43I No. XIV
FR . JOHN BIRKETT, CONFESSORIN LANCASTER CASTLE, AND THE RECENT DISCOVERY OF DOCUMENTS BY JOSEPH GILLOW. MR . BIRKETT , clergyman , " appears immediately below the name of Mr. Penketh, Jesuit , in a list of priests " condemn'd on account of Or"ders , but repriev'd , and pardoned, An . 1679 , printed by Dodd in his Church History, vol . III , 1742, p . 400. This was during the national " No Popery" delirium raised by means of the perjuries of Titus Oates and his fellow plotters , secretly incited by the Earl of Shaftesbury, through the medium of the Green Ribbon Club , with the ultimate object of excluding the Catholic Duke of York from the throne . By the Bill of 1679, the Prince was excluded from inheriting the crowns of England , Scotland , and Ireland with their dependencies because he had joined " the communion of the Church of Rome," and had entered " into several negotiations with the Pope, his cardinals , and nuncios, for promoting the Romish Church and interest . Bishop Challoner , Memoirs of Missionary Priests, 1742, vol . II, 446 , added a Christian name, the place of the Confessor's trial and condemnation , and that he died a prisoner : " Richard Birket, Priest , of the Secular Clergy , but of what College I have not found . He was tried and condemned at Lancaster , and died in Prison, a Confessor of Christ . I was unable to add anything to this in my notice of the confessor in Bibl. Dict. Eng. Caths., vol . I , 215 , 1885, but subsequently I met with a curious prophecy attributed to the confessor and said to have been found in his cell in Lancaster Castle after his death in 1680 ( vide IV) . It was sent to Squire William Haydock, of Cottam Hall , according to the endorsement on a copy forwarded to Francis Whitgreave , Esq., of MoseleyCourt , Staffordshire , by Dame Gertrude Wells, ofthe English Benedictine Convent at Dunkirk, in a letter dated Jan. 3, 1764. The squire's son and successorwas an active adherent of the exiled Stuarts , and it may be that it was used by him in his Jacobite propagandism . But even if the prophecy should be proved to have originated as a political squib , confessor'smemory was it will, remain evidence of the veneration in which the no held otherwise the name attached would have had weight and would not have appealed to Catholic sympathizers with the Jacobite cause . On Augt. 1714 , , 4, , Thomas Tyldesley the diarist records that Esqre . Hadocke , of Cottam Hall, and several other Jacobite squires Edward Winckley, of Bannister Hall , Richard Butler , the young lord of Rawcliffe , Gabriel Hesketh , of Whitehill , and Henry Whittingham, of Whittingham Hall , brought the news that Queen Anne died on Sunday morning , Augt. 1st , " betwixt 7 and 8." In their joyful anticipation and excitement they commemorated the event in a " pige feast . " Two springs had passed since Pentecost and the feast of St. Barnaby came within three days of meetingAnd when the pentecost shall be The nearest to St. Barnaby Then ere a spring or two be ore Expect this Prince to his native shore.
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So said the prophecy," and, as a matter of fact , the Chevalier de St. George, or James III , as his adherents loved to call him , landed at Peterhead Dec. 22, 1715 . than two centuries and a quarter after the death of the A little more confessor, a briefaccount appeared in The Catholic Times of December lastof of the discovery at Athy in Ireland of some old documents relatingto a prisoner in Lancaster Častle named John Birkett. Nothing is known as to how the