Saint of the Day † (February 27) ✠ St. Anne Line ✠ English Roman Catholic Martyr:

 † Saint of the Day †

(February 27)

✠ St. Anne Line ✠

English Roman Catholic Martyr:

Born: 1563 AD

Essex, England

Died: February 27, 1601

Tyburn, England

Venerated in: Roman Catholic Church

Beatified: December 15, 1929

Pope Pius XI

Canonized: October 25, 1970

Pope Paul VI

Feast: February 27

Saint Anne Line was an English Roman Catholic martyr. After losing her husband, she became very active in sheltering clandestine Roman Catholic priests, which was illegal in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Finally arrested, she was condemned to death and executed at Tyburn for harbouring a Catholic priest. The Roman Catholic Church declared her a martyr, and Saint Paul VI canonised her in 1970.

Anne Line was the widow of Roger Line, who along with Anne’s brother was arrested in England and banished to Flanders where he died a few years later. Anne was given charge of a house of refuge for priests, was found out, arrested, charged and executed. One of Shakespeare’s enigmatic poems, The Phoenix and the Turtle, has been interpreted as in praise of the love of St Anne Line and her husband Roger.

A convert from Calvinism:

Anne Line was the second daughter of William Heigham of Essex, a strict Calvinist, and was, together with her brother William, disinherited for converting to Catholicism. Sometime before 1586, she married Roger Line, a young Catholic, who had been disinherited for the same reason. Roger Line and young William Heigham were arrested together while attending Mass and were imprisoned, fined, and finally banished. Roger Line went to Flanders, where he received a small allowance from the King of Spain, part of which he sent regularly to his wife until his death around 1594.

In charge of a house of refuge for priests:

Around that time Fr John Gerard opened a house of refuge for hiding priests and asked the newly-widowed Anne Line, despite her ill-health, to take charge of it. By 1597 this house had become insecure, so another was opened, and Anne Line was, again, placed in charge. On 2nd February 1601, Fr Francis Page was saying Mass in the house managed by Anne Line, when men arrived to arrest him. The priest managed to slip into a special hiding place, prepared by Anne, and afterwards to escape, but she was arrested, along with two other laypeople.

Trial:

Tried at the Old Bailey on 26 February, she was so weak that she had to be carried to the trial in a chair. She told the court that far from regretting having concealed a priest, she only grieved that she “could not receive a thousand more”. Sir John Popham, the judge, sentenced her to hang the next day at Tyburn.

Execution:

Anne Line was hanged on 27 February 1601. She was executed immediately before two priests, Fr Roger Filcock, and Fr Mark Barkworth, though, as a woman, she was spared the disembowelling that they endured. At the scaffold she repeated what she had said at her trial, declaring loudly to the bystanders: “I am sentenced to die for harbouring a Catholic priest, and so far am I from repenting for having so done, that I wish, with all my soul, that where I have entertained one, I could have entertained a thousand.” Fr. Barkworth kissed her hand, while her body was still hanging, saying, “Oh blessed Mrs Line, who have now happily received thy reward, thou art has gone before us, but we shall quickly follow thee to bliss if it pleases the Almighty.”

The Phoenix and the Turtle:

There is no foolproof documentary evidence that Shakespeare was a Catholic. But in The Times Literary Supplement of April 18, 2003, John Finnis and Patrick Martin argued that Shakespeare’s most enigmatic poem, The Phoenix and Turtle, published in 1601, which up till then had defied all attempts at explanation, is, in fact, a memorial poem for Anne Line, the Catholic widow executed at Tyburn in 1601 and her husband, Roger.