No. III .
THE LIFE AND MARTYRDOME OF MR. MAXFIELD, PRIEST , 1616
THE venerable Thomas Maxfield suffered at Tyburn on the first of July, 1616. His fortitude made a great impression, and letters giving an account of his death were at once sent by his friends in England to the Seminary at Douay , which, in fact, he had but lately left. At Douay these accounts were recast as relations, those intended for the foreign public being written in Latin. An early and very brief form of such a relation will be found in the Miscellany of the Abbotsford Club MSS . in the Advocates Library, Edinburgh . (vol . i , p. 97), printed from the Balfour There is also a very brief MS . relation among the Westminster Archives (vol . xv, fo. 275), which is perhaps earlier still . It is dated August 11, 1616 , being thus endorsed; Relatio Præsidis Collegii Duaceni Anglorum de Martyrio Rdi Dni. , D. Thomæ Maxfieldi . Eiusdem Collegii Alumni, passi Julii xi.-R. Aug. xi , 1616. As more news came in, a more ample history was put together, and on the 15th of September, 1616 , the censor's approbation was obtained for printing it. The title of the second edition shows that it was based on a letter sent from England by a priest, who had been a Douay student in past years . Tradition has ascribed to Dr. Kellison , then President of the College, the credit of having given the storyits final form and its Latin dress , though his name does not appear on the title page, and the authorship seems to have remained unknown to the translator of the version now printed . The book itself was published before the end of the same year by the widow of Lawrence Kellam, under the title Vita et Martyrium D. Thoma Max- Fildai, Collegii Anglorum Duaceni Sacerdotis, Londini ob Sacerdotium capitis damnati , 11 Julii, 1616. Ex litteris Anglice datis aucta, et Latine reddita . Duaci , 1616, 18mo was reprinted in the following year, with accounts of three other Douay martyrs, who suffered in the same year as Maxfield . Exemplar Literarum a quodam sacerdote Collegii Anglorum Duaceni quondam alumno ex Anglia ad idem Collegium transmissarum. De Martyriis quatuor eiusdem Collegii Alumnorum ob Sacerdotium hoc anno 1616, in Anglia morti damnatorum . Pretiosa in conspectu Domini mors Sanctorum eius. Psal. 115. Duaci , typis Petri Aurol, sub Pelicano aureo, Anno M.DC.XVII Small 8vo, pp . 56, with the censor's approbation , dated Douay, 15 Sept., 1616. Except in their opening and closing paragraphs, there seems to be little difference between the two editions. Both are works of great rarity. There is a copy of the latter in the British Museum, but not of the former, and am indebted to Mr. Joseph Gillow, the fortunate possessor of one , for information concerning it, as well as for the identification of the translator's name and the genealogical and bibliographical notes which follow. The quaint English translation , now printed for the first time, was made, as we shall see, some years after the martyrdom , at the request of the Rev. Mother Frances Stanford , Prioress of the English Augustinian convent at Bruges, who claimed a family connection with the martyr, inasmuch as the wife of his brother , Peter Macclesfield (or Maxfield ), was a sister of the grandmother of the prioress. Peter Macclesfield, the eldest son and heir of the martyr's father, William Macclesfield, Esq. , of Maer Hall and Chesterton Hall , co . Stafford, married Joan, daughter of Thomas Levison , of Wolverhampton , Esq. , and sister of Sir Walter Levison, Knt . Mrs. Macclesfield's sister, Anne, was the wife of Sir Robert Stanford , of Perry Hall , in the same county, Knt. , and his son Edward , of the same place, was the father of the prioress. This good religious was born in 1596 , and in 1619 was professed at the English Augustinian convent of St. Monica's , Louvain , which had been founded in 1609. In twenty years the number of postulants had become so great that it was determined to begin a filiation at Bruges, and thither nine of the religious proceeded on September 14, 1629 , under the direction of Mother
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