Blessed James Duckett

Blessed James Duckett was a London bookseller and publisher, a husband and a father. In the reign of Elizabeth I, when Catholics were persecuted in England, he printed and sold Catholic books. For this he spent many years in prison and was hanged at Tyburn. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on April 19, the day of his death.

He came from Gilfortrigs in the parish of Skelsmergh, in the county of Westmorland in the north of England. The year of his birth is not known. As a younger son he was apprenticed in London after some years of schooling. He was brought up a Protestant and was a zealous Puritan. His son later wrote that he would hear two or three sermons in a single day.

The way to the Catholic Church was opened to him by a book lent to him by Peter Mauson, a Catholic from his own part of the country. After reading it, James stopped going to Anglican services, and for this he was twice sent to prison. Each time his master got him out, but he was unwilling to keep him any longer, and James had to buy out his apprenticeship. Within two months he was received into the Catholic Church by an aged priest named Weekes, who was himself a prisoner in the Gatehouse at Westminster.

After two or three years he married Anne Hart, a widow and a Catholic like himself. He supported his family by tailoring and, among other things, made vestments for priests. Later he took up the printing and selling of Catholic books, prayer books above all. During one search a printing press was found in his house, together with the whole edition of a Rosary prayer book. Of the twelve years of his marriage he spent nine in prison.

The last time, he was betrayed by Peter Bullock, a bookbinder who was himself under sentence of death and probably hoped for a pardon. Bullock informed Judge Popham that Duckett had copies of a work addressed to the queen, written by the Jesuit Saint Robert Southwell. In a search by night that work was not found, but other Catholic books were, and on March 4 James was taken to Newgate prison. The jury at first found him not guilty, but the judge told them to consider again, and then the sentence of death was passed.

On the day of his execution, April 19, 1602, he comforted his weeping wife. He told her that she would not weep if he had been made the queen’s secretary or treasurer, and that he was now going to the King of kings. He counted it a favor that, like his Lord, he was placed among thieves. He was taken to the place of execution in the same cart as Bullock, whose denunciation had not saved his life. James asked his wife to forgive the man who had betrayed him. Under the gallows he himself told Bullock that he forgave him with all his heart, kissed him, and asked whether he would die as he was dying, a Catholic. Bullock answered that he would die as a Christian should.

His story was written down by his son John, a Carthusian and prior of the English Carthusians at Nieuport in Flanders. Pope Pius XI beatified James Duckett on December 15, 1929, among 136 martyrs of England and Wales.