Blessed Nicholas Garlick

Nicholas Garlick (c. 1555 – 24 July 1588) was an English Catholic priest, martyred in Derby in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. He was born around 1555, near Dinting in Glossop, within the county of Derby. In January 1575 he matriculated at Gloucester Hall, now Worcester College, Oxford. Although he was described as "well seen in Poetry, Rhetoric, and philosophy," he remained at Oxford for only six months and left without taking a degree, perhaps because of the required Oath of Supremacy. He then became a schoolmaster in Tideswell. Garlick seems to have been schoolmaster at Tideswell for some six or seven years. An anonymous writer, quoted in Hayward, says that he taught "with great love, credit, and no small profit to his scholars." Three of his pupils became priests; one of them, Christopher Buxton, was himself later martyred, while another, Robert Bagshaw, witnessed his teacher's martyrdom, and ended his life as President of the English Benedictine Congregation. Garlick entered the English College at Rheims on 22 June 1581. He was ordained as a priest at the end of March 1582, and left for the English Mission on 25 January 1583. Little is known of his arrival or his early work there, but he was arrested and banished along with seventy-two other priests in 1585. He arrived at Rheims on 17 October that year; two days later, he was on his way back to England. Garlick's second ministry in England lasted over two and a half years. The Douai Diary reports that he was in London in April 1586. A spy's report from 16 September 1586 says that he "laboureth with diligence in Hampshire and Dorsetshire." A government list of recusants for March 1588 announces his presence in Derbyshire. He was finally arrested with fellow priest Robert Ludlam on 12 July 1588 at Padley, at the home of the famous recusant family the FitzHerberts.