year he was arrested and later moved from Newcastle Gaol to York Castle where he again tended the sick. He completed his novitiate under his fellow prisoner, Father John Robinson, and took simple vows as a Jesuit. After three years in prison he was banished from the country and served as a missionary to the English and Irish soldiers attached to the Spanish army in the Low Countries. Returning to England at the end of 1633 he laboured in London, in the St Giles-in-the-Fields area. In 1635 plague was brought on boats from Flanders.