Saint John Kemble

Saint John Kemble was an English priest who, in a time of persecution, served the Catholics of Herefordshire and Monmouthshire in secret for more than fifty years, on the border between England and Wales. As an old man of eighty he was hanged at Hereford for being a priest. The Church commemorates him on August 22.

He was born in 1599 at Rhydicar Farm in the parish of St Weonards in Herefordshire. Catholic priests could not be trained in England at that time, so he went to the English College at Douai in Flanders. There he was ordained a priest on February 23, 1625, and in the same year he returned to his homeland as a missionary.

Under a law from the reign of Elizabeth I, the mere presence in England of a priest ordained abroad was high treason, punishable by death. For more than half a century John Kemble visited Catholic families in Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, celebrated Mass for them, and administered the sacraments. In old age he lived with relatives at Pembridge Castle in the parish of Welsh Newton.

In 1678 England was gripped by a panic stirred up by the Popish Plot invented by Titus Oates, an alleged Catholic scheme to murder King Charles II. At the end of that year Captain John Scudamore arrested the aged priest at Pembridge Castle. John had been warned and urged to flee, but he refused. He was put in prison in Hereford.

In 1679 he was taken to London and questioned in Newgate Prison about the alleged plot. No evidence was found that he had anything to do with it, yet he was sentenced to death solely for being a Catholic priest. He was sent back to Hereford, and the old man had to cover much of the journey on foot.

His execution was set for August 22, 1679, on Widemarsh Common in Hereford. Before he was led out of prison, he finished his prayers and then smoked a pipe and drank a cup of wine with the under-sheriff. From this came the Herefordshire expressions “Kemble pipe” and “Kemble cup” for a parting pipe and a parting cup. At the gallows he declared that he was dying for the Catholic faith and not for any plot, forgave the hangman, and was hanged. On the same day the Franciscan Saint John Wall was executed at Worcester.

John Kemble’s body rests in the churchyard at Welsh Newton, where pilgrims come every year, and one of his hands is kept in the church of St. Francis Xavier in Hereford. Pope Pius XI beatified him on December 15, 1929, as one of one hundred thirty-six martyrs of England, and Paul VI canonized him on October 25, 1970, as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.