Blessed Thomas Pickering

Thomas Pickering (c. 1621 – 9 May 1679) was a Benedictine lay brother who served in England during the time of recusancy in the late seventeenth century. He was martyred as a result of the fraudulent claims of Titus Oates that he was part of a plot to murder King Charles II. Pickering was born in 1621 in Skelsmergh, near Kendal, Cumbria. His father died fighting for Charles I of England during the Civil War He entered the Benedictine Priory of St. Gregory the Great at Douai and made his vows as in 1660. In 1665, he was sent to London to be steward for the Benedictine monks who served the chapel of Catherine of Braganza, the Catholic wife of King Charles II, first at St James's Palace, and from 1671 at Somerset House on the Strand. He became known personally to the Queen and Charles II; and when in 1675, urged by the Parliament, Charles issued a proclamation ordering the Benedictines to leave England within a fixed time, Pickering was allowed to remain, probably on the grounds that he was not a Catholic priest. In 1678, Titus Oates made false claims of a Catholic plot against the King's life, and Pickering was accused of being part of this conspiracy, which is popularly known as the Popish Plot. At his trial on 17 December 1678, no evidence of treason against Pickering except Oates's mere word was produced, and Pickering's housekeeper, the formidable Ellen Rigby, later testified that Oates had only seen Pickering once in his life, when he had been begging for alms at the Benedictine's London house in the summer of 1678. She also testified that he had a personal grudge against Pickering, who, despite his habitual charity and good temper, told her not to admit him again. Pickering's innocence was so obvious that the Queen publicly announced her belief in him.