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| November 29th | Saint Cuthbert Mayne (Death) |
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Barnstable – born Cuthbert Mayne (1543 – 1577) was executed on this day in 1577. The nephew of an Anglican priest, Mayne was ordained, aged just eighteen, and appointed to the living of Huntshaw, near Torrington, with his family’s expectation that he would, in due course, inherit his uncle’s living too. However, after ordination Mayne attended Oxford where he converted to Catholicism. He was intended for arrest but, being warned, he escaped to Cornwall before then further travelling to the English College at Douai where he was ordained a Catholic priest in 1575. In 1576, Mayne took further refuge at the home of Francis Tregian in Probus. Knowledge of his return and approximate whereabouts were quickly passed to the agents of the protestant, Elizabeth I, who began a systematic search. The High Sheriff of Cornwall, Sir Richard Grenville, father of Sir Richard Grenville (June 26th) and Sir Bevil Grenville (March 23rd) raid on Tregian’s house (then called Wolveden but now known as Golden Manor House) on June 8th, 1577. With nothing found, Tregian invited Grenville to dine during which he taunted Grenville for his failure to find Mayne in the region. Enraged, Grenville ordered another search of the house and eventually discovered Mayne in the secret Priest’s Hole. Mayne and Tregian were sentenced to death, although Tregian’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and seizure of all goods, wealth and property but Mayne was hanged, drawn and quartered at Launceston on this day in 1577. He was canonised by Pope Paul VI on October 25th, 1970.
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