Blessed William Exmew

William Exmew, O.Cart (died 19 June 1535, Tyburn) was an English Catholic priest and Carthusian hermit. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn and is honoured as a martyr by the Catholic Church. Exmew and his brother Carthusian martyrs were beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 9 December 1886. Exmew was one of the first members of Christ's College, Cambridge, then just founded by Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII. He became a proficient classical scholar. Entering the London Charterhouse, he was soon raised, at the age of twenty-eight, to the office of vicar or (sub-prior) then in 1534 he was named procurator. He was said to have had a particular reputation for learning, being well-versed in Greek and Latin. The Crown was at first anxious to secure the public acquiescence of the monks of the London Charterhouse in the matter of the break with Rome, since for the austerity and sincerity of their mode of life they enjoyed great prestige. When there was unexpected resistance, the only alternative was terror. On 4 May 1535 the authorities sent to their death at Tyburn Tree three leading English Carthusians, Doms John Houghton, prior of the London house, Robert Lawrence and Augustine Webster, respectively priors of Beauvale and Axholme. Two days later William Exmew and the vicar, Humphrey Middlemore, were denounced to Thomas Cromwell by Thomas Bedyll, one of the royal commissioners, as being "obstinately determined to suffer all extremities rather than to alter their opinion" with regard to the primacy of the pope. Three weeks later they and another monk of the community, Sebastian Newdigate, were arrested and thrown into the Marshalsea, where they were made to stand in chains, bound to posts, and were left in that position for thirteen days. After that, they were removed to the Tower of London.